AEOLIAE INSULAE
(Lipari Islands) Messina, Sicily.
The peaks of the volcanic range of which
Vesuvius and Aetna are a part form this archipelago
off Cape of Milazzo in NE Sicily. Greek and Roman
tombs have been located at various points on Filicudi;
Salina has produced Roman house walls and Greek and
Latin inscriptions; a Roman habitation with a hypogeum,
traces of wall painting and mosaics is located on Basiluzzo, while Stromboli, famous in antiquity, has yielded
millstones and Roman tombs. Of the entire group, Lipari
(ancient Lipara) is of the greatest importance archaeologically.
Pentathlos' Knidians arrived at Lipara in 580 B.C. and
settled on the site of the modern village in the area now
known as Castello or la Cittade. The colony waged a
successful struggle against the Etruscans for control of
the Tyrrhenian Sea. During the intervention of Athens
in the affairs of the West in 427 B.C., Lipara was allied
with Syracuse and withstood the assault of a combined
force of Athenians and Rhegines. Carthaginian forces
succeeded in holding the site briefly during their struggles
with Dionysios I in 394, but once they were gone the
polis entered a three-way alliance which included Dionysios' new colony at Tyndaris. Lipara prospered, but in
304 Agathokles took the town by treachery and is said
to have lost 50 talents worth of pillage from it in a
storm at sea. Lipara became a Carthaginian naval base
during the first Punic war, but fell to C. Aurelius in 252-251, and again to Agrippa in Octavian's campaign against
S. Pompeius. Under the Empire, it was a place of retreat,
baths, and exile.
The excavation of Graeco-Roman Lipara is complicated by the existence of the modern town over the
ancient site. The discovery of the necropolis at the outskirts of the town indicates that the ancient and modern
settlements are coterminous. During excavation a sanctuary to Demeter and Persephone was discovered on the
ancient road leading to the necropolis. The sanctuary,
which consisted of an altar open to the sky within a
temenos, has produced a well-dated series of ex voto
dating from the 4th c. to the Roman capture. Near the
Comune, portions of the Greek defense wall of the 4th-3d
c. are still visible. At the site of the museum, the Castello,
the construction of the square in front of the cathedral
at the beginning of this century destroyed all archaeological evidence over a large part of the acropolis, but what
remains shows a “tell deposit” 9 m deep from the Neolithic to the present. Excavation has traced the Graeco-Roman street grid and has uncovered house remains. The
Hellenistic and Roman remains rest on the prehistoric
strata.
There are important collections from Lipari at Palermo, Cefalu, Syracuse, Glasgow, and Oxford, in addition to the Aeolian Museum at Lipari.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Mezquirez de Irujo, “Ceramica ibérica en Lípari,”
Archivo Espanol de Arqueologia 28
(1955) 112; L. Bernabò Brea, “Lipari nel IV sec. a. C.,”
Kokalos 4 (1958) 119ff; id. & M. Cavalier,
Il Castello
di Lipari e il Museo Archeologico Aeoliano (1958) with
bibliography; idd.,
Meligunìs-Lipára II: La Necropoli
Greca e Romana nella Contrada Diana (1965); idd.,
“Lipari—la zona archeologica del Castello,”
BA 5, 50
(1965) 202-5; L. Zagami,
Le Monete di Lipara (1959);
TCI Guida d'ltalia: Sicilia (1968) 444-80; A. D. Trendall & T.B.L. Webster, “The Stevenson Collection from Lipari,”
Scottish Art Review 12, 1 (1969) 1-7 (serialized).
H. L. ALLEN
