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

apidly diminishing power of Cumae during the fifth century BC, Capua took over
most of the lands south of the river Clanius as far as the sea. The sanctuary of
Hamae, mentioned by Livy under 215 BC as being situated three miles
from Cumae,
probably lay on the border between the land of Cumae and that of Capua. 376 The
ager Phlegreus was the most fertile part of the ager Campanus and also included
Mons Gaurus. 377 The Roman consuls later demarcated it by two military roads
leading from Cumae and Puteoli to Capua. The Colles Leucogaei formed the
boundary between the land of Naples and the ager Campanus. Where the south-
eastern border of the ager Campanus lay is not easy to say. By the mid-fourth
century Calatia, Suessula, Acerrae and Cales seem to have become independent with
their own territories. These communities grew perhaps on the edge of the ager
Campanus to guard routes leading south of Capua and towards the interior of the
peninsula. Atella emerges as a separate settlement before the late fourth century, but
the extent of its land is still disputed. To the north, the sanctuary of Diana Tifatina,
Capua's main extraurban sanctuary, was provided with lands for its maintenance,
which naturally were part of the ager Campanus. The sanctuary, situated on the
Mons of Tifata, which in itself constituted a natural northern border to the territory of
Capua, was probably built near the border of the territories of Capua and Caiatia.
The Romans first annexed part of the ager Campanus by detaching the ager
Falernus after the Latin Wars in 340 BC, when it was distributed among the plebs,
probably by viritane allocation (see map IV). 378 The protection of the territory was
entrusted to the Roman colony established near Cales, where 2500 colonists were
376 Livy 23.35. Frederiksen (1984) 37 identifies it with today's Torre S. Severino, close to the ancient
Liternum.
377 Pliny NH 18.111. suggests that the agri Leborini were called the Phlegraean fields by the Greeks.
378 Livy 8.11.13-4. Taylor (1960) 56.
109