VESCIA
VESCIA (Eth.
Vescinus), a city of Latium, in the most extended sense of that name, but originally a city of the Ausones, situated in a plain to the S. of the Liris (
Garigliano). Livy in one passage tells us distinctly that the Ausones had three cities, Ausona, Minturnae, and Vescia, all of which were betrayed into the hands of the Romans by a party within their walls, and the inhabitants put to the sword in B.C. 314. (
Liv. 9.25.)
The name of Vescia is mentioned also about 25 years before as affording shelter to the remains of the. Latin army defeated by the consuls Manlius and Decius in B.C. 340. (Id. 8.11.)
But after the capture of the city in 314, no mention of it again occurs, and it is probable. that it never recovered from that calamity. Minturnae indeed is the only one of these three cities which again appears in history; but the “ager Vescinus” is repeatedly mentioned (
Liv. 10.20,
21,
31), and would seem to have extended from the banks of the Liris as far as the extreme point of the ridge of Mount Massicus. The Roman colony of Sinuessa, which was situated just, where that ridge abuts upon the sea, is expressly said to have been planted “in saltu Vescino.” (
Liv. 10.21.)
But all trace of the city seems to have been lost. Pliny does not even notice the name among the
extinct cities, of Latium and Campania, and we are wholly without a clue to its precise situation.
[
E.H.B]
