Latium adiectum () or Latium Novum was a region of Roman Italy between

Monte Circeo Monte Circeo or Cape Circeo ( it, Promontorio del Circeo , la, Mons Circeius) is a mountain promontory that marks the southwestern limit of the former Pontine Marshes.located on the southwest coast of Italy near San Felice Circeo. At the nort ...

and the river

Garigliano The Garigliano () is a river in central Italy. It forms at the confluence of the rivers Gari (also known as the Rapido) and Liri. Garigliano is actually a deformation of "Gari-Lirano" (which in Italian means something like "Gari from the Liri") ...

, south of and immediately adjacent to

Old 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 t ...

, hence its name of ''attached Latium''.

Sources

As a geographical term, it was used at least as early as the 1st century AD, when mention of it occurs in

Pliny Pliny may refer to: People * Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE), ancient Roman nobleman, scientist, historian, and author of ''Naturalis Historia'' (''Pliny's Natural History'') * Pliny the Younger (died 113), ancient Roman statesman, orator, w ...

in conjunction with Latium antiquum, the original territory of the

Latini The Latins (Latin: ''Latini''), sometimes known as the Latians, were an Italic tribe which included the early inhabitants of the city of Rome (see Roman people). From about 1000 BC, the Latins inhabited the small region known to the Romans a ...

tribe. Says Pliny of the latter:

Its inhabitants have often changed: at various times it has been occupied by various peoples — the Aborigines, the
Pelasgi The name Pelasgians ( grc, Πελασγοί, ''Pelasgoí'', singular: Πελασγός, ''Pelasgós'') was used by classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks, or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergenc ...
, the Arcades, the Siculi, the
Aurunci The Aurunci were an Italic tribe that lived in southern Italy from around the 1st millennium BC. They were eventually defeated by Rome and subsumed into the Roman Republic during the second half of the 4th century BC. Identity Aurunci is the n ...
, the Rutuli ...

Then he speaks of a later extension to the river

, to include the

Volsci The Volsci (, , ) were an Italic tribe, well known in the history of the first century of the Roman Republic. At the time they inhabited the partly hilly, partly marshy district of the south of Latium, bounded by the Aurunci and Samnites on the ...

Osci The Osci (also called Oscans, Opici, Opsci, Obsci, Opicans) were an Italic people of Campania and Latium adiectum before and during Roman times. They spoke the Oscan language, also spoken by the Samnites of Southern Italy. Although the lang ...

and Ausones. The "last town" in the Adiectum Latium, or "Extension of Latium", was

Sinuessa Sinuessa ( el, or ) was a city of Latium, in the more extended sense of the name, situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea, about 10 km north of the mouth of the Volturno River (the ancient ''Vulturnus''). It was on the line of the Via Appia, and was t ...

. Pliny's remarks concerning Latium are part of his description of

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 ...

...a land which is at once the nurseling and the mother of all other lands, chosen by providence of the gods to make heaven itself more glorious, to unite scattered empires, to make manners gentle, to draw together in converse by community of language the jarring and uncouth tongues of so many nations, to give mankind civilization, and in a word to become throughout the world the single fatherland of all the races.

After waxing yet more eloquent concerning Italy — he was in fact north Italian himself, rather than Roman — he then gives:

an account of a circuit of Italy, and of its cities. Herein it is necessary to premise that we intend to follow the authority of his late Majesty Augustus, and to adopt the division that he made of the whole of Italy into eleven regions ...

Latium and Campania together comprise Region I, of which Latium is divided into Latium Vetus or Antiquus and Latium Adiectum or Novum.

Geography of New Latium

It included the Hernican cities of Anagnia (their capital),

Ferentinum Ferentino is a town and ''comune'' in Italy, in the province of Frosinone, Lazio, southeast of Rome. It is situated on a hill above sea level, in the Monti Ernici area. History ''Ferentinum'' was a town of the Hernici; it was captured from th ...

Aletrium Alatri ( la, Aletrium) is an Italian town and ''comune'' of the province of Frosinone in the region of Lazio, with c. 30,000 inhabitants. An ancient city of the Hernici,Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hernici". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed. ...

, and Verulae, a group of mountain strongholds on the north side of the valley of the (the River Sacco); together with the Volscian cities on the south of the same valley, and in that of the Liris, the whole of which, with the exception of its extreme upper end, was included in the Volscian territory. Here were situated Signia, Frusino, Fabrateria,

Fregellae Fregellae was an ancient town of Latium adiectum, situated on the Via Latina between Aquinum (modern Aquino) and Frusino (now Frosinone, in central Italy), near the left branch of the Liris. History Fregellae was said to have been founded i ...

, Sora, Arpinum, Atina,

Aquinum Aquino is a town and '' comune'' in the province of Frosinone, in the Lazio region of Italy, northwest of Cassino. The name comes from the Latin Aquinum, probably from ''aqua'', meaning "water" as witnessed by the abundance of water that still ...

