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Greek
and Roman ruins, of course, abound in southern Italy.
Those of earlier Italic cultures—the ancient peoples of Italy—are
a bit harder to come by since they are overlaid with
so much later construction that it has not always been
clear what you are looking at. Even the best-known
such site near Naples—Pietrabbondante,
a Samnite ruin—was long thought to be Roman.
Closer to Naples, just north of the town of Acerra are
the ruins (such as they are) of what is confusingly
called the Oscan/Etruscan town of Suessula (also known
locally as Suessola).
The term “Oscan” comes from the name of the Osci, an early Italic tribe; the name refers to both the tribe as well as to a language group, also termed either Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic (cognate of Sabine). The speakers were close Indo-European relatives of those who spoke Latin; indeed, various dialects of Oscan were spoken by central-Italian tribes that were often at war with early Rome. The Etruscans were non-Indo-European immigrants to Italy and started to spread out in Northern and central Italy in the early part of the first millennium b.c. Thus—with all sorts of wiggle room—we can say that at some prehistoric time in Italy, say 700 b.c., Suessola existed as a pre-Roman settlement of Oscan speakers; the settlement was later incorporated into an Etruscan confederation (though not one of the famous 12 Etruscan cities). When the Etruscans faded, the indigenous warrior Samnites, who spoke an Oscan dialect, took over the town. Suessula is mentioned
in many sources since it was the site of a famous
battle between the Romans and the Samnites in 343 BC.
Suessula was on the road from Capua to the straits of
Messina (a road later to be known as Via Popilia) and
was also important, somewhat later, for the Romans
keeping an eye on Hannibal’s movements in the area.
Eventually, of course, the Samnites and Carthaginians
were defeated and the town of Suessola was
incorporated into the rest of Roman Italy.
Those woods, much later, became a hunting preserve for Bourbon royalty in the 1700s centered on a hunting lodge called casina Spinelli, now in ruins (photo, above). It is adjacent to an earlier medieval structure called the “Sessola tower” (obviously a variation of Suessula). That the lodge and preserve were actually on ancient ruins wasn’t clear at all until the late 1800s when Oscan tombs were excavated and vases and bronzes were found. The site is mentioned prominently by German archaeologist Friedrich von Duhn (La necropoli di Suessula, in Rom. Mitteil. II. 1887) and later by the Neapolitan archaeologist, Amedeo Maiuri (in Il Fuidoro, year III, issues 1-2, January-June 1956). Work on the site
continued, but the devastations of WWII took their
toll; the premises were occupied and used by both
German and then Allied forces. Vandalism, theft and
simply the need for firewood left the lodge in ruins,
which have as yet not been restored. What was left of
the significant Oscan artifacts was donated by the
Spinelli family to the Naples
Archaeological museum as the “Spinelli
collection.” [Also see this entry
on the nearby The Atella
Archaeological Museum.] |
Suessula
was not a particularly important Roman town before or
after the age of empire, but it did have its moments.
It crops up in documents, for example, as having
received a body of military veterans as colonists
under the dictator