| Newsletter July 2008
Itinerary , Undiscovered Italy off the beaten track - Minturno’s Roman Ruins :
A Voyage through History PART 2 - CLICK HERE TO READ THE PART 1
Topic : Archaeology
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Minturnae archaeological excavations 1931
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Although the earliest excavations date back to the 19th century it was a young American archaeologist named Jotham Johnson to bring to lights the wonders of ancient Minturnae, under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. It is now almost 80 years since the first scientific excavations of ancient Minturnae were directed by Jotham Johnson. In Johnson campaign from 1931 to 1933, 77 pieces of sculpture and numerous fragments were unearthed.
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Above on the left Jotham Johnson – On the right: A member of the excavation team washes a marble head from a theater in the ancient Roman city of Minturnae. Photo on the right by Jotham Johnson, 1931. | |
During the excavations directed by Jotham Johnson in 1931 the real size of the Roman town became apparent and an entire town of fairly significant size came to light from the ground with temples, a port, a market, a forum and a Roman theatre. A consistent number of Roman pottery, statues and many inscriptions were discovered into the underground layer of the foundations of a 1st century AD Roman temple erected in the forum at Minturnae. The inscriptions were older than the temple and archaeologists dated them to the first half of the 1st century BC. They are an important document as they represent the lists of the magistrates elected annually in the town. There are even the names of many Middle East and Greeks merchants on the inscriptions.
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“Audentis Fortuna iuvat” (Fortune favors the brave)
Virgil 70 - 19 BC
Great classical Roman poet
Archaeologists discovered that ancient Minturnae was an important centre for a well-established industry such as pottery which kept an atypical Etruscans-like style adapted to Roman taste. The architectural terracotta decorations are also some of the most exceptional category of finds from Minturnae. The style of Minturnae’s terracotta pottery and building decorations finds are typical of central Italy’s Etruscans buildings. The style was largely uninfluenced by Greek stone working methods and here local artisans continued to work with terracotta until the end of the Republic in 31 BC and even beyond.
Minturnae marks the furthest south that this ancient style was found. Other more recent (1980s) archaeological excavations discovered other remarkable findings about Minturnae ancient past. Some underwater excavation which took place in the nearby Garigliano River discovered more about the Roman port at Minturnae. In ancient times manufacts such as lead curse tablets and magical papyri were routinely deposited in rivers, streams, and at sea. The tradition of placing a coin inside the mast-step of a ship's hold probably originated with the Romans and persisted through the Middle Ages becoming synonymous of good fortune. Such ancient custom is associated to the modern concept of ‘luck’. This tradition is really ancient and continues in various forms today. An evidence of this is the ‘launch’ of coins which tourists do when visiting Trevi’s fountain in central Rome. The evidence of more than a dozen ancient shipwrecks indicates that this old custom was not taking place only on the sea. In fact, thousands of votive coins were found in the river Garigliano (the ancient Liris in Roman times) near Minturnae.
The very luxurious and abundant archaeological material, especially sculptures, is factual evidence that the city must have been very wealthy: the presence of both a theatre and an amphitheatre with many statues, sheds light upon such an abundance of sculptures. A large collection of statues, about 160, from Minturnae is today in the National Museum of Zagreb, Croatia; fewer pieces are at the Philadelphia University, USA, after the participation in the excavation of 1931-33; a hundred of statues are at the National Museum in Naples.
The most recent excavations have involved the oldest part of ancient Minturnae only. The ancient site still keeps many treasures waiting to be discovered: there are the Italic town from the Aurunci age (1000 to 315 BC) before the Romans and the republican-imperial city (from 295 BC onwards), with its walls, public residential buildings and amphitheatre to be unveiled in more details.
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Minturno open-air Roman Museum today
A visit to ancient open-air museum of ancient Minturnae will surprise all the visitors who have not been there yet. This is an archaeological site second maybe only to Pompei or Ostiae especially considering the size and plan of the ancient town. The colony originally had a reduced extension along the river; however, already during the 3rd century BC it had a considerable urban development in direction west, along the Appian Way (Via Appia). In the Roman age the larger town and its immediate area were bound by the city walls.
