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Terracina and the Pomptine Marshes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

O. A. W. Dilke  and
Margaret S. Dilke
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Extract

We were interested to read Dr. Bertha Tilly's recent article in Greeceand Rome. Such studies do much to infuse life into our ‘dead’ language, and help not only to bring reality to the student and throw light on Latin literature but to add interest to modern travel. We should like to add some further points on Terracina, which we recently visited. It provides a fascinating remnant of classical times, almost unaltered until this century, when the first truly successful draining of the Pomptine marshes took place.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , October 1961 , pp. 172 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1961

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References

page 172 note 1 Second Series, vi (1959), 194–203.

page 172 note 2 Tilly, Bertha's words, ‘on the northern side … was the seaport of Tarracina’ (p. 201)Google Scholar, give the wrong orientation.

page 172 note 3 Pliny, , H.N. iii. 59Google Scholar, quotes the credulous Mucianus as reporting that it once had 24 urbes!

page 173 note 1 Hence Virgil's words quaerit iter (Aen. vii. 802)Google Scholar of the Ufens are appropriate. This river flows into the sea east, not north-west (Bertha Tilly), of the Circeian promontory.

page 173 note 2 A few details in Bertha Tilly's account of Monte Circeo need correction or revision. The west peak is 1,750 feet (541 m.) above sea-level, the arx not 300 but 1,140 feet (352 m.), approached now by a rough road which is being improved. The inscription C.I.L. x. 6422Google Scholar, although it may have originated at Circeii, was found at Terracina; a head, probably of Circe–Venus, from Circeii is in the Museo delle Terme at Rome. Today Circeo, like Terracina, has many modern villas and a prosperous appearance.

page 173 note 3 iii. 22. 11; cf. Walbank, F. W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius, i (Oxford, 1957), p. 344.Google Scholar

page 173 note 4 iv. 59. 10.

page 175 note 1 Livy, viii. 21. 11.Google Scholar

page 175 note 2 Weber, M., Die römische Agrargeschichte (Stuttgart, 1891), 53.Google Scholar

page 175 note 3 Cf. Schulten, A., ‘Römische Flurkarten’, Hermes, xxxiii (1898), 534–65, especially 541–2Google Scholar; Castagnoli, F., ‘Le formae delle colonie romane e le miniature dei codici dei grondatici’, Atti della Reale Accad., iv (1940), 83–118Google Scholar, especially 107 ff. The latter, now the leading authority on centuriation in Italy, seems there to have decumani and cardines at Tarracina the wrong way round.

page 175 note 4 Livy, vii. 39.Google Scholar 7 says mare; the marsh may then have been so extensive as to look like the sea.

page 176 note 1 Livy, xxvii. 4, 13.Google Scholar

page 176 note 2 Cf. Porphyrio on Hor. Sai. i. 5. 25.

page 176 note 3 Not Pesce Montano, as Bertha Tilly has it, which would mean ‘mountain fish’; though there is a Torre del Pesce not far away. Heyden, A. A. M. van der and Scullard, H. H., Atlas of the Classical World (London and Edinburgh, 1959), Fig. 296, give a good photograph of the rock.Google Scholar

page 177 note 1 Cf. North, W., Roman Fever (London, 1896), 26 ff.Google Scholar

page 177 note 2 For a picture of the appalling conditions then prevailing see Cervesato, A., The Roman Campagna, tr. Caico, Louise and Dove, Mary (London, 1913).Google Scholar

page 177 note 3 Almagià, R., ‘The Repopulation of the Roman Campagna’, Geog. Review, xix (1929), 529–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; SirRussell, E. J., ‘Agricultural Colonization in the Pontine Marshes …’, Geog. Journal, xciv (1939), 273–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Milone, F., L'Italia nell' economia delle sue regioni (Torino, 1955), 610 ff.Google Scholar

page 178 note 1 The final drawing of the map (Fig. I) was done by Mr. O. J. Dunlop, teacher of geography at Kilmarnock Academy.