Capua

“ Capua does indeed survive as the sepulchre and memorial of the Campanian nation, the people themselves are either dead and buried, or else cast forth as exiles. It is a headless and limbless city without a senate, without a plebs, without magistrates, an unnatural portent in the land. ”

“ Capua is a small unimportant town, distinct from the ancient city of that name, which was situated at some distance, where remains of an amphitheatre are still visible, and which before the building of that of Vespasian, was considered superior to any in Rome itself; indeed old Capua is said, at one time, to have vied with Rome and Carthage themselves, in size and magnificence. It was here that the victorious army of Hannibal, is said to have been enervated by the luxuries of Italy. ”

“ Among those 233 remnants of what was, the walls of Capua, the arx of Capua, are not to be found; at all events they do not strike the traveller on his first or his second visit. For something faintly answering to a Capuan arx, he takes himself to the neighbouring mountains. There, on their lowest slopes, looking out on Vesuvius and Ischia, looking down on the Campanian plain, with its river, with its older and its newer Capua, we come to a spot where a famous temple of the older faith has given way to a less famous one of the new. ”

“ At Capua he found that his mules only required an hour and a half, when I should have been well pleased to have stayed three hours, in which case I might have visited old Capua. In the modern city there is little except a few columns in the cathedral, of granite, cipollino, and bigio antico, which are hardly sufficient to interest a man who has just left Rome. From Capua the country appears covered with a continued grove of small poplars, over which the vines climb luxuriantly; and below, wheat and Indian corn are cultivated. I was on the watch for Vesuvius ”

“ I believe I was present at the military council which met after the fall of Capua, when the consuls made enquiry as to which of the Capuans had assisted our republic. They discovered only two, and those were women. One was Vestia Oppia of Atella, who was living in Capua and who offered sacrifices daily for the welfare and triumph of Rome ”

“ Capua and Gaieta will soon fall; and, the moment the scoundrels of French are out of this kingdom, I shall send eight or nine ships of the line to Minorca. I have done what I thought right: others may think differently; but it will be my consolation, that I have gained a kingdom, seated a faithful ally of his majesty firmly on his throne, and restored happiness to millions. Do not think, my dear lord, that my opinion is formed from the arrangements of any one. ”

“ When wild beasts are mad with rage you can still divert their blind fury by approaching their lairs and young ones which they will hasten to defend. The Romans were not diverted from Capua by the prospect of their city being besieged, or by the terrified cries of their wives and children which could almost be heard here, or by the threatened desecration of their hearths and altars, of the shrines of their gods and the tombs of their ancestors. So eager are they to visit us with punishment, so greedily do they thirst for our blood. ”

“ N.W. of the ancient Capua. Its position at the point of junction of the Via Appia and Via Latina, and at their crossing of the river Volturnus by a three-arched bridge, which still exists, gave it considerable importance under the Roman republic; and while the original pre-Roman town, which was doubtless dependent on the neighbouring Capua, stood entirely on the left (S.) bank, surrounded on three sides by the river, the Roman city extended to the right bank also; remains of it have been found at some 25 ft. below the modern ground-level, the river-bed having risen considerably. ”

“ The Museo Campano also contains a considerable collection of antiquities from the ancient Capua.
Capua changed hands frequently during the middle ages. One of the most memorable facts in its history is the terrible attack made on it in 1501 by Caesar Borgia, who had entered the town by treachery, in which 5000 lives were sacrificed. It remained a part of the kingdom of Naples until the 2nd of November 1860, when, a month after the battle of the Volturno, it surrendered to the Italian troops. ”

“ It is strange to see so great a city, one which for some ages must have been far greater, far more 230 splendid than Rome, so utterly gone—or rather to see the little that is left of it translated to another site. But great as Capua undoubtedly was, we begin to doubt its extreme antiquity. Capua, once Etruscan Vulturnum, remained Etruscan Vulturnum till the fourth century of Rome. It was the last remnant of the great Etruscan dominion in that region of Italy. As such, it represents a state of things far older than Rome. But the city itself may well be of later date than Rome. ”

“ An impression seems, however, to have prevailed that the district of Capua had been so named on account of its flat and fertile nature, and hence every similar tract of plain country came to be called a campagna in the Italian language. The exact time when the name, which had thus become a mere appellative, was applied to the Roman Campagna is not accurately ascertained. ... ”

“ The front of the Royalists was protected by the windings of the Volturno. It is a stream of not very considerable breadth, but still one which would be a formidable obstacle to young troops in presence of a well-served artillery. The King held Capua and Gaeta—two out of the three military stations of the first-class in the kingdom. The modern Capua is not the town which in ages long gone past contended with Rome for supremacy in the Italian peninsula, and in an evil hour for itself cast in its lot with the Carthaginian chief. ”

“ I have paid a visit to the ruins of ancient Capua, and all that is connected with it.
In this country one first begins to have a true idea of what vegetation is, and why man tills the fields. The flax here is already near to blossoming, and the wheat a span and a-half high. Around Caserta the land is perfectly level, the fields worked as clean and as fine as the beds of a garden. All of them are planted with poplars, and from tree to tree the vine spreads; and yet, notwithstanding this shade, the soil below produces the finest and most abundant crops possible. ”

“ And Polybius, in his seventh book, says, that the inhabitants of Capua in Campania, having become exceedingly rich through the excellence of their soil, fell into habits of luxury and extravagance, exceeding all that is reported of the inhabitants of Crotona or Sybaris. ”

“ SANTA MARIA CAPUA VETERE, kä′pōō-ắ vā′tắ-rắ. A city of South Italy, in the Province of Caserta, 15 miles north of Naples, located on the site of ancient Capua, of whose stones it was partly rebuilt (Map: Italy, J 6) . It is an active, thriving, attractive place, with a population of 22,146 (commune) in 1901. Its large, reconstructed cathedral, dating from 1766. has five naves and 52 columns. The Roman ruins attract many sight-seers. Ancient Capua, in Campania, was second only to Rome among the cities of Italy in wealth and population. ”

