Submitted for award of PhD September 2006. - King's College London

Capua is preserved in Stephanus Byzantinus. 336 This long pre-dates the efforts by
Latin authors to find ancestors or founders of cities among the wandering heroes of
the Trojan war, and indicates a strong Greek interest in the region. According to
Dionysius of Halicamassus, Remus founded Capua and named it after his great-
grandfather, Capys; this ties the earliest history of the city to that of Rome and the
Latin towns which were founded by Romulus and Remus. 337
Strabo lists the numerous peoples of the plain from the earliest times, but
attributes the foundation of Capua to the Etruscans, who founded twelve cities in the
region as a league with Capua as the head. 338 This suspiciously recalls the supposed
league of twelve cities in Etruria, and enhances Capua's importance as the capital of
this alliance. 39 Velleius Paterculus discusses the possible year of the city's
foundation, suggesting that the Etruscans founded Capua in about 800 BC, but he
also mentions Cato's opinion that it had existed for about 260 years before the
Roman conquest. 340 Livy even gives the Etruscan name of the town, Volturnum, and
claims that it was later renamed by the Samnites. 341 Archaeological remains suggest
that the early urban development of Capua was due to the Etruscans, a claim that is
accepted by most modem historians, although the question of the precise date has led
to unprofitable
debate. 342
Attempts by Diodorus Siculus and Livy to derive the name of the city from
campus seem doubtful because they presuppose the local use of Latin at a very early
date. The derivation from the word caput, capital, in Strabo, is also dubious and
336 Hecat (Steph. Byz. 70).
337
Dion. Hal. 1.73.3; Strabo 5.4.10.
338 Strabo 5.4.3; Livy 4.37.1.
339 Similar mentions of the Etruscan organization based on twelve cities: Polybius 2.17; Livy 5.33.5,
Servius 2.278 and 8.845.
340 Vell. Pat. 1.7. It is not clear which conquest Cato is thinking of. it may be the occupation of 211
BC, in which case the city would have been founded in 471 BC; if however he refers to the beginning
of the Samnite Wars, it it would go back to the early sixth century BC.
341
Livy 4.37.1.
100