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The three Polyphemus' grottoes.

by Egenia Salza Prina Ricotti

SPERLONGA AND ITS PROBLEM
As I have just told, when I arrived at Sperlonga I found myself involved in its principal problems and, as you have seen (“Sperlonga: la scoperta” and “La mia ricostruzione” in this site) I succeeded in solving them but then I couldn’t stop at this but at this moment I discovered that I couldn’t stop there. Sperlonga interested me and I continued to study it. At this moment other facts, always connected to this cavern, had caught my attention. It was a general belief that Sperlonga’s groups were originated in the island of Rhodes. The three sculptors that signed the colossal works of art - Agesander, Athenodorus and Periander – were from Rhodes, and this was never put in discussion, but different hypothesis had been advanced on how the groups appeared in Sperlonga. Some scholars considered the statues copies of the the Rhodian ones; some other thought that they were the originals that bought by some very rich Roman who brought them back to adorn his splendid Nympheum. Most affirmed that the man who bought those works of art must have been Tiberius who, when the scandal of his wife Giulia broke out, deemed that for him the best thing to do was to call himself out of it and repair at Rhodes, an island he well knew because he had been there while studying philosophy.
As I have often said and repeated I never believed that this simple and honest man could have done so. To return to Rome and to his stepfather with this kind of souvenirs would not have been advisable. Augustus was absolutely against any display of luxury in the houses and he had just finished to raze to the ground a villa built by his daughter because he considered it too sumptuous. He certainly would reprove such a thing and he would never allow Tiberius to put it in Sperlonga’s Nympheum, and this if ever this beautiful place had belonged to them. The legend that attributed to Tiberius the property of the place was only based on the fact that the day of the landslide Tiberius had dined in the grotto’s water triclinium, a thing that, as I always told, couldn’t establish a possible title of possession. I always told that we don’t ever know if this villa and its splendid fishpond belonged to the imperial “praedia”, but if it was so, it could have only been as a legacy left to the emperor - maybe Augustus himself - at the demise of some very rich “piscinarius”, and we could also remember that one of these tycoon was Philip, Augustus stepfather, who probably left much of his property to him.
However, abandoning the question of who was the grotto’s owner and who adorned it with those splendid sculptures lets try to find if, before the end of the first century B.C., those statues were still at Rhodes.
I was just trying to decide if this had been the case, when, studying some grottoes map and particularly Rhodes’ ones, my attention was caught by Prof. Dr. Hans Lauter article on a Rodini’s grotto (and I must thank him for having given me the permission to use his plan). Accustomed as I had been to draw the map of Sperlonga, and having many times delineated the low background wall, I knew it by heart. You can imagine what a shock it was for me to discover, dug in the Rhodian grotto’s side, the same curves that delimited the giant’s body. It was too strange a coincidence for overlooking it.
There were the well known two arches, one for Polyphemus’ right arm and one for his right leg. But at Rodini’s there was also one more arch, a small third one, for his head. At Sperlonga there had not been need to have one because here the giant’s torso was free from the background wall, but at Rodini the rock continued up to the vault.
And now let we have a look at Rodini’s grotto. It stood in the Rhodini Park just in front of the so-called Tholomeus’s tomb. I drew its plan in the same scale of Sperlonga and checked the two of them. The curves had very similar shapes, also if in Sperlonga the dimensions were slightly smaller of Rodini’s ones. These were not much different, only a ten per cent larger than Sperlonga’s ones, but this could also depend by the different inclination of the two statues that, as is easy to understand, in a map, indifferent to the objects inclination, are projected on a plan. What I found - and what persuaded me to go on with my research - was that I could extract from my computer the image of Polyphemus from the Sperlonga’s plan and put it on the Rodini plan. It fit.
Now the question was the following: was there a Polyphemus in the Rodini’s grotto? And the answer was: why not. Polyphemus was perfect for a cavern. Of course sperlonga and Rodini were different: Sperlonga was enormous and very high while Rodini’s one was lower and darker. In Sperlonga we had a group consisting of five figures. In Rodini maybe there was only the statue of Polyphemus.
Another question to solve was: were in Rhodes a group from which the Sperlonga’s one could have been copied, and, if this was the case, how the Rhodian statues had been made? Were they bronze or marble? We can only say that Rhodes was justly famous for its bronze colossal statues and remains of enormous melting pits were often found.
