BENEVENTUM, in Ancient Geography, a town of the Samnites, formerly called Malerentum from the unwholesomeness of the wind, an appellation under which it is mentioned by Livy; but after a Roman colony had been led thither in the 485th year of the city, the name Beneventum, as a more auspicious denomination, was applied to it. It is mentioned by Horace as an ancient city.