TADINUM
TADINUM (Eth.
Tadinas: Ru. near
Gualdo), a town of Umbria, mentioned by Pliny among the municipal towns of that region. (
Plin. Nat. 3.14. s. 19.)
It is not noticed by any other ancient author previous to the fall of the Western Empire; but its name is repeatedly found in the epistles of Gregory the Great, and it is evidently the same place called by Procopius Taginae (
Τάγιναι, Procop.
B. G. 4.29), near which the Gothic king Totila was defeated by Narses in a great battle, in which he was himself mortally wounded, A.D. 552.
The site is clearly fixed by the discovery of some ruins and other ancient monuments in 1750 at a place about a mile and a half from
Gualdo, where there is an old church consecrated in the middle ages to
Sta Maria di Tadino. Gualdo is about 9 miles N. of
Nocera (Nuceria), close to the line of the Flaminian Way: hence there is little doubt that we should substitute Tadinas for “Ptanias,” a name obviously corrupt, given in the Jerusalem Itinerary as a station on the Flaminian Way. (
Itin. Hier. p. 614; Wesseling,
ad loc.; Cramer,
Italy, vol. i. p. 267.)
[
E.H.B]
