The Rapolla Sarcophagus Mystery

 

Our Little Piece of Heaven Circled in Yellow at 
Sunrise Just below Calitri’s Castle

The Rapolla Sarcophagus Mystery

Right now, at this precise moment, I can envision our Calitrane rooftop terrace, unoccupied and silent though far from forsaken.  We built it on a gamble in 2014.  Ours hadn’t been a bout of intense labor where we’d pulled down stone walls, had to mix cement and shuffled terracotta roof tiles about.  No, though I’d loved to have taken part, our labors had been from a distance, done remotely.  Back then, our commitment on whether we should make the investment at all to transform our vision into reality was fleeting at best, for any agreement to proceed would come as fast as it would vanish with a “no, let’s not”.  Once we’d finally made up our minds and committed to do it, details like where it should go and how to access it somewhere up on the roof where all in play — an elevator maybe?  How about a dumbwaiter to shuttle those savory delights up and down?  A more practical and economical solution, stairs, won out, although these days the frequent ups and downs with trays in hand, though still worth it, can be a drag.  Where should the stairs go?  Should we raise the terrace’s back wall for some privacy and afternoon shade, could a metal railing do the job instead of a wall at the edge of a three story abyss?  Decisions, decisions.  We knew what we wanted, access to an amazing vista.  It was only a matter of expressing it clearly on paper or in a sketch now and then to Italian workmen from another place we also called home in the States, where we inhabit a forest surrounded by silence.  Early discussions with our builder, Nicolo, transformed our ideas into sketches before we had to leave.  From then on, the Internet would support the design’s evolution and issues as they popped-up.  All that dithering from “let’s do it” to “no, let’s not,” had stolen our time in Calitri.  We had to leave and missed out on the demolition and the eventual fun part, the construction.  I doubt Nicolo minded.  He’d made terraces before, and though this one happened to be up in the air, replacing a roof, he didn’t have us, especially me, mucking about and getting in the way.  For Maria Elena, she’d avoided a caravan of laborers trekking through the house and one gigantic mess.  Months later when we returned, as Pharrell Williams is like to croon in his hit, Happy, our bedroom had become “a room without a roof.”

The agita involved is now long behind us.  It turned out to be a safe bet with the dividends going well beyond our monetary investment, for as Mare is wont to say, “It’s only money.”  How do you value a morning sunrise above a cloud deck lying in the undulating riffle of valleys below us that appear like a misty shoreline?  Then, there is that view toward a jagged sawtooth caldera that dominates

Morning View from our Rooftop Perch

our eastern skyline. Today, thankfully, it is an extinct volcano that each morning serves as an altar to host the rising sun.  From this ancient fixture, wooded hillsides laced every which way with farmhouses and quilted fields unfurl across the countryside.  By night, a spider web of roads lit by headlights lead to and from a network of crested hill towns like Pescopagano, Rapone, and Sant’Andrea that dapple distant ridges. Worth a dollar a day or would you go all in and call it priceless?  

There have been many late afternoons when Maria Elena and I have taken in the steely expanse of an impossible blue sky there on our terrace.  By day, it is a sky bruised with popcorn clouds.  By evening, they’d fall away to gradually be replaced with a riotous splattering of stars that ignite a sky show of twinkling lights.  Soon, they in turn would give way to share the night sky with the moon’s silver luminescence.  So bright, so many, and appearing so close, you imagine that like low hanging fruit you could reach out to touch them.  This drama occurred daily as the shadow-line of evening, cast by a retreating sun, gradually moved up a nearby mountainside topped by a sentinel of a church, now rarely used.  Much like a blanket being drawn up, this phalanx of an ever-advancing dusk slowly ascends the slope as the first rumor of nightfall makes its appearance.  Gradually, day is erased, replaced with a veil of blackening dimness.  Sitting there, we’d strain to spot the first pinprick of light appear in the blackboard night sky and make a wish.  

Where is that magic carpet, another transformative veil, when Maria Elena and I need it most to whisk us away from where we’re from to where we want to be, to that other place we consider home in Calitri?  It would surely take magic about now in the COVID depression of a locked down world.  In this stay at home existence, I’ve finally become overwhelmed with Broadway Joe Namath TV Medicare ads, by those constant appeals to be sure to ask your doctor about every sort of unpronounceable new drug, and the insatiable droning on and on about leaf gutter guards and the unfathomable danger of using a ladder.  It’s a wonder I haven’t yet dreamed that I took a ladder, climbed onto my roof, ingested a handful of pills I couldn’t pronounce, got dizzy, slipped on the leaf guard, fell, and wound up in the hospital fortunately covered by Medicare insurance I’d purchased through Joe.  Yet in frustration, I’ve wandered just a wobbly bit here away from our terrace experience at home in Calitri, high up as it is.

