ErN 129, entry Mar 2008 revise Dec 2014
The Cavern of Mithra
Hercules,
Thou Shouldst
Be Living
at this Hour
Well before the construction of the New City
(“Neapolis”) in the fifth century B.C., Greeks built the
original settlement of Parthenope on what is now called
Pizzofalcone or Mt. Echia. It is the height that overlooks
the small island of Megaride (where the Castel
dell’Ovo now stands). At the time —the seventh
century B.C.— that height commanded a view of the entire
coast; the cliff was pristine and washed by the sea and
there were no neighbors. It was the perfect place to put
an acropolis and town.Today, of course, even the mythical powers of Hercules would be hard-pressed to perform a thirteenth labor of clearing away 2,500 years of urbanization, including, but not limited to (as my lawyer friends like to say), the Nunziatella military academy, a dozen or so churches, and a long row of modern hotels that now totally obstruct the ancient view of the sea —indeed, obstruct the ancient view of the cliff from (!) the sea. So if Hercules can come forward in time —or back or sideways or whatever he does— I really want to see things the way they used to look.
A
print from the 1700s, when the cavern
was used for rope-making
was used for rope-making
In order to build the town on top, the Greeks quarried the tufaceous rock directly beneath them in the hill itself, producing a man-made cavern 60 meters by 30 meters, and 25 meters high. For centuries the space was a mithraion (from whence the later Latin mithraeum), a chamber dedicated to the Greek version of the cult of Mithra, their own syncretistic blend based on the Persian (Zoroastrian) religion dedicated to the deity Mithra. Later, Mithraism spread throughout the Roman Empire and was a rival to Christianity until banned by the edict of Theodosius I in 394 A.D.
The mithraion
was typically a natural or man-made cavern, meant to be
dark and mysterious; there were benches for participants,
an altar, and the vast ceiling surfaces were often adorned
with signs of the zodiac. There are still examples of such
chambers throughout Europe, some of which, over the ages,
have been converted to crypts beneath Christian places of
worship. The mithraion
of Parthenope (image, above, right) was a large and
important one among the settlements of Magna
Grecia, one which welcomed worshippers from
throughout the Mediterranean and even from Persia, itself.
As recently as the 1890s
(the years of the photo on the left), the old cavern was
largely unused, except for random storage. (The prominent
dome in the photo is the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli a
Pizzofalcone.) Today, the cavern of Mithra is
a parking structure (image, right). You can still see the
many ladder-like hand and footholds dug into the walls
over the centuries by workmen as they scurried up and down
to dig out and fix up. The current owners have put in an
extra ramp and floor for parking such that you now have a
two-tier parking garage. The cavern is supported by eleven
giant, arched columns built in 1800 and maintained since
then. This reflects the older concern (since the time of
the Spanish in the 1500s) that you can’t keep taking out
rock from below your house and putting it on top of your
house for another floor forever and ever. Mt. Echia rests
on many thousands of cubic meters of nothing.Entrance to the cavern is from the small street of Santa Maria a Cappella Vecchia at Piazza dei Martiri; you walk along the side of the large Feltrinelli book shop, past the old residence of Admiral Nelson (and Lady Hamilton), turning in on the left and following the P for “parking” arrows. You really can’t miss it. It’s that big. (It is marked as #2 on the map on this page.)
photo credit: 1890s b&w, above, courtesy of Napoli Underground (NUg).
Also see Proud to be a Troglodyte!
Beneath Mt. Echia
The Bourbon Tunnel
The Roman Amphitheater in downtown Naples
archaeology portal Ancient World Underground Naples to top of this page
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