Recherche par auteur > Silecchia Chiara

Samnite presence in Pompeii is testified by many sources. Strabo (V, 4, 8) said that “The Oscans held Herculaneum and nearby Pompeii, near which the Sarno river flows; after them the Etruscans and the Pelasgians held it and after that the Samnites, who were finally chased away (by the Romans)”. Numerous Oscan inscriptions indicate the presence of an institutionally structured Samnite society, led by the highest magistrate (meddix). The elements of the urban landscape tell a sequence of periods: a first Etruscan city, whose evidences range from the 6th to about the middle of the 5th century BC; a hiatus (from the second half of the 5th to the third quarter of the 4th century BC), where the site doesn't seem to yield particular traces of life and which coincides with the process of "Sannitization" that also involved other well-known cities in Campania; finally, a re-urbanisation of the city starting at the end of the 4th century BC., attested by defensive, public, residential and sacred buildings. The latter, due to their importance within the new city society, will be the subject of this presentation. The two urban sanctuaries of the Etruscan city, the sacred areas of Athena and Apollo, say a lot about this moment of change: the sharp decline in votive offerings reflects the crisis of the dominant Etruscan aristocracies, which followed in the Samnite age a resumption of ritual and building activities. If the sanctuaries of Apollo and Athena (to which is added the cult of Heracles) are archaic religious places that “came back to life” in the Samnite age, with a perspective of continuity with the previous period (although there are notable differences in the architectural and votive style), something new in the sacred panorama emerges in the area of the future temple of Venus: the first traces of ritual activity date back to around the end of the 4th century BC. and, a century later, a first religious building was built, whose dedication to the Samnite goddess Mephite seems to be a plausible hypothesis, also considering the recent discoveries of structures connected to the use of water. Thanks to many research carried out over the years, several elements have emerged that need to be analysed, catalogued and integrated to be understood as a whole. This meticulous work of systematization and georeferencing of the data, carried out using the methodology of the Archaeological Information System (see A. Carandini, P. Carafa, A. Campbell Halavais, “The Atlas of Ancient Rome. Biography and Portraits of the City”, 2017), despite the difficulty in “reading” these sacred contexts (some of which were heavily affected by the bombings of the Second World War), has made it possible to outline the history of the ancient landscape by reconstructing phase plans related to their construction (or reconstruction) in the first Samnite phases and to their evolution until the first half of the 2nd century BC., before that phase of Romanization which would strongly change the urban landscape.