When I pause to think about it, is home where we lay our heads at night?  Could it simply be where at end of day we plug in our cellphones and laptops?  Is it possibly where we hail from, the place our story began, or could it be as elementary as where our mail is delivered, maybe the address where, beyond our laundry, we store our possessions?  Still, these are all merely locations that I’ve prefaced with the word “where,” followed by another “where.”  Just maybe they’re a little too materialistic in nature when home might better be described as where we build our lives and attach meaning with family.  More than a place, it’s a feeling we ache for, an ache beyond homesickness, where we find the most happiness.  There I go, I’ve wondered off again, haven’t I.

Our enchantment with this big sky dominated landscape is not exclusive to us.  When our son-in-law emerged onto the terrazzo that very first time, he verbalized our sentiment precisely when he remarked, “I’m never leaving.”  More than simply being “the money,” Maria Elena and I had been its

End of the Appian Way, Brindisi

creators and now serve as caretakers.  We cherish this privilege as we gaze off at those rolling mountains, teeming with history, as they in return just might contemplate us, the current interlopers.  In the time yet before us, if only there could be hundreds more such occasions ahead, to drink in the ambiance there like hummingbirds on our Italian perch.  Oh, I’ll admit there are sunny days and starry nights elsewhere in Italy, so I wouldn’t say our corner of Italy is any more particular in that way.  Still, across the valley laid out at our feet and at times known to run high atop that distant mountain ridge where earth touches sky, lies an ancient causeway that in coexistence with the past, crowns this area as indeed special.  

The trail I’m referring to begins at the ancient bullseye of early Rome, the Roman Forum.  From there it courses its way south then easterly until it ends at the entrance to a port where in antiquity Roman infantrymen set off for the eastern empire.  Built beginning in 312 BC, its purpose was to support the quick movement of military forces and supplies as well as commercial traffic.  The road led

Route of Appian Way Antica

many a young legionnaire off to police an empire from this seaport.  Years later, for the lucky ones by then considered seasoned veterans, it would lead them a step at a time all the way back to their homes.  Lying on the Ionian Sea, the port was known as Brundisium, to the Greeks, Brentesion.  Today, we know it more efficiently simply as Brindisi.  This relatively straight road was the kind Romans loved to build.  Why bother to go around anything when up and down will do just fine?  Essentially the first highway in history, on the order of England’s M1 motorway or the A1 Autostrada from Milan to Naples, it was referred to as Regina Viarum, the queen of all roads.  We know it as the Appian Way, the oldest and most prestigious of Roman roads.  Approximately 435 miles (700 km) in length, and in places still paved with large basaltic stones typical of Roman roads of the time, it was a revolutionary development in its day and the origin of the expression, “All roads lead to Rome.”

Departing Rome along Via Appia from its beginning close to the Circus Maximus and Baths of 

The Remains of Porta Capena, Rome
Where the Appian Way Begins

Caracalla, an ancient Roman traveler passed first through a gate that bore the name Porta Capena overhead.  Passing through the Servian Wall that surrounded Rome at the time, its name, Porta Capena, served as a giant road sign, proclaiming the first major destination along the roadway, namely Capua.  In 73 BC, a slave uprising against Rome, led by an ex- gladiator, Spartacus, began in Capua and continued for over two years.  Spartacus attempted to escape Italy by getting to Brundisium.  He and his army of 120,000 never made it.  Pinned between armies led by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) and Marcus Licinius Crassus, the slave army was finally defeated in 71 BC not far from Calitri.  In the defeat, thousands of the ex-slaves were captured.  The Romans, having judged that the slaves had forfeited their right to live, crucified 6000 slave prisoners along the 200 km stretch of the Via Appia from Capua to Rome.

Closer to Rome, although shifted in time to 1943 in the throes of World War II, this same stretch of the Appian Way would be lined not with crucified slaves but with German armor racing to push the

Via Appia Today

Allies into the sea at Anzio.  The Allies had landed on the coast of Italy close to Anzio at Nettuno.  In fact, Maria Elena’s “Uncle Sweet” was wounded there.  They were keen on breaking the stalemate at Monte Cassino and taking Rome.  Upon landing, they found the place undefended.  Their intent had been to move along the line of the Via Appia and take Rome, outflanking Monte Cassino and its defenders in the process.  It never went as planned, which is how wars usually go.  They didn’t move fast enough and were pinned down by artillery fire as the German army surged to counterattack.  A costly quagmire ensued along a four mile front that lasted four months before the Allies broke through and following the Appian Way, captured Rome.

