Aricia

Q241744

Aricia: ancient city in Latium, modern Ariccia.

The temple terrace

Aricia was situated near the sixteenth milestone of the Via Appia on the slopes of the Alban Mount. The town was conquered by the Romans in 338 VC; the city walls and Republican temple date back to this age.

The city was well-known for the temple of Diana near the Lake of Nemi (if you fail to recognize it on the photo, here is a hint). It has become famous because the priest had to be a runaway slave who had to kill his predecessor. The Scottish anthropologist James Frazer used this custom as the prologue to his famous study The golden bough (1890).

This page was created in 2003; last modified on 4 October 2020.