Antium in the context of "Fasti Antiates Maiores"

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (/ˈnɪəroʊ/ NEER-oh; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68) was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his death in AD 68.

Nero was born at Antium in AD 37, the son of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the Younger (great-granddaughter of the emperor Augustus). Nero was three when his father died. By the time Nero turned eleven, his mother married Emperor Claudius, who then adopted Nero as his heir. Upon Claudius' death in AD 54, Nero ascended to the throne with the backing of the Praetorian Guard and the Senate. In the early years of his reign, Nero was advised and guided by his mother Agrippina, his tutor Seneca the Younger, and his praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, but sought to rule independently and rid himself of restraining influences. The power struggle between Nero and his mother reached its climax when he orchestrated her murder. Roman sources also implicate Nero in the deaths of both his wife Claudia Octavia – supposedly so he could marry Poppaea Sabina – and his stepbrother Britannicus.

The Volsci (UK: /ˈvɒlskiː/, US: /ˈvɔːl-, ˈvɒlsaɪ, -siː/, Latin: [ˈwɔɫskiː]) were an Italic tribe, well known in the history of the first century of the Roman Republic. At the time they inhabited the partly hilly, partly marshy district of the south of Latium, bounded by the Aurunci and Samnites on the south, the Hernici on the east, and stretching roughly from Norba and Cora in the north to Antium in the south. Rivals of Rome for several hundred years, their territories were taken over by and assimilated into the growing republic by 304 BC. Rome's first emperor Augustus was of Volscian descent.

Torre Astura, formerly an island called by the ancients merely Astura (Greek: Ἄστυρα), is now a peninsula in the comune of Nettuno, on the coast of Latium, Italy, at the southeast extremity of the Bay of Antium, on the road to Circeii. The name also belongs to a medieval coastal tower in the same site, as well as to the river which rises at the southern foot of the Alban Hills, and has a course of about 33 km before flowing into the sea immediately to the southeast.

It was called Storas (Στόρας) by Strabo, who tells us that it had a place of anchorage at its mouth. It was on the banks of this obscure stream that was fought, in 338 BC, the last great battle between the Romans and the Latins, in which the consul Gaius Maenius totally defeated the combined forces of Antium, Lanuvium, Aricia and Velitrae. At a much later period the little island at its mouth, and the whole adjacent coast, became occupied with Roman villas; among which the most celebrated is that of Cicero, to which he repeatedly alludes in his letters, and which he describes as locus amoenus et in mari ipso (a pleasant place and right by the sea), commanding a view both of Antium and Circeii, and to which he retired on the death of his daughter Tullia in 45 BC. It was from thence that, on learning his proscription by the triumvirs, he embarked, with the intention of escaping to join Brutus in Macedonia; a resolution which he afterwards abandoned. We learn from Suetonius also that Astura was the occasional resort both of Augustus and Tiberius, but due to its unhealthy climate, both Augustus and Tiberius contracted here the illnesses which proved fatal to them. Existing remains show that many of the Roman nobility must have had villas there. There is scholarly conflict as to whether there was a town of the name, as asserted by Servius. Up to at least the early 20th century, the remains of only one villa had been found on the island itself, but along the coast c. 1.5 km to the north-west a line of villas begins, which continues as far as Antium. To the south-east, on the other hand, remains are almost entirely absent, and this portion of the coast seems to have been sparsely populated in Roman times.

Lavinium was a port city of Latium, 6 km (3.7 mi) to the south of Rome, midway between the Tiber river at Ostia and Antium. The coastline then, as now, was a long strip of beach. Lavinium was on a hill at the southernmost edge of the Silva Laurentina, a dense laurel forest, and the northernmost edge of the Pontine Marshes, a vast malarial tract of wetlands. The basis for the port, the only one between Ostia and Antium, was evidently the mouth of the Numicus river.

The location of Lavinium has never been lost to historians nor does there appear to have been any significant break in its habitation. Today's settlement remains a walled village of medieval design, Pratica di Mare, in the comune of Pomezia. The latter is a city constructed in 1939 and settled according to a plan of Benito Mussolini, whose engineers completed the millennia-long task of draining and filling the marsh, now the Pontine fields. A brief strip of field separates the large and flourishing city from the village. One Roman gate allows entry into the narrow streets of the village past the Castello Borghese, originally a fortification, purchased along with the village in 1617 by Marcantonio Borghese. The castle and the village were periodically renovated. All that remains of the river that once partly surrounded the village is a small stream, the Fosso di Pratica.

Anteias or Antias (Ancient Greek: Ἀντείας or Ἀντίας) was in Roman mythology a figure in some versions of Rome's foundation myth. He was one of the three sons of Odysseus by Circe, and brother to Rhomos and Ardeas, each of whom were said to have founded a major Roman city, much like the Romulus and Remus myth. The town of Anteia or Antium in Italy was said to have been founded by, and taken its name from, this Anteias.

This characterization primarily comes to us from the writings of the historian Xenagoras. Xenagoras was likely writing at a time that Antium was being assimilated into the identity of Rome, Antium having been the capital of the Volsci people before their defeat in the Roman-Volscian wars of the 4th century BCE, after which the Romans sent colonists to Antium to more fully enculturate the city as "Roman". Modern scholars believe this characterization to indicate that Antium was considered at the time to be a city on equal footing with Rome and Ardea, the cities represented by the other two brothers.