Interamna Lirenas

Interamna Lirenas (also Interamna Sucasina ) was an ancient Roman city in southern Lazio.

Location and Name

The place was about 80 kilometers south of Rome in the valley of the Liri, one of the headwaters of the Garigliano ( in antiquity: Liris ), on the left bank of the river to its confluence with the Rio Spalla Bassa, near the Via Latina in modern Pignataro Interamna. The Latin name Interamna means " between the rivers ". The epithet Lirenas ( after the river Liris ) or Sucasina the city received the distinction of Interamna Nahars (Terni ) and Interamna Praetuttiorum (Teramo ).

History

The place was inhabited since the 7th century BC, first of Aurunkern, Volsci and Samnites. 312 BC, the Romans founded Colonia there a Latin rights to secure the Liris valley against the Samnites. 294 BC their territory was devastated by the Samnites. This was repeated 212 BC, when Hannibal marched on Rome along the Via Latina. Apparently Interamna was so badly affected that it could afford no help against Hannibal Rome and later was severely punished along with eleven other colonies at the end of the war. In the Social War Interamna 90 BC was a Roman municipium, which the tribe Tere Tina belonged.

Interamna remained a municipium in the Roman imperial period, but from historical sources about the city at that time little known. Its importance declined probably later than in late antiquity, after which it is no longer mentioned; probably it was abandoned around the year 500. Houses and roads were used by subsequent generations as a building material and thereby largely destroyed. Today, at the spot where several thousand people lived to see next to a barely -preserved medieval castle Terame only flat land.

Research

The remains of buildings and inscription finds could infer in the 19th century that Interamna could not have been insignificant in the imperial period. Recent ground-based radar measurements have confirmed that the settlement at that time not a small village was but a large bustling city. Clear indications gave the recognized by the geophysical measurements large size of the theater and of the marketplace, as well as other public buildings.

The new findings about the settlement are the result of a project launched in 2010, Italian researchers and the University of Cambridge, which aims to explore what happened in the ancient Roman foundations during the Roman conquest of the Italian peninsula. Interamna Lirenas was chosen because of its size. It was not grown significantly during the wedding of Rome. This means for the researchers that the original shape and extent of the colony is still possibly get. The aim of the research in the coming years will be to study the topography of the city.