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ANTIUM

Volume 1 · 144 words · 1778 Edition

ANTIUM, (Livy;) Anitia, Dionysius Halicarnassus; a city of the Volsci, (Livy;) situated on the Tuscan sea, yet without a harbour, because they had a neighbouring hamlet, called Ceme, with a harbour, (Strabo.) The Romans gained their first reputation in naval affairs against the Antiates; part of whose ships they conveyed into the arsenal of Rome, and part they burnt, and with their beaks, or rostra, adorned the pulpit erected in the Forum, thence called Rostrum, (Livy, Florus.) Several colonies were successively sent thither, (Livy, Tacitus.) The epithet is Antianus, Antianus, Antiatinus, and Antias; the people Antiates. Here stood a famous temple of Fortune, (Horace). Addison says, there were two Fortunes worshipped at Antium.—The birth-place of Caligula and Nero, (Sueton;) but, according to Pliny, the Ambiatus Vicus was the birth-place of Caligula. It is now extinct, but the name still remains in the Capo d'Anza.