ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

(Venus(?) sanctuary, temple on the Melfa River, and Aesculapius complex), in cultivatedland (Hercules shrine), and in the natural landscape (the terraces of the Aesculapiuscomplex). In short, the Fregellan religious spaces acted to define Fregellan control overthe Via Latina and the Liris River Port as well as over the colonial territory in general, tomark the source of the economic prosperity of the city, to connect the health of thepopulation with the purity of the natural landscape, and, ultimately, to conceptually andideologically integrate populations within the city.As a final observation, the identified cults of Fregellae, including the cult in theforum, are not to the gods traditionally identified as central to the Roman state cult.Concordia and Aesculapius were foreign gods or inspired by foreign gods, and joined theRoman pantheon during the course of the middle Republic. Both were influenced byGreek or Magna Grecian cults, whence also their import to Fregellae seems to have come.Even the cult of Hercules was a wider Italic cult of travel, transhumance, and colonialcommunity. The Roman cult was located in the Forum Boarium near the Tiber RiverPort, whereas the Fregellan cult was located away from the Liris river in what may havebeen the pasture area for the colony. The most that can be said for these two cults is thatthey partake of the same Greek myths and Italic traditions. Overall, the cults of Fregellaewere not a copy of the cults of Rome as translated by the Latin colonists, but developed intheir own right out of the needs of the inhabitants of their own city.169