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Minturnae Roman theatre
One of the masterpieces of the site is the Minturno’s superb Roman amphitheater. Its use was very much the same of Rome’s Coliseum (Colosseo) of which people know much about: we can still imagine and see the shadows of fire musicians, acrobats and gladiators in the Roman theatre. But the old past life of MInturnae may be better explained by the rest of the ruins enclosed in this ancient Roman town. Substantial proofs of life in Minturnae remain in the archaeological area: the Republican city walls, the ancient Via Appia (the decumanus), the castrum, the Republican forum and the Imperial forum, the theatre, the aqueduct, the macellum and the so-called Capitolium. Inside the complex there is a pic nic area garden and some panoramic view areas. Adjacent to the Archaeological Park is the Antiquarium, an indoor museum much of which consists of finds uncovered in the excavations of 1931-1933.
The Antiquarium at Minturnae
Adjacent to the outdoor archaeological park is the Antiquarium, much of which consists of finds uncovered in the excavations of 1931-1933. It is essential to visit the Antiquarium in order to understand all the aspects of life in an ancient Roman city. It houses sculptural, architectonic, epigraphic and ornamental material. Many of the sculptures were lost, misplaced, stolen or destroyed during transport in the attempt to save them from advancing armies during the Second World War.
However, in the indoor part of the museum, the Antiquarium there are many statesmen and Emperors statues of the Roman period. The Antiquarium displays some very interesting sculptures and it was instituted in the archaeological site in 1965: the exhibition are displayed inside the theatre's porticoes, restored for this purpose. In the 1st century BC Minturnae was a full scale, medium sized wealthy Roman town with a theater, a florid market a port on both sea and river and with many slaves most of them used as actors, circus performers, musicians and gladiators. Minturnae grew in importance during the Imperial Age. Its commercial importance rose and survived amidst varying fortunes until the 6th century AD.
While visiting Minturnae and walking among the silent ruins, still today after more than 2000 years it becomes easy imagining how could have been the life of the town long time ago’. Crossed by the Appian Way just outside its large town, the market (the macellum) was the lively and noisy meeting place with goods and spices from all over the Mediterranean along the local products such as honey, game, sheep and goat cheese from the shepherds of the nearby Aurunci Mountains’s; the cultivation of olive trees and vineyards practiced in the fertile countryside around produced the strong red Cecubum wine and olive oil sold in the terracotta amphorae and jars delivered on horse karts to the market. This is proved by the ‘Macellum’, the part of the ancient city which was the local market where merchants could sell or buy their goods coming from far lands of Africa and Middle East on merchant ships.
"Pecunia non olet" (Money has no smell)
Emperor Vespasian 9 - 79 AD
Roman Emperor
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The Macellum at Minturnae
The Macellum was the Emporium of the city, where local and imported goods poured into the nearby port. The presence of this Macellum in Minturnae is deduced from an inscription, dated II century A.D., which refers to a donation of a pair of scales and relative weights to this colony by a certain Hermes .The hypotheses on which the Macellum of Minturnae was reconstructed takes origin from the research and from surveys carried out on the existing structure and also from the study of other Macella with the same characteristics, with particular reference to those of Pozzuoli and Pompei. The building dates back to the Hadrian age with subsequent intervention during the Antonian era.
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It is constructed on a previous urban installation, preserving only the façade on the Via Appia with its monumental colonnade and the neighbouring arcade.
From the arcade you can access the main hall situated North on Via Appia. On the sides of this arcade a double line of “ tabernae” (the shops) with a wall in common was built. Five of these tabernae faced inwards and six faced outwards. These latter are developed on two levels as shown by the two staircases on either sides of the main entrance. The rest of the structure is only on one level. Two minor halls are situated perpendicularly on the east and on west of the building. The central courtyard is surrounded by four arcades of more or less square shape, with 18 marble shaft columns and corinthian-asiatic decorations, surmounted by roundhead arches.
The entrance to the archaeological site is in the large theatre area, without doubt the most impressive monument of the city, built right on the Via Appia and on the republican forum with its arcades. The western side of the compound is occupied by an important temple dedicated to Jupiter, the colony's Capitolium, of which only the foundations exist today.
The Capitolium at Minturnae
The Capitolum was an Etrusco-Italic type temple dedicated to the God Juppiter; it was built with three cells which soon after 191 b.C. It is located in the southern part of the Republican Forum and borders with the Via Appia.
