Grumentum

Grumentum is the name of an ancient city in Lucania, southern Italy. Its location in the center of today's Basilicata region corresponds roughly to the present Grumento Nova. About 50 km to the north lies the ancient Potentia and near which the present district town of Potenza.

Grumentum lay on the right bank of the river Agri (Latin Aciris ) at about 600 meters above sea level, while the Neustadt one kilometer is almost 800 meters above sea level. The city should not be a Greek colony, but Lucan and barely younger than Rome. The fertile surrounding countryside was often contested and is sometimes affected by earthquakes.

In the year 215 BC, the Carthaginians were defeated here under Hanno the Great, and 207, it chose Hannibal as his headquarters. In the same year it came at the Battle of Grumentum again in Roman hands. In the Roman civil war Grumentum was strongly fortified and temporarily in the hands of both parties. At the time of Sulla, it was the Roman colony and had some importance and a large amphitheater, the Arena impressive 60 x 63 m measures. It is the only such building next to Paestum in Lucania.

The present ruined city also shows remains of a theater and thermal baths (about 57-51 BC), a similar old portico and a rectangular, oriented north road network.