Virgil's tomb: Encyclopedia - Virgil's tomb

Virgil's tomb

The tomb known as "Virgil's tomb" is found at the entrance to the old Roman tunnel known as the grotta vecchia or cripta napoletana in the Parco Virgiliano in the Piedigrotta district of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. It is on the road heading north along the coast. Virgil's tomb is in a lovely spot on the hill between Mergellina and Fuorigrotta. Virgil's tomb is in a Roman burial vault dating back to the Augustan age. It is a small, unimpressive-looking structure, a small dome of rocks, located at the top of the park.

It is beside a very old tufa quarry. The tunnel, itself, was built during the reign of Augustus connecting Neapolis (ancient Naples) to Pozzuoli and Baiae. Unfortunately, the tunnel is closed for renovations (parts are blocked by collapses that happened during the 1920s). The tunnel is over 700 meters in length and between 4 to 6 meters wide.

While Virgil was already the object of literary admiration and veneration before his death, in the following centuries his name became associated with miraculous powers, his tomb the object of pilgrimages and pagan veneration. The poet himself was said to have created the cave with the fierce power of his intense gaze.

When Virgil died at Brindisi in 19 BCE, he asked that his ashes be taken back to his villa just outside of Naples. There a shrine was created for him, and sacred rites were held every year on his birthday. In other words, he was given the rites of a Hero, at whose tomb the devout may find protection and counsel (as from Orpheus' oracular head). Virgil's tomb became a place of pilgrimage for many centuries, and even Petrarch and Boccaccio found their way to the shrine. It is said that the Chiesa della Santa Maria di Piedigrotta was erected by the Church authorities to neutralise this pagan adoration and "Christianise" the site. The tomb however, is a tourist attraction, and still sports a tripod burner originally dedicated to Apollo, bearing witness to the continued allure of hinted dark powers and bizarre mysteries.

Eventually the tomb fell into ruin and its exact location was forgotten. It is said that a certain English scholar Ludowicus, acting secretly for the Norman king Roger II (c.1136 CE), who was trying to conquer Naples, came looking for Virgil's bones and book of magic. Through his secret arts he found them, but the people of Naples prevented him from taking the bones, which protected the city, although he was allowed to take the book, the Ars Notaria. (John of Naples showed parts of this book to Gervase of Tilbury around 1200.) The bones were placed in an ampule (ampulla) in the Castel dell'Ovo, where they guarded the city. (Many cities were similarly protected by Heroes; for example Aristotle's bones guarded Palermo, and other cities were protected by Orpheus, Hesiod, Alcmene, Plato and others.) Other sources say that it was Robert of Anjou who placed Virgil's bones there.

Virgil's Bones protected Naples for many years, and attackers usually suffered from plagues of flies. (It is interesting that one of the legends of Virgil has him constructing a Magic Fly to control the Neapolitan flies. Like the hero Heracles, he appealed to Zeus Muiagros, or Fly Catcher. Gervase of Tilbury knew of two churches that used Virgil's spell to control flies.) Eventually, in 1194 Emperor Henry VI, who was well-schooled in classical lore, was able to conquer Naples, for it had been discovered that there was a minute crack in the ampule. Thus the Hermetic seal was broken, and Naples fell by force of arms for the first time in a thousand years.

Category: Naples

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Virgil's tomb", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki