Circeii

Circeii was an ancient Roman city on the site of modern San Felice Circeo and near Mount Circeo, the mountain promontory on the southwest coast of Italy. The area around Circeii and Mount Circeo was thickly populated with Roman villas and other buildings, of which the remains of many can still be seen. The origin of the name is uncertain: it has naturally been connected with Homer's legend of Circe. The difficulty has been raised that the promontory ceased to be an island well before Homer's time; but Procopius remarked that the promontory has all the appearance of an island until one is actually upon it. The town on the eastern side of Monte Circeo was probably founded by Greeks at the end of the Bronze Age, when they established ports and emporiums along the Italian coast. At the east end of the promontory ridge are the remains of Bronze Age cyclopean walls that roughly form a rectangle of 200 by 100 metres. It seems to have been an acropolis and contains only a subterranean cistern with a beehive roof of converging blocks. The megalithic blocks are cut and assembled precisely together using tight polygonal joints without mortar. Many walls of this type were built during the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, for example in Lazio those of Segni, Ferentino, Norba and Arpinum, possibly by the Aurunci people of the area. The blocks of the inner face are much less carefully worked both here and at Arpinum. The Roman colony of Circeii was founded in the time of Roman king Tarquinius Superbus (before 495 BC). The Roman colonists were expelled by the Volsci during the Volscian invasion led by Coriolanus in 491-488 BC. Circeii was reconquered by the Romans in about 393 BC three years before the Gaulish War. Not long afterwards the Circeians revolted, and joined the Volscians again. Nevertheless in Rome's treaty with Carthage in 348 BC Circeii is stated as under Roman protection. They must have succeeded in establishing their independence as at the start of the second Latin War in 340 BC Circeii was a member of the Latin League.