Poseidonia/Paestum: Fabulous, Fabulous, Fabulous! I loved this site.
The region shows indications of having been habited in Neolithic times and later with more permanent settlements after perhaps the 10thC BCE. By the time the Greeks arrived in about 600 BCE they were met by local peoples in the region. They built the Heraion not necessarily solely as a means to honor Hera from Argo, but as a way to defend the city from the invading Etruscans across the Sele River. The structure was famous throughout the Greek world, & Strabo mentions that Jason & the Argonauts constructed it. The four gates are at the four cardinal directions.
The Lucans conquered the rich area in about 400 BCE and changed the name from Poseidonia to Paistom. In 273 the Latin colony changed its name to Paestum. The Romans added an amphitheater, baths, the Tempio della Pace to the city.
The Museum has a fascinating collection of Hera/Ceres figures as well as frescoed tomb paintings in addition to the typical Roman artifacts one would expect and a few very nice Greek vases, which, as usual, are incredibly difficult to photograph with the reflections on the glass surrounding them.
The most famous fresco from the site is that from the Tomb of the Diver (Tomba del Tuffatore) which is “the only example of Greek painting with figured scenes dating from the Orientalizing Archaic, or Classical periods to survive in its entirety." (Museum plaque) It was created ca 470 BCE in Poseidonia & was the inside of the cover of the tomb. The surrounding four inside walls have pictures of a typical Greek symposium. The symposium figures are similar to ones found in Greek masonry of the time, but the lone diver is unique. The woman who was giving a tour while I was in the museum and who has apparently written a book about it (but I didn’t get her name) hypothesized that the diver should not be taken in a literal but rather metaphoric act. Rather than diving into the ocean, the deceased who would be looking – if he could – at the diver is sailing gracefully from one world into the next. The curly foam of the waves clearly indicating a different reality, while the diver is caught suspended between worlds in the act of death. The surrounding symposia are representative of heaven, where there is good companionship, food, wine, discourse and song. Who knows if she’s right, but there is some logic to her thought.
The rest of the Lucian tombs with paintings have generally two lines of thought: 1) warrior images with lots of horses, including the return of the warrior on his horse, or the warrior driving a chariot, and 2) domestic scenes.
Throughout the museum, not just in the Roman section, are small to medium sized Ceres/Hera/Minerva images. They range in age from the 6th C BCE to the 1C CE. There are some with peacock feathers and they are supposed to represent Venus. There is also a small Neolithic section of an early cave goddess with the large hips, but unfortunately it is only a fragment. It is exactly like the French and German Neolithic mother-goddess images, however.
The site itself is quite large. I started in the north end with the Temple of Athena -Ceres, (6th C BCE – restored/modified ca. 520-510 BCE) the columns of which are almost completely intact. Nearby is the foundation of an earlier goddess temple with altar. The major buildings of the site are the three temples, the aforementioned Temple of Athena, then the Temple of Neptune and the Temple to Hera (530 BCE). The friezes from Neptune’s temple are more or less intact and are in the museum. These latter two are next to one another and it is easy to see the cella inside both, with the second stories in both of the two temples. I could not discern if they were intentionally aligned in any way, other than being parallel to one another. They are both huge & it is easy to see why Goethe was so impressed with them. I was too. All have Doric columns.The Temple to Neptune (mid 5th C BCE) has fewer but much thicker columns and a more intact tri eck-facades. Other important buildings were the ekklesiasterion (480-470) which was used for public meetings, the basilica which was meeting/gathering space, the Heroon, which was an underground sacrarium dedicated to the city’s founder, and one I especially liked besides the cut –in- half- by- the- street amphitheater, was the Corinthian Doric Tempio della Pace, dedicated to Mens Bona (the goddess of reason) which was built in the2nd-1st C on the north side of the Forum, by Freemen “to supervise the capacity for discernment of the political class, & which subsequently became a symbol of the gratitude of freemen towards the bona mens (good minds of their former masters). “
The temple splits the comitium (meeting room) in half.
Not far from the temples, there is a row of fourteen altars, not all contemporary with each other, of which only the foundations are preserved. The last one to the south has been dated to the late republican era while the others date to the 5th & 4th C BC. …The most well-preserved buildings are the shrine to Mater Matuta, which can be dated to the 3rd C BCE and a circular structure, just visible beneath the marcellium, which has been identified as the Temple of Hercules. The entire area, associated with cults that were established after the foundation of the Latin colony, was separated from the southern temple by a small cement wall. Part of the temple dedicated to the cult of Asclepius can be seen almost next to the present road. (information patched from Paestum guide pamphlets)
The day was the perfect temperature, the fields were full of flowers and there were only a handful of people over this very large area. It was a very peaceful, insightful and delightful day.
