Italo-Hellenistic Sanctuaries of Pentrian Samnium: Questions of Accessibility
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doi: 10.2143/AWE.13.0.3038731 AWE 13 (2014) 63-79 ITALO-HELLENISTIC SANCTUARIES OF PENTRIAN SAMNIUM: QUESTIONS OF ACCESSIBILITY RACHEL VAN DUSEN Abstract This article addresses the region of Pentrian Samnium, located in the Central Apennines of Italy. The traditional view regarding ancient Samnium presents the region as a backwater which was economically marginalised and isolated. This article examines Pentrian religious architecture from the 3rd to the 1st century BC in order to present an alternative reading of the evidence towards a more favourable view of the region with respect to its socio- economic conditions and openness to ideas and developments in Italy. The early 3rd century BC marks a time of great transformation in Italy. Roman imperialism was sweeping through the entire peninsula, large stretches of territory were being seized and Roman power was being solidified via colonies, military camps and unbalanced alliances in many of the regions in both the hinterland and along the coast. Yet, in the midst of these changes one region of Italy remained almost completely intact and autonomous – Pentrian Samnium.1 However, one look at the political map of Italy during this period suggests that while on the inside Pentrian territory, located high in the Central Apennines, remained virtually untouched by Roman encroachment, on the outside it had become entirely surrounded by Roman colonies and polities unquestionably loyal to Rome. Pentrian Samnium was the largest and most long-lived of all the Samnite regions. From the early 3rd century BC onwards, it can be argued that the Pentri made up the only Samnite tribe to have remained truly ‘Samnite’ in its culture and identity. However, this does not necessarily signify a resistance to the changes taking place in the Italian Peninsula. In fact, beginning in the 3rd century, in the aftermath of the Samnite Wars, the material culture of the region is significantly altered in a way reflective of the changes documented elsewhere in Italy. Prior to this period, the Pentrian region produced a material culture in which a strong warrior ethos was articulated; the graves of adult males from this earlier period contained arms and armour including almost always lance-points and often – in the more wealthy 1 During the Republican period, only Aesernia was made into a colony – a Latin one (263 BC). Yet it is worth noting that this settlement was located in the peripheral southernmost stretch of Pentrian territory. 997030.indb7030.indb 6633 22/09/14/09/14 008:288:28 64 R. VAN DUSEN examples – bronze belts, helmets, greaves and breastplates.2 In the case of the more wealthy burials, the expense related to the skilful design of these arms and armour and the material that it took to create such pieces as well as the prominent way in which they were displayed in the burials testify to their use as status symbols. The importance placed on the warrior is further discernible when one takes into account the fact that, aside from large hill-forts, the only evidence for expenditure of wealth and resources in this region during the 5th and 4th centuries BC predominantly comes from these lavish burials.3 The warrior-like nature of the Samnites in this early period is also noted by the Roman and Greek authors, who identify them as having been among the strongest and most threatening of warriors.4 Yet beginning in the 3rd century, attention directed towards promoting a warrior ethos seems to be minimised as indicated by a sharp reduction in the amount of arms and armour in burials. This change corresponds to the beginning of monumentalisation in Pentrian sanctuaries and the adoption of Italo-Hellenistic religious architecture. Thus, this period is marked by a shift in the display of conspicuous consumption from burials to sanctuaries. Modern scholars have already noted this change and compared it to similar trends already present in other regions of Central Italy, but so far, aside from brief general comments acknowledging this change, very little has been done to interpret and fully understand its nature.5 Furthermore, the pastoral image of the region perpetuated by Livy, Strabo and other ancient Roman and Greek authors has to some degree continued to shape the way in which modern scholars had viewed this region.6 During the 1950s and 1960s, the image of poverty, backwardness and isolation of the area in antiquity was promoted in such works as Togo Salmon’s Samnium and the Samnites (1967). And, as recently as the 1990s, this view contin- ued to influence the work of scholars such as John Patterson, who also marginalised the area, pointing to the comparatively late arrival in Samnium of features associated with a more sophisticated and ‘Romanised’ way of life, such as aqueducts and 2 For warrior burials in Samnium, see Cianfarani 1978; La Regina 1980; Parise Badoni and Ruggeri Giove 1980; Tagliamonte 1996. 