THE VIRGILIAN SILA

The well-known episode Amor omnia vicit in the Georgics of Virgil is set in Sila, which tells a violent jealousy fight between two antagonist bulls: “Virgil found legends of wild passions which broke out is the Silan woods and, in the episode of the fighting bulls, heightened to overwhelming poetry what people roughly told …”

Whether or not Virgil was in Calabria we don’t know; but we know that, for more than a century, Romans considered Calabria a rich land to be exploited, not much on its coasts, as Greeks have already done, but rather on its inland woody spaces. Here, they spread systematic resin groves, by putting this work in the hands of contractors depending directly from the Government of Rome. These contractors were scattered in the whole Sila because resin was needed in great deal to caulk ships, and the Silan resin in particular, thicker and pastier than other species, was used to smear every kind of container. And if you consider that during the Punic Wars Romans built many fleets and, at that time – at least until after the second Punic War – Sila was the widest pine-wood under the Roman control, you easily understand the reason why, during the second Punic War, the inland populations – those who were exploited – rose against Romans, whereas the towns on the coasts, from Locri to Crotone to Metaponto – less exploited – remained elusive if not allied with Romans.

To sum up, at the time of Virgil, Sila and the Silan woods and herds were well-known issues to the Roman milieu, so much that together with Virgil they could easily enter the literary heritage …

As for the Magna Sila episode, we have to refer to the pre-existing tradition, for example Cicero. He says that, at the time of Servio Galba, horrible crimes happened in the Silan woods: some resin contractors were killed, and the slaves, together with the members of the contract company itself, were suspected. The crime frightened insomuch as the Calabrian authorities thought it appropriate to put them on trial to the Roman Senate. The Senate appointed Lelio with the trial in order to shed light on the tangled and contradictory details. Lelio, who were known for his experience and wisdom, tried to make the situation clear but he didn’t come to any solution, thus he suggested the Senate to charge Servio Galba of this task, the only person who could have brought new issues.

The story told by Cicero, even if unsolved, make us suppose that Galba really found the guilties. But what is important for us is the fact that, already in the mid-second century B.C., Calabria was known to Rome for its bloody episodes, which are events showing the pride and the passionate temperament of the race, until the last tragic epilogues. This passionate temperament and bloody pride were already part of the Bruzi armies which remained loyal to Hannibal, even in difficult situations, for all the time he fought against Rome on the Italian land but, when they were asked to leave for Africa with him venturing from Crotone, they strongly refused and let themselves slaughter rather than desert their native land. This combination of pride, passion and perseverance enlivens the psyche of the two fighting bulls in the Silan woods to take possession of the famous heifer. And as for the universal animism, it is not strange that Virgil gave the animals the passions of the inhabitants of this region. After all, he put these passions in creatures which are stronger then men, and so he improved at the top, through a sublime elevation, the peculiar temperament of the inhabitants of Brutio. We don’t want to talk about allegory in Virgil, but rather about the folkloristic influence in the creation of the episodes and characters who stand out.

THE PREHISTORIC WRECK

The scientific name is Woodwardia Radicans and it is a rare species of “tropical-mountain” flora, one of the most ancient species of the whole Mediterranean area. It grows in very humid gorges of mild hills or in the caves characterized by scarce brightness and mild daily and yearly temperature range. It is one of the most beautiful ferns, the only representative of the Blechnaceous family, drawing wide luxurious sprawls of huge and green plants.

It is found in Italy in some specimens on the Ischia Island, in the Sorrentina Peninsula, in Sila Greca and in Sicily. It is a remain of that tropical mountain vegetation which, during the Tertiary period, precisely during the Mesozoic, covered the whole Italy. It has very long branches stretching until touching the humid land or the clods kept by the rocks to which they cling with small roots which give life to a new fern. It is a vulnerable species because of its rarity and location and so it is particularly threatened by works such as street buildings or spring picking up; moreover, because of its beauty, it was subject to continual and huge harvestings by flower growers who nearly caused its extinction. WWF included it in the Red Book of Italian plants and suggested the establishment of reserves able to suitably protect this specimen.

