ARICIA
(Ariccia) Italy.
An ancient Latin
town on the Via Appia at the 16th milestone. It lies on
a spur at the juncture of the outer slopes of the craters
of Lago d'Albano and Lago di Nemi facing SW over
Valle Ariccia, the remains of a lesser crater. From a
very early period it was one of the most important and
most powerful of the Latin towns, and from an early period it led these in war against Rome (
Livy 1.50-51). It
was finally subdued in the Latin war of 338 B.C. from
which time it enjoyed civitas sine suffragio (
Livy 8.13).
It later was given full citizenship and was inscribed in
the tribus Horatia. Its highest magistrate was called dictator even in the time of the Empire; it also had two
quaestors, two aediles, and an ordo decurionum called
senatus. It had the distinction of being the birthplace of
P. Clodius and Atia, the mother of Augustus, as well as
many Roman magistrates (Cic.
Phil. 3.15-16).
The remains of the town itself spread on either side
of the old Via Appia, climbing to a triangular height at
the NE, the arx of the town, and spreading out on a
broad front on the edge of Valle Ariccia. Three periods
of construction in the remains of fortifications have been
distinguished: the earliest embracing only the arx; the
middle one, an extension of this into lower ground to
the S; the last, a further extension to enclose what one
may think of as the lower city. There the Appia seems
to have been the main street, and an arched gate spanned
it at the SE, so these fortifications are not likely to be
earlier than Hellenistic, but they seem to be towerless,
so the arch may have been inserted later. Little remains
of the earlier fortifications.
Among the remains of buildings, only a temple has
been more than cursorily examined. This reminds one of
the Temple of Gabii but is on a smaller scale, the interior
of the cella measuring only 7.70 by 13.15 m. It was a
temple with Vitruvian alae; there were four columns
across the front and four down each flank; and it stood
on a platform 1.75 m high that has largely disappeared.
There is no indication of the god of this temple; it is
commonly called the Tempio dell' Orto di Mezzo or
Tempio di Diana. In 1927 a votive deposit containing an
abundance of material, including large statues and busts
of terracotta of superior workmanship, was discovered.
The divinities here were clearly Ceres and Proserpina.
The most impressive remains lie outside the walls, a
viaduct of large rusticated ashlar facing a concrete core
that carried the Via Appia across a valley just SE of the
town. Canina, who saw it in better state at the beginning
of the 19th c., measured it as 231.25 m long, 13.2 m
in its greatest height, 8.22 m wide at the level of the
pavement. There is a slight batter to each face, and it
is pierced at three points by arched tunnels. A building
inscription found nearby proves it Augustan in date.
Within the town's territory lay two important sanctuaries, the lucus Ferentinae and the nemus aricinum of
Diana in associaton with Egeria and Virbius. The former
was a grove surrounding a spring at the foot of the Alban
Mount where the Latins assembled in council to award
imperium. This was the custom from the time of the
destruction of Alba to the consulate of P. Decius Mus,
340 B.C. (
Livy 1.50-51; Festus 276L s.v. praetor). It has
never been located.
The nemus aricinum lay NE of the Lago di Nemi looking out over the water the poets called “speculum
Dianae.” Here a natural shelf was improved by terracing
to make a rectangular platform with a surface area of
45,000 square m. Around the E corner runs a retaining
wall, the only conspicuous remains today, a series of
half-domed semicircular niches faced with opus incertum.
The temple itself was not centered on the platform but
set back toward the N corner, raised on a podium (overall dimensions: 30 m x 15.9 m). It is reported that Doric
capitals were found, but in most other features the temple is not clear. In the vicinity were found a way flanked
with bases, colonnades, and a great many structures of
unknown purpose. Just outside the precinct to the NW
was found a theater of the Imperial period and other
remains suggestive of baths.
The whole area has been the object of antiquarian researches since the early 17th c. at least, and in the 18th
and 19th c. considerable quantities of antiquities were
removed. Most of the material was votive, of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. Some small portions of the
temple's decorations in terracotta and gilt bronze were
recovered; from the paucity of the terracottas (antefixes
only) it would appear that most of the decoration was
carried out in bronze.
The nemus, like the lucus Ferentinae and the Sanctuary
of Jupiter Latiaris, seems to have been the shrine of a
Latin amphictyony. The extraordinary character and initiation of the rex nemorensis with its overtones of human
sacrifice, the mystery cult of Virbius with its theme of
resurrection, and the theatrical festival in which women
carried torches in procession to the nemus are well known
and explain the enormous popularity of the cult in antiquity, but the unsolved problems connected with it are
numerous, and the site today is so intensely cultivated
that a visitor can see little and form no idea of the whole.
It was known as early as the 15th c. that under the
waters of the lake near its edge lay the remains of two
large ships (see Shipwrecks).
Considerable collections of material from Aricia and
the nemus are in the Museo delle Terme, the British
Museum, the museum of Nottingham, and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek in Copenhagen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. Morpurgo,
MonAnt 13 (1903) 297-392; id.,
NSc (1931) 237-305; G. Florescu,
EphDac 3
(1925) 1-57; R. Paribeni,
NSc (1930) 370-80, pls. 16-17; F. Poulsen,
ActaA 12 (1941) 1-52, pls. 1-3
I; G.
Ucelli,
Le navi di Nemi (1950)
MPI; A. Alföldi,
AJA
64 (1960) 137-44, pls. 31-34; S. Haynes,
RömMitt 67
(1960) 34-45, pls. 12-19; P. J. Riis,
ActaA 37 (1966)
67-75.
L. RICHARDSON, JR
