CUMAE
Campania, Italy.
A city in Phlegraean Fields inside Cape Misenum on the Bay of Naples.
This area and its original Oscan inhabitants were known
to Mycenaean explorers of the 12th c. B.C., but the city
was actually founded ca. 750 B.C. by colonists from
Chalkis, Eretria, and the island of Pithekusai (Ischia).
The site included a strong acropolis, fertile hinterland,
and an attractive harbor, now nonexistent. From 700 to
500 B.C. it was a prosperous and important disseminator
of Greek culture in the West through the Chalkidian
alphabet, Greek cults, and several important colonies of
its own. The earliest historic Cumaean, Anistodemos,
repulsed an Etruscan attack in 524 B.C. and shared a
leading role with the Latins and Romans in defeating
the Etruscans again at Aricia ca. 505; in 474 the Cumaean
and Syracusan fleets combined to crush Etruscan power
in Campania. But about a half century later Cumae was
conquered by the Samnites and became Oscan until 180
B.C. Samnites were not maritime-minded and did not
really maintain the harbor. However, after Hannibal's
failure to establish outlets to the sea at Neapolis and
Puteoli, in 215 B.C. Cumae was his third—and equally
unsuccessful—choice. Already a civitas sine suffragio
(338 B.C.) Cumae was now granted municipal citizenship with Latin as the official language, and it became a
municipium at the end of the Republic. In 37-36 Agrippa
undertook a massive reorganization of the harbor facilities, adapting the lakes Lucrinus and Avernus on the bay
side into Portus Julius for the construction of a fleet and
the training of personnel against Sextus Pompey (battles
of Mylae and Naulochos, 36 B.C.) and, on the Cumaean
side, the construction of a whole new Roman port for
the unloading of supplies, and two long tunnels for communication between the sea and the lakes (see below).
After this great ad hoc achievement Cumae once more
silted up into maritime insignificance, though Symmachos
sailed from there to Formia in A.D. 383.
Cumae was most famous for its oracular Sibyl, just
as her grotto is now its most spectacular monument. As
shown by an inscribed bronze disk, she was giving, and
declining to elucidate, responses by the middle or the
late 7th c. B.C., originally for a chthonic Hera and only
later for Apollo, and her famous bargaining with Tarquinius Priscus (regn. ca. 616-579) for the Sibylline
Books was about contemporary. Vergil's poetic but surprisingly accurate description of her antrum (A en. 6.9-155 for the whole incident) is clearly based on autopsy.
Though restored by Augustus, the Sibyl's official cult
lapsed within the next century.
The site of the Sibyl's grotto was discovered in 1932,
a trapezoidal gallery (131.5 x 2.4 m and an average
height of 5 m) cut N-S into a solid tufa ridge below the
acropolis, overlooking the sea through six similar trapezoidal bays, with a total of nine doorways (not all now
documented) and, cut back into the rock on the left (E)
side, three ceremonial baths later converted into cisterns;
note the repetition of triads and the Sibyl's relation to
Hekate (Trivia). The splendid archaic Greek stone-cutting is attributable to the 5th c. B.C. and reminiscent of
Mycenaean and Etruscan dromoi. At the extreme (S)
end is an arched chamber, the inmost adyton wherein
Aeneas received oral instructions from the frenzied priestess; a vaulted chamber to the E, perhaps the Sibyl's personal apartment, and a similar but smaller W chamber,
probably for light and ventilation, open to left and right
of the adyton. This last complex, with vertical walls and
doorposts supporting semicircular arches, is a 4th-3d c.
addition or alteration to the original gallery. Under the
early Empire the whole floor was lowered 1.5 m to convert the entire grotto into a cistern; still later, parts were
used for Christian inhumation.
The entrance to the Sibyl's grotto was part of an architectural unit including steps leading up to the Temple of
Apollo (see below) and a ramp leading downward to the
entrance of the so-called Cumaean Roman crypt, a long
underground E-W tunnel passing under the acropolis. The
operations of Narses against the Goths (A.D. 560), landslides, and quarrying have destroyed this impressive
facade, but the crypt itself is undoubtedly attributable
to Cocceius, the Augustan architect who also built the
very similar crypt of Cocceius under Monte Grillo (see
below) and the crypta Neapolitana tunnel between
Puteoli and Neapolis. For 26 m the Cumaean crypt is
barrel-vaulted 5 m high and then opens into an enormous
Great Hall or “vestibule” 23 m high with revetment of
tufa blocks and with four niches for large statues; lighting for these and the whole crypt, of which the remainder
was a normal tunnel, was supplied by vertical or oblique
light-shafts down through the rock. Toward the E end
enormous rock-cut storerooms and cisterns open on one
side. Like the Sibyl's grotto, this crypt was eventually
used for Christian burials.
