ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

area, the extra-urban cult of Aesculapius, and the locations of the other sanctuaries todraw some conclusions as to the role of the religious landscape in shaping the colony.Excavations have revealed a comitium and curia complex at the north end of theforum, to the eastern side of the Via Latina.Adjacent to the comitium are the remainsof a small temple with architectural terracottas pertaining to at least three building phases,from the end of the fourth century through the beginning of the second century BCE.The first phase is practically contemporaneous with the foundation of the Latin colony.The second phase of architectural terracottas dates from the first decades of the secondcentury BCE, contemporary with the monumentalization of the comitium complex. Theterracottas are in a very polished Hellenistic style, with the additional feature of a Greekname in Latin characters scratched into one of the architectural pieces. This suggests thatthe temple was decorated by a Greek artist, who might have been hired during one of theeastern wars (in which the Fregellans participated) to complete a more monumental,sophisticated city center for the colony.This is the same move towards monumentalization which can be seen in the ,second phase of the neighboring curia. The renovation of this monument is analogous instructure with late-Republican temple-theater structures, in particular the theater-TempleB complex at Pietrabbondante, the common sanctuary of the Samnite Penetri. 34Thisconnection may be significant given the late date of the parallel at Pietrabbondante, builtnearly a century after the complex at Fregellae. It suggests the possibility that the31 See Coarelli ed. (1998), Table 2, p. 122 and Table 3, p. 123 after G. Batocchiori and L. Romagnoli.32 Coarelli(1998),p.60.33 Ibid.34 Ibid.159