ARDEA, a town of the Rutuli in Latium, 3 m. from the S.W. coast, where its harbour (Castrum Inui) lay, at the mouth of the stream now known as Fosso dell’ Incastro, and 23 m. S. of Rome by the Via Ardeatina. It was founded, according to legend, either by a son of Odysseus and Circe, or by Danae, the mother of Perseus. It was one of the oldest of the coast cities of Latium, and a place of considerable importance; according to tradition the Ardeatines and Zacynthians joined in the foundation of Saguntum in Spain. It was the capital of Turnus, the opponent of Aeneas. It was conquered by Tarquinius Superbus, and appears as a Roman possession in the treaty with Carthage of 509 B.C., though it was later one of the thirty cities of the Latin league. In 445 B.C. an unfair decision by the Romans in a frontier dispute with Aricia led, according to the Roman historians, to a rising; the town became a Latin colony 442 B.C., and shortly afterwards it appears as the place of exile of Camillus. It had the charge of the common shrine of Venus in Lavinium. It was devastated by the Samnites, was one of the 12 Latin colonies that refused in 209 B.C. to provide more soldiers, and was in 186 used as a state prison, like Alba and Setia. In imperial times the unhealthiness of the place led to its rapid decline, though it remained a colony. In the forests of the neighbourhood the imperial elephants were kept. A road, the Via Ardeatina, led to Ardea direct from Rome; the gate by which it left the Servian wall was the Porta Naevia; a large tomb behind the baths of Caracalla lay on its course. The gate by which it left the Aurelian wall has been obliterated by the bastion of Antonio da Sangallo (Ch. Hülsen in Römische Mitteilungen, 1894, 320).
The site of the primitive city, which later became the citadel, is occupied by the modern town; it is situated at the end of a long plateau between two valleys, and protected by perpendicular tufa cliffs some 60 ft. high on all sides except the north-east, where it joins the plateau. Here it is defended by a fine wall of opus quadratum of tufa, in alternate courses of headers and stretchers. Within its area are scanty remains of the podium of a temple and of buildings of the imperial period. The road entering it from the south-west is deeply cut in the rock. The area of the place was apparently twice extended, a further portion of the narrow plateau, which now bears the name of Civita Vecchia, being each time taken in and defended by a mound and ditch; the nearer and better-preserved is about ½ m. from the city and measures some 2000 ft. long, 133 ft. wide and 66 ft. high, the ditch being some 80 ft. wide. The second, ½ m. farther north-east, is smaller. In the cliffs below the plateau to the north are early rock habitations, and upon the plateau primitive Latin pottery has been found. In 1900 a group of tombs cut in the rock was examined; they are outside the farther mound and ditch, and belong, therefore, to the period after the second extension of the city.
See O. Richter, in Annali dell’ Istituto (1884), 90; J.H. Parker in Archaeologia, xlix. 169 (1885); A. Pasqui, in Notizie degli scavi, (1900) 53.
(T. As.)
ARDEBIL, or Ardabil, chief town of a district, or sub-province, of same name, of the province of Azerbaijan in north-western Persia, in lat. 38° 14′ N., and long. 48° 21′ E., and at an elevation of 4500 ft. It is situated on the Baluk Su (Fish river), a tributary of the Kara Su (Black river), which flows northwards to the Aras, and in a fertile plain bounded on the west by Mount Savelan, a volcanic cone with an altitude of 15,792 ft. (Russian triangulation), and on the east by the Talish mountains (9000 ft.). Ardebil has a population of about 10,000, and post and telegraph offices. Its trade, principally in the hands of Armenians, is still important, but is chiefly a transit trade between Russia and Persia by way of Astara, a port on the Caspian 30 m. north-east of Ardebil. It is surrounded by a ruinous mud wall flanked by towers; a quarter of a mile east of it stands a mud fort, 180 yds. square, constructed according to European system of fortification. Inside the city are the famous sepulchres and shrines of Shaikh Safi ud-din and his descendant Shah Ismail I. (1502-1524) the first Shiah shah of Persia and founder of the Safavi dynasty. Plans and photographs of the shrines were taken in 1897 by Dr F. Sarre of Berlin and published in 1901 (Denkmäler Persischer Baukunst; 65 large folio plates).
European and Chinese merchants resided at Ardebil in the middle ages, and for a long time the city was a great emporium for central Asian and Indian merchandise, which was forwarded to Europe via Tabriz, Trebizond and the Black Sea, and also by way of the Caucasus and the Volga. Since the beginning of the 16th century, when Persia fell under the sway of the Safavis, the place has been much frequented by pilgrims who come to pay their devotions at the shrine of Shaikh Safi. This shrine is a richly endowed establishment with mosques and college attached, and had a fine library containing many rare and valuable MSS. presented by Shah Abbas I. at the beginning of the 17th century, and mostly carried off by the Russians in 1828 and placed in the library at St Petersburg. The grand carpet which had covered the floor of one of the mosques for three centuries was purchased by a traveller about 1890 for 100 pounds, and was finally acquired by the South Kensington Museum for many thousands. This beautiful carpet measures 34 ft. by 17 ft. 6 in., and contains 380 hand-tied knots in the square inch, which gives over 32,500,000 knots to the whole carpet (W. Griggs, Asian Carpet Designs).
(A. H. S.)