Casinum

Casinum was an ancient town of Italy, probably of Volscian origin. Varro states that the name was Sabine, and meant forum vetus, and also that the town itself was Samnite, but he is probably wrong. When it came under Roman supremacy is not known, but it probably received the citizenship in 188 BC. It was the most southeasterly town in Latium adiectum, situated on the Via Latina about 40 miles north-west of Capua. It appears occasionally in the history of the Hannibalic War. Varro possessed a villa near it, in which later on Mark Antony held his orgies.

Towards the end of the republic it was a praefectura, and under the empire it appears as a colony , though in two inscriptions it is called municipium. Strabo speaks of it as an important town; Varro mentions the olive oil of its district as especially good. The older Volscian Casinum must have stood on the hill above the Roman town , where considerable remains of fortifications in Cyclopean masonry, of finely cut blocks of limestone, still exist.

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