Roman-Volscian wars in the context of Ancient Italic peoples

Titus Geganius Macerinus (fl. c. 492 BC) was a Roman politician who served as consul in 492 BC with Publius Minucius Augurinus.

The consuls were required to deal with a famine which had taken hold of Rome and they focused their efforts on obtaining grain shipments from around Italy. The famine arose because the plebeian farmers had not sown their fields during the secession of the plebs which ended the previous year. Envoys were sent by ship to buy grain from the coastal towns of Etruria, the Volsci and others to the south as far as Cumae. Because many of Rome's neighbours bore the Romans animosity from past military conflicts, envoys were even sent as far as Magna Graecia (Sicily). Grain was purchased in Cumae, however the tyrant Aristodemus (who had been made the heir of the exiled Roman kings) seized the Roman ships on account of the property of the Tarquinii which had been seized by the Roman Republic when the king's family had been exiled. Roman attempts to buy grain were also thwarted in the territory of the Volsci, including the Pomptine Marshes. Because of recent wars with Rome, the grain merchants were threatened with violence if grain was sold to the Romans. However, grain was successfully obtained from Etruria and transported to Rome down the Tiber river. An even greater amount of grain was imported the following year from Sicily, and the question of how it should be distributed amongst the Roman citizens led to the exile and defection of Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.

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.

Attius Tullius was a well-respected and influential political and military leader of the Volsci in the early fifth century BC. According to Plutarch, who calls him Tullus Aufidius, his home town was Antium. Tullius sheltered the exiled Roman hero Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, then incited a war with Rome, in which he and Coriolanus led the Volscian forces. He appears in William Shakespeare's tragedy Coriolanus under the name of Tullus Aufidius.