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

Although they suggest that the meddix tuticus was a local magistrate,
Heurgon, Sartori, Camporeale and Frederiksen also accept the existence of the
Capuan league. 330 For Heurgon the league came into existence after the conquest of
Capua by the Samnites in 437 or 423 BC. It was dissolved after the First Samnite
war, when towns in Campania were bound to Rome by grants of citizenship.
Frederiksen accepts that the cities of Campania formed `a kind of league or
confederation', whose member cities managed their own affairs, until it was
dissolved in 211 BC during the Second Punic war. None of the four historians
mentioned above explained the public institutions of the so-called league.
`The plain round Capua is the most celebrated in all Italy, both for its fertility
and beauty, and because it is served by those seaports at which voyagers to Italy
from nearly all parts of the world land'; thus Polybius praises the Campanian
plain. 331 The territory of Capua was among the most fertile lands in the
Mediterranean. The city's importance was confirmed by its strategic location at the
meeting point of several communication lines: the via Appia ran through the city and
it lay at the end of a route that was re-built as via Latina in Roman times. The latter
road connected the north of Campania with the regions of the river Tiber and the
territory of the Faliscans. Capua also controlled the route leading from the mountains
to the plain, and from Nola to the north. Furthermore, the city took advantage of the
port on the river Volturno, Casilinum, today's Capua.
The ancient city lies under modem Santa Maria Capua Vetere and cannot be
excavated, but several necropoleis, situated around the edge of the ancient
settlement, have been discovered and provide a considerable amount of information
330
Heurgon (1942) 116-8,189-90; Sartori (1953) 17, Camporeale (1956) 36; Frederiksen (1984) 140-
1.
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