The Antiquarian Debate on the Local Past in Benevento, Venosa, Grumentum, and Matera in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

In the paper have been discussed some cases of how, in the Kingdom of Naples of the 15th and 16th centuries, several humanists, antiquarians and poets investigated the local past of their own cities by interpreting classical and medieval literary sources and by considering the discoveries of ancient inscriptions, buildings and artifacts. In particular, the paper has focused on the Renaissance debate concerning the history and the cultural identity of four cities placed in today’s Campania and Basilicata: Benevento, the main city of the Samnium region, whose impressive Roman memory was clearly readable in the very urban structure and in the relics still surviving in later times; Venosa, the birthplace of Horace – an identitarian label which influenced deeply the local historiography and literary production; Saponara (Grumentum), where an antiquarian debate promoted the study of the local antiquities placed in the archaeological area close to the medieval site of the city; Matera, where the consciousness of a Roman and also pre-Roman past developed by comparing the reading of the classical sources and some fortuitous discovering of ancient subterranean thumbs.