Even more impressive is the so-called crypt of Cocceius itself which, passing for ca. 1 km under Monte
Grillo, was wide enough for loaded wagons to pass and
which, after an open interval from the previous crypt,
continued the underground water-level supply route from
Cumae to Agrippa's Lake Avernus base. It was partly
barrel-vaulted with neat blocks; the remainder was cut
through unadorned tufa. Like the other crypt it was
lighted by vertical and oblique light-wells of which the
deepest is 30 m. As a further tour de force, Cocceius included an aqueduct along its N side, with its own niches,
ventilation shafts, and wells. But it and the Cumaean
crypt were strictly military in purpose and were not properly maintained thereafter until the Bourbons cleared it
for land reclamation purposes. It can still be traversed
despite ruts and water due to bradyseism and deforestation.- It was undoubtedly Cocceius' masterpiece.
Not all of the crypt of Cocceius and the mountain
under which it passes is strictly Cumaean, but consideration of Cumae cannot ignore Domitian's cut through the
crest of Monte Grillo and his filling the consequent gash
with the high narrow Arco Felice of brick, not an aqueduct but apparently simply a high-level bridge from one
side of the cut to the other.
The precise areas of the Greek, Samnite, and Roman
territory of Cumae varied from time to time and are not
entirely clear, but at least the acropolis was always the
obvious center. It was originally part of a crater; much
of it consists of varying qualities of tufa. Easiest access
was from the S where the harbor and principal city lay
with appropriate gates, but on the remaining sides it was
impregnable. In Greek times it was fortified with walls
of which some fine stretches remain visible, but in Roman
times it was extensively occupied by private dwellings
which have virtually eradicated structures (portico, cistern), but two temples remain identifiable.
The lower of these, epigraphically identified as the
Temple of Apollo, built upon a still earlier sanctuary,
exists only in ground plan (34.6 x 18.3 m). It was oriented N-S; in Augustan times the Cumaean Apollo received a new and presumably more elaborate E-W temple; in the 6th-7th c. this was converted into a Christian
basilica, once more N-S. The Greek phase of the upper
so-called Temple of Jupiter is E-W but even less recognizable than that of Apollo, though its dimensions were
greater (at least 39.6 x 24.6 m). The Tiberio-Claudian
phase is of characteristic reticulate masonry and is generally recognizable in its unusual plan, which was adapted
to a Christian basilica in the 5th-6th c., one of the earliest such structures in Campania.
In the lower town were Temples of Jupiter Flazzus
(later the Capitolium) and of Divus Vespasianus used
for a committee meeting in A.D. 289, a forum (ca. 120 x
50 m) with long porticos, largely unexplored, and two
2d c. bathing establishments. At the S end of the city
was an amphitheater with a major axis of 90 m, of which
only parts of the outer shell remain above ground. Statius, who often refers to Cumae, refers to quieta Cyme
(Silv. 4.3.65) and Juvenal calls it vacuae (3.2), but this
was doubtless in contrast to Rome and busy Puteoli.
Under the late Republic and early Empire Cumae was a
favorite resort of upper-class Romans, vying with Puteoli
and Baiae.
A large and ill-defined necropolis surrounds the city,
especially to the NE where extensive plundering during
the 19th c., as well as responsible excavation during the
20th c., has revealed interments of all periods including
pre-Hellenic; some tombs are painted. A tholos tomb
reflecting Mycenaean tradition and a mass grave of headless skeletons are of especial interest.
Most of the finds from Cumae, including a fine marble
copy of Cresilas'
Diomedes, are in the Naples Museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
General: A. Maiuri,
The Phlegraean
Fields (Guide books to Museums and Monuments in
Italy, 32) (3d ed. 1958, tr. Priestley)
MPI; W. Johannowsky in
EAA (1959)
PI; J. H. D'Arms,
Romans on the Bay
of Naples (1970)
MI.
G. Pellegrini, “Tombe greche archaiche e tomba grecosannitica a tholos della necropoli di Cuma,”
MonAnt 13
(1903) cols. 201-96
I; E. Gàbrici, “Cuma,”
MonAnt 22
(1913) cols. 9-871 (chiefly necropolis)
PI; A. Maiuri,
“
Horrenda secreta Sibyllae: Nuova esplorazione dell'antro
Cumano,”
BStM 3, 3 (1932-33) 21-29
I; J. Bérard,
Bibliographie topographique (1941) 50-52; M. Guarducci “Un antichissimo responso dell'oracolo di Cuma,”
BullComm 72, 3-4 (1946-48) 129-41
I; C. C. van Essen, “Etudes VI-X,”
Meded 2 XXXIII 4 (1966) (Sibyl's grotto); R. V. Schoder, S.J., “Ancient Cumae,”
Scientific American 209 (1963) 109-18
MI; R. F. Paget, “The Ancient Harbours of Cumae,”
Vergilius 14 (1968) 4-15
PI; id., “The Ancient Ports of Cumae,”
JRS 58 (1968) 152-69
PI; id.,
“Portus Julius,”
Vergilius 15 (1969) 25-32
M.
H. COMFORT