VIA LABICANA
* a road which diverged to the right from the via Praenestina
just inside the porta Praenestina of the Aurelian wall (
Liv. iv. 41. 8;
Frontinus, de aquis 21; Hist. Aug. Did. Iul. 8; Not. app.;
NS 1891, 203;
BC 1892, 78). Between them, just outside it, is the
SEPULCRUM EURYSACIS (q.v.). The fact that the gate took its name from the latter shows
that the intramural portion of the road, from the porta Esquilina, should
really bear the same name; though Strabo (v. 3. 9. p. 237) speaks of
both roads as starting from the porta Esquilina, which has led to the
impossible theory that they separated just outside the gate, rejoined just
before the porta Tiburtina, and then separated again (Jord. i. I. 358-362;
PBS i. 139 n., 149-150). The first part of the via Labicana may have
belonged to the original route to Tusculum; it ran, as its name implies,
in the first instance, to Labici, 15 miles from Rome, and then joined the
via Latina by crossroads at three different points. In later days, however, it very likely superseded the latter as a road for through traffic, and
its summit level is 650 feet lower, and the difference in length at Ad
Bivium is less than a mile. The milestones in the further portion of its
course will therefore agree with either numeration (contrast CIL x. p. 695).
Administratively it seems to have been under the same curator as the
via Latina (
BC 1891, 112-121). For its first milestone (Vespasian), see
BC 1903, 371;
NS 1903, 513;
Mitt. 1903, 336; and for others,
CIL
x. 6883. See Jord. i. I. 222;
T. vi. 1-121, 235-237;
x. 377-459; OJ
1902,33; HJ 355;
PBS i. 215-281;
iv.6-8.
