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

very strong evidence for the existence of a tribe. The two passages about the Samnite
Wars in the second part of the fourth century BC show that the adjective Alfaterna,
whether an ethnic or not, was a designation of the town of Nuceria. These two passages
refer to events relevant only to the town, not to a larger community. Coins with the
legend nuvkrinurn alafaternum (see in section 6.6.2) also support the idea that the
adjective qualifies only the name of the town. In the passages from Pliny the Alfatemi
are inhabitants of a town which
has disappeared from the fourth region and they are not
connected to the city of Nuceria in the first region. I therefore conclude that the ancient
sources do not show that a tribe called the Alfaterni existed in the region of the river
Samus. It is possible that the adjective Alfaterna originally derived from an ethnic
denoting a larger group, and perhaps there had been some group in Latium called the
Alfaterni of whom some had settled at Nuceria, but the Alfaterni, unlike the Sidicini,
Aurunci or Apuli, were no longer an identifiable group by the fourth century.
6.2.2. Political history of the region
In this part, I focus on the historically attested relations between the towns in the area.
The passage in which Diodorus Siculus mentions that the Nucerians abandoned the
Roman alliance in 316 BC and joined the Samnites has been already cited. 687 Historians
have tried to understand why the Nucerians 'deserted' the Romans. 688 I believe that the
circumstances adequately explain this decision. Six years after the Roman defeat at the
Caudine Forks, this was the most successful period for the Samnites. The Romans were
686 Senatore (2001) 206.
687 Diod. Sic. 19.65.7.
197