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MISENUM

Volume 14 · 135 words · 1823 Edition

or Misenus, in Ancient Geography; a promontory, port, and town in Campania, situated to the south-west of Baiae, in the Sinus Potentianus, on the north side. Here Augustus had a fleet, called Classis Misennensis, for guarding the Mare Inferum; as he had another at Ravenna for the Superum.

On this peninsula a villa was built by Caius Marius, with a degree of elegance that gave great offence to the most austere among the Romans, who thought it ill suited to the character of so rough a soldier. Upon the same foundation Lucullus the plunderer of the eastern world, erected an edifice, in comparison of which the former house was a cottage; but even his magnificence was eclipsed by the splendour of the palace which the emperors raised upon the same spot. To these proud abodes