Silvium
SI´LVIUM(Σιλούϊον: Eth. Silvinus: Garagnone), a town of Apulia in the interior of the country. It is noticed by Strabo (6. p. 283) as the frontier town of the Peucetii, and its name is noticed by Pliny among the municipal towns of Apulia (Plin. Nat. 3.11. s. 16). But at a much earlier period it is mentioned by Diodorus as an Apulian town, which was wrested from the Samnites by the Romans in B.C. 306 (Diod. 20.80). Our only clue to its position is derived from the Itineraries, which place it 20 miles from Venusia, on the branch of the Appian Way which led direct to Tarentum. This distance coincides with the site of a town (now destroyed) called Garaynone, situated about midway between Spinazzoloand Poggio Orsino, and nearly due E. of Venosa (Pratilli, Via Appia, 4.6. p. 478; Romanelli, vol. ii p. 188).
[E.H.B]A town of the Peucetii in Apulia, on the borders of Lucania, twenty miles southeast of Venusia (Diod.xx. 80).
The ancient city lies in the Botromagno district of the present town. Strabo (6.283) mentioned it for its position on the inner side of Peucezia, and Pliny (HN 3.105) included it among the principal cities of the region. The first mention of it in the literary sources (Diod. 20.80) pertains to its conquest by the Romans, who seized it from the Samnites in 306 B.C. Known in the itineraries also as Silitum, or Silutum, it is doubtful that this Roman statio should be identified with the Greek Sidis or Sidion. The Museum at Gravina preserves rich grave gifts dating from the 7th to the 3d c. B.C.
BIBLIOGRAPHYK. Miller, Itineraria Romana (1916) 343; RE 3.1 (1927) 129-30; M. D. Mann in Atti II Convegno Studi Magna Grecia (1962) 87; G. B. Ward Perkins et al., “Excavations at Botromagno, Gravina di Puglia” BSR 37 (1969) 100ff.
F. G. LO PORTO