So much for Beloch and Eratosthenes.
To sum up: Strabo is wrong in saying that the temple of Athene stood on
the summit of Mount San Costanzo; I was wrong in thinking that this
temple lay at Ierate; Peutinger's Chart is wrong in figuring the
structure on the south side of the Sorrentine peninsula; Beloch is wrong
in identifying the skopelos trikoruphos of Eratosthenes with Mount San
Costanzo; Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the boundary
between the two gulfs.
The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella, whose crag is of
sufficient altitude to justify Roman poets like Statius in their
descriptions of its lofty site. So great a number of old writers concur
in this opinion - Donnorso, Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anastasio,
Capaccio - that their testimony would alone be overwhelming, had these
men been a little more careful as to what they called a "temple."
Capasso, the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it "in the
neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella." Professor Pais, in 1900, wrote a
paper on this "Atene Siciliana" which I have not seen. The whole
question is discussed in Filangieri's recent history of Massa
(1908-1910). It also occurs to me that Strabo's term akron may mean an
extremity or point projecting into the sea (a sense in which Homer used
it), and be applicable, therefore, to the Punta Campanella.
Rome
Here we are.
