Le statue parlanti (Italian Edition)

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Upon his death, the statue was named in his honor, and people began posting commentary similar to Pasquino's on the statue. Some sources suggest that the first postings were little more than schoolboys taunting their teachers, but the statues quickly became a major outlet for critiquing government and religious leaders. A number of popes, who were often the butt of criticism from the statues, sought to limit the posting of commentary on Pasquino.

Adrian VI planned to have it thrown into the Tiber River , and was only dissuaded when told that, like a frog, the statue would only croak louder in water. According to the tale, one man responded, and his hands were cut off.

Abate Luigi 1 - Picture of Statua dell'Abate Luigi, Rome

As a result, the public turned to other statues, who joined Pasquino as talking statues. These other statues included Marforio, which was sometimes used to post responses to writings posted on Pasquino, creating a repartee between the two statues. Abate Luigi , Piazza Vidoni. Madama Lucrezia , Piazza San Marco. Fontana del Facchino , Via Lata. Theatre of Marcellus by night. Mausoleum of Hadrian Castel Sant'Angelo.

Mausoleo di Cecilia Metella. Basilica di San Pietro. St Paul outside the walls. Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano. Behind Santa Maria Maggiore. Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere. San Giorgio al Velabro - Roma. Eternal beggar, in front of the main entrance of Santo Spirito Hospital. Laocoon Sculpture in the Vatican Museums. Piazza Trilussa at night, Trastevere.

Location - Maps of Rome. Cults of Damat i ra Demeter , are especially numerous, but other examples include Aprodita Aphrodite , Venas possibly Venus, although this is problematic , Artamas Artemis , Athana Athena and possibly several different cults of Zeus Zis. Certainly, the cult places and cult practices of Southeast Italy seem very different from those of the Greek world, something that suggests contact and adaptation of cultural influences and deity names rather than an extensive Hellenisation of local cults and cult practices.

The corpus of inscribed potsherds includes a number of sherds inscribed ]idde[ , which has been identified as a Messapic deity name or epithet. Another name or epithet that occurs there is Batas , likewise also probably the name of a deity.

Pasquino e le statue parlanti by Cristina Giovannini

Other pottery inscriptions, dedications written in Greek to Zeus Batios, suggest a possible syncretism between a Greek cult of Zeus and a Messapic deity, Batas. It has been suggested that references in Greek sources to a cult of Zeus Kataibates may relate to the cult of Zeus and Batas.

The Latin inscriptions on the inside of the cave name the deity as Jupiter Batius. This sanctuary was dedicated to a Messapic deity—probably male—called Taotor, whose cult appears to have been prominent in the region. The votive objects and the later rock-cut inscriptions demonstrate that it was used by a significant number of people from outside the region.

The votives include Greek as well as local pottery and the inscriptions—in this case mainly incised on the cave walls rather than the portable votives—include dedications in both Apulian and Latin as well as numerous non-alphabetic symbols. Many sanctuary sites have copious evidence for animal sacrifice and burnt offerings on altars.

Several of the inscriptions from Grotta della Poesia, both in Messapic and in Latin, corroborate this. Many appear to be written as records of promises to give perishable—and often quite costly—offerings, such as amphorae of wine or mulsum a mixture of wine and honey , or sacrificial animals. We can therefore infer that both libation and animal sacrifice were an important parts of ritual practice.

The prominence of stelae in sanctuaries suggests that they may also have had ritual significance. The offering of votive objects to the gods was clearly practiced, but how and why this was done is unknown.

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The survival of votive material in sanctuary areas demonstrates clearly that both cult-specific and purpose-made votives, as well as more generic items such as pottery, were offered. Although most of the surviving evidence is of low-value pottery or terracotta items, higher-value objects are occasionally found, such as a bronze statue of Zeus found near Ugento and the bronze laminae from Oria.

We have no way of knowing, however, what the proportion of high-value to low-value votives might have been. Inscribed votives do not differ from non-inscribed objects, neither in the nature nor in the quality of object. Most inscriptions are on portable objects of low intrinsic value and on generic objects that could be and may have been in everyday use before being offered as votives. No inscriptions have been found on objects that were probably made specifically as votives, such as miniature pottery or cult-specific images or figurines.

Superficially, this seems to suggest that many of these items were low-value offerings, and therefore possibly offered by dedicators of low status or limited economic means. However, the presence of inscriptions on even a small number of objects raises important questions about this assumption. The actual practice of literacy may have been in the hands of non-elite groups such as scribes and particularly for inscriptions on durable objects artisans such as potters and metal workers, but the selection and commissioning of a written text is likely to have been an elite prerogative.