“ No such thing. His Capua was nearly destroyed, and if it had an amphitheatre it would have been ruined. These ruins must have belonged to Capua the Second, which was restored by Augustus or Tiberius, and became as flourishing and populous as the first had been.— [C.C.G.]
The Italian postilions, it must be owned, are a comical set. ”

“ We suffered much from the cold.
Our road again lay among and over volcanic hills, among which I did not notice many limestone rocks. At last we reached the plains of Capua, and shortly afterward Capua itself, where we halted at noon. In the afternoon a beautiful but flat country lay stretched before us. The road is broad, and runs through fields of green corn, so even that it looked like a carpet, and was at least a span high. ”

“ Capua fell in 211, and the seat of war, to the great relief of Rome, was removed to Lucania and Bruttium. The punishment inflicted upon Capua was severe. Seventy of her Senators were killed, three hundred of her chief citizens imprisoned, and the whole people sold as slaves. The city and its territory were declared to be Roman territory, and the place was afterwards repeopled by Roman occupants. ”

“ N.E. of Capua, on the road between it and Telesia. It was already in the hands of the Romans in 306 B.C., and since in the 3rd century B.C. it issued copper coins with a Latin legend it must have had the civitas sine suffragio. In the Social War it rebelled from Rome, and its territory was added to that of Capua by Sulla. In the imperial period, however, we find it once more a municipium. Caiatia has remains of Cyclopean walls, and under the Piazza del Mercato is a large Roman cistern, which still provides a good water supply. The episcopal see was founded in A.D. 966. ”

“ Where property was restored it was to include all the captured live stock except the horses, all the slaves except the adult males, and everything which was not attached to the soil. It was further decreed that the populations of Capua, Atella, Calatia and the valley of the Sabatus should all retain their liberty, except those who themselves, or whose parents had been with the enemy, but none of them could become a Roman citizen or a member of the Latin League. ”

“ CAPUA (mod. S. Maria di Capua Vetere) , the chief ancient city of Campania, and one of the most important towns of ancient Italy, situated 16 m. N. of Neapolis, on the N.E. edge of the Campanian plain. Its site in a position not naturally defensible, together with the regularity of its plan, indicates that it is not a very ancient town, though it very likely occupies the site of an early Oscan settlement. Its foundation is attributed by Cato to the Etruscans, and the date given as about 260 years before it was “taken” by Rome (Vell. i. 7) . ”

“ He escaped and gathered about him a large army of slaves and gladiators, with whom he intended to push northward and allow them all to return to their homes. They, however, after attacking many towns, were finally overcome. Spartacus himself died in battle, and six thousand slaves were crucified on the road from Capua to Rome.
Capua was a city of great luxury, containing an amphitheater nearly as large as the Coliseum at Rome. The ancients attached great importance to the rites of burial, and believed that the soul could not reach the Elysian Fields unless the body had been buried. ”

“ The country between Capua and Naples displays a varied scene of lavish fertility, and with great propriety might be named Campania Felix, if the richest and most generous soil, with the mildest and most agreeable climate, were sufficient to render the inhabitants of a country happy. ”

“ It was arranged that a meeting of their national council should be convened to meet him, and thither he proceeded with some fast-sailing vessels. He commenced his address to the assembly by alluding to the captures of Syracuse and Capua as instances of the success which had attended the arms of Rome in Sicily and Italy, and then proceeded: "It is the practice of the Romans, a practice handed down from their ancestors, to cultivate the friendship of other nations; some of them they have received into citizenship on the same footing as themselves ”

“ It enabled a Capuan to own Roman land, to settle on the ager publicus, to marry into the noble houses of Rome, and to serve, not in the auxiliary cohort, but in her army or in the legion raised from the municipes. But meanwhile his own magistrate, the meddix tuticus, administers in the Campanian courts the native Sabellian law, [1427] his senate deliberates, and his popular assembly decides. Sometimes, as in the case of Capua, the state is still bound by treaty relations to Rome, and the two conflicting principles of armed alliance and of absorption are for once commingled. ”

“ Capua, though not so well situated for the leadership of Italy, might have played the part of Rome; but the plain which she commanded, though very rich, was too small, and too closely overhung by the fatal hills of the Samnite, under whose dominion she fell. Rome had space to organize a strong lowland resistance to the marauding highland powers. It seems probable that her hills were not only the citadel but the general refuge of the lowlanders of those parts, when forced to fly before the onslaught of the highlanders, who were impelled by successive wars of migration to the plains. ”

“ When he might have taken advantage of his victory, he chose rather to seek enjoyment from it, and, leaving Rome, to march into Campania and to Tarentum, where both he and his army soon lost their vigor, so that it was justly remarked that "Capua proved a Cannæ to Hannibal"; since the sunshine of Campania and the warm springs of Baiæ subdued—who could have believed it?—him who had been unconquered by the Alps and unshaken in the field. In the mean time the Romans began to recover and to rise, as it were, from the dead. ”

“ Now, by the goodness of heaven, everything is going in our favour; the situation in Italy and Sicily is becoming better and more hopeful day by day. In Sicily, Syracuse and Agrigentum have been captured, the enemy has been everywhere expelled and the whole of the island acknowledges the sovereignty of Rome. In Italy, Arpi has been recovered and Capua taken, Hannibal in his hurried flight has traversed the whole breadth of Italy from Rome to the furthest corners of Bruttium, and his one prayer is that he may be allowed to make a safe retreat and get away from the land of his enemies. ”