Of course there was always the question: could all the statues came from the Rodini’s grotto which doesn’t seems ample enough, or if, taking them from some other place they were assembled to the Polyphemus one of Sperlonga. Were the Rhodes’ statues bronze statues? And were the marble ones of Sperlonga copies? Probably. One of the arguments that made think that the originals were bronze ones are the unaesthetic props we note in all the personages of the Sperlonga’s group. They really give the idea that they are marble copies of bronze originals, however also if they were copies, they were signed by the artists as if they were originals, and they are certainly real works of art made by valid sculptors who were not obliged to follow in a pedantic way every bit of the model and maybe, due to the vastness of Sperlonga could have added other characters to the original one.
Now there is another question we must examine. We have now seen Sperlonga and Rodini’s caverns and decided that they could be two Polyphemus’ grottoes, but there is still another Polyphemus’ grotto that is found in Domitian’s Albana villa: the Bergantino nymphaeum on the border of the Castel Gandolfo’s lake. Now in these three grottoes we find some striking elements that certainly connect them and even more certainly they are originated by the Rodini’s grotto. One of these is the small lateral oval structures circled by a bench. In Rodini it had been cut in the rock and also in the rock had been fashioned its bench. As Rodini existed long before Sperlonga’s and the Bergantino’s Nymphaea and thus the ones existing there must have been copied by it, they must have had an important reason to be there.
Moreover while Rodini’s one had been cut in the rock, the other had not been done in the same way. In Sperlonga the oval grotto is placed in a large diramation of the cavern where anything could have been built. But here only the Rodini’s oval structure was done and both it and its bench were done in masonry. The same we find in the Bergantino’s nymphaeum where the oval recess is arranged in a ramification of the cavern, a small one but still too large to cut it in the rock and also here it had to be built in masonry. These structures might have been important and important might also have been their shapes. But why?
These places were certainly not interested in the admiration of Polyphemus because none of them was placed and oriented in such a manner that they could see him. Their presence in the three grottoes makes clear that they were important elements connected with their activity, but certainly they had no finality as point of observation. Then what could have been their function? The bench circling them was not very large, only 45 cm, just like a normal chair. Of course we must imagine that those places were used to consume some dinners or symposia, but if this would have been the case why they could not admire the sculptures? Moreover in Sperlonga there was the splendid water triclinium where the diners enjoyed the view of the groups. Could the oval grotto with the bench host other less important guests to the meal? No. One of the charcteristic of those arrangements was that all the guests could see the master of the house, while in Sperlonga’s oval structure not even that was possible. Only a part of people sitting on the south eastern side could get a glimpse of him.
The problem regarding the three grottoes don’t stop here. They still have common characteristic that need explanations. The three of them have recesses deep enough to perform in them some form of rituals, but which one? Polyphemus did not seem the right person to be celebrated and yet in the Rodini’s grotto there was an ample recess cut in rock that on its back had stood a a kind of table, looking as an altar, with a niche to hold some bas relief cut over it. Maybe a bas relief representing Ulysses and his companions blinding Polyphemus. It looked just like a chapel.
The same thing we find at Sperlonga where, in a niche set at the extreme SE end of the cavern, we find the traces left by two beams that held a bracket, and again we are induced to imagine that here there must have been celebrated some kind of ritual.
Also in the Bergantino we have a very deep niche in which we can see two square holes cut in the rocks to lodge two beams holding a bracket. Again we ask ourselves the same question: what could have been the use of these niches with their altar-like table or brackets? Also if we could suspect that the oval recess could have been used for symposia (as a matter of fact, the wine drinking Polyphemus represented in frescoes, mosaics or sculpting is a common decoration of ancient world dining rooms), here, uncomfortably seated on the straight and narrow benches, it would have been a strange kind of symposium. Besides we can’t accept the too far away niches as places where to display the Mensa vinaria. They would not have been practical for serving the drinks. If, in those large caverns, they had to build tables for a mensa vinaria, there were much more convenient places to set them.
Thus the chapel looking niches had been prepared to celebrate some kind of ritual, not of course directed to Polyphemus, who stood domineering the scene with his size, but whom no one could pick up as his genius. Then to whom? And at this moment I realized that I had been completely wrong calling the three grottoes Polyphemus’ ones. The hero was not poor drunk and blinded Polyphemus. The hero was Ulysses.
Immediately I thought of Heroons. The three grottoes with their little temple embedded in the rock could be Heroa dedicated to the Odissey’s protagonist? But a Heroon without the Hero’s tomb does it exists? This is the question and I can’t find an explanation for it. Maybe some one brighter than me will solve it.