TRADIZIONI PUNICO-ELLENISTICHE A VOLUBILIS I CAPITELLI CORINZI E COMPOSITI

At Volubilis are to be seen characteristic forms of Corinthian and composite capitals and column shafts in local stone unparalleled elsewhere in terms of formal features and execution of decoration. They were erected in public monuments and the peristyle houses of the city, examples datable between the end of the second and early decades of the third century A.D. being presented here. With study of the type of acanthus a Punic-Hellenistic decorative line of tradition has been identified, which persisted in northern Africa also in the Imperial age, despite the spread of decorative forms associated with official Roman Imperial architecture. However, on the evidence of the Augustan-age capitals of Carthage and Tripolitania, like many funerary monuments of the interior dating to the first and second centuries A.D., it has been possible to follow the circulation of earlier traditions in the following centuries.