CASINUM
(Cassino) Latium, Italy.
In Crocifisso, Frosinone, 120 km E-SE of Rome, a Volscian city,
Oscan in origin. It was occupied by the Samnites and
then by the Romans at the end of the 4th c. B.C. (There
are archaic 7th c. B.C. tombs, 4th and 3d c. B.C. Hellenistic ones, and Roman tombs of the 2d c. B.C. to the
4th c. A.D.) The city, sacked by Hannibal in 208 B.C. was
reconstructed and flourished in the Imperial period, particularly through the interest of a local family, the Ummidi. It suffered decline in the late Empire and was destroyed by the Longobards in the 6th c.
There is evidence of the Roman city on the cliff of the
Chiesa del Crocifisso by the Via Latina which crosses it,
with the theater above and the amphitheater below, and
at the center in a small level area the forum with its
remains of a temple dating, in its first phase, to the
Volscian period. The theater was probably rebuilt in
the time of the amphitheater through a gift from Ummidia Quadratilla in the second half of the 1st c. A.D.
The mausoleum of Ummidia is unique, with a cella in
opus quadratum, on a central plan with a cupola, a
pronaos facing - with Italic Corinthian columns covered in stucco. Paved streets allow us to reconstruct the
extent of the terraced settlement. Large remains of
cyclopean walls of the Volscian period are visible on
the side of the mountain and on the summit the remains
of the Temple of Jupiter beneath the Abbey. There is
evidence of a villa with a bath complex (noteworthy is
an octagonal room known from sketches by Giuliano da
Sangallo) in the valley of the Gari river—the so-called
villa of M. Terentius Varro.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Carettoni,
Casinum (1940); id., “Fortificazioni medievali,”
Palladio (1952) 135ff; id.,
EAA 2 (1959) 404-6; id., “Sepolcreto dell'età del ferro . . . ,”
Bull. Paletn. Ital. 69 (1960); A. Pantoni, “Pitture della chiesa del Crocifisso,”
Benedictina (1949) 230ff.
V. SANTA MARIA SCRINARI
