UNA NUOVA COPIA DELL’APOLLO SAUROCTONO DAL SANTUARIO DEL BAGNO GRANDE A SAN CASCIANO DEI BAGNI

This contribution focuses on the Etruscan and Roman sanctuary of Bagno Grande at San Casciano dei Bagni and presents the discovery between 2022 and 2023 of different parts of a marble statue of a male naked deity. This statue belongs to the series of copies of the Apollo Sauroctonos. Its importance lays in the detailed analysis of its stratigraphic context. Although the fragments have been brought to light in different areas within the excavation, their location can be associated with the complex ritual of dismantling of the sanctuary that took place between the end of the 4th and the early 5th century CE. The presence of a bronze lizard offered among the ex votos within the sacred pool with thermo-mineral water that constitutes the center of the small temple allows for a new reading of the sacred meaning of this type of Apollo. This paper also discusses the preliminary archaeometrical analyses conducted on the fragments.