Cerveteri

Cerveteri Ingrandisci

A guided visit to the Banditaccia necropolis

Maggiori dettagli

  • Autore: Dario Rossi
  • Anno: 2005
  • Formato: 14 x 21 cm.
  • Pagine: 32 pp., ill.
  • ISBN: 88-7145-217-8

Beginning to write about the origins of this very ancient city is not easy, as one loses oneself in the darkness of time immemorial.

In any case, drawing from the ancient Greek and Latin artists, mainly Dionigi of Halicarnassus (a very precise writer about Roman antiquity) beginning with his first book, we find that the ancient Agylla, which later changed its name to that very famous one, Caere, was located in the territory where the modern town of Cerveteri is now found, a short distance from the Tyrhennian Sea. It was one of the most ancient and memorable cities of central Etruria, and one of the celebrated lucomonie (or principal cities) of the Etruscan confederation. Its founding, counting from the era of the passage of the Siculi in Sicily, dates to about 14 centuries before the era volgare; but information on the city’s first founders is varied and uncertain, since some sources believe it was founded by the Siculi themselves, and others by the Pelasgic people together with the aboriginal inhabitants.

The Agillini people certainly dedicated themselves with great care to the cultivation of the soil and especially to sheep herding, the main occupation of ancient peoples; thus – so Virgil tells us with regard to the ancient Pelasgics who inhabited Agylla – they consecrated a shady wood of fir trees in honor of Silvanus, god of the fields and herds, which was much-venerated by the populace. The sacred wood was located a little over a kilometer to the east of the city, on that elongated tuffaceus mountain broken into little hills and valleys; still today it is called “Monte Abetone” (Big Fir Mountain) for the ancient fir trees that were planted there.

  • Autore Dario Rossi
  • Anno 2005
  • Formato 14 x 21 cm.
  • Pagine 32 pp., ill.
  • ISBN 88-7145-217-8