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entry August 2009
Greek and Roman
ruins, of course, abound in southern Italy. Those of earlier Italic
cultures—the ancient peoples of Italy—are a
bit harder to come by since they are overlaid with so much later
construction that it has not always been clear what you are looking at.
Even the best-known such site near Naples—Pietrabbondante,
a Samnite ruin—was long thought to be Roman. Closer to Naples, just
north of the town of Acerra are the ruins (such as they are) of what is
confusingly called the Oscan/Etruscan town of Suessula (also known
locally as Suessola). The term “Oscan” comes from the name of the Osci, an early Italic tribe; the name refers to both the tribe as well as to a language group, also termed either Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic (cognate of Sabine). The speakers were close Indo-European relatives of those who spoke Latin; indeed, various dialects of Oscan were spoken by central-Italian tribes that were often at war with early Rome. The Etruscans were non-Indo-European immigrants to Italy and started to spread out in Northern and central Italy in the early part of the first millennium b.c. Thus—with all sorts of wiggle room—we can say that at some prehistoric time in Italy, say 700 b.c., Suessola existed as a pre-Roman settlement of Oscan speakers; the settlement was later incorporated into an Etruscan confederation (though not one of the famous 12 Etruscan cities). When the Etruscans faded, the indigenous warrior Samnites, who spoke an Oscan dialect, took over the town. Suessula is mentioned in many
sources since it was the site of a famous battle between the Romans and
the Samnites in 343 BC. Suessula was on the road from Capua to the
straits of Messina (a road later to be known as Via Popilia) and was
also important, somewhat later, for the Romans keeping an eye on
Hannibal’s movements in the area. Eventually, of course, the Samnites
and Carthaginians were defeated and the town of Suessola was
incorporated into the rest of Roman Italy.
Those woods, much later, became a hunting preserve for Bourbon royalty in the 1700s centered on a hunting lodge called casina Spinelli, now in ruins (photo, above). It is adjacent to an earlier medieval structure called the “Sessola tower” (obviously a variation of Suessula). That the lodge and preserve were actually on ancient ruins wasn’t clear at all until the late 1800s when Oscan tombs were excavated and vases and bronzes were found. The site is mentioned prominently by German archaeologist Friedrich von Duhn (La necropoli di Suessula, in Rom. Mitteil. II. 1887) and later by the Neapolitan archaeologist, Amedeo Maiuri (in Il Fuidoro, year III, issues 1-2, January-June 1956). Work on the site continued,
but the devastations of WWII took their toll; the premises were
occupied and used by both German and then Allied forces. Vandalism,
theft and simply the need for firewood left the lodge in ruins which
have as yet not been restored. What was left of the significant Oscan
artifacts was donated by the Spinelli family to the Naples Archaeological museum as the
“Spinelli collection.” [Also see this entry on the
nearby The Atella Archaeological Museum.]
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Suessula was not a
particularly important Roman town before or after the age of empire,
but it did have its moments. It crops up in documents, for example, as
having received a body of military veterans as colonists under the
dictator