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PLATE I.
This general view of lake Fucino and of the plain whichsurrounded it, was taken from the Western slope of Mt Salviano,at a point situated about 150 metres above the level of the plain.
In ancient times, this mount Salviano was covered by awood sacred to the goddess Angitia the protectress of the Marsi ;we shall show further on, in the course of this description, theposition of the city which bore her name, and which containedthe college of the priests of this terrible divinity, who was thegoddess of suffering and very probably of medicine also.
In the foreground we see the town of Avezzano , now theseat of the sous-prefecture of the same name; its territory wasformerly, like Mt Salviano, sacred ground; it was dedicated toJanus the great god of the Sabines, who gave him the title ofthe God of Gods; this territory was called of the Ave Jane, i. e.of the « hail Janus, » because no one passed through it without thisinvocation to the divinity, who was exalted over' all the others,and whose temple is said to have been on the spot occupied bythe modern town. Janus was the God of gates, and thereforehis temple was very properly placed at that point, because tothe right and to the left at a short distance from each other onthe shores of the lake, and at the points where the lake ap-proached most the mountains by which it was surrounded, weresituated the two entrances into the country of the Marsi .
From Ave Jane y Aveianum was derived, and then Avezzano .The town did not exist before the IX lh century, and all the ter-ritory on the left was dependent anciently from the city of Albasituated in this plain at a distance of three kilometres (1.86 miles)from Avezzano . Alba and this territory belonged to the nationof the Equi, who did not form part of the Sabellic family andjust for this reason, in the absence of any natural frontier whichdivided the Equi from the Marsi , they multiplied in that locality