Product Code Database
The Vicarello Cups are four silver cups discovered in 1852 in the healing sanctuary and Thermae of Aquae Apollinares, at Vicarello, Italy, near Lake Bracciano. Their appearance recalls Roman milestones and they are engraved with the route from ancient Gades (modern Cadiz) to Ancient Rome.
Most of the finds from the deposit, including the cups, are to be found in the Museo Nazionale Romano, while a few of the numismatic finds are in the Vatican Museums. The collection belonged originally to the Kircher Museum, which was later incorporated into the Museo Nazionale. Many of the coins from the original discovery were not recorded.
Dated to the 1st century AD, the cups are cylindrical in form and range in height from , and are similar in shape to Roman milestones. They are inscribed on their outside with an Itinerarium that goes from Gades (modern Cadiz) overland to Rome, including all the 104 stopping points along the way and the distances between them, for a total of 1840 Roman miles ().
The cups are thought to have been manufactured in Roman Spain.Edward Champlin, "The Richest Man in Spain," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 196 (2015), pp. 278, n. 4.
The presence of the cups with the inscribed itinerary has raised several questions. They do not seem to have any relationship to the divinity of the location and in fact the route on the cups, which includes the Via Flaminia in Italy, does not include Vicarello, instead passing dozens of kilometers to the east, through Narnia (modern Narni) and Ocriculum (modern Otricoli). One hypothesis Università di Bologna - Corso di laurea in storia, insegnamento di storia romana - "Le fonti per lo studio dell'Italia romana" is that the cups were dedicated to Apollo as a thank offering for the accomplished trip, by merchants from Gades who traveled to Rome for business. This hypothesis does not explain why these merchants would have preferred the much longer land route to the faster and likely less expensive one by sea.
A second hypothesisG. Cordiano, Domiziano, Columella e la Stipe di Vicarello, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, , Nº 24, 2003 is that these cups were donated by travelers from Spain to the Roman senator Lucius Junius Caesennius Paetus, a relative of the emperor Domitian who had a villa in the town of Vicarello. These merchants would then later have dedicated the cups to Apollo.
|
|
