Lipara
Lipara, the largest of the Aeolian Islands, is situated approximately twenty miles off the northeastern coast of Sicily, Italy. It is often described as a "prehistorian's paradise" due to its continuous human occupation from ancient times. The island has a rich history, with evidence of Mycenaean presence and a significant role as a trading hub in the Late Bronze Age. The term "Ausonian Culture," linked to the island, highlights its connections to early settlers and their interactions with surrounding regions.
In the 6th century BC, Greek colonists from Cnidus and Rhodes settled Lipara, establishing a community that would engage in various conflicts for maritime control. Over the centuries, Lipara transitioned through various dominions, including the Carthaginians and Romans, who used it as a naval base and mint. Archaeological discoveries on the island have revealed important insights into its history, including remnants of Greek and Roman structures, and findings related to local pottery and terracotta production. Today, Lipara is also known for its significant archaeological sites, such as the Contrada Diana cemetery and a sanctuary dedicated to Demeter and Persephone, which reflect its long-standing cultural and historical significance.
Subject Terms
Lipara
also known as Meligunis (Lipari)
The largest of the Aeolian Islands (Aioliai Nesoi; Aeoliae or Liparaeac or Vulcaniae Insulae; now known as the Eolie or Lipari group), Lipara lies twenty miles off northeastern Sicily. The other principal islands of the group are Hiera Hephaesti (or Thermessa or Terasia or Vulcani; now Vulcano, with Mount Vulcanello at its northern extremity), Didyme (Salina), Phoenicussa (Filicudi), Ericussa (Alicudi), Euonymos (Panarea), and Strongyle (Stromboli; a volcano).
Lipara has been described as a `prehistorian's paradise’ because of a continuous series of occupations from the earliest times. A ship wrecked in the seventeenth century BC has recently been found in its bay. Subsequently the island may have served as a staging point for the Mycenaeans on the way to their trading posts at Pithecusae (Ischia) and the neighboring island of Vivara. The term `Ausonian Culture,’ sometimes applied to the Late Bronze Age civilization of the Aeolian islands, is derived from a story (reported by Diodorus) asserting that Liparus, the mythical founder of Lipara—succeeded by his son-in-law Aeolus the wind god, at whose (preexisting) shrine the earliest Greek settlers worshipped—was the son of Auson and king of the Ausonians, who lived in middle and lower Italy; the southern coast of the peninsula stood on the `Ausonian Sea,’ though the Ausonians were, according to an alternative definition, limited to Campania; and, by way of contrast, the term was also extended to the whole of Italy. A later version of the Aeolian islands' `Ausonian Culture’ continued into the Iron Age, with Calabrian and Campanian links and trading activity in obsidian (volcanic black glass), which existed in large quantities at Lipara and was highly prized in antiquity. The island also possessed mines of valuable styptic earth (which checked bleeding).
About 580 BC, a group of emigrants from Cnidus (Reşadiye) in Caria (southwest Asia Minor) and from Rhodes, under the leadership of Pentathlus, driven out of Lilybaeum (Marsala) by Phoenicians and native Elymians, established themselves in the Aeolian archipelago. Pausanias did not know if the islands were previously uninhabited, or if the people the colonists found there were ejected. Diodorus records an implausible story that a few descendants of Aeolus' Greek settlers were present to welcome the newcomers. Archaeological investigation has so far provided no evidence of inhabitants immediately preceding Pentathlus' colonists, but has confirmed the date of c 580 for his settlement (rather than 628, proposed by Eusebius). The site they chose at Lipara was on a defensible hill beside the sea (in the area now known as Castello or La Cittade); and they crossed over to the other islands by boat, in order to use their soil for cultivation.
Maintaining a communistic way of life, subsequently followed by a modifed form of collectivism, the inhabitants of Lipara waged constant struggles against the Etruscans for the control of the Tyrrhenian Sea, denouncing them and being denounced in return, as pirates. Early in the Peloponnesian War (427) they allied themselves with Syracuse and withstood a combined assault by troops from Athens and Rhegium (Reggio di Calabria). In 394 Lipara fell briefly to the Carthaginians, but subsequently formed an alliance with Dionysius I of Syracuse. The last of all known important Greek vase painters, in c 340, is known as the `Lipara Painter,’ because his works are found and were apparently made on the island (and appear also on neighboring shores). The city of Lipara prospered, but fell by treachery in 304 to Agathocles of Syracuse, who robbed it of its valuables (which subsequently went down in a storm at sea). Lipara later issued coins celebrating an alliance with Tyndaris (off Cape Tindaro), but then succumbed to the Carthaginians, and during the First Punic War (264–261) provided them with a naval base, until the city was captured by the Roman commander Gaius Aurelius in 252.
During his Civil War with Sextus Pompeius (the son of Pompey the Great) in 37/36, Octavian (the future Augustus) employed Lipara as an important fleet station and mint, issuing bronze pieces bearing the signatures of more than a dozen of his officers and repeating the type of Hephaestus (Vulcan) (the principal local deity, together with Poseidon [Neptune]) which had already appeared on local coinage. The head of Augustus appears on a coin which, although inscribed in Greek, refers to duoviri, the principal officials of a Roman municipium, which at this juncture Lipara evidently became—probably after the deportation of Pompeian supporters. During the empire the island served as a place of exile and a bathing resort. A Christian bishop Agatho is recorded during the persecutions of Valerian (254).
Excavations on the acropolis of the city present a unique stratigraphical series owing to the constant augmentation of volcanic dust. In addition to the remarkable light thus thrown on Sicilian prehistory, rich discoveries in the cemetery known as the Contrada Diana (now an Archaeological Park) dating from the archaic period until the Roman resettlement in the second century BC, have contributed substantially to our knowledge of Italiot and especially Sicilian pottery, and to our evidence for the terracotta industry in which Lipara evidently excelled. A tract of the city wall of the Greek settlement, dating from the later fifth and fourth centuries, has been cleared, as well as a rampart that was built to strengthen the defences in the first century. Remains of Roman houses, built over earlier structures, have come to light, and the Greco-Roman street grid can now be reconstructed.
Outside the city, a sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone has been uncovered, consisting of an altar open to the sky within an enclosed precinct, in which numerous dedicated objects (ex votos) were unearthed. Among a number of wrecked ships brought to the surface in the area is the Capistrello wreck (c 300) off the southeast coast of the Lipara island, brought up by a new type of saturation diving equipment and found to contain a cargo of amphorae and pottery. Underwater archaeological activity around the other Aeolian Islands is also continuing, in addition to excavations on land.