Excavations from 1952 show that the town developed around the archaic sanctuary of Lucus Feroniae as a meeting centre and famous market. It was located at an obvious communications centre between the
Latin,
Cures Sabine, Etruscan and
Faliscan territories, near the
Tiber and
Via Tiberina and at the start of the routes to the Picena and Teramo-Aquilana regions, the future
via Salaria and
via Caecilia. Archaeology at the beginning of the 1970s led to the identification of buildings which were related to the forum and were in use during the second half of the 3rd c. BC. Strabo is the only author who mentions a town of the name, which he calls Feronia; other writers speak of Lucus Feroniae and Feroniae fanum. It is natural that in process of time a town should have grown up around a site of so much sanctity, and which was annually visited by a great concourse of persons.
Feronia appears to have been a
Sabine goddess, and hence the festivals at her shrine seem to have been attended especially by the Sabines, though the sanctuary itself was in the
Etruscan territory, and dependent upon the neighbouring city of Capena The first mention of these annual festivals occurs as early as the reign of
Tullus Hostilius, when we find them already frequented by great numbers of people, not only for religious objects, but as a kind of fair for the purposes of trade, a custom which seems to have prevailed at all similar meetings. Great wealth had, in the course of ages, been accumulated at the shrine of Feronia, and this tempted
Hannibal to make a digression from his march during his retreat from
Rome, in 211 BC, for the purpose of plundering the temple. On this occasion he despoiled it of all its gold and silver, amounting to a large sum, besides which there was a large quantity of rude or uncoined brass, a sufficient proof of the antiquity of the sanctuary. The only other notices of the spot which occur in history are some casual mentions of prodigies that occurred there; but Strabo tells that it was still much frequented in his time, and that many persons came thither to see the miracle of the priests and votaries of the goddess passing unharmed through a fire and over burning cinders. This superstition is ascribed by other writers to the temple of
Apollo, on the summit of Mount Soracte. It was probably transferred from thence to the more celebrated sanctuary at its foot. In the 2nd c. BC the town underwent considerable development with the start of a rectangular town plan and housing blocks (
insulae). Pliny mentions a Lucus Feroniae among the colonies of the interior of Etruria and from the order in which he describes the towns of that province, there can be little doubt that he means the celebrated locality of the name in southern Etruria. But it is singular that Ptolemy, who also notices a Lucus Feroniae, to which he gives the title of a colonia, places it in the northwest extremity of Etruria, between the Arnus (modern
Arno) and the
Macra. No other notice occurs of any such place in this part of Etruria; and the
Liber Coloniarum, though unusually copious in its description of the province of
Tuscia, mentions no such colony at all. An inscription, on the other hand, in which we find the name of
Colonia Julia Felix Lucoferonensis refers probably to the southern Etruscan town, and on the whole it is more probable that the name should have been altogether misplaced by Ptolemy, than that there should have existed a second colony of the name, of which we know nothing.
Colonia Julia Felix Lucus Feroniae In 46 BC Julius Caesar passed a law for the redistribution of state land which was enacted after 44 BC under the
triumvirate, including the territory of Capena. Archaeology has shown that the Colonia Julia Felix Lucus Feroniae was founded for army veterans at this time starting with the forum area built over the earlier town and with an orthogonal city plan. The town was separated from the sanctuary, which had been destroyed, by a wall. The cult of Feronia was abolished and replaced by that of Salus Frigifera to whom a small temple was built at the end of the forum. The colony was already partly built around the forum when Augustus (r. 27 BC - 14 AD) initiated many enhancements and new buildings including the aqueduct,
basilica and amphitheatre. The shops in the forum were restored and an equestrian statue of
M. Volusius Saturninus, friend of the emperor, patron of the town, and owner of the neighbouring villa-estate, was erected in the forum.
Tiberius continued with building monuments including the
Augusteum. The numerous honorary inscriptions in the Forum testify to a flourishing life from the Julio-Claudian age to the Flavian age up to 266 AD.
Trajan (r.98 - 117) restored much of the town and built the forum baths and two small temples in the sanctuary. The last building works date to the 4th c. when housing blocks were enlarged and renovated and houses were built on the via Tiberina near the amphitheatre. The town seems to have been abandoned at start of the 5th century. ==The site==