Clastidium

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Clastidium (modern Casteggio), was a village of the Anamares, in Gallia Cispadana, on the Via Postumia, 5 miles east of Iria (modern Voghera) and 31 miles west of Placentia.

Here in 222 BC Marcus Claudius Marcellus defeated the Gauls and won the spolia opima; in 218 Hannibal took it and its stores of corn by treachery. It never had an independent government, and not later than 190 BC was made part of the colony of Placentia, founded in 219.

In the Augustan division of Italy, however, Placentia belonged to the 8th region, Aemilia, whereas Iria certainly, and Clastidium possibly, belonged to the 9th region, Liguria (see Theodor Mommsen in Corp. Inscrip. Lat. vol. v. Berlin, 1877, p. 828).

The remains visible at Clastidium are scanty; there is a fountain (the Fontana d'Annibale), and a Roman bridge, which seems to have been constructed of tiles, not of stone, was discovered in 1857, but destroyed.

[edit] References

• C. Giulietti, Casteggio, notizie storiche II. Avanzi di antichità, Voghera, 1893.
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.