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Cosa
42°24′39″N 11°17′11″E / 42.410919°N 11.286503°E
Cosa was an ancient Roman city near the present Ansedonia in southwestern Tuscany, Italy. It is sited on a hill 113 m above sea level and 140 km northwest of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast. It has assumed a position of prominence in Roman archaeology owing to its excavation.
The Etruscan town (called Cusi or Cosia) may have been where modern Orbetello stands; a fortification wall in polygonal masonry at Orbetello's lagoon may be in phase with the walls of Cosa.
Cosa was founded by the Romans as a Latin colony in 273 BC, on the Ager Cosanus, land confiscated from the defeated Etruscans, to solidify the control of the Romans and offer the Republic a protected port. The town was linked to Rome by the Via Aurelia from about 241 BC.
The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) in which Hannibal had left a trail of devastation across Italy affected the town like many Latin colonies and the rich bought up both public land and the small farms of the poor. New colonists arrived in 197 BC. Cosa seems to have prospered again until it suffered a crisis in the Roman Republican civil wars and in the 60s BC when it became depopulated. As part of land redistribution, a group of great villas were assembled in the area, run by slave labour like the latifundia estates typical of southern Italy. These villas included nearby Settefinestre, the largest at "Le Colonne" (Capalbio), "La Provinia" and one at Portus Cosanus.
It was rebuilt under Augustus. Cosa appears to have been affected by an earthquake in 51, which occasioned the reconstruction of the republican Basilica as an Odeon under the supervision of Lucius Titinius Glaucus Lucretianus, who also worked on the Capitoline temple. However, as early as 80, Cosa seems to have been almost deserted. It was revived under the emperor Caracalla, during whose reign the portico around the forum was built, concealing two large granaries, while the odeon was restored, a Mithraeum constructed in the basement of the Curia, and a sanctuary to Liber erected at the southeast end of the Forum.
It is possible that the intermittent nature of the occupation of the town was due to the fact that, already in the early Empire, malaria was hyperendemic on the coast of Tuscany.[citation needed] By the 4th century only the sanctuary of Liber was periodically visited. One of the last textual references to Cosa comes from Rutilius Claudius Namatianus who remarks that by AD 417 the site of Cosa was deserted and was in ruins and suggests that a plague of mice had driven the people away.
In the early 6th century some occupation in the ruins is attested by pottery and the remains of a church have been found built onto the Basilica. Perhaps at the same time the Arx was occupied by a fortified farm, subsequently transformed into a small fortified outpost under Byzantine control. This was abandoned in the late 6th or early 7th century.
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Cosa AI simulator
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Cosa
42°24′39″N 11°17′11″E / 42.410919°N 11.286503°E
Cosa was an ancient Roman city near the present Ansedonia in southwestern Tuscany, Italy. It is sited on a hill 113 m above sea level and 140 km northwest of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast. It has assumed a position of prominence in Roman archaeology owing to its excavation.
The Etruscan town (called Cusi or Cosia) may have been where modern Orbetello stands; a fortification wall in polygonal masonry at Orbetello's lagoon may be in phase with the walls of Cosa.
Cosa was founded by the Romans as a Latin colony in 273 BC, on the Ager Cosanus, land confiscated from the defeated Etruscans, to solidify the control of the Romans and offer the Republic a protected port. The town was linked to Rome by the Via Aurelia from about 241 BC.
The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) in which Hannibal had left a trail of devastation across Italy affected the town like many Latin colonies and the rich bought up both public land and the small farms of the poor. New colonists arrived in 197 BC. Cosa seems to have prospered again until it suffered a crisis in the Roman Republican civil wars and in the 60s BC when it became depopulated. As part of land redistribution, a group of great villas were assembled in the area, run by slave labour like the latifundia estates typical of southern Italy. These villas included nearby Settefinestre, the largest at "Le Colonne" (Capalbio), "La Provinia" and one at Portus Cosanus.
It was rebuilt under Augustus. Cosa appears to have been affected by an earthquake in 51, which occasioned the reconstruction of the republican Basilica as an Odeon under the supervision of Lucius Titinius Glaucus Lucretianus, who also worked on the Capitoline temple. However, as early as 80, Cosa seems to have been almost deserted. It was revived under the emperor Caracalla, during whose reign the portico around the forum was built, concealing two large granaries, while the odeon was restored, a Mithraeum constructed in the basement of the Curia, and a sanctuary to Liber erected at the southeast end of the Forum.
It is possible that the intermittent nature of the occupation of the town was due to the fact that, already in the early Empire, malaria was hyperendemic on the coast of Tuscany.[citation needed] By the 4th century only the sanctuary of Liber was periodically visited. One of the last textual references to Cosa comes from Rutilius Claudius Namatianus who remarks that by AD 417 the site of Cosa was deserted and was in ruins and suggests that a plague of mice had driven the people away.
In the early 6th century some occupation in the ruins is attested by pottery and the remains of a church have been found built onto the Basilica. Perhaps at the same time the Arx was occupied by a fortified farm, subsequently transformed into a small fortified outpost under Byzantine control. This was abandoned in the late 6th or early 7th century.
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