3 Many female burials were also wealthy, but, instead of arms and armor, they produced personal ornaments and imported goods. 4 Frontinus (Strat. 2. 1. 8); Livy (10. 28. 3). For more on Greek and Roman perceptions of the Samnites and other Central Apennine peoples, see Dench 1995. 5 On the subject of changes in the material culture of Samnium in this period, see in particular La Regina 1976; D’Ercole 2000; Tagliamonte 1996; 2004. 6 Livy (9. 13. 7) called the Samnites montani atque agrestes ‘mountainmen and peasants’ and described them as living vicatim ‘in villages’ in the flat areas of their country or in walled oppida or castella where the country was mountainous (10. 17. 2; 10. 18. 8), while Strabo (5. 4. 11) claimed that Samnium hardly had any centers which deserved the name polis. See also Appian (B.C. 1. 51. 222; Samn 4). 997030.indb7030.indb 6644 22/09/14/09/14 008:288:28 ITALO-HELLENISTIC SANCTUARIES OF PENTRIAN SAMNIUM 65 bath-buildings.7 Jean-Paul Morel as well, in his work on Samnium, has emphasised the lack of certain pottery styles as a mark of the economic and cultural marginality of the region.8 Similarly, while Mario Torelli acknowledges the monumentalisation of sanctuaries in this region, he claims that ‘new Hellenistic architectural types are slow to penetrate’ because of the area’s socio-economic marginality.9 However, since the early 1990s, scholarship on Samnium has advanced toward a more favourable view of the region’s socio-economic status.10 It is the aim of this author, through an examination of Pentrian religious architecture from the 3rd to the 1st century BC, to add to this more recent scholarship by presenting evidence supporting the view that the Pentri not only enjoyed relatively prosperous socio-economic conditions at this time, they were also more open to ideas and developments from the greater Mediterranean world than initially thought. This examination aims to emphasise the point that not only were the Pentri using Hellenistic architecture they also had access to the latest architectural developments available.11 Thus, if the latest architectural forms were appearing in Pentrian Samnium at the same time they were being introduced elsewhere in Italy, then it could be argued that the Pentri must have been actively participating in these architectural developments and thus were relatively open to the changes taking place beyond their borders. Pentrian Temples and their Podium Mouldings It was in the 3rd century BC that Italo-Hellenistic architecture, which had already begun to permeate Latium and Campania, began arriving into Pentrian Samnium. By the 2nd century, Rome’s direct presence in Greece brought Italy into greater contact with the Greek world and opened up a direct connection between the Greek East and Italy for the first time. As new architectural forms were being introduced into Italy, the Pentri made use of them right alongside the Romans, Latins, Greeks and others. In Pentrian Samnium, such architecture can be found predominately within sanctuaries, including San Giovanni in Galdo, Campochiaro, Vastogirardi, Quadri, Schiavi d’Abruzzo, and Pietrabbondante (Fig. 1). The arrangements of the temples from these Pentrian sanctuaries have been identified as ‘Etrusco-Italic’, in that they are prostyle and tetrastyle in the arrange- ment of their columns, they are oriented frontally and all but one were constructed 7 Patterson 1991, 146. 8 Morel 1991, 187. 9 Torelli 1995, 200. 10 See in particular Dench 1995; Tagliamonte 1996; Bispham 2008; Stek 2009. 11 For the influence of Italo-Hellenistic models in Pentrian sanctuaries, see Zanker 1976, especially the contributions of Adriano La Regina and Jean-Paul Morel. 997030.indb7030.indb 6655 22/09/14/09/14 008:288:28 66 R. VAN DUSEN Fig. 1: Pentrian Samnium showing drove roads (tratturi) and major sites (after La Regina 1990, 54). 997030.indb7030.indb 6666 22/09/14/09/14 008:288:28 ITALO-HELLENISTIC SANCTUARIES OF PENTRIAN SAMNIUM 67 on top of a high podium.12 The earliest of them, the Greater Temple at Schiavi D’Abruzzo, dates as far back as the late 3rd century BC. This arrangement contin- ues to be used in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC with Temple A at Pietrabbondante, the temples at Campochiaro, Vastogirardi, and the Lesser Temple at Schiavi d’Abruzzo.13 An important source of information, which Pentrian temples provide, comes from the temple podia. Most Pentrian temples were constructed on top of large podia realised in blocks of limestone worked with precise accuracy and accented by a series of crown and base mouldings. These mouldings derive from both Etruscan and Greek forms common to nearly all temple podia within peninsular Italy. Lucy Shoe-Meritt produced an invaluable series of studies on Greek and Etruscan mould- ings, which has allowed her to develop a typology and chronology of them.14 Thus, for this study, these mouldings provide useful information on the development and level of access to new architectural forms available in the Pentrian region.