ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

spreading perhaps from Capua or Falerii in the third century BCE and gaining popularitythroughout Italy during the next hundred years. 25Thus, what began as an Easternconception of the Artemis divinity became a local Italian artistic motif.The common elements of all of these approaches to Diana are that her divinityrepresents many borders, such as the divides between light and darkness, man and beast,civilization and wilderness, and what is ours and what is theirs, in terms of territory. As aconcrete symbol of her ideological territory, Diana's altars and temples are almost alwayslocated outside of the civic space, even when firmly in control of one city, such as atEphesus or Alicia or Rome. Thus, the cult of Diana embodied a multi-valence of bordersand space, which afforded the cults of Diana in Italy a choice of associations throughwhich to stitch the colonists and locals into coherent communities.One of the most wide-spread representations of Diana in Italy is the terracottaantefix depicting apotnia theron deity. This trend in terracotta temple decoration isfound in Northern Italy in Ariminum (268), Bononia (189), Aquileia (181), Luna (177). 26In the colonies in Samnium and Campania, these antefixes are found at Fregellae (328,316), Luceria (315), Sora (303), Interamna (312), and Minturnae (295). 27 All of thecolonial terracotta decorative pieces are dated to the third and second centuries, at whichtime these potnia theron type decorations were common in Rome, but also in Italicshrines such as the Samnite sanctuary complex at Pietrabondante.This type of25 For Capua: Blazquez Martinez (1953), p. 266. Torelli (1999b), p. 124 cites Falerii as the original sourceof this motif.26 See especially Fontana (1997), pp. 226-227,236-237,265-266.27 Luceria: d'Ercole (1990), plate lOOg. Sora: Rizello (1980), p. 87 and n. 18 for bibliography on thesamples at Fregellae, Interamna, and Minturnae.28 Fontana (1997), p. 236.202