BOVIANUM
(Boiano) Abruzzi e Mouse, Italy.
About 210 km E-SE of Rome, the earliest settlement
of the Samnites and capital of the Pentri tribe. It became
a Roman municipium ca. 87 B.C., but after A.D. 70 it
was the colonia Bovianum Undecimanoruin with settler
veterans from Legio XI.
A road winds up, past San Michele church on an
ancient temple site, to Civita Superiore where one can
see polygonal walls of the Samnite town. Possibly this is
Pliny's Bovianum Vetus (
HN 3.107). The view is to
be rejected that Bovianum Vetus was 45 km to the N at
Pietrabbondante, where spectacular remains exist of 2d c.
B.C. temples and a theater.
No Roman remains survive at the site; its antiquities
are housed at Chieti.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. T. Salmon,
Samnium and the Samnites (1967) Index s.vv. “Boiano” and “Pietrabbondante,”
and plates 2, 6, 7, 8, 9
MPI.
E. T. SALMON
