NORBA
(Norma) Italy.
A Latin colony in
Volscian territory of 492-491 B.C. (
Livy 2.34.6) set in
a very strong position on a limestone height on the edge
of the Monti Lepini overlooking the Pontine plain. The
original colony may have occupied only a small part of
the site since little has come to light that can be dated
so early. The city plan is keyed to the layout of walls
and gates, and the systematization of the terraces of the
two acropoleis is normal to the orientation of the street
grid. From material recovered in excavations in footing
trenches and in the ifil of the walls, it is clear that the
whole scheme is not to be dated before the 4th c. B.C.;
and in view of the exceptional strength of the walls, a
date after the devastation of the colony by the Privernates
in 342 B.C. (
Livy 7.42.8) is to be preferred. The strength
of the walls was Norba's glory and its undoing, for it
dared to remain faithful to Rome in the second Punic
war, and in 82 B.C. dared challenge Sulla's armies in the
social war, even after the fall of Praeneste. When the
city was betrayed by treachery, some citizens killed themselves, while others closed the gates and set fire to the
town (App.
BCiv. 1.94). It was utterly destroyed, and
any survivors must have gone elsewhere; Pliny (
HN
3.68-69) names Norba as a city of the past.
The walls form an irregular ring following closely the
brow of the hill, but dipping in the SW sector to the best
line of defense. Their total length is 2662 m. Three gates
are well preserved, one at the N point, two in the SE
sector; there may have been one or two more in the W
sector. The walls are of terrace character, the outer face
of large polygonal blocks of limestone quarried within
the city with some variation in style in different stretches.
Almost everywhere one finds a strong batter and coursing
for short stretches. Two of the gates are given protective
bastions but they are not highly sophisticated; and the
only tower, the rectangular “loggia,” stands free of the
curtain at the point from which attack was likeliest to
come.
Within the walls, the town is laid out in ample terraces
rising to an acropolis at the SE corner and a larger one
NE of the center of town. The minor acropolis held two
temples at right angles to one another, the major acropolis the Temple of Diana, which was surrounded on three
sides by a portico. Another temple, that of Juno Lucina,
with its temenos and an adjacent paved area surrounded
on three sides by a portico, is set on a terrace to dominate
the view to the SW. These were excavated in 1901-2.
They are all single-cella temples set on bases of polygonal masonry, and while a little of the material found in votive deposits is as old as the late 6th and early 5th c., the great majority of it and all the terracotta revetments
associated with the temples must be dated close to the
city's destruction. The material from the excavations is
in the Museo delle Terme in Rome.
In addition there are numerous traces of building and
terracing on the site; walls and cisterns abound amid a
litter of tile fragments and potsherds. The forum seems
to have lain E of the center of town, just below the major
acropolis and in communication with it; the main area of
habitation probably lay SW of the forum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. Savignoni,
NSc (1901) 514-59; R.
Mengarelli,
NSc (1903) 229-62; L. Cesano,
NSc (1904)
403-30; A. L. Frothingham,
Roman Cities in Northern
Italy and Dalmatia (1910) 80-97; A. Andrén,
Architectural Terracottas from Etrusco-Italic Temples (1940)
385-89, pl. 117; G. Schmiedt & F. Castagnoli,
L'Universo
37 (1957) 125-48.
L. RICHARDSON JR