Casinum Casinum was an ancient town of Italy, of Oscan origin. Varro states that the name in Oscan language meant ''forum vetus'' ("old forum"), and also that the town itself was Samnite before the Roman conquest. Casinum was a Samnite city only bef ...

,Oscan city, later conquered by the Volsci, the Samnites and finally the Romans
L'Italia preromana. I siti laziali: Cassino
in ''Il Mondo dell'Archeologia'' (Treccani), 2004; "Casinum", The Oxford Classical Dictionary, New York 1999. and Interamna; Anxur ( Terracina) was the only seaport that properly belonged to the Volscians, the coast from there to the mouth of the Liris being included in the territory of the

Aurunci The Aurunci were an Italic tribe that lived in southern Italy from around the 1st millennium BC. They were eventually defeated by Rome and subsumed into the Roman Republic during the second half of the 4th century BC. Identity Aurunci is the n ...

, or Ausones as they were termed by

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

writers, who possessed the maritime towns of Fundi, Formiae, Caieta, and

Minturnae Minturno is a city and ''comune'' in the southern Lazio, Italy, situated on the north west bank of the Garigliano (known in antiquity as the Liris), with a suburb on the opposite bank about from its mouth, at the point where the Via Appia cross ...

, together with Suessa in the interior, which had replaced their more ancient capital of

Aurunca The ancient city of Aurunca was the capital or metropolis of the little mountain tribe of the Aurunci (in the more limited sense of that name (see Aurunci)), was situated on one of the summits of the volcanic group of mountains, which rise above th ...

. Sinuessa, on the seacoast between the Liris (Garigliano) and the Vulturnus, at the foot of the Mons Massicus, was the last town in Latium according to the official use of the term and was sometimes assigned to

Campania (man), it, Campana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demog ...

, while Suessa was more assigned to Latium. On the other hand, as Nissen points out (Italische Landeskunde, ii. 554), the Pons Campanus, by which the

Via Appia The Appian Way (Latin and Italian: ''Via Appia'') is one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy. Its importance is indicated by its common name, ...

crossed the Savo some 9 m. SE of Sinuessa, indicates by its name the position of the old Campanian frontier. In the interior the boundary fell between Casinum and

Teanum Sidicinum Teano ( Teanese: ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, northwest of Caserta on the main line to Rome from Naples. It stands at the southeast foot of an extinct volcano, Rocca Monfina. Its St. Clement's ...

, at about the 100th

milestone A milestone is a numbered marker placed on a route such as a road, railway line, canal or boundary. They can indicate the distance to towns, cities, and other places or landmarks; or they can give their position on the route relative to so ...

of the Via Latina, a fact which led later to the jurisdiction of the

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 ...

courts being extended on every side to the 100th mile from the city, and to this being the limit beyond which banishment from Rome was considered to begin. Though the Apennines comprised within the boundaries of Latium do not rise to a height approaching that of the loftiest summits of the central range, they attain to a considerable altitude, and form steep and rugged mountain masses from 4,000 to 5,000 ft. high. They are traversed by three principal valleys: (1) that of the Anio, now called Aniene (and formerly Teverone), which descends from above Subiaco to Tivoli, where it enters the plain of the Campagna; (2) that of the ( River Sacco), which has its source below Palestrina ( Praeneste), and flows through a comparatively broad valley that separates the main mass of the Apennines from the Volscian mountains or Monti Lepini, until it joins the Liris below

Ceprano Ceprano (Central-Northern Latian dialect: ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Frosinone, in the Latin Valley, part of the Lazio region of central Italy. It is south of Rome and about north of Naples. History Ceprano was part of the Pa ...

; (3) that of the Liris (

), which enters the confines of New Latium about 20 m. from its source, flows past the town of Sora, and has a very tortuous course from there to the sea at

; its lower valley is for the most part of considerable width, and forms a fertile tract of considerable extent, bordered on both sides by hills covered with vines, olives and fruit trees, and thickly studded with towns and villages.

History

Following the Roman conquests, several Roman and

Latin colonies Latin rights (also Latin citizenship, Latin: ''ius Latii'' or ''ius latinum'') were a set of legal rights that were originally granted to the Latins (Latin: "Latini", the People of Latium, the land of the Latins) under Roman law in their origi ...

were established in the territory. Roman colonies were smaller colonies inhabited by Roman citizens and normally set up along the coast. The internal area of Latium adiectum (today known as

Latin Valley Valle Latina (''Latin Valley'') is an Italian geographical and historical region that extends from the south of Rome to Cassino, corresponding to the eastern area of ancient Roman Latium. The valley's principal cities are Frosinone, Cassino, ...

), crossed by the

Via Latina The Via Latina (Latin for "Latin Road") was a Roman road of Italy, running southeast from Rome for about 200 kilometers. Route It led from the Porta Latina in the Aurelian walls of Rome to the pass of Mount Algidus; it was important in the ear ...

, was instead colonized through the establishment of Latin colonies, inhabited by Latins and Romans who lost their citizenship.

References

Bibliography

External links