View of the temple of Augustan age (I century B.C. – I century A.D.), which was located in a sacred grove dedicated to the goddess Angitia (Lucus Angitiae), near actual Luco dei Marsi, L’Aquila. Angitia was a healing goddess, who protected particularly against snake bites, worshiped by the Marsi and later by the Romans as well. For Archaic age Latin peoples the presence of a divinity (numen) was perceived in places which expressed most prominently nature’s power and were thus regarded as inhabited by a deity: woods, caves, river sources, hot or healing springs. Seneca’s words convey with efficacy the sense of the sacred perceived by the Roman man in the presence of a forest:

“If you have ever come on a dense wood of ancient trees that have risen to an exceptional height, shutting out all sight of the sky with one thick screen of branches upon another, the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot, your sense of wonderment at finding so deep and unbroken a gloom out of doors, will persuade you of the presence of a deity (fides tibi numinis faciet)” (Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, XLI, 3).

In every wood it was thought that it could be the dwelling of a divinity. Cato, indeed, describes the ritual which a farmer had to execute when he was about to clear from the trees a tract of terrain:

“Offer a pig as an expiation and utter the following words: “Whoever you are, god or goddess, divinity to whom this wood is consecrated (Si deus, si dea es, quoium illud sacrum est) accept this offering, which I made to you before clearing. In memory of this sacrifice, forgive the pruning we are going to do, I and those who work under my orders. It is for this that we offer you the pig in expiation, I beg you to grant me your protection, to me, to my house, to my people and to my children. Be pleased with the expiatory offering of this pig, which I am going to sacrifice” (Cato, De re rustica, CXXXIX).

 

[Image: http://www.pbase.com/solofotogrammi/image/106230082]