Aveia
AVEIA (Ἀουΐα. Eth. Aveias,--atis), a city of the Vestini, placed by the Tabula Peutingeriana on the road from Prifernum to Alba Fucensis. Its name is also found in Ptolemy (Ptol. 3.1.59) among the cities of the Vestini, but is not mentioned by Pliny, though we learn from inscriptions that it must have been a municipal town of some importance. There is little doubt that we should read Aveiaef or Avellaei n Silius Italicus (Sil. Ital. 8.519) where he enumerates it among the towns of the Vestini, and celebrates the excellence of its pastures. We learn from the Liber Coloniarum (p. 228, where the correction of Aveias agerf or Veiosa dmits of no doubt) that its territory was portioned out in the same manner as that of Amiternum, but was not made a colony, and retained, as we learn from an inscription, the subordinate rank of a Praefectura. The site of Aveia has been a subject of much dispute, but Giovenazzi, a local antiquarian, who has investigated the matter with great care, places it near Fossa, a village about six miles S. of Aquila, where there are said to be considerable remains of an ancient city, as well as a church of Sta Balbina, connected by ecclesiastical records with the ancient Aveia. The ruins at Civita di Bagno, supposed by Holstenius to be those of Aveia, are ascribed by this author to Furconium. (Giovenazzi, Della Città d'Aveia nei Vestini, Roma 1773, 4to.; Holsten. Not. in Cluver. p. 139; Romanelli, vol. 3. p. 257--263; Orell. Inscr. 1.06.)
[E.H.B]A city of the Vestini and a Roman prefecture in the upper Aterno valley, today in the province of Aquila. In an inscription from the 3d c. A.D. it is mentioned as the municipiuin Habae (ILS 9087). The official name of the community, Aveintes Vestini, included indication of its ethnic makeup (CIL IX, 4206; Ann. Épigr. 1937, 119, 1. 12; 121, 1. 10ff).
Part of the city was in the area occupied by the modern town on the slope of the mountain, and part was farther down in the valley. The exact limits and the urban plan of the settlement have not been studied even though there remain stretches of the city walls in opus incertum and remnants of buildings including a theater so-called the Palazzo del Re.
BIBLIOGRAPHYV. M. Giovenazzi, Della città di Aveia ne' Vestini (1773); CIL IX, p. 341; H. Nissen, Italische Landeskunde 2 (1902) 442; R. Gardner, in JRS 3 (1913) 216ff; A. La Regina in MemLinc 13 (1968) 383ff, 429ff.
A. LA REGINA