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Good afternoon everyone and thank you for being here at the presentation of my PhD research, "Cult and landscape of Regio VI, Umbria et Ager Gallicus: Mevania, Hispellum and the Ancient Umbrian Valley". My PhD work began three years ago, starting from the analysis and collection of archaeological findings related to the sacred system of the entire Regio VI, which roughly places itself between the current regions Umbria and Marche. It immediately emerged that the Augustan subdivision of the regions did not reflect the area's natural geographical and ethnical features, but several different clusters, both geographical and ethnic, had been gathered in it. Once this ensured, I decided to focus on one of this well-defined area, the middle Umbrian valley. Briefly, I will describe you this land. The middle Umbrian valley is a broad and extensive flood plain that runs north-south between the left side of the Tiber and the Apennines, from the city of Arna to Spoletium, in Italy's central part. Hills border this Valley, and eleven historical cities rise on the top of the theme. These cities are in a visual connection with each other in a sort of natural circular structure, with a centre, the city of Mevania, the modern Bevagna, that is the only not on a top of a hill, but down in the Valley. Hence, according to the foremost scholars, this city's name in the Umbrian language means "the city in the centre" and, according to the sources, was the Umbrian League's ancient capital. We have to remember that the landscape has changed considerably today as the marshland and swamps of Lake Clitorius formerly marked the Umbrian Valley and reclaimed in the 3rd century BC. So, the Middle Umbrian Valley is the object of numerous studies, especially between the 80s and 90s of the last century, which have led to the advancement of some theories regarding the settlements and religious pattern in antiquity. Therefore, the purpose of my presentation today is to present the Augustan-era "Umbrian" cultic system as a medium for investigating the effects of Roman control in the specific context of the Umbrian Valley. To begin, we must point out that: 1. We have very few specific information about the politic, administrative and religious organization of the Umbrians. Both the ancient sources and the archaeological findings do not allow us to deeply know the people who inhabited these lands before the Roman conquest. 2. From 308 BC to the Augustan age began a process of assimilation, integration, syncretism and exchange of the Umbrian populations to the Roman models. We witness phenomena such as the monumentalism of building, the adoption of Latin, the introduction of new administrative and religious figures. At the moment, we will call it Romanization without dwelling on the numerous implications that the same involves. 3. With the beginning of the Augustan Age, a spatial and physical restructuring of the Middle Umbrian Valley is put into effect, with implications in the administrative and religious context. Regarding this last point, many scholars have supported the theory of a rearrangement based on the previous cults and worship's places that placed side by side to the new Roman divinities and embedded in a roman religious system that overlapped, also geographically, the previous one. Although such actions have indeed occurred, this hypothesis starts from assumed the existence of a pan-Umbrian league, with an ethnic and sacred value in pre-Roman times, not aprioristically and archaeologically context. The Umbrian cultic system ran through three different main centres, corresponding to as many cities: Mevania, Hispellum, and Spoletium in the south. Placed respectively to the centre, to the extreme oriental side and the south of the Valley, it is fascinating to notice the centurial system's development. From the identifiable traces, we know that the centuriation of the Umbrian Valley took place twice. The first one was contextual to the deduction of the Latin colony of Spoletium, concurrently with deep interventions on the Umbrian Valley's hydrography, in 241 BC. These reclamations led to the planning of the Via Flaminia, that passes through the centre of the Valley. The centuriation was according to an artificial axis, a meridian that crossed the hydrographical basin of the Clitumnus and Tinia rivers. The drainage of the valley led to regimentation of the Clitumnus basin. Two centuries after, in the Augustan age, extensive centurial interventions proved in the northern part of the Umbrian Valley. The sources hand us down they are already widely exploited from the agricultural point of view. With the centuria gromatica of triumviral-Augustan colony the entire middle Umbrian valley's subdivision changed and the new Latin Hispellum became the new central pole. This is proved by the orientation of the actus: the new actus rotates their orientation and align themselves with the pertica