THE RESINOUS PINE

Sila is rich is beauties and legends and was called “sacred wood” by the ancestors, because it fed the herds of Juno, the stitches of Jove whose temple arose on the Lacinio headland; famous wood, rich in legends and fears, seat for Gods and recipe fro brigands. Among high peaks and fertile valleys, Sila shows enchanting landscapes, rich pastures peopled by herds and very thick woodlands, wide plateaux and clear springs. Despite the bad work of deforestation and fires, there are still superb forests where luxurious beeches, ashes, firs, pines, yews, poplars, boxes, oaks and chestnut trees vegetate.
In the past, the wide Silan wood supplied Athenians with a great deal of timber for buildings which they used for their fleets; Dionysus, tyrant in Siracusa, ordered the building of a huge ship.
Saint Gregarious Magnus got long beams brought to Rome to built the temple in honour of Peter and Paul; many other peoples and countries took advantage of this. The ancient Brezii got out black and white pitch from the age old pines in order to take benefits from it. It was valuable and it was called fragrant, shiny and tenacious fat, used to produce a particular kind of oil able to make clear the skin, to shave, to block vessels, … Still today, the inhabitants of the Silan villages use the resinous pine to light up and walk in the night across the dark paths bringing lighted torches.

THE LEGEND of the CASTLE

It was a gloomy and dark night: Santa Severina was asleep and no moan or laugh was heard, but silence hung supreme and severe. Something had to happen that solemn and mysterious night. Everybody portended a wretchedness, so houses were closed and doors and windows were barred.
It was an abhorring and hair-rising deal: Devil – the woman tells – out of hell because he was invoked in a place not far from the town, was buying the soul of a Christian and, in return, he got a colossal pine carried from Sila, which he manufactured to the very long manger of the stable in the castle. For his diabolic task, that man would have been dreaded and admired from age to age and no oath would have struck him! And so happened: Devil, thanks to the symbol of his power, took possession of that place; but, as time went by, he lost his power because the archiepiscopal palace rising in front of the castle reduced the evil anger of hell.
People told this story, but now no one is afraid: the castle is abandoned and in the cruel fight it lowered, subdued, his proud head; the palace of the Archbishop won and Devil opposed in vain.
The fight in the legend, which becomes epic in the folk tradition, is between God and Evil, good and evil: victory couldn’t miss and good must win, and it won! However, once history has gone over the myth, it enters the legendary traditions considering only the archiepiscopal power and dukedom.
I saw the legendary beam of the similarly famous manger: it is a wonder. It seems a planed wood, straight, but it was not manufactured with iron, and there is the bark too which is 17.5 m. long. Is has the same thickness from top to toe, and this features testifies that that pine must be nearly three times as much as the beam, giving the idea of the size of trees growing in Sila. To enhance the legend, on the manger a rough painting represents a devil bringing a beam …

THE WOLF of SILA

The wolf is found on the whole plateau thanks to the presence of thick woods where he takes cover. When we talk about the wolf it is useful to discredit some commonplaces which, still today, make this animal hated by the most part of people and by farmers and shepherds above all who, blaming the beast of the continual attacks to the livestock, persecute it by any means. With regard to this, we have to say that the diet of the Italian wolf, which is documented through many scientific researches on the field, is very different from what we could imagine: 50-60% (and even 70-80% in winter) of its nourishment come from the left-overs of the many garbage dumps surrounding the villages, whereas 4,8 % (but even 0.8 % in winter) comes from predation of the domestic livestock; for the rest it’s about small wild mammals, dogs and vegetables. However, even if for the most part claims for assumed damages which farmers and shepherd underwent have to be considered actual attempts of fraud, it is not unusual to find sheep, goats and calves dead. Moreover, we have to clear up that the most part of these deaths is to be imputed not to wolves, but rather to dogs grown wild living on the Calabrian territory in 39.000 species (against a hundred wolves) and which lack the ancestral fear which is, instead, typical of wolves, just because they usually come from litters of sheepdogs abandoned by their owners.
A last lie to be discredited concerns the fact that wolves coming from Canada, Sibera and any other place were parachuted in Sila and on other Apennine mountains by the Forest Rangers: re-introductions of wolves were never attempted, either in Italy or in Europe, and in any case in Calabria would be useless and deleterious if we consider the presence of native species.

