Terracina historical timeline

Terracina appears in ancient sources under two names, and they belong to two peoples. The Latin Tarracina and the Volscian Anxur — the latter being the name of Jupiter himself as a youth, Iuppiter Anxur or Anxurus, the tutelary god of the city, venerated on the Mons Neptunius, today's Monte Sant'Angelo, where a temple dedicated to him still exists.

The name Tarracina has been read variously as of pre-Indo-European origin, or as Etruscan — Tarchna or Tarchuna, the name of the Tarquinii family — in which case it would predate the Volscian conquest.

Position made it contested. The city commands the Pontine Marshes, as Livy's phrase records — urbs prona in paludes, a city surrounded by marshes — and possesses a small harbour, at the one point where the hills meet the sea.

During the 600s BC it joined the Etruscan League of twelve cities. By 509 BC Terracina was already under Roman supremacy, as reported in the first treaty between Rome and Carthage. It was soon re-occupied by the Volsci and was not included in the list of the Latin League of 499 BC. In 406 it was recaptured by the Romans, lost in 402, recovered in 400, unsuccessfully attacked by the Volsci in 397, and finally secured by the establishment of a colony of Roman citizens in 329 BC as Colonia Anxurnas.

The construction of the Via Appia in 312 BC added to its importance — and created its defining engineering problem. The road at first crossed the hill at the back of the promontory by a steep ascent and descent. In 184 BC the censor Lucius Valerius Flaccus attempted to get round it with an embankment thrown out into the sea. But it was probably not until early in Trajan's time, between AD 98 and 117, that a cut in the rocks at the foot of the promontory — Pisco Montano — finally solved it.

That cut carries its own record. The depth is indicated by marks on the vertical wall at intervals of ten Roman feet; the lowest mark, about a metre above the present road, is CXX, corresponding to thirty-six metres.

And the city never stopped. The site has been continuously occupied since antiquity.