Antemnae was a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

and

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state' ...

ancient Latium Old Latium ( la, Latium vetus or ') is a region of the Italian peninsula bounded to the north by the river Tiber, to the east by the central Apennine mountains, to the west by the Mediterranean Sea and to the south by Monte Circeo. It was the te ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. It was situated two miles north of

ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...

on a hill (now Monte Antenne) commanding the confluence of the Aniene and the

Tiber The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest List of rivers of Italy, river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where ...

. It lay west of the later

Via Salaria The Via Salaria was an ancient Roman road in Italy. It eventually ran from Rome (from Porta Salaria of the Aurelian Walls) to ''Castrum Truentinum'' ( Porto d'Ascoli) on the Adriatic coast, a distance of 242 km. The road also passed throug ...

and now lies within a park in modern Rome.

History

The name was said to have derived from '. Antemnae was regarded as older than Rome. In Rome's founding myths, its people, sometimes regarded as Sabines, were among those who attended the festival of Neptune Equester organized by Romulus to supply wives for the Roman men. The abduction—known as the

Rape of the Sabine Women The Rape of the Sabine Women ( ), also known as the Abduction of the Sabine Women or the Kidnapping of the Sabine Women, was an incident in Roman mythology in which the men of Rome committed a mass abduction of young women from the other cit ...

—was said to have prompted an invasion by the Antemnates. The Romans repulsed them and then conquered their town. The ''

Fasti Triumphales The ''Acta Triumphorum'' or ''Triumphalia'', better known as the ''Fasti Triumphales'', or Triumphal Fasti, is a calendar of Roman magistrates honoured with a celebratory procession known as a ''triumphus'', or triumph, in recognition of an impor ...

'' placed Romulus's triumph for the victory in 752 BC. As it was the home of Romulus's own wife

Hersilia In Roman mythology, Hersilia was a figure in the foundation myth of Rome. She is credited with ending the war between Rome and the Sabines. Battle of the Lacus Curtius In some accounts she is the wife of Romulus, the founder and first King of ...

(later

deified Apotheosis (, ), also called divinization or deification (), is the glorification of a subject to divine levels and, commonly, the treatment of a human being, any other living thing, or an abstract idea in the likeness of a deity. The term has ...

as "Hora"), she convinced her husband to make the locals

Roman citizens Citizenship in ancient Rome (Latin: ''civitas'') was a privileged political and legal status afforded to free individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance. Citizenship in Ancient Rome was complex and based upon many different laws, t ...

, effectively granting it

status.

Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in ...

, ''

History of Rome The history of Rome includes the history of the city of Rome as well as the civilisation of ancient Rome. Roman history has been influential on the modern world, especially in the history of the Catholic Church, and Roman law has influenced m ...

''
Vol. I, Ch. 9–11
The settlement was subsequently of little importance, although it was the site of the Samnites' surrender to Sulla in 82 BC during the

civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

between the Cinna-Marius faction and Sulla, and of one of Alaric's encampments in the year before the

Visigoth The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is kn ...

's sack of Rome in AD 410. In the 19th century, no ruins were known to have survived, but an excavation undertaken during the construction of

's Forte Antenne discovered wells, several huts, a cistern, and traces of the defensive walls of the ancient town around 1880. The remains of a

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became s ...

from the end of the Republic were also found.

Notes

References

Sources

* * * . {{Coord, 41.9379, N, 12.5000, E, source:wikidata-and-enwiki-cat-tree_region:IT, display=title 8th century BC in the Roman Kingdom Roman towns and cities in Italy Rome Q. II Parioli