COMI´NIUM
COMI´NIUM (
Κομίνιον), a city of Samnium, the situation of which is very uncertain.
There are, indeed, strong reasons to suppose that there were two places of the same name.
It is first mentioned by Livy (
10.39-
43) during the campaign of the Roman consuls Carvilius and Papirius in Samnium, B.C. 293, when Carvilius besieged Cominium, while his colleague assailed Aquilonia.
It appears from the detailed narrative of Livy that the two cities were not much more than 20 miles apart, and both sufficiently near to Bovianum for the fugitives of the Samnite armies to find refuge in that city. Cominium was taken by Carvilius, and burnt to the ground, (
Liv. 10.44.) Two years later Dionysius speaks of Cominium (evidently the same place) as again in the hands of the Samnites, from whom it was taken by the consul Postumius Megellus, BC.. 291. (Dionys. Exc. 16.16, 17.) During the Second Punic War, on the other hand, Livy mentions a town which he calls “Cominium Ceritum,” where Hanno received the news of the defeat of his army and the capture of his camp near Beneventum, B.C. 212. (
Liv. 25.14.)
It appears from his narrative that this place could hardly have been very distant from Beneventum, and it is at least a plausible conjecture that the modern town of
Cerreto, about 16 miles NW. of Beneventum, represents the Cominium Ceritum of Livy.
But it is very doubtful whether this is the same place with the Cominium mentioned in the earlier Samnite wars. Holstenius had suggested that this was to be sought in the Apennines near the sources of the Fibrenus; and later Italian topographers have shown that the names of “Cominum” and “territorium Cominense” are still found in medieval writers and documents in reference to the district of
Alvito, just in this part of the mountains. Hence the ruins still visible at a place called
Santa Maria del Campo, on the road from
Alvito to
S. Donato, and about 5 miles NW. of
Atina, are supposed by Romanelli to be those of, Cominium. (Holsten.
Not. ad Cluv. p. 223; Giovenazzi,
Sito di Aveja, p. 50; Romanelli, vol. ii. pp. 496--500, iii. pp. 357-359.)
This situation, however, appears too remote from Bovianum, and the position both of Cominium, and the Aquilonia connected with it, must still be regarded as undetermined. [
AQUILONIA]
The Comini mentioned by Pliny as an extinct community of the Aequiculi must be certainly distinct from either of the preceding.
[
E.H.B]