Literacy also appears to have been restricted to a small number of mainly ritual spheres, with a strong emphasis on elite funerary commemoration. In other words, the very presence of writing is likely to have signalled a level of prestige and importance. This raises some interesting questions about: Apart from the inscribed laminae , which we can reasonably assume to have been purpose-made for votive use, most of the inscribed votives seem to have been ordinary items.

It is possible that some of the pottery fragments came from miniature vessels that were not functional items but were specially produced as votives, but most seem to have come from normal-sized vessels. This suggests at least the possibility that these were produced as ordinary domestic wares but later used as votive offerings. In addition, most of the inscriptions seem to have been added after manufacture. Dipinti or inscriptions added before firing are rare. Therefore, it is possible that one of the functions of the inscription is to mark the transition from one state— everyday object to another sacred object and to make that transition permanent.

Funerary inscriptions in the region, for example, place great emphasis on personal names.

The epigraphic culture of the Salento seems to be very much one in which inscriptions are part of an elite display culture and in which the role of the inscription is usually to display and commemorate personal or family identity. In Etruria, which is much better documented, most votive inscriptions emphasise the identity of the donor and the act of dedication rather than the god to whom the dedication is made. These offerings were not necessarily made by the non-elite. The consistent nature of the votives found at the sites in question, both inscribed and non-inscribed, suggests that in most cases the nature of the offering was largely dictated by what was appropriate to the nature of the cult rather than the status, personality, or even ethnicity of the donor.

It is possible, therefore, that the role of writing on a votive object of low value also had another function other than to irrevocably mark it as a votive. It is a cave sanctuary with long occupation and a pattern of Archaic activity on the external terrace and Hellenistic and Roman activity in the interior. As noted previously, these inscriptions record verbal promises of high-value offerings to the deity, Taotor.

The aspirations suggests that—however banal some of the votive objects may look to modern eyes—the people who made offerings at Grotta della Poesia and similar sanctuaries were not necessarily of low social and economic status. Chronologically, the practice of inscribing votive objects seems confined to the Archaic and early Hellenistic periods.

It declines markedly just at the point when epigraphic density in the region starts to rise sharply, and the emphasis shifts almost exclusively to the sphere of elite display, with inscriptions appearing in elite tombs and on stone votives and buildings, rather than on portable objects. Geographically, inscribed votives seem to cluster at sites with a very international character, and evidence of their use by people, notably Greeks, from beyond the region. This has important implications for our understanding of the adoption and diffusion of literacy.

Perhaps, as elsewhere in Italy, sanctuaries acted as focal points for the teaching and dissemination of literacy. The sanctuary at Baratella, near Este, had an important role in disseminating literacy in the Veneto and may have been a centre of teaching of literacy. Some sanctuaries in southern Etruria may have had a similar role. There is no evidence that these sanctuaries had a formal role in the teaching of literacy, as has been argued for Baratella. It seems entirely plausible, however, that they might have acted as meeting places and points of contact and cultural exchange between Greeks and Messapians.

Perhaps the practice of labelling portable votives with the name of either deity or donor is essentially an adoption of a Greek practice, which becomes less common as an independent Messapic culture of writing and epigraphy becomes more securely established. The diminution in numbers of inscribed votives may also be less dramatic than it initially seems, given the number of inscribed portable objects of unknown context. More significantly, this change coincides with a wider change in the cult practices at some sanctuaries, marked by a greater focus on rituals taking place within the caves rather than in front of them.

The inscriptions from the Grotta della Poesia may also indicate that a greater degree of importance was placed on offerings of perishable goods in this later phase. Inscriptions also served to defunctionalise objects by marking them out as a votives, and thus symbolising their transition from the sphere of daily life to that of votive offering. The practice of adding inscriptions to votive objects shows that some sanctuaries played a role in diffusing literacy skills in the region.

Commodities and the politics of value, in A.

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Commodities in cultural perspective , Cambridge, p. Bagnasco Gianni , G. Becker, Votives, places and rituals in Etruscan religion , Leiden, p. La nuova documentazione archeologica.

Numéros en texte intégral

Atti del Colloquio Internazionale Lecce aprile , Galantina, p. Il culto di Zeus a Ugento , Cavallino. De Simone , C.

Atti dei convegni Lincei 39, Rome, p. Smith edss , Religion in archaic and republican Rome and Italy , Edinburgh, p. Commoditization as a process, in A. The archaeology of the dedicated object. World Archaeology , Note preliminari, ASNP , 17, p. Leuca , Galatina, p. Parte I le epigrafi.

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