PUTEOLI
(Pozzuoli) Campania, Italy.
Twelve km from Naples about midway on the shore of a
bay formed by the promontories of Mons Posilypus and
Misenum. To the rear it is ringed by a series of volcanic
hills, and as far as Cumae the whole area was known
as the campi phlegraei from its sulphurous atmosphere,
hot springs, and other volcanic phenomena. Settled by
Samian refugees ca. 520 B.C. and politically dependent
upon Cumae, it was an outpost against Neapolis until
conquered by the Samnites in 421. There is little literary
or archaeological evidence until ca. 334 B.C. when much
of Campania came under Rome. In 215 B.C. Puteoli successfully resisted Hannibal; in 199 it received a Roman
customs station and a maritime colony in 194. By this
time its proximity to the Via Appia at Capua had made
it a port preferable to Naples. Sulla or Augustus may
have conferred further colonial status; Nero and Vespasian certainly did, and the latter enlarged the city's territory from ca. 10 sq. km of coastline to include a substantial part of the agricultural ager Campanus.
Puteoli's attraction for upper-class Romans and its
location only 5 km from Baiae's amenities must have
influenced the city's cultural life, but its great fame and
prosperity were based on its importance as a port of
Rome, especially from the East and especially after Delos
became a free port in 166 B.C. Even after Claudius installed the port of Ostia, its prosperity continued to such
an extent that Nero undertook to link it with the Tiber
by canal. Although by comparison Puteoli declined from
the 2d c. onward, it nevertheless remained important until it was abandoned in the 6th c. The city's population,
estimated to be nearly 65,000, was commercial and highly cosmopolitan, as is reflected by oriental cults such as
Sarapis (105 B.C.), Kybele, Jupiter Dolichenos, Bellona,
Dusares, I.O.M. Heliopolitanus, Judaism and pre-Pauline
Christianity (but not Mithraism), as well as by the usual
Graeco-Roman and the imperial worship. Puteoli was
likewise a gateway for Alexandrian artistry and artisanship, while its material imports were as varied as the world's products, especially eastern grain bound for the capital.
Return cargoes from Puteoli included oil, wine, and
probably Republican black “Campanian” pottery; also
the locally made and widely distributed glass and early
imperial terra sigillata.
The most conspicuous ancient monuments are reproduced and named on Late Classical globular glass vases
from Piombino (now in the Corning [N.Y.] Museum of
Glass), Odemira (Portugal), Ampurias, Populonia, and
one now in Prague, and in Bellori's engraving of a
wall painting now destroyed; interpretation of these illustrations and inscriptions is difficult and often conjectural. The city was eventually plundered to provide building materials for the cathedrals of Salerno and Pisa.
Puteoli naturally divides into a lower town, an upper
town, and the environs. Since antiquity parts of the
lower town have sunk ca. 8 m and risen again through
bradyseism; high water has been marked by marine borers attacking the three columns standing since antiquity
in the macellum. Since the 18th c. a new cycle of subsidence has progressed at about 2 cm annually.
The great macellum, formerly called the Temple or
Baths (?) of Sarapis from a statue found there in 1750,
consisted of a large rectangular courtyard (ca. 38 x 36
m), now submerged, surrounded by a portico into which
shops on E and W opened, or onto the streets outside;
the inner oriented shops were faced and paved with marble while the others were merely stuccoed. Stairs led to
an upper story. The grand entrance, flanked by further
shops or offices, was in the center of the S side; opposite
it on the N was a large apse with capacious latrines in
the courtyard's NE and NW corners. At some later time
the courtyard was embellished by a circular colonnade
of 16 African marble columns on a podium (18.2 m
diam.); statues and putealia were in the intercolumniations, a fountain was at the center, and the whole structure was either roofed or hypethral. The entire macellum was surrounded by an even larger one-story enclosure of
additional shops facing inward, and the whole must have
been a spectacular unit worthy of the importance of the
city it served.
Of the port little is now accessible. Ruins of the famous
Augustan opus pilarum, a breakwater (15-16 m x 372 m), carried on 15 enormous masonry piers, with at least
one triumphal arch, columns topped by statues, a lighthouse, and an architectural ship's prow at the end, are embedded in the modern solid breakwater. The colonnaded quay (ripa) and some docks are now below sea
level.
