CARREO POTENTIA
(Chieri) Piedmont, Italy.
About 12 km SE of Turin and in antiquity a city of
the Augustan Regio IX. Perhaps a Gracchan colony, it
was built on a previous oppidum of which there is a
reminder in the Roman-Celtic name (Carreo quod Potentia dicitur:
Plin. 3.5.49). Its identification with Chieri
is based on lost epigraphic evidence of M. Ebatius, who
mentions (C)-arrei and Industriae. This is strengthened
by sparse but significant discoveries. The aqueduct, which
entered the city from Tetti Miglioretti, met the junction
of the cardo (the Via Vittorio Emanuele) and the decumanus into which the principal cross streets ran: the
road to Augusta Taurinorum with an orientation NW to
SE and the road through Hasta to Forum Fulvii-Dertona
(the Via Fulvia) in a NE direction. Remains of structures discovered inside the Cathedral may confirm the
existence of a cult building which local tradition attributes to Minerva (the Capitolium?). Outside the building,
the fortuitous discovery of a discharge tunnel, with an
orientation E-W, seems to follow the straight alignment
of houses and streets that run parallel to the cardo in the
S sector. Sections of walls have been brought to light in
Via Palazzo di Città in the course of a random excavation and may belong to the fortified circuit wall which,
on this side, must have run in a straight line following
the line of the modern streets.
Outside the settlement, which must have been elongated in the direction of the cardo, the necropolis spread
out along the principal and secondary streets to the NE
and SW. Still to the NE, 500 m from the Maddalena
farm, along the old road to Cambiano, the discovery of
a farmhouse with its attached equipment (a triple basin
and fishpond for rain water) dating to the 2d c. of the
Empire gives evidence of the population of the countryside around the urban center. Inscriptions are for the most part scattered. Some of the excavated material has been brought together in the Museum of Antiquities at
Turin, and the most recent finds are housed in the small
Museo Civico.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Plin. 3.5;
CIL V, 848, 7493ff;
Inscr. It.
IX, 1.16.
G. Cipolla,
Resti di costruzioni romane e oggetti vari,
N.S. (1890) p. 327ff; F. Gabotto,
I municipi romani
dell'Italia occidentale (Biblioteca Soc. Storica Bibiliografica Subalpina, XIII; 1908) 180; E. Pais,
Dalle Guerre
puniche a Cesare Augusto (1918) 673; R. Ghivarello,
“L'acquedotto romano di Chieri,”
BSPABA (1932)
156ff; P. Barocelli, “Notiziario di archeologia piemontese,”
BSPABA (1932) 221ff; A. Cavallari Murat,
Antologia monumentale di Chieri (1968).
S. FINOCCHI
