Campania in Classical Antiquity
Campania in Classical Antiquity

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyze how ancient Greeks and Romans perceived the geographical particularities of the landscape. We focused on the image of Campania – an interesting region due to its volcanic and seismic specificity. We have considered a large variety of sources. The information given by literary sources was enriched with data from iconographic material. As it resulted from the sources, Campania appears to have had a contrastive image which the ancients connected with its most important landmark, the Mount Vesuvius. Firstly, Campania was the principal agricultural area of ancient Italy, notorious for its grapevine and grains. This idea of prosperity is symbolically stressed by the two patron-gods of Campania, Bacchus and Ceres. The rhetoric device which describes its gifts of nature is locus amoenus. So Campania is represented as a place belonging to a new Golden Age, where the land bears fruit without the need of human labor. This image of natural paradise is completed by the facilities of the urban life, as a characteristic of the Greco-Roman civilization. Secondly, Campania and Mount Vesuvius had a negative image. From a philosophical and ethical point of view, the excessive richness of the place was considered to be the cause of moral corruption. But Campania represented also a boundary territory. In mythological accounts, this region was one of the entrances to the Underworld. The eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 revealed dramatically how dangerous the place could be.

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