THE RECOVERED OTTER

In Sila National Park researchers detected the presence of the otter, whose last traces on this area date back to the 70s. It is one among the mammals which are mostly endangered in Italy, and has survived only in the southern regions. In fact, the species have been included by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) in the category of threat NT – Near Threatened.
 This is an important goal achieved in the field of a research project promoted by the Sila National Park Agency in collaboration with the Local Authority for the Environmental Politics – Department of Environment Politics of Regione Calabria, and LUTRIA, which is an operative company in the field of the eco-faunal research, was entrusted with this task. The signals are the first actual evidences of the presence of the otter in Sila National Park.
The unequivocal findings took place in a place where, a previous quest in 2003, led to any result.
The authors of the research, Dr. Manlio Marcelli and Dr. Romina Fusillo, members of the group of specialists of the otter of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (OSG/SSC IUCN), carried out multi-years studies in central-southern Italy highlighting the re-colonization of the river sites in the provinces of Cosenza, Crotone and Catanzaro during the last 20 years.
In Sila National Park, the finding seems to give further evidence of the recovering of the otter in Calabria, as well as confirmation of the strategic importance of the National Park for the preservation of this half-aquatic carnivore.
The continuation of the quest activities will allow both the evaluation of the state of preservation of the otter in the various aquatic environments in the National park, and the outline of possible interventions of protection and management of it.

“PETRA D’ATARI” and the SACRED RING

by AEFFE

What I’m going to tell happened about 15 years ago.

I was walking to pick up mushrooms with my father-in-law Benito in a new site on the mountains of “porcina”, located between the tourist villages of Lorica and Silvana Mansio, on the Silan plateau, in Calabria.
It was late November and it was quite cold; it was one of the last times of that beautiful year we walked always looking for new places at 1700 m. in altitude. We have been walking for some hours reaching the inner site of one of those wonderful age old beech woods, located some kilometres away from Botte Donato Mountain and “valle dell’inferno” [the valley of hell], a northward area, hardly ever sunny stretching towards the Cecita Lake side.
It was a beautiful place, surrounded by fragrant larch pine woods and spaced out by beech, alder and poplar woods where (in this last case) some spring or bog area emerged. A thousand shades: from yellow to orange, from brick-red to bright-red, to deep green.
All at once, in the distance, inside a quite dark beech wood, we saw a little bright flame.
We worried about it, above all because we were far from any village and the period made us rule out the presence of some tourist.
We warily approached and, near some huge granite rocks, typical in that place, we found an iron cross well driven into the ground, together with a grave light.
Of course it was strange that, in the middle of a wood, in a place quite away from the main routes and villages, there was that cross and, above all, a red flickering light.
At that point, I looked around and I realized that, at the bottom of those two huge rocks, that together created a sort of vault under which it was possible to get sheltered, it was a small round and plane area, 20/25 m. in diameter, bordered by big stones and, in the middle, another boundary granite stone.
I soon remembered something I had previously read on a history book about the “sacred sites” of the ancestors, where often some “magic” rings were set in order to prey and offer sacrifices!
In short, very ancient places of worship, were even animal and human sacrifices were carried out!
Some hundred metres away from that place, in a 300/400 years old beech wood, I noticed about thirty and more piles of stones on the steep ground, the common practice used in the past to bury dead.
I even took pictures of that strange place which subsequently, by checking a military map and by asking the local people the name of that site, turned to be the place “pietra dell’altare” [stone of the altar] (“petra d’atari” in the local dialect), on the Charlemagne Sierra.
The name of Charlemagne leads us to wrong interpretations about the toponym! I think that, rather than evoking the famous leader Charlemagne, it comes from two words: carru magnu, where carru stands for the Spanish word “carretera” meaning “road”, and magnu comes from a word which in Calabria people use to refer to a “shady and cold place” (the “manghìa”).
Obviously, it’s just a guess, even if not so much, being that place at 1600 m., located in a shady area which, during winter, it’s difficult to pass through because of ice and snowdrifts which here hold over more than in other surrounding places.
It is worth to point out another interpretation, according to which the toponym comes from the Latin carrus mancus, standing for “imperfect wagon”, or faulty.
I came back to that place twice, because I got curious and the same curiosity arouse in the people who came with me!
I have to say that, due to the strange effect of what I have told or to the name “given” to the place (who knows by whom and why) – “pietra dell’altare”! But what altar? The sacrificial one I think I have noticed? Or to point out a sacred place? – it seems rich in strange coincidences and presences, above all because of that piles of stones under which, probably, there is nothing! Maybe!
I nearly forget to tell that, following further surveys among the local inhabitants, I learnt that the grave light and the iron cross are due to the work of a woman, wife and mother of two shepherds who, many years ago, while pasturing their herds, found shelter under the two rock during a storm, and they remained here … where they were killed by a lighting.
I may be wrong, but the places which were struck by lightings were considered sacred and magic by the ancestors, weren’t they?
[…] I can assure that a walk to “Pietra dell’Altare” will make you feel particular emotions […].
For those of you who are experts, the place is easily noticeable and reachable! Let’s visit and experience what I’ve told … and, above all, the feeling you will enjoy by staying for a little while in that … magic place!