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

the wars ended with the town being forced to surrender by the Roman commander
Quintus Fabius Maximus.
It is conventionally accepted that the arrival of the Samnites at Capua occurred in
the 430s-420s BC. Archaeological evidence suggests that Nuceria existed already in the
sixth century BC, with a material culture that has been described as 'Etruscan'. It is clear
from passages in Livy and Diodorus that by the time of the Samnite wars Nuceria was
inhabited and dominated by the Samnites, and it is plausible that the town was occupied
at the same time as the cities of north Campania towards the end of the fifth century.
Even if it is possible that Alfaterna derived from the ethnic of a group of Samnites
who lived in the region of Nuceria, our literary evidence from the fourth century BC
does not confirm such a suggestion. Diodorus Siculus does not speak about the Alfaterni
who lived at Nuceria, but about the Nucerini who were called Alfaterni and who were
the inhabitants of a single town. It is also clear from Livy's passage that Quintus Fabius
besieged only the town of Nuceria Alfaterna. Furthermore, neither Greek nor Latin
authors speak about Pompeii Alfatemi or Herculaneum Alfaternum.
Pliny, in the third book of his Natural History, draws up lists of towns and
colonies in the regions instituted by Augustus. Two passages mention the Alfaterni by
name. The first lists the Alfaterni among those communities which had disappeared from
the territory of the Aequicoli in the fourth region. 678 Thomsen suggested that parts of
Pliny's lists, namely those which contained the communities in alphabetical order, went
back to those published by Augustus. 67' However, it seems doubtful that Pliny, quoting
lists from the last quarter of the first BC, was speaking about the tribal movements of the
fifth to early fourth centuries BC, considering that the so-called Alfaterni had to be at
678
Pliny NH 3.108: 'in hoc situ ex Aequicolis interiere Comini, Tadiates, Caedici, Alfaterni'
679
Thomsen (1947) 60-1.
194