AECLANUM
(Eclano) Italy.
A road center
and market town of the Hirpini, situated on the Via
Appia, 24 km E of Benevento, near Mirabella Eclano,
at the point where the Via Aeclanensis left the Via Appia
to join the Via Traiana Nova at Herdoniae. Besieged and
sacked by Sulla in 89 B.C., it rapidly recovered, becoming
successively a municipium and, in the 2d c., a colonia.
Later the seat of a bishopric, it was captured and destroyed by Constans II in 660, after which it disappears
from history.
The town occupied an irregular promontory, with modest natural defenses on the S side, overlooking the river
Calore, and open to the N towards the crest of the ridge
that carried the Via Appia. The principal remains above
ground are those of the circuit of walls and towers, in
opus quasi-reticulatum. They date from the second quarter of the 1st c. B.C. with substantial repairs at a slightly
later date, and are important because unusually well documented epigraphically. Excavation within the town has
revealed a long history of pre-Roman settlement. It has
also exposed two quarters of the Roman town, of which
the most noteworthy monument is a bath building, probably Augustan with later modifications.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Sgobbo,
Atti del II Congresso di
Studi Romani (1931) 394ff;
EAA 3 (1960) 207 (G.
Colonna); G. O. Onorato,
La ricerca archeologica in
Irpinia, Naples, 1960.
J. B. WARD-PERKINS