1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Teano (original) (raw)

​TEANO (anc. Teanum Sidicinum), a town of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta, 21 m. N .W. of that town on the main line to Rome from Naples, forming conjointly with Calvi an episcopal see. Pop. (1901) 6067 (town), 13,505 (commune). It stands at the S.E. foot of an extinct volcano Rocca Monfina (3297 ft.), 643 ft. above sea-level. The cathedral dates from 1530, but has many columns obtained from the ruins of the ancient town. There is a feudal castle built by the dukes of Sessa in the 15th century. Below the town on the S.E. is the old church of S. Paride.

The ancient Teanum Sidicinum (there is a Teanum Apulum,q.v., in Apulia) was the capital of the Oscan tribe of the Sidicini which drove the Aurunci from Rocca Monfina. They probably submitted to Rome in 334 B.C. and their troops were grouped with those of Campania in the Roman army. Thus the garrison of Regium, which in 280 attacked the citizens, consisted of one cohort of Sidicini and two of Campanians. Like Cales, Teanum continued to have the right of coinage, and, like Suessa and Cales, remained faithful to Rome in both the Hannibalic and the Social wars. Its position gave it some military importance, and it was apparently made a colony by Claudius, not by Augustus. Strabo speaks of it as the most important town on the Via Latina, and only coming after Capua among the towns in the interior of Campania. It lay on the Via Latina, here joined by a branch road from Suessa, of which remains still exist, and which continued E. to Allifae. Remains of a theatre and an amphitheatre still exist, and some extensive baths, containing several statues, and some Roman dwellings. both some way below the modern town, were excavated in 1908. A tomb with a Christian mosaic representing the visit of the three kings to Bethlehem was found in 1907 (V. Spinazzola in Notizie degli Scavi, 1907, 697; E. Gabrici, ibid., 1908, 399).