I’m uncertain about your experiences along roadways but from time to time, all I ever seem to find by the side of the road is a shoe.  Never a pair mind you, just a single shoe.  I’ve seen enough of them that when I put my shoes in the car, I take a moment to tie the

A Typical "Solo" Lost Shoe

laces together.  At least then, whoever finds my loss has a pair and if they fit, who knows where they might lead.  I’ve yet to come across a pair myself but it’s within the realm of possibility.  I’d be willing to bet though that I’ll never ever find a sarcophagus out there, but others have.  In fact, one was discovered by chance along the route of the ancient Via Appia in the countryside near the town of Rapolla, about 20 miles from Calitri off in our panorama to the east.  The exact date of the discovery in 1856 is uncertain but it was triggered when a road construction crew found it in the countryside between Melfi and Venosa, where I confess, we often go to fill our jugs with bulk wine.  Was such a find uncommon or might it be on the ancient equivalent of finding a lost shoe?  Truth be told, since dead bodies were regarded as polluting, burials inside Rome’s Servian Wall were forbidden.  In terms of convenience and ease of access, you might expect the next best option

Servian Wall (in red) Circling Ancient Rome
with Porta Capena Circled

would be just beyond the gates along the Appian Way and it was.  Today, that beginning stretch is a tourist attraction due to the ruins of numerous monumental tombs lining Via Appia there.  I’d think it unusual, however, to find a tomb or single sarcophagus very far from a major Roman city.  Situated like that, it might attract grave robbers.  Regardless, being located in such a remote area in far off Basilicata seems to have been the case.  Possibly there may have been a villa of a noble family nearby who in keeping with funerary rules had the sarcophagus placed nearby along the road.

This snow white sarcophagus was the centerpiece of an empty unadorned room, blacked-out but for a beam of light that bathed it from above in a white glow.  Western made sarcophagi are decorated only on the front side.  In this case, all four sides are richly decorated in elaborate relief statuary murals inspired by ancient mythology.  The fact that all the outer surfaces are decorated indicates to scholars that it originated in Asia Minor, likely present day Turkey.  It is considered among

The Magnificent Rapolla Sarcophagus with a Caricature of Aemilia Csaurus
Reposed Atop as We Observed it in Melfi Castle

the best examples of funeral art from the period.  The top lid portrays the marble figure of a young woman lying on her bed as though she is sleeping.  A little dog lies on her lap, but all that remains of it today are its paws.  Finally, a cherub stands nearby holding a garland of flowers in one hand, and a torch pointing downward in the other, adopting a pose which, in Roman funerary iconography is an illusion to death.

When I saw what is referred to as the Rapolla sarcophagus that first time at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale del Melfese Massimo Pallottino located in the Norman Castle in nearby Melfi 
and read what information there was concerning its discovery, I wondered who the young woman

The Norman Style Melfi Castle

immortalized on the lid had been.  Unfortunately, this apparently abandoned “marble shoe” by the side of the road did not come with an inscription that might have offered some clue to confidently identify the deceased.  Without an inscription to help settle matters, the name of the young woman may remain a matter of scholarly speculation forever.

Yes, controversy swirls around the identity of the person once laid to rest in this pristinely preserved tomb.  I tend to get behind the traditional explanation presented in the museum that contends the sarcophagus contained the remains of Aemilia Scaurus.  Aemilia or Emilia was the 18 year old daughter (100 - 82 BC) of the Roman patrician and consul, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus (163 - 89 BC) and his wife Cecilia Metella Dalmatica.  Aemilia's father, considered one of the most illustrious and influential politicians of the Republic in his day, was the orator of the senate and prestigious princeps senatus (senate president).  While this museum claim as to the occupant of the tomb lacks strong supportive evidence, there are also arguments against it being Emilia, mostly related to the chronology of the monument and customs.  Her hairstyle, for instance, is just one of them.  The style presented on the reclining figure was typical of women who lived much later (96-196 AD) in the time-period known as the Antonina Dynasty.  Also, cremation was in vogue by the aristocracy at the time, not internment.  Finally, the location of the find raises doubt that it could have been Emelia who’d been entombed there.  Since Emilia is known to have died in Rome, why would her tomb, itself in question as to its date of manufacture, have been sited in such a remote region of Basilicata, just about at the other end of the Appian Way?  Is it simply a historical misunderstanding?  Could it involve speculative inference by some, or as others might heatedly argue, akin to unquestionable settled science, all relying on a few chiseled curls of hair?

