GRAGNANO
Campania, Italy.
A small
agricultural center not far from Stabine. It was buried in
A.D. 79. Several country villas and a farm with one of
the best preserved and most advanced grain mills have
been uncovered so far. A bath connected with one of
the villas was decorated with stucco reliefs depicting
boxers, Psyche, harpies, Narcissus, and Pasiphai. A second villa dating from the Republican period contained
a large kitchen and five non-adjoining rooms. A third
villa, built during the Flavian period, preserves the entrance and two day rooms on the N, a medium-sized
kitchen with an oven and apotheca on the E, a storage
area on the W, a triclinium with walls decorated in the
Fourth Style (including paintings of the Triumph of
Bacchus, Bacchus and Ariadne, Neptune and Amymone;
bacchantes) on the S, and finally, next to the triclinium,
two smaller rooms, one with erotic paintings and the
other with a painting of Pomona. Like other buildings
in the complex, it was built in opus incertum. In addition a pre-Roman necropolis with almost 200 tombs has
been found nearby. The finds from there and from the
villas are in the National Museum of Naples and the
Antiquarium of Castellamare at Stabiae.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NSc (1887) 155-56, 251-52;
NSc
(1892) 204-5; A. Liguori,
Gragnano; memorie, archeologiche e storiche (1955) esp. 30-45;
FA 16 (1961) no.
2737, 4747;
FA 18-19 (1963-64) no. 7377.
J. P. SMALL
