Puteoli. (Pozzuolo.)

Title

Puteoli. (Pozzuolo.)

The view shows the town of Pozzuoli in Italy with a shepherd and goats in the foreground as staffage. After the British landscape painter William James Linton (1791-1876), published by John Murray, London.

c. 1835

Artist

Finden

Historical Description

Pozzuoli was founded in 531 BC as Dikaiarcheia by a group of Greek colonists from Samos who had fled the tyranny of Polycrates. Dikaiarcheia, which had an excellent natural harbor, served as a trading port for the Greek colony of Kyme and was part of Magna Graecia. When the city became a Roman colony in 194 BC, it was renamed Puteoli. Due to its proximity to Capua and the Via Appia, the port continued to gain importance for trade and passenger traffic and was protected from the dangerous southerly winds by a breakwater at the beginning of the 2nd century BC. The grain supplies for Rome, which came by ship from Egypt via Alexandria, were landed here. Puteoli was Rome's most important port in Republican times and continued to play such an important role after the turn of the century, after the port in Ostia had been expanded by Emperor Claudius.