POZZUOLI, the ancient Puteoli, a city of Italy, on the northern shore of the Bay of Pozzuoli (Sinus Puteolanus or Cumanus),—the western portion of the Gulf of Naples, separated from the larger eastern portion by the promontory of Posilliρo and from the open sea on the west by the peninsula which terminates in Cape Miseno. It is a place of 11,967 inhabitants (1881) and the centre of a commune, which, including Bacoli (3130; the ancient Bauli) and Nisida (1202), numbers 17,269. Its small flat-roofed houses cluster picturesquely on a tongue of land projecting south-west into the bay. The cathedral of St Proculus occupies the site of a temple erected to Augustus by L. Calpurnius and contains the tomb of Pergolesi. The harbour is still visited by 500 or 600 sailing vessels in the course of the year. But the true riches of Pozzuoli are its ruins. First in point of interest is the Serapeum or temple of Serapis. This consisted of a rectangular court enclosed by forty-eight massive columns and having in the centre a round temple with sixteen Corinthian pillars of African marble. The three great columns of the portico, about 40 feet high, still stand. The perforations of a boring mollusc show that they must for a time have been submerged 13 feet in the sea. The new upheaval of the ground appears to have begun before 1530 and to have been hastened by the great Monte Nuovo eruption of 1538. A gradual subsidence has again been observed since the beginning of the 19th century. The pillars of the round temple are now in Caserta, and the statue of Serapis is in the National Museum at Naples. The amphitheatre (482 feet long by 383 broad), erected in the time of the Flavian dynasty on the hill behind the town, was seated for 30,000 spectators, and had an arena 286 feet long and 138 ...feet broad. Among the populace the building is known as the Prison of St Januarius, because, according to the legend, that saint and his companions were here condemned to fight with wild beasts. At an earlier date it had been the scene of the spectacle in which Nero, in presence of King Tiridates of Armenia, displayed his personal prowess. To the west of the Serapeum lie traces of various minor ruins, a temple of Neptune, <fcc., and especially the site of Cicero’s villa (Puteolanum or Academia), which was afterwards occupied by a temple in honour of the emperor Hadrian. The whole neighbourhood has proved rich in epigraphic remains.
Puteoli first appears under the name of Dicaearchia as a port of the people of Cumae. The statement made by Stephanus of Byzantium and Eusebius, that the city was founded by a colony of Samians, probably refers to some secondary accession of population from that quarter. The Romans in 215 b.c. introduced a garrison of 6000 men to protect the town from Hannibal; and in 194 b.c. a Roman colony was established. In the Civil War the citizens sided first with Pompey and afterwards with Brutus and Cassius. Augustus strengthened the colony with a body of his veterans (hence Colonia Augusta), and Nero admitted the old inhabitants into it. The remains of Hadrian, who died at the neighbouring town of Baiae, were burned at Puteoli, and Antoninus Pius, besides erecting the temple to his memory already mentioned, instituted sacred games to be held in the city every five years. It was mainly, however, as a great commercial port that Puteoli was famous in ancient times. It was one of the two places in Italy (Rome was the other) where the Tyrian merchants had a regular-trading station; it trafficked with Syria (merchants from Berytus are mentiorred among its residents), Egypt, Africa, arrd Spain, and spices from the East, corn from Alexandria, iron from Populonium were stored in its warehouses. Like Ostia, Puteoli was considered a special port of Rome, and, on account of the great safeness and convenience of its harbour, it was preferred to Ostia for the landing of the more costly and delicate wares. Like Ostia, consequently, it was treated as practically part of Rome, and with it enjoyed the peculiar distinction of being enrolled in the Palatine tribe. The artificial mole was probably of earlier date than the reign of Augustus; and by that time there were docks large enough to contain the vessels employed in bringing the obelisks from Egypt. Remains of the piles of the mole still exist, and are popularly known as Caligula’s Bridge, from the mistaken idea that they belong to the temporary structure which that emperor flung across the bay from the mole at Puteoli to the shore at Baiae. Alarie (410), Genseric (455), and Totila (545) successively laid Puteoli in ruins. The restoration effected, by the Byzantines was partial and short-lived. Sacked by Grimoald of Beneventum in 715, harassed by the Saraceus in the 10th century, captured by John duke of Naples in 1014, and again sacked by the Turks in 1550, the city could hardly have continued prosperous even apart from the earthquakes of 1198 and 1538.
Works on Puteoli have been written by Mazzella (1594), Capaccio (1604), Sarnellius (1691), Parrino (1709), Jorio (1817 and 1830). See the bibliography in Corp. Inscr. Lat., vol. x. part i. pp. 182, 317.
[896 words — estimated reading time: 6 minutes]