Stellatis Campus

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography

STELLA´TIS CAMPUS was the name given to a part of the rich plain of Campania, the limits of which cannot be clearly determined, but which appears to have adjoined the Falernus ager,and to have been situated likewise to the N. of the Vulturnus. Livy mentions it more than once during the wars of the Romans with the Samnites (9.44, 10.31), and again during the Second Punic War, when Hannibal found himself there by an error of his guides (Liv. 22.13). From his expressions it would appear to have adjoined the Calenus ager,and apparently was the part of the plain lying between Cales and the Vulturnus. It was a part of the public lands of the Roman people, which the tribune Rullus proposed by his agrarian law to parcel out among the poorer citizens (Cic. de Leg. Agr. 1.72.31): this was for the time successfully opposed by Cicero, but the measure was carried into effect a few years later by the agrarian law of Caesar, passed in his consulship, B.C. 59 (Suet. Jul. 20). The statement of Suetonius that the district thus named was previously regarded by the Romans as consecrated, is clearly negatived by the language of Cicero in the passages just referred to. The name of Stellatinus Ager seems to have been given to a district in quite another part of Italy, forming a part of the territory of Capena in southern Etruria. It was from this district that the Stellatine tribe derived its name (Fest. s. v. Stellatina).
[E.H.B]

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