CUMAE CIVITAS

Cumae has been selected by Roberto Amati in relation to the real history of european integration, then enlisted in the CITY OR CIVITAS category, accompanied by own fact SHEET useful to the comprehension, completed of historical MAPS AND IMAGES or with a direct linking to the related Blog contents dedicated to the the aeternitas and the future of Europe.

Cumae is one of the most ancient cities of the history of European integration, signed in great part by Christianity. Founded around X century B.C. by Greeks, Cumae has been the first greek colony in Italy within the Magna Graecia immediately connected to Ischia island, with a dominant position on the particularly fertile ground on the edge of the Campanian plain, so that its power enlarged to all the Gulf of Naples and the daughter-colony of Messina, on its strategic strait joining the Thyrrenian sea to the Mediterranean sea. Cumae was so important at that age that Rome often bought the grain and was allied and protected, in particular when the civitas could defeat Etruscans in a naval fight (Battle of Cumae, 215 B.C.) by combining the fleets with Syracuse, and it founded the new city of Naples. The latin culture had been influnced by the greek gods and alphabet of the city and there started the tradition of the 'Cumaen Sybil', which reproduced in Italy the ancient rites so diffused in Hellas.

From III century B.C. Cumae became a civitas sine suffragio of Rome with the citizenship privilege for its inhabitants and fought against its enemies until was annexed to the Roman Respublica, particularly interested in the Miseno military port and the Puteoli area and in the Naples commercial port. Within the reform of Augustus (see Roman Empire), Civitas Cumae was included into the Regio I Latium et Campania of the Italiae province, where could live together Romans, local Italics tribes and Greeks colonists into the ancient Christian community, while with the reform of Constantine I (see Christian Empire) became a bishopric city within the imperial Italiae Diocesis. It was so important that still today Cumae is enlisted by the Catholic Church as a 'titular see', even if the city doesn't exist anymore since 1027 A.D. when was conquered to the byzantine Ducatum Naples. It is yet of interest the archeological area rich of ancient temples and monuments from both the greek and roman age, visible together with the Cave of the Sybil.

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