Tusculum

About

Tusculum was an ancient Roman city in the Alban Hills, in the Latium region of Italy. Tusculum was most famous in Roman times for the many great and luxurious patrician country villas sited close to the city, yet a comfortable distance from Rome, notably the villas of Cicero and Lucullus.

Tusculum is located on Tuscolo hill on the northern edge of the outer crater rim of the Alban volcano. The volcano itself is located in the Alban Hills 6 km (4 mi) south of the present-day town of Frascati.

The summit of the hill is 670 m (2,200 ft) above sea level and affords a view of the Roman Campagna, with Rome lying 25 km (16 mi) to the north-west. It had a strategic position controlling the route from the territory of the Aequi and the Volsci to Rome which was important in earlier times.

Later Rome was reached by the Via Latina (from which a branch road ascended to Tusculum, while the main road passed through the valley to the south of it), or by the Via Labicana to the north.

Most of the ancient city and the acropolis and amphitheatre have not yet been excavated archaeologically.

According to legend, the city was founded either by Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and Circe, or by the Latin king Latinus Silvius, a descendant of Aeneas, who according to Titus Livius was the founder of most of the towns and cities in Latium. The geographer Philipp Clüver discounts these legends, asserting that the city was founded by Latins about three hundred years before the Trojan War. Funerary urns datable to the 8th–7th centuries BC demonstrate a human presence in the late phases of Latin culture in this area.

Tusculum is first mentioned in history as an independent city-state with a king, a constitution and gods of its own. When Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last King of Rome, was expelled in 509 BC, and failed to win back his throne by making war on Rome, he sought refuge with his son-in-law Octavius Mamilius, one of the leading men of Tusculum. The Mamilii claimed to be descended from Telegonus, the founder of the city. Mamilius commanded the army of the Latins against the Romans at the Battle of Lake Regillus, where he was killed in 498 BC. This is the point at which Rome gained predominance among the Latin cities.

The first stable settlement has been identified by excavation in the acropolis area and dates to the 10th century BC, but it is from the 7th-6th centuries BC onwards that there is clear archaeological evidence of a well-organized settlement with growing relations with other Latin peoples in the region. The city developed on the slopes of the acropolis and particularly in the forum area, where a series of substantial and important buildings began to appear.

The city walls can be dated between the 5th and 4th c. BC from the type and technique of construction, as visible on the North slope of the hill.

According to some accounts Tusculum subsequently became an ally of Rome, incurring the frequent hostilities of the other Latin cities. In 460 BC a Sabine named Appius Herdonius occupied the Capitol. Of the Latin cities, only Tusculum quickly sent troops, commanded by the dictator Lucius Mamilius, to help the Romans. Together with the forces of the consul Publius Valerius Poplicola they were able to quash the revolt.

In 458 BC the Aequi attacked Tusculum and captured its citadel. Because of the assistance given Rome the previous year, the Romans came to their defense, and helped regain the citadel, with soldiers under the command of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who defeated the Aequi at the battle of Mount Algidus.

In 381 BC, after an expression of complete submission to Rome, the people of Tusculum received a franchise from Rome. Tusculum became the first " municipium cum suffragio", or self-governing city. The Tusculum citizens were therefore recorded in the " Tribus Papiria ". Other accounts, however, speak of Tusculum as often allied with Rome's enemies, the last being the Samnites in 323 BC. Major urban development followed the granting of municipal status to the city (381 BC) and its annexation within the Roman sphere of influence, evidenced by the progressive rise of members of the leading Tusculan families to the highest Roman political offices.

In Sulla's civil war Tusculum supported the Marians but after Sulla 's victory in 82 BC it suffered extensive devastation and the punishment of becoming a veterans' colonia. Major building renovation dates from this time when monumentalisation of the forum took place and parts of the city wall were rebuilt.

In 54 BC Cicero said: "You are from the most ancient municipium of Tusculum, from which so many consular families are originating, among which even the gens Iuventia; all other municipia (together) do not have so many (consular families) coming from them".

Varro wrote about the laws of Tusculum: "New wine shall not be taken into the town before the Vinalia are proclaimed".

The town council kept the name of senate, but the title of dictator gave place to that of aedile. Notwithstanding this, and the fact that a special college of Roman equites was formed to take charge of the cults of the gods at Tusculum, and especially of the Dioscuri, the citizens resident there were neither numerous nor men of distinction.

In Roman times the city had expanded into two parts: the acropolis with the temples of the Dioscuri and Jupiter Maius, and the main city along the ridge of the hill where the main street passes through the forum to the theatre.

The villas of the neighbourhood, of which 36 owners are recorded in the Republican era and 131 villa sites identified, had indeed acquired greater importance than the town itself, which was not easily accessible. By the end of the Republic, and still more during the imperial period, the territory of Tusculum was a favourite place of residence for wealthy Romans. Seneca wrote: "Nobody who wants to acquire a home in Tusculum or Tibur for health reasons or as a summer residence will calculate how much yearly payments are".

In 45 BC Cicero wrote a series of books in his Roman villa in Tusculum, the Tusculanae Quaestiones. In his times there were eighteen owners of villas there. An example is the so-called villa of Lucullus, which later belonged to Flavia gens, which was built in terraces on the slope of Tusculum facing Rome: the vast terrace now houses virtually all the historical centre of Frascati and his mausoleum is visible in the Torrione di Micara near Frascati.

The Imperial period was the city's golden age and from the reign of Tiberius, a vast program of systematisation and embellishment of the monumental centre was undertaken. Whilst in the Flavian period a slow decline of the city is noticeable, significant building activity included modifications and transformations of various buildings surrounding the forum such as the theatre and in the Temple of Mercury. The last phase of urban expansion was in the Hadrianic period with the construction of the amphitheatre, houses and thermal baths.