of Hispellum. The new centurial system are visible from Mevania up to the Clitumnus springs. So, the dense network of rivers, lakes and springs of the Valley provides a suitable place for the rise of myths and beliefs related to the worship in water, already before the Roman conquest. The worship in water means the religious activities for which water is the subject of worship, always related to the spiritual purification and healing effects, the sanatio, and oracular functions. The river Clitumnus rises to Campello sul Clitunno and, in direction north, it is thrown in the Timia river, that connects it with Mevania, then in the Topino river, in the Chiascio river and directly in to the Tiber. Several ancient sources, among which Strabo and Pliny, inform us of how the river network of central Umbria, composed by Clitumnus, Tinia and Tiber, was much more extensive and modified today modern reclamations, and Clitumnus river reached, therefore, the cities of Mevania and Hispellum. The correct reconstruction of the hydrography of the ancient Umbrian Valley allows us to understand the centrality of the Clitumnus river: considering its entire course from its springs at Campello as far as its confluence with the Tiber, it was undoubtedly the longest river (about 40 km) of the whole land. Three cult places arose and linked among its water: the springs of Clitumnus Sanctuary, the Sanctuary of Villa Fidelia to Hispellum and the Aisillum of Mevania. These sanctuaries present two main ethnic divinities, one male and one female, Jupiter Clitumnus and Valetudo. Near Campello sul Clitunno a sanctuary arose devoted to the god Clitumnus, identifying it with Jupiter. Clitumnus was the umber flumen sacrum and a network of springs, dedicated to Clitumnus/Jupiter, composed the sacred area. Recent surveys have allowed localizing the ancient sacred area a little more to the south of the actual springs, covered entirely still today by a landslide which occurred in the 5th century AD, under the Santi Cipriano and Giustina Church. The cult of the Clitumnus springs has probable pre-Roman origins, and with the conquest, at first, the area became pertinence to the colony of Spoletium, and, at the end of the 1st century BC, moved to Hispellum. Pliny the Younger provides an accurate description: the ancient Sanctuary stood at the point where the river first emerged from the rock and was surrounded by smaller temples to lesser gods, most or all of them associated with more secondary springs. The main temple kept the image of the god, young and in toga praetexta. A bridge connected the area with a thermal plant and the lodgings for pilgrims. The sacred area contains a sacred wood, a lucus to which it is possible to refer two stones recovered in the near San Quirico and S. Stefano di Picicche Churches. These cippi bringing back the lex sacra of the sacred Jupiter’s wood, and dated to the middle of the 3rd century BC. With the Augustan age, the Sanctuary returned to Hispellum and connected to the sacred ehnic system, in addition to the clitumnalia sacra, the celebrations held in May to the god Clitumnus, as attested in numerous inscriptions. Clitumnus, as typical in worship's water, was credited with oracular powers, as Svetoniua an Pliny states. The small temple of classical style that still today rise near the Clitumnus springs is a Christian Church, composed from a sacellum on a high podium, with a pronaos and four Corinthian columns, built with roman elements of reuse. The crypt contains a spring. Some scholars believe that the fountain preserved inside the small temple wasinitially dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel, whose cult is often on the places of devotion to Aesculapius. The other divinity of the Roman-Umbrian system is Valetudo, the female 'partner' of Clitumnus, in a religious association between male and female deities known in ancient Italy. Valetudo is a Latin word that means "state of health", good or poor. Goddess of personal health (compared to Salus, goddess of social welfare), cleanliness, and sanitation. Widespread in all the Mediterranean area, Valetudo thus has a strong bond with water, thanks to its healing and purifying power, and also is credited with oracular power, attested by the small bronze Valetudo sortes in Ticinum. Valetudo probably never worshipped in Rome, as evidence of its Italic origin, more precisely Umbro-Marsic. The word valetudo appears in Latin prayers and rituals in the II century BC. At first, it is the object of the theme, such as in the Catonian precatio, and in many formulas such "pro valetudo or valetudine", "valetudinis causa", "bona valetudo", to ask for healing or good health maintenance. Valetudo acquires a religious autonomy and enters into the pantheon of abstract Italic-Roman deities in the middle of the II century BC. Romans and Italic peoples were in the habit to deify abstract concepts, in the vein of ‘divine virtues’ or ‘qualities’, as Cicero stands.