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INTERAMNA NAHARS (Terni) Umbria, Italy.

The modern city, 73 km N-NE of Rome, is near the confluence of the Nera (ancient Nar) and the Serra, which may have changed course since antiquity. The ancient city must have been encircled by the rivers.

According to an inscription (CIL XI, 4170) the city was founded in 672 B.C. It lay along an alternate route that heft the Flaminia at Narni. Terni was a flourishing Roman municipium ascribed to the tribus Clustumina.

The Nera valley appears to have been a rather important center during the Iron Age. This is documented particularly by the finds from the large necropoleis of the Acciaierie (at the foot of the Pentima hill) and of S. Pietro in Campo (near the railway station), topographically and chronologically a continuation of the former. The protohistoric necropoleis developed largely from the 10th to the 8th-7th c. B.C., but there are also tombs dating to the 4th c. B.C. It is not possible to establish the habitation site related to the protohistoric necropoleis.

The Roman settlement, covered by the center of the modern city, must have been about the size of the mediaeval city. A rather extensive stretch of the Roman city wall of limestone, which probably encircled the whole city, is visible below the Public Gardens.

The most important preserved monument is the amphitheater at the SW extremity of the city, near the wall, It is dated, on the basis of an inscription, to the age of Tiberius. Exploration under the Church of S. Salvatore, earlier believed to overlie a Roman temple, has shown that the Roman structures underneath belong to a lordly domus independent of the church.

Archaeological material from the city and its environs is preserved in the Civic Museum of Terni.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

EAA 7 (1966) 721-23 (Feruglio) with bibliography; H. Blanck, in AA (1970) 326.

U. CIOTTI

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