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Other discoveries in the Villa of August
The archaeologists of Japanese scientific mission, coordinated by
professor Masanori Aoyagi of
Tokyo,
engaged by Soprintendenza Archeologica di
Napoli started since 2001 excavations of a villa dated
back to the I century b.C., in
the area of Somma Vesuviana. The
results are surprising!
During the excavations was found the
eardrum of a great
Basilica
devoted to a god (still unidentified);
infact, in the center of the architecture, in plaster, there is an
embossed crown and a great peristyle with a colonnade. It’s high
about seven meters, it has all
the columns surmounted by Corinthian capitals, originated from a
block of material brought from an African cave found by
Settimio Severo in the II century
A.D.. Besides, has been found the road in Vesuvians “basoli”
that turned around the villa and the
mosaic
which adorned the place between the peristyle and the entry. The
mosaic is white and black and
dates back to the III century b.C..
A
bust,
probably the representation in marble of an
athlete
of two thousand years ago (according to the first hypotheses it
would be the copy of an original of the IV century b.C.) maybe
belongs to one of the
statues
that enriched niches of the portico of the
Villa of August; it doesn’t have head and arms and it has
broken legs above the knees. The statue was hidden under a heap of
ground and almost to the center of the area inside the big portico.
According to the experts, the marble would have been
hurled
from the niche to five meters from the violent shaken of an
earthquake of volcanic origin. It destroyed the whole structure,
buried from the ashes expelled from the
Vesuvius
during the eruption of
Pollena,
dated to the second half of the IV century A.D..
Other two pieces were founded, a
peplofora (bearer of peplo, a characteristic
mantle) whose dress preserve still traces of color amaranth, and a
Dionysus in precious marble. The
female figure maybe was embellished with
earrings
and with a
diadem,
through the use of fibulas on the marble, at the extremity of the
suit and on the shoulders.
Dionysus
is an unique figure, because he has a pup of
panther
in his arms instead of having it, as usually found, near his legs.
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