The temple faces south where it is thought there was a stairway leading to a 1.5 m high podium on which the pronaos stood. This latter was formed by a double row of columns with two square pillars on either sides. The foundations are 18.70 m long and 17.80 m wide; thus the plan is almost similar to a square with the sides measuring 60 roman feet and is equivalent to the size of other temples with three cells of the same period (temple of Pyrgi and Capitolium of Cosa ).
The termae (Minturnae Roman baths)
The termae are the remains of the Roman baths in Minturnae located south of the Appian Way (Via Appia) looking towards east and are accessible via a secondary passage. The baths are behind the macellum. The baths are provide more evidence that Minturnae was a wealthy colony with people and citizens rich enough to enjoy such luxury. The termae building techniques unveiled by excavations seem to confirm that their original plan was restructured again in the age of Emperor Hadrian in a quite different way from the classical schemes.
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The open pool (natatio in Latin) was large and divided in two parts with the walls covered in local marble and the water was flowing from a main central water channel. The pool was accompanied by a gymnasium on its south and west sides as seem to evidence the regular patterns of the foundations on which there were heavy columns of the portico. The main space was probably covered by the typical curvy vaults according to the traditional and well-established building techniques of similar baths found in Pompei and Ercolano further south in Campania.
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"Time is a violent torrent; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place."
Marcus Aurelius 121 - 180 AD
Roman Emperor and one of the most important Stoic philosophers
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The slab indicating the bidental with the letters FDC (Fulgur Dium Conditum) | |
A mysterious place, Minturnae bidental
In Ancient Rome, a bidental was a precise place in the ground that was struck by lightning. The phenomena of a lightning was considered as a negative event so the bidental was enclosed with a wall, or palisade and an altar erected over it. A council of ten Roman priests was in charge of arranging special ceremonies on the location of a bidental.
They were called bidentales and trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy or hepatomancy with the sacrifice of a two years old sheep (called bidens). The priests collected the earth which had been torn up by the lightning, and everything that had been scorched, and burnt it in the ground with a sorrowful murmur.
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Nobody was allowed to access the place anymore.
Sometimes, after centuries from the first day a place was declared sacred, if the bidental had fallen to decay from passing time it was rebuilt; yet still after centuries no one dared to remove the bounds of one. It was not allowable to walk on the place or to touch it, or even to look at it. Even just looking at the bidental was considered a sacrilege which could bring very bad luck to the person.
Horace wrote that “a person who dared to desecrate the bidental was punished by the Gods” and Seneca (Nat. Quaest. II.53) mentions another belief of a similar kind that wine which had been struck by lightning would produce death or madness in any one who drank it. Persons who had been struck by lightning (fulguriti) were not removed, but were buried on the spot. If someone died the body would have buried the body in the same place and after the special ceremony the priests declared the bidental as a sacred place where no one was not allowed to be walked over;
The ritual arranged by the bidentales was called in Latin “fulgur conditum”. A specific inscription on one fulgur conditum tablet witness that in 207 BC “the temple dedicated to Zeus was struck by the sky…” and again in 191 BC the temple and all the tabernae of the market were again struck from the sky”. Historic sources confirm that Minturnae was struck twice by heavy lightning and even destroyed around the first half of the 1st century BC from fire caused by lightning.
The ritual well, Minturnae bidental, is right close to the capitolium (the temple) and is one of the rare vestiges of fulgur conditum, a ceremonial burial of objects striken by lightnings left fromt the Romans anywhere in the world. The position so close to the capitolium is the proof that the temple of Jupiter was hit twice by a lightning. Extremely important, the extra-urban sanctuary of the goddess Marica, the aurunca goddess of the sea, is situated 400 m from the Minturnae ancient harbor: known by the bibliography and excavated in 1926, it is placed beside a second temple, dedicated to Aphrodites.
But this amazing site is much older dating back more the 4,000 years ago’ to the age of the Aurunci tribes. Minturnae was inhabited long before the Romans from the mysterious Italic tribe of the Aurunci who left few proofs of their civilization and whose past is hidden under the ground and the layers of the Roman age. We are looking forward to the future excavations aiming to find out more secrets of the far and hidden history of this Roman colony. Nearness to the water is the secret behind every civilization. The river nearby Minturnae called Liris in Roman times (today called Garigliano) it hides many others fascinating underwater findings which wait to be discovered after 3000 years of history behind them.
"Carpe diem" (Seize the day)
Horace 65 - 8 BC
Leading Roman lyric poet in the time of Augustus
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