Castrum Novum

CASTRUM NOVUM


1. （Κάστρον νέον,Ptol.: Eth. Castronovani, Inscr. ), a city on the sea-coast of Etruria, between Pyrgi and Centumcellae. We have no account of it prior to the establishment of a Roman colony there, and from the name we may presume that this was a new foundation, and that there was no Etruscan town previously existing on the site. But the period at which this colony was established is unknown; we first find it mentioned in Livy (Liv. 36.3), in B.C. 191, as one of the coloniae maritimae,together with Fregenae, Pyrgi, Ostia, and other places on the Tyrrhenian Sea. There can therefore be no doubt that the Tuscan town is here meant, and not the one of the same name in Picenum. Mela, Pliny, and Ptolemy all mention it as one of the towns on the coast of Etruria, but it had in their time lost its character of a colony, in common with its neighbours Fregenae, Pyrgi, and Graviscae. (Plin. Nat. 3.5. s. 8; Mela, 2.4; Ptol. 3.1.4.) Yet we find it termed. in an inscription of the third century, Colonia Julia Castro Novo(Orell. Inscr. 1009), as if it had received a fresh colony under Caesar or Augustus. Its name is still found in the Itineraries ( Itin. Ant. pp. 291, 301; Itin. Marit. p. 498); but in the time of Rutilius it had fallen into complete decay, and only its ruins were visible, which that author erroneously identifies with the Castrum Inui of Virgil. (Rutil. Itin. 1.227—232.) Servius appears to have fallen into the same mistake (ad Aen. 6.776), The site of Castrum Novum seems to have been correctly fixed by Clever at a place called Torre di Chiaruccia, about 5 miles S. of Civita Vecchia(Centumcellae),—where considerable remains of it were still visible,—though this distance is less than that given in the Itineraries. (Cluver. Ital. p. 488; D'Anville, Anal. Géogr. de l'Italie, pp. 122, 123.)


2. （Καστρούνοουν,Strab.; Κάστρον, , Ptol.), a city on the sea-coast of Picenum, which was, as well as the preceding, a Roman colony. There can be little doubt that this is the Castrum, the foundation of which as a colony is mentioned both by Livy and Velleius, though there is much discrepancy between them as to the date. The latter represents Firmum and Castrum as founded at the beginning of the First Punic War, while Livy assigns Castrum to the same period with Sena and Adria, about B.C. 282. (Liv. Epit. xi.; Vellei. 1.14; Madvig, de Colon.pp. 265, 299.) No subsequent mention of it is found as a colony, the Castrum Novum of which the name occurs in Livy (Liv. 36.3) as a colonia maritima,being evidently, as already observed, the Tuscan town of the name. But it is mentioned among the maritime towns of Picenum by Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy, and we learn from the Liber Coloniarum (p. 226) that its territory, the ager Castranus,was portioned out to fresh colonists under Augustus, though it did not resume the rank of a colony. The Itineraries place it 12 M.P. from Castrum Truentinum, and 15 from Adria ( Itin. Ant. pp. 101, 308, 313), from which we may infer that it was situated near Giulia Nuova, a little to the N. of the river Tordino, the Batinus of Pliny. It probably occupied the site of the now deserted town of S. Flaviano, near the bank of the river, and below the modern town of Giulia Nuova, the foundation of which dates only from the fifteenth century. (D'Anville, Anal. Géogr. de l'Italie, p. 181; Romanelli, vol. 3. p. 303.) [E.H.B]