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the “aurei”, the two heads of the goddess were portrayed from the
front, while on the “denari”, the two busts were represented over
a lectisternium ,or processional baldachin. The figure of one body
covered by garments has a crown on its head, while the other one,
showing naked breasts, wears a helmet on her head.
According to some scholars, these two images of the goddess, which
Martial used to call sorores or sisters, signified that each one of
them had different functions and qualities: the first one was more
feminine, the second one was more masculine and bellicose. The
authoritative scholar J. Champeaux, authoress
of a wide and very interesting essay on the goddess of Fortune
in the ancient world, does not share this opinion. She believes
instead that the two images belonging to a sole goddess might both be
at the same time forms of an oracular patroness, a fertility goddess
and a protectress of man
during the diverse moments of his life. This dualism is characteristic
of the religion and of the animistic beliefs of the Latin-Roman world
which felt the need to point out two faces or two aspects of the same
essence. The uniqueness of the goddess is nevertheless confirmed by
several interpretations. According to Champeaux and Scevola, we can
assert that the main quality of “Dea Fortuna” is fecundity and
birth as she was healer of all the parts of the body, in particular of
the genital organs. Moreover we know (from some of Horace’s odes)
that the goddess was also in charge of the execution of two other
important functions: to do with the cultivation of the land and to do
with the sea. To the town of Antium the latter function is obviously
predominant as is pointed out from the coins of Rustius and from the
statue kept in Villa Spigarelli, where the “Fortuna” is holding
the helm of a ship by her right hand. There are two hypotheses about
the location of the temple. The first one sets the temple on the
upland where Villa Albani was later built. The second hypotheses, of
historical topographical nature and very suggestive, indicates the
promontory of Capo d’Anzio as the seat of the temple and of the
sanctuary of “Dea Fortuna”.
The
temple of Aesculapius
No one has ever doubted that in Antium there was a
temple dedicated to the god Aesculapius. On this subject ancient
sources are very explicit indeed. Ovid, Valerius Maximum and Cicero in
the “De viribus illustribus”, unanimously tell of the ship, in
which some Roman ambassadors were travelling back from the Greek town
of Epidaurus along with the sacred snake of Aesculapius, that made a
stop at Antium.
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Here the snake is said to have left the ship heading for the
nearby temple of Aesculapius where it stayed a few days. Livy too
gave us direct confirmation of the existence of the temple of
Aesculapius in Antium telling of the praetor Lucretius who adorned
the temple of the god with beautiful
pictures taken from Macedonia. However, about the exact location
of the temple we know very little, even if Volpi has given the
drawing of its plan.
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The fact that a big statue in ancient black
marble portraying Aesculapius was found inside the area of the
municipal villa, the former Villa Pia, is not a sufficient
indication to the situation of the temple because other statues of
divinities like the one of Jupiter were also discovered inside the
villa.
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The
temple of Hercules of Antium
The presence of this temple is certain
enough as well. Cicero in one of his letters reported of the transport
of a statue of the god to Antium. The finding of the famous polychrome
mosaic with marble tesserae, vitreous paste and shells set inside a cave
on a side of Villa Sarsina, clearly indicates the place of the cult. We
know that in ancient Greece,
Hercules was invoked together with Poseidon mostly by sailors and
pirates: despite the dating of the mosaic to the Neronian period, we
believe that it is pertinent to a cult which had very ancient roots in
Antium, perhaps the same one and more popular than the one of the
Fortune.
The
temple of Jupiter
Father Lombardi wrote in his
well-known book that, in 1751, a statue of Jupiter in black marble of
special beauty was found inside Villa Pia. This statue, like the one
of Aesculapius, both found in the same area and made of the same
material, could perhaps have decorated the public thermae built here,
rather than the sacellum of a temple. A temple dedicated to Jupiter
could not have been in Antium like in all other Latin towns. Its
natural location is the acropolis on the Capitolium of the town.
The
temple of the “Spes Augusta”
Its existence can be deduced from a marble
inscription in which are mentioned the “Augustales”, that is the
priests assigned to this specific cult.
The
temple of Dioscuri
This
very ancient cult on Latin soil is also attested to Antium in a
passage of Strabo which
recalls a temple in the Tyrrhenian
colony.
The
temple of Cerere Anziatina
This is another historically
documented cult: an inscription on a marble plate
conserved at Verona expressly mentions it. The inscription may
be dated to 85 AD. and it was dedicated to the temple and sacrarium of
the goddess Ceres by a free woman who lived under the Emperor
Domitiatus. In this inscription is also named another personage of
ancient Antium, the priestess Iulia Procula whose sepulchral stone was
found in the “Vigna Pollastrini”.
Temples
of eastern divinities: Mithra and Anubi
In a town like Antium, open to sea
traffic, it is natural that there would have been
cults and temples dedicated to oriental gods and religions. For
example, the cult of the god Mithra was well documented in Antium. We
know from Della Torre that in the
Seventieth century, near the right hand pier of the Neronian
port, was found a plate
representing in bas-relief the young god killing the sacred bull after
having knocked him down. Above two young boys who are present at the
scene, the sun is portrayed in contrast to the moon on the opposite
side. We have further information from the famous artist and forger
Pirro Ligorio, who wrote about the discovery in the same place of an
inscription in which is mentioned the cult of the priests of the god
Mithra already at the time of Augustus. More reliable information
comes from Tomassetti who, in 1910, saw a bas-relief, with the same
mithraic scene sculptured in the fragment described by Della Torre, in
the garden of the honorary inspector of antiques of that time, the
lawyer Censi. The last information, in order of time, is that
regarding the existence of a mitreus, complete of side banks,
sacrificial altar and a portion of a fresco probably portraying the
god Mithra, found and immediately covered and incorporated into the
structures of Villa Serena, the former Salpietro palace. We have
evidence of the cult of the Egyptian god Anubi from the discovery in
1763 inside Villa Pia (at the time property of the Pamphiljs) of a
fine statue portraying him with the distinctive lotus flower on his
ears, the sistrum in his right hand and the caduceus in the left one.
The
temple of Neptune, of the winds and tranquillity
A temple to the god of the sea, of
the winds and of tranquillity could have not be absent in a sea town
like Antium. The vivacity of the marine cults is attested by a fine
statue of Neptune from
Antium kept originally in the Lateran Museum in Rome and today in the
Vatican Museums, and from the three round altars found in the port of
Antium and now conserved in the Capitolini Museums. All three of them
have carved into them the rostra of a ship and respectively, Neptune
riding a dolphin, a sailor whose ship’s sails are unfurled and
swollen by the wind and a young flying man who is blowing into a shell.
ATTENZIONE !!!
La riproduzione o distribuzione, totale o parziale,
non autorizzata del testo riportato in lingua inglese è vietata e
punibile per legge.
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