Incredible Day: Terracina & Sperlonga

After spending Thursday July 2 indoors, out of the sun and heat attending lectures, we hit the road again on Friday July 3 for a magical day.

Our first stop was the Temple of Jupiter Anxur (Jupiter as a youth) in Terracina.  This temple contained an oracle.  Most oracular sites were accessed through an underground passageway called a cryptoporticus.  

At the end of the underground passage was the oracle.  In this case a rock situated in such a way that the breeze blew up through it and made whistling noises.  Special attendants would listen to these noises and interpret them for people seeking the oracle's guidance.

This is the back side, underneath the temple.

 There isn't much left of the temple, as you can see.

 More is left of a secondary, smaller temple on the same site.

We then went into the town of Terracina to view a major engineering project.  Experts differ on when this work was done, some placing it as late as the reign of Trajan, while others feel it was done a couple of centuries before.  What did they do that's so important?

This crag was originally at least double this size and extended all the way into the sea.  That forced the Appian Way, the main Roman road in the area, to climb through the hills.  That slowed troop movements and so was unacceptable to the Romans.

The Romans also liked to impose their will on nature.  They carved away more than half of the headland, allowing the Appian Way to remain level and stay on the coast.   In the picture below, if you look to the left of the doorway, you see "CXX" carved into the rock.  To the left of the "window" you see "CX" and to the left of the shaded area at the top you can see "C".  The Romans kept track of how many feet they dug down.  A Roman "foot" was slightly smaller than an English (American) foot, so 10 Roman feet equals 2.96 meters.  To reach a depth of 120 Roman feet, they dug down through 35.5 meters of solid rock.  This also provided a good defensive position, as an opposing army would be vulnerable if they tried to funnel themselves between the rock and the ocean.

 After Terracina, we drove to Sperlonga, a town on the Italian coast that was home to a villa belonging to the Emperor TIberius.  The remains of the villa show its size.

 But the key feature was this seaside grotto.

 The Romans enhanced the cave, carving out a decorative pool

 and adjusting a rock formation to resemble the prow of a ship.

Just up the coast is Mount Circeo, a headland, here barely visible through the summer haze.  This mysterious hazy appearance is perfect, if you consider that this was the place where the witch Circe lived.  Odysseus traveled here and spent a year in the beautiful Circe's company (and according to some versions of the story, fathered a son).  As a result of this, Odysseus features prominently in the iconography of the area as we will show you.

 The persityle (courtyard) area of Tiberius' villa.

 Above the villa is a small museum containing some incredible finds.  This is thought to be a depiction of Aeneas.

 There are also remnants of three amazing statues that decorated the seaside grotto.  All of them include Odysseus.

Here are the remnants of a statue depicting Odysseus and his men sailing past Scylla.  Scylla was a sea monster who used to be a mortal woman.  She betrayed her father by cutting off a magic lock of purple hair from his head and giving it to her lover.  As a punishment, she was transformed into a monster with six rabid dogs that came out of her crotch.  She also had a serpent's tail.  While these are only fragmentary remains, you get an idea of the visual impact this sculpture had.

 Another sculpture is that of Odysseus and his men blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus.

The third was of Odysseus and Diomedes stealing the Palladium from the Temple of Athena in Troy.

There was another statue, with no significant remains on display, that apparently showed Odysseus recovering the body of the dead Achilles, after Achilles was pierced by an arrow in his one vulnerable spot--the heel.

Tomorrow, back in Rome.  Up on the Palatine Hill and into the Domus Aurea.  Stay tuned!