Interamnia Praetuttiorum
This Roman city was founded near the confluence of the Tordino and Vezzola rivers in the territory of the Praetutti. It was assigned to Regio V (Picenum) under the Augustan territorial arrangement.
Inhumation burials found mostly to the W of the city demonstrate that a primitive indigenous settlement must have existed before the foundation of the Roman city. The Romanization of the Praetutti territory goes back to the beginning of the 3d c. B.C. In the age of Sulla the city was already designated a colonia, and in the course of the 1st c. B.C. its double status of municipium and cohonia is documented (CIL LX, 5074). A reflection of this double administrative structure may perhaps be traced in the characteristics of the urban plan, whose orthogonal arrangement is complex, with two zones juxtaposed and diversely oriented. The general lines of the urban network were partially followed in the plan of the mediaeval streets. The urban area was almost rectangluar (ca. 440 x 240 m). Among the public buildings the most conspicuous today are the theater and part of the amphitheater in the W sector of the city. A zone of suburban settlement may be recognized in the modern Largo della Madonna delle Grazie section outside Porta Reale. Roman burials have been found near the railroad station and near the Messato bridge. The latter is 3 km from the inhabited center along a stretch of the road that led to Amiternum, where there exists a row of funerary monuments from the 1st c. A.D.
Three stelai with boustrophedonic inscriptions from the 5th c. B.C. are attributable to the S Picene group (also called Old Sabellic or E Italic). They were found in the Valley of the Vomano, near Penna S. Andrea, to the SE of Teramo.
BIBLIOGRAPHYCIL IX, p. 485ff; F. von Duhn, Italische Gräbenkunde, I (1924) 583ff; M. E. Blake in PAAR 8 (1930) 135-37; EAA 7 (1966) 712-13 (A. La Regina) with bibliography; G. Cerulli Irelli, Edizione archeologica della Carta d'Italia 140 (1971) with a city plan.
A. LA REGINA