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

second centuries and was enlarged in the first century BC. 177 Capini draws attention
to two settlements, one outside the walls of the hill-forts at Monte San Paolo,
inhabited during the third and second centuries BC, and another near Ponte San
Mauro. '78 Traces of a village were found in the vicinity of Fonte del Romito
(Capracotta), which was inhabited from the 9t' century BC, although the
archaeological material increases during the fourth and third centuries BC, when the
settlement was reorganized and enlarged. 179 The late second century BC saw an
important change in the plan of this settlement, with the buildings being rebuilt
around an open space. ' 80
Most of the farmsteads mentioned above were built of stone in the peaceful
period following the Samnite Wars, when the population increasingly tended to settle
near the land they cultivated. We can conclude that the number of villages and
farmsteads grew considerably after the Samnite Wars. Letta and Fracchia, as noted
above, have already identified an analogous tendency in the area of the Marsi and
around the fortified centre of Roccagloriosa. 18'
The ancient literary record also relates the existence of urban or pre-urban
settlements in the region. Under the year 296 BC Livy mentions that the Roman
general P. Decius, having learned that the enemy had fled after a series of defeats,
decided to lay waste to cities and fortifications rather than wandering around the
villages (vicatim) of Samnium. 182 Strabo noted that many poleis in Samnium had
become mere villages by his time, thus emphasizing the earlier existence of cities in
176
A. Di Niro (1991) 121-6.
'77 Lloyd-Rathbone (1984) 216-9.
178
Capini (2000) 260.
179
Rainini (1996) 52-194.
180
Rainini (1996) 193-4.
'$' See introduction to section 2.2. on Ancient sites.
182
Livy 10.17.2: `Quin urbes et moenia adgredimur? '
56