The Temple of Augustus, contributed cum ornamentis
by a local admirer, was situated on a low (36 m) acropolis. It was largely destroyed by the renovations of the
present Cathedral, but some columns, an architrave, and
inscriptions remain. In 1964 it was discovered to have
encased the remains of a structure reusing late 5th c.
Greek blocks, and of a Samnite or Italic temple with
handsome base moldings. Other monuments of the lower
town, conspicuous enough for identification on the glass
vases and engraving mentioned above, have disappeared.
The upper town was residential and recreational. An
outstanding discovery was the small Augustan amphitheater with axes of 130 and 95 m under the new Rome-Naples express railway line; it apparently lacked the subterranean chambers necessary for venationes. These and
other improvements were supplied in the great Flavian
amphitheater (149 x 116 m) nearby, which the Puteolans
built at their own expense in the principate of their
benefactor Vespasian. Accommodating 40-60,000 spectators, it was the third largest in Italy after those at Rome
and Capua. Beasts and machinery went underground on
ramps along the long axis reaching 6.7 m down to two
subterranean levels of passageways and 80 cages; as
needed, animals were returned to the arena on elevators
through rectangular openings, in an ellipse paralleling the
podium of the cavea and through other shafts. Cisterns
and fountains were for decoration, not naumachiae. An
elaborate sewer system concentrated all surface drainage
under the arena.
The upper town also included the Baths of Trajan or
Janus, which may be the same as the so-called Temple
of Neptune or of Diana, a solarium portico, a circus,
and several great cisterns served by a Republican aqueduct from the N and, from the E, by a longer one attributed to Agrippa.
In the environs, Puteolan opulence is evident in the
magnificence of the columbaria, hypogea, and mausolea
along the Via Consularis Capuam Puteolis (Via Campana) extending for ca. 2 km as far as S. Vito, especially
that part closest to the city gate (Via Celle). Some are
decorated with stucco or mosaics, or are otherwise impressively preserved, and in Christian times some were
reused for inhumations. Similar but less ostentatious
funerary monuments also flanked the ancient road to Naples.
The Via Campana was the only road connecting the
coastal cities with the hinterland and the Via Appia until
construction of the Via Domitiana linking Rome with
Puteoli, a less expensive substitute for Nero's projected
canal. Under Augustus the pre-Sullan road to Naples was
shortened by the crypta Neapolitana; Nerva and Trajan
improved this artery and made it a continuation of the
Domitiana, and the latter placed a triumphal arch over
it.
There is a museum at Pozzuoli but the statues, coins,
pottery, and other antiquities from the city are mostly
distributed among museums in various countries and at
Naples.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Dubois,
Pouzzoles antique (1907)
PI;
J. Bérard,
Bibliographie topographique des principales
cités grecques de litalie méridionale et de la Sicile dans
l'Antiquité (1942); annual entries in
FA (1948- ); H.
Kähler, “Der Traiansbogen in Puteoli,”
Studies Presented
to David Moore Robinson I (1951) 430-39
I; W. Johannowski, “Contributi alla topograpfia della Campania antica
I, La ‘Via Puteolis-Neapolim,’”
RendNap 27 (1952) 83-146
M; A. Maiuri, “Studi e ricerche sull'anfiteatro flavio
puteolano,”
MemNap (1955)
PI; id.,
The Phlegraean Fields (Guide Books to Museums and Monuments in Italy, 32,
3d ed. 1958, tr. Priestley)
PI; id., s.v. “Pozzuoli,”
EAA 6 (1965) 413-20
I; A. De Franciscis & R. Pane,
Mausolei
romani in Campania (1957) 56-72
PI; C. Picard, “Pouzzoles et le paysage portuaire,”
Latomus 18 (1959) 23-51
MI; M. F. Fredericksen, s.v. “Puteoli” in
RE 23, 2 (1959) 2036-60
P; J. H. D'Arms,
Romans on the Bay of
Naples (1970); R. Ling,
BSR 38 (1970) 153-82 (San
Vito tomb)
PI.
H. COMFORT
