Word: sperlonga
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Dates: during 1957-1957
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...discovery was made by a young Italian engineer named Erno Bellante, who was building a road past the town of Sperlonga (pop. 3,000) by the Tyrrhenian Sea. Taking time off from his prosaic work, Amateur Archaeologist Bellante set workmen to digging inside the grotto of Tiberius (who reigned from 14 A.D. to 37 A.D.), 90-ft.-deep cavern hard by the site of Tiberius' famed Villa Spelunca (Cave Villa).* Beneath six inches of limy earth, one of Bellante's men struck a marble fragment shaped like the calf of a human leg, about twice lifesize. The diggers...
Only a third of the cave had been excavated by last week, and the torso of Laocoön himself was still among the missing pieces. To complicate matters, the citizens of Sperlonga were trying to keep the fragments in home ground. Thinking of tourist-trade possibilities, they rolled a five-ton rock before the cave entrance, dug a moat to frustrate approaching trucks. Still, having logic, culture and Cops all on his side, Jacopi was determined to get the entire cave excavated and the fragments transported to Rome, where they can be expertly examined and reassembled to determine whether...
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