L’anfiteatro e il criptoportico di Capua nell’antiquaria del cinquecento. Due sonetti inediti di Giovan Battista Attendolo

The present article provides an edition of two hitherto unpublished sonnets by the Capuan poet and orator Giovan Battista Attendolo (1536-93). Both found in a Neapolitan manuscript, they deal with antiquarian matter – the amphitheater and the cryptoporticus of Capua vetus resp. Apart from their literary value, the two short bear witness to the antiquarian debate that developed there between the 16th and the 17th centuries and focused on Capuan territory. The sonnets are shown here as a product of the same Capuan milieu responsible for a few antiquarian works influenced by Antonio Sanfelice’s Campania (1562), as well as for a series of such poems, in both vernacular and Latin, chiefly modeled on Jacopo Sannazaro’s epigram In theatrum Campanum.