Marcello Gelone

The Roman baths of Agnano are one of the biggest archaeological complexes of Neapolis; it’s on the border between this last and Puteoli, along the road that connected the two centers. The area was intensely busy beginning from the augustean age, but the site was jus occupied in Hellenistic epoch.
The archaeological complex of Agnano’s baths is composed by four separate archaeological (complex of Hellenistic age, grotta del Cane, thermal complex of Roman age, bridge of Roman age); all these areas are inside the area currently occupied by the modern Thermal baths of Agnano. This area has never reentered to full in the affairs of the researchers and it has remained for long periods to the borders of the archaeological search.
To the area of the thermal baths of Roman age they are tightly connected the structures of the socalled Grotta del Cane, currently inaccessible for the elevated temperature and the presence of poisonous gas, as well as the complex of Hellenistic age. This last is constituted by a mighty terrace-wall in blocks of tufo, on which some structures of Roman age have been founded. The wall, partially covered by the water of a source of mineral water, was also in ancient time connected to a source, as it testifies a channel, always in blocks of tufo, that cross it.
The presence of a fragment of black glaze ware with the inscribed name Igea, recovered in the layers of foundation of the channel, give us the possibility to hypothesize the pertinence of the structures to a sanctuary devoted to Asclepio and Igea. The complex of Roman age is distant from the Greek structures and, at the moment, there is no trace of a direct relationship among the two buildings.

A recent autopsy of the bilingual epitaph of P. Tillius Dexiades from Nuceria Alfaterna, kept at the National Archaeological Museum of Valle del Sarno, allowed to notice some mistakes in the reading of the first hexameter of the Greek distich, present in the first publication of the funerary inscription’s text. In the paper a new reading is suggested, based on the interpretation of some letters marks that survived on the slab’s surface, quite vanished. This reading allows to correct even the text meaning, in a clearest and most fluent way.
This re-edition of the funerary inscription, a singular case of the epigraphic evidences of the ancient Roman colony, constitutes also a chance in drawing some hypothesis on the relationship that subsisted between the grave’s holder and the two dead women remembered in the text; besides it has been useful in making some reflections about the presence of the gens Tillia in Nuceria Alfaterna and on the origin of the family branch to which the dedicant of the funeral monument belonged.

Poster presentato al colloquio internazionale "TeANUm Sidicinum. Nuove prospettive per lo studio della città e della sua storia", organizzato dall'Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II" e tenutosi a Napoli e Teano il 21 e 22 gennaio 2016.