Lavinium
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Coordinates: 41°39′42″N 12°28′42″E / 41.661625°N 12.478427°ELavinium was a Latin port city of Latium 30 km south of Rome,[1] already fortified in the seventh century BCE and flourishing in the sixth.[2] Lavinium was assimilated by Republican Rome. Its early gate seems to have linked the city by a road to Ardea. The city was securely linked to Rome by the Via Laurentina.
A number of kilns have been identified within the perimeter of the city walls. Outside the city was a sanctary dedicated to Sol Indigetes and a vast sanctuary with numerous altars, where the bronze inscribed plaque records that the Dioscuri were being venerated at one of numerous altars.[3]
According to Roman mythology, which links Lavinium more securely to Rome, the city was named by Aeneas[4] in honor of Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, king of the Latins, and his wife, Amata. Aeneas reached Italy and there fought a war against Turnus, the leader of the local Rutuli people. He did not found Rome but Lavinium, the main centre of the Latin league, from which the people of Rome sprang. Aeneas thus links the royal house of Troy with the Roman republic.
The foundation of Lavinium and the Rutulian war are both mentioned prominently in the great Roman epic, the Aeneid by the Mantuan poet Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil).
In ancient times Lavinium had a close association with the nearby Laurentum. According to Livy, in the 8th century BC at the time when Romulus and Titus Tatius jointly ruled Rome, the ambassadors of the Laurentes came to Rome but were beaten by Tatius' relatives. The Laurentes complained, however Tatius accorded more weight to the influence of his relatives than to the injury done the Laurentes. When Tatius afterwards visited Lavinium to celebrate an anniversary sacrifice, he was slaim in a tumult. Romulus declined to go to war and instead renewed the treaty between Rome and Lavinium [5].
More recently, the city is the setting of the modern epic poem, The Laviniad by Claudio R. Salvucci.
The modern small town of Pratica di Mare, in the comune of Pomezia, now stands on the site of ancient Lavinium; the sea stood much closer in Antiquity.[3]
[edit] Notes
- ^ The site of the city is the modern Pratica di Mare; the modern Lavinio takes its name as the seaside town.
- ^ Christopher John Smith, Early Rome and Latium: Economy and Society C. 1000 to 500 BC (Oxford University Press) 1996:134; Mario Torelli, Lavinio e Roma. Riti iniziatici e matrimonio tra archeologia e storia
- ^ a b Smith 1996.
- ^ A tumulus was identified by Romans as the Heroon of Aeneas
- ^ Livy, Ab urbe condita, 1:14
[edit] References
- Richard Stillwell, ed. Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, 1976: "Lavinium (Pratica di Mare), Latium, Italy"
