consisted of more than a line of 13 altars, in addition to the neighboring heroonand
an archaic building, demolished in the fifth century. The same applies to many sacred
groves (luci). At the border with Latium, in the Sabine land, the lake of aquae Cutiliae
was a cult place, sacred to Victory, surrounded by a palisade and inaccessible “except
that at certain times each year those whose sacred office it is go to the little island
in the lake and perform the sacrifices required by custom” (Dion. H. 1.15). This
island was supposed to be a floating one and thus was never built on. In these cases,
if the place was left in its natural state, it is above all because it represents a “geo-
logical wonder.” In a more general way, the Greek and Latin literary sources are
very often interested in the old sanctuaries of Italy only insofar as they belong to
the category of the thaumasta, of the mirabilia, of natural curiosities to be reported
to the scholar and the tourist. These sources are interested in landscape rather than
in the cult, in the works of nature more than in human ones. Ovid (Am. 3.13) described
in picturesque terms the feast of Juno Curitis and her sacred grove within the land
of the Faliscans, without mentioning the temple of Celle, which was built in the
sixth century bc. Strabo and Plutarch insist on the celebrity of the sacred grove of
Marica at the mouth of the Liris, on the border between Latium and Campania. It
is only incidentally that Plutarch mentions the existence of a temple – where a votive
picture representing the escape of Marius from Minturnae was deposited. This
temple, which goes back to the end of the archaic period and was replaced by a new
building in the imperial period, was excavated between the two world wars. In the
valleys of Ampsanctusin Hirpinia, Virgil locates a “mouth of the underworld” (Virg.
Aen.7.563–71) because the water, charged with carbon dioxide, is fatal. Only Pliny
the Elder (Nat.2.208) reports the existence of a temple of the goddess Mefitis. None
of the places of cult which I have just quoted is, contrary to what one might think
at first sight, a sanctuary in open air – at least not entirely, and not in the last phase
of their architectural evolution.
In other cases, when we are faced with missing or too limited excavations, it is
quite difficult, using only the literary sources, to reconstruct the appearance of the
sanctuary and to come to a conclusion about the presence or not of a cult building
inside. We know only by one famous inscription from the second century bc, found
in 1848 in Capracotta near Agnone, in Samnium, the húrzof Ceres. What does húrz
stand for? The translations suggested differ slightly: “garden” (cf Lat. hortus),
“sacred grove,” “enclosure,” and simply “sanctuary” (Del Tutto Palma 1996). All
that we do know about this place of cult is that it included an “altar with fire” and
(temporary?) altars for 15 divinities or groups of divinities, among them Ceres, while
six others are described as “Cererian.” Moreover, outside the húrz, one sacrificed at
the time of the fiussasiai(the feast of Floralia?) to four other divinities, of which
three are again known as “Cererian.”
Let us return to the place of cult of Mefitis in the Ampsancti ualles. It is com-
posed of two parts. The small valley is the actual domain of the goddess, where one
only enters to sacrifice: the animal victims are killed simply by putting them in con-
tact with water. The hill, delimited by a portico, is the part of the sanctuary which
allows for human access: it is a space which people to some extent share with the
goddess, since there she had her temple, perhaps on the site of the current church52 Olivier de CazanoveACTC04 25/04/2007 09:26 AM Page 52