Miseno
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Miseno is one of the frazioni of the municipality of Bacoli in the Italian Province of Naples. Known in ancient Roman times as Misenum, it is the site of a great Roman port.
Geography
Nearby Cape Miseno marks the northwestern end of the
History
According to mythology, Misenum was named after Misenus, a companion of Hector and trumpeter to Aeneas. Misenus is supposed to have drowned near here after a trumpet competition with the sea-god Triton, as recounted in Virgil's Aeneid.
With its gorgeous natural setting and the nearby important Roman cities of
In 39 BC, Misenum was the site where the short-lived
The first naval base,
The town became a municipium in the 1st century.
Monuments
The ancient town including the naval barracks lies below the modern one and hence its layout is poorly understood. Most research has therefore been on the nearby coastal villas which included the fishponds, private harbours and docks in
The Grotta Dragonara is a huge Roman cistern which was dug into the cliff next to the harbour. It may have been used as water supply for the fleet base and/or for the Villa of Lucullus, which was probably on the hill above.
A Roman theatre is located on the coast cut into the tuff cliffs with a semicircular gallery and is half submerged due to bradyseism.
Near the theatre on the coast a large Roman villa complex has recently been discovered which may have been the residence of Pliny the Elder, judging by its date and position giving maximum visibility of the port basin and the Gulf.[4]
The sacellum of the Augustales
The
It was discovered in 1968. It was a priestly college whose members were generally recruited among the freedmen in charge of the cult of the emperor Augustus and his successors. The architectural, sculptural and epigraphic finds range in date from the Domitian to the
A porticoed courtyard is in front of three rooms in the centre of which is the sacellum, a room with an apse in which an altar is reached by a marble flight of steps. Marble statues of Vespasian and his son Titus were found here, now in the museum. A bronze equestrian statue of Vespasian's other son, Domitian, was also found in the left part of the sacellum, crushed under the collapse of rocks above. It had been transformed into his successor Nerva after the damnatio memoriae (erasure of the records) as shown by a suture along the contour of the face and by three remnants of hair on the back originally depicting Domitian.[6]
A reconstruction of the
Notable residents
In his Second Philipic, Cicero mocked Antony for owning a property at Misenum (bequeathed to Antony by his paternal grandfather), since it was shared with co-owners, having been mortgaged due to Antony's debts.[8][9]
The powerful and influential Roman empress
Misenum is said to be the birthplace of
]In fiction
Misenum is one of the main settings in
In the novel Ben-Hur, Misenum is the location of a villa owned by Quintus Arrius later bequeathed to his adopted son Judah Ben-Hur. The Ben-Hur family would later live in Misenum.
References
- ^ Tacitus Annals 6.50
- ^ Plutarch Antonius 32-33
- ^ Gervasio Illiano, Misenum: the Harbour and the City. Landscapes in Context Archeologia e Calcolatori 28.2, 2017, 379-389
- ^ Remains of a monumental Roman villa linked to Pliny the Elder discovered at Miseno https://archaeologymag.com/2024/01/roman-villa-linked-to-pliny-the-elder-miseno/
- ^ Laird, M. (2015). Res communis Augustalium: Community in the Sacello degli Augustali at Misenum. In Civic Monuments and the Augustales in Roman Italy (pp. 139-182). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139051767.006
- ^ museo archeologico dei campi flegrei, catalogo generale, 3: liternum, Baia, Mlseno
- ^ VISITA AL CASTELLO DI BAIA https://www.ulixes.it/Visita-Castello-di-Baia.html
- ^ Cicero Second Philippic XIX.47
- OCLC 1012713230.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ Tacitus Annals 14.4
- ^ Tacitus Annals 6.50
External links
- The Church of St. Sossio in Miseno Archived 2013-01-08 at the Wayback Machine