There was a profound amount of human drama intermingled with tragic family intrigue

Thought to Be Aemilia Scaurus
 (100 BC - 82 BC)

surrounding Emilia and the characters in her short life especially from one, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, commonly known to history as simply Sulla.  He would seize the empire and become dictator in 82 BC.  It gets a bit convoluted but stay with me here for an appreciation of the manipulation she experienced, though did not quite survive.  Her father, Scaurus, mentioned earlier, married Caecilia Metella.  Caecilia would later become Sulla’s third wife, making Aemilia Sulla’s stepdaughter.  Before this marriage occurred, however, young Aemilia had married and was expecting a child.  The same year of her husband’s death, Cecilia Metella married Sulla.  This worked to ally Sulla with a powerful family of Roman plebeian nobility and accelerate his career first to Consul then Dictator by 82 BC.  Sulla’s marriage to Cecilia was celebrated with great pomp, following Sulla's divorce of Cloelia, his third wife, whom he divorced citing “barrenness.”  Aemilia, now Sulla’s stepdaughter, would soon become the second wife of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.  Better known simply as “Pompey”, Sulla persuaded him to divorce his wife, Antistia, and marry Aemilia.  Aemilia, though at that moment pregnant from her first marriage, was forced by her mother and stepfather, Sulla, to separate from her husband and marry Pompey in a scheme designed to forge an alliance with Pompey.  After Pompey divorced Antistia, the latter's mother committed suicide, cursing those who had harmed her daughter, now dishonored.  In noble families, it was customary to build the political careers of their 

Cecilia Metella's Mausoleum Built by
Sulla on Via Appia Just Outside Rome

important men through marriages.  In case after case, the women, in addition to being brides were also victims.  It didn’t stop there, and while it had begun tragically, it ended just as appallingly when Aemilia died in childbirth at Pompey’s home shortly following her forced marriage to him.  There was no consideration of Aemilia’s plight in these affairs since, at that time, citizen women were considered little more than chattel, with the maturity of a child, thus in need of the perpetual oversight of a guardian.

Like a lost shoe found along the road, its owner nameless, it remains a mystery as to who exactly the beautiful young woman immortalized by the Rapolla sarcophagus had been.  There are many historic mysteries hidden in plain view, off in the distant terrain visible from our terrazzo, this being but one of them.  Listen hard and long enough and the mountains may hint at, even reveal, their shadowy secrets.  Pulling back the curtain of time for instance, they could share the echoes of legionnaire voices heard above the clatter of their footfalls as they marched along Via Appia toward Brindisi.  Listen closely, there it is, the voice of one forced to pause from continuing his ribald boast of conquest.  Ah, another, a disparaging taunt directed at a fellow soldier just steps ahead, likewise cut short.  Then, fading as well, the faint mutter of an insubordinate curse, though not discernable, addressed to his centurion commander a few paces further on.  All of them had stopped what they were saying, mid-sentence, to step aside and make way for an approaching wagon.  One of them shouted to the men walking alongside the heavily loaded vehicle to ask how far they had journeyed from Brindisi, if indeed it had been their point of departure.  His reply, “Alio modo 135 mille passuum esse Brundisium, mi amice” (Only another 200 kilometers to Brindisi, my friend), told them what the mile markers and their officers had not.  Unfortunately, days more of their unending trek awaited them before they could hope to see rest aboard ship, anywhere for that matter.  Thoughts of their plight hadn’t fully sunk in when their attention was drawn again to the weighted-down wagon now so close they might shift the packs on their backs,

Aemilia Scaurua?

reach out, and touch it.  Pulled slowly by a laboring team of white podolica cattle, its overburdened load, a gleaming white sarcophagus, so long it extended from the back of the cart, was clearly visible.  As the abrupt snap of the team leader’s whip hastened the wagon along, each of them caught a glimpse of the beauty, rivaling Venus, lying atop her milky white marble vault.  Frozen in the silence of stone, like a victim of the Gorgon, Medusa, the scene caused each in turn to pause just a moment to remember recent shadows from their past, fragments of memory of those they had left behind — the sweetheart, daughter, wife, — all about her age, everyone they had ever loved, who with each step they distanced themselves from further.  They, like us, had gazed in awe wondering who she had been, curious to know her name, a secret you see, layered in time, well-kept to this day.

 

From That Rogue Tourist

Paolo