CHAPTER ONE GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE MITHRAEUM AT PONZA In 1950 Father L. M. Dies 1 published a little guide to the isle ofPonza. This island, known as Pontiae 2 in Antiquity, is situated in the Tyrrhenean Sea opposite Terracina. Like Monte Circeo,3 Gaeta and especially Sper­ longa,4 Ponza "the pearl of Rome" has in the past century been connected with the wanderings of Odysseus, the most famous of heroes. Hence the comparison of Ponza "I'isola lunata, isoletta graziossissima" where "la donna e evoluta, distinta, agiata, sensibiIe al bello, che in lei si trans­ fonde dal mare, del cielo, dal panorama luminoso che la circonda" and where the full-bodied wines are the "buoni testimoni delle segrete forze del suolo e degli aromi delle nostre marine" 6 with the isle where the sorceress Circe lived which was described by the poet (Od., IC 195) as : ... , I I " ',L' V7JUOV, T7JV 1TEP& 1TOVTOS a1TE'p&TOS EO'TE't'aVWTa&. Yet, life on this marvellous isle was not always as pleasant as most authors describe it. Boccacio refers to it in the Decameron as the land of oblivion, because he knew that in the early Imperial period it served 1 L. M. Dies, Ponza, perla dl Roma, Roma 1950, at present the most recent survey. Earlier publications: G. B. Fortis, Osservazionl litografiche su I'isole di Ventotene e Ponza, Padova 1793; G. C. Tricoli, Monografia per le lsole del gruppo Ponzlano, Napoli 1855; M. Bieber, Die Ponza lnsel im Tirrenischen Meer, Berlin 1925; For more recent finds: L. Jacono in NSc (S. VI) Il, 1926, 219ft'; A. Maiuri in Boil. d'Arte (S. IO VI, 1926, 224-232; F. M. Apollonj Ghetti, L'arcipelago pontino nella storia del medio Tlrreno. Cronache delle isole di Roma/ino al secolo XVIII. Roma 1969. I Pandataria or Pandateria and Pontia are mentioned by Strabo, 2, 5,19 C 123 and V, 3, 6, C 233 without any details of interest. See Hofmann in PWRE 43 s. v. Pontiae; Pontiae insulae, cols 21-24; H. Nissen, ltQ/ische Landeskunde, Berlin 1883-1902; reprint Amsterdam 1967. I S. Aurigemma - A. Bianchini - A. de Santis, Circeo, Terracina, Fondi, Roma 1957. , G. Jacopi, L'antro di Tiberio, Roma 1965. Recently: R. Hampe, Sperlonga und Vergil, Mainz 1972; G. Siiftund, The Pol),phemus and Sc)'lIa Groups at Sperlonga, Stockholm 1972; H. Lavagne, Le Nymphie au Polypheme de la Domus Aurea in MEFR 82, 1970, 673-721. I Dies, o.e., 26; 28. 2 THE MITHRAEUM AT PONZA ISOLA DI PONZA o 500 1000 1500 m. MARE T I R RENO MITHRA:UM M.Faragllone 1 M.Guardla " F.OERKSEN-lANSSENS 1975 Fig. 1 as a place of exile. Indeed, the first Emperor Augustus exiled his own daughter Julia to Pandataria (= Ventotene), one of the Pontiae insulae (Fig. 1), a story vividly told by Carcopino 1 in connexion with the exile of the poet Ovid to Tomi. Suetonius 2 mentions that immediately after 1 J. Carcopino, Rencontres de I'histoire et de la litterature romaines, Paris 1963, Ch. 11 L'exil d'Ovide, poete neopythagoricien. 8 Suetonius, Caligula, 15. Ct. Suetonius, Tiberius, 53. The elder Agrippina and her eldest son Nero were banished by Tiberius at the instigation of Sejanus. See Philo, .