Ampsancti valles. Costruzione e rappresentazione di uno spazio "mefitico"

The article shows the flexibility and variety of the ancient models of construction and representation of the religious landscape in reference to the Ampsanctus’ valley, in Irpinia, seat of a famous sanctuary of Mephitis. In the different strands of ancient tradition, the sacred space of the Ampsanctus’ goddess, linked to sulphurous vapors and to the field of mediation, appears from time to time, in the light of specific cultural metaphors, as “navel” of the hell’s stomach or as oracular “centre” on the basis of the Delphic model, becoming at last, in the Christian authors, source of the pestiferous exhalations of the ancient “pagan” deities.