La Regia di Gabii nell’età dei Tarquini

Recent archaeological investigations shed new light on the history of Gabii, the Latin town located 18 km. east of Rome, which is mentioned in written sources for having been fraudulently taken by Sextus Tarquinius. In the arx area of this city, a courtyard-fronted tripartite edifice dating to the earliest decades of the 6th century BC has been discovered. Its exceptional degree of preservation - the remaining structures being higher than two meters - is mostly due to the way it was eventually destroyed in the context of the political turmoil occurred in the years following the fall of the Tarquinii's family in Rome: the building was unusually buried under a four meters high monumental tumulus made of stones. Both functional features of the building and its layout, along with fragments of revetment plaques representing felines and bull-headed figures, leave no doubt that the building under scrutiny was meant to parallel the Roman architectural complex studied by F. Brown and identified with the Regia, i.e. the site where the early royal-age cults of Ops Consiva and Mars were celebrated. The construction of a Regia at Gabii constitutes the first evidence of Rome’s determination to impose her supremacy over a Latin town, and it must therefore be regarded as an historical correlate to Tarquinius Superbus' expansionist policy, which characterised the last decades of the 6th century BC.*