|
|
|
|
THE RED VENUS Venarotta is a name that has been given different interpretations which can be divided into two large groups. The first, generally cited by the older historians, contains those interpretations that could be defined as legendary and that link, in one way or another, the name of Venus to the specific characteristics of the goddess of love. According to a variant of this group, a small pagan temple existed in this area and dedicated to the famous goddess of Cyprus. It was then destroyed by the first Christians, so that we get a “Venus rotta” (rotta means ruined, destroyed, etc.). However, all this contrasts with the fact that in the diction of the local dialect Venarotta is pronounced with an open “o” and not with a closed “o” as it should be if it were the adjective from the verb “to break”. In fact, “rotta” if anything, means “grotta”, grotto or cave. Another argument, always of this mythological group, would justify the open “o” with the fact that the statue of the goddess were red and that it still existed in the zone when, towards the middle of 500 A.D. the Longobards arrived. They spoke old-German or gothic and called it the Venus – red “Venus-roth”, that is, Venarotta. On the other hand, others have it that the matter was bloodier. The Longobards raped some women of the place, there were fights and blood was spilt. From this an improbable “Venus-red” or “roth”. Whatever the explanation is, all the hypotheses in this group refer to the mythological name of Venus and seem to refer to very ancient rural rites, relating to the fertility both of the land and animals and, naturally, of Man. The second group talks of broken stone, which seems to have more basis even if it is less spectacular. It refers to the geological nature of the land, starting from the fact that “vena” also means “vein”, or a layer of rock. Now, since in this area extensive and long banks of sandstone tufa of the Miocene period often surface, some hold that the place name Venarotta – testified to by the medieval “Vena Rupta” – means a fracture of these banks of stone.
In fact, to reach Venarotta you have to pass through areas of broken tufa. Nonetheless, even in this case there is the question of stress, given that “vena spezzata”(broken vein” should give rise to the place name “Venarotta” with a closed "ò" and not with an open “ò". The latter, if anything, could mean a “cave in the vein” or rather “a vein with a cave”. In any case it cannot be excluded that over centuries of oral transmission the stress may have lost its initial characteristic. The fact is, however, that there are many places around Ascoli that are characterised by place names with the root “vena” which clearly refers to layers of stone and not to Venus. The history of Venarotta tends to coincide with that of Ascoli, but not so much as to reflect a state of subordination, rather a historical homogeneity that fatally derives from preceding demographic, cultural and economic homogeneities. Venarotta’s small territory was certainly able to house and protect town victims of the barbaric invasions but could not have had the strength to enforce political autonomy, particularly on the border. On the other hand a large part of its territory was in the hands of the “Farfensians”, that is, the imperial monks of Farfa who had transformed themselves from the poor Benedictine missionaries that San Benedetto had wanted them to be into powerful and sometimes bossy owners of fiefs. However, we do not intend to refer to any traces of prehistoric dwellings, because in that case we would have to return to what is normally called the “night of times”, but also because in the town of Venarotta, perhaps due to the lack of serious research, there are no reliable findings really. It is to be supposed that in the millennia preceding 1000 B.C. (the piceno age of iron) there was one of the primitive agricultural villages in the area which gave life o the ethnic group of the Asili, the last of the Piceni.Bibliography:
|
