ANZIO. - A Volscian city 58 km from Rome, with a famous port (Caenon), subjected in 338 B.C. by the Romans, who, toward the end of the Republic, populated it with villas along the coast. It reached the height of its development in the time of Nero, who, having been born there, enlarged its port and built a new imperial villa on it on the western shore.
The necropolis, in the area west of the lighthouse, with groups of tombs dating between the 8th and 7th century B.C., with grave goods very similar to those of the Alban Hills, suggests a primitive Latin population rather than a Volscian one. But more important is the subterranean tomb with three chambers, with loculi arranged even in a double row on the walls; a tomb discovered in 1938, a little north of the present-day cemetery, whose right-hand compartment has the form of a catacomb gallery. As in Etruscan tombs, the three entrance doors open at the end of an uncovered dromos. The funerary assemblage of the more than 50 dead, buried intact and wrapped in bandages, consisted of Etruscan-Campanian pottery, mirrors, strigils, necklaces, spindle whorls, etc., of very fine workmanship, on account of which we can assign the work to between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century B.C.
If pagan remains abound, the archaeological records of the primitive church of Anzio are very poor: an epigraph (SPES IN DEO [CIL, X, 6762]) on travertine, surmounted by a large ivy leaf, and this in turn by two palmettes.
On account of the ductus of the letters and the formula characteristic of the age of the persecutions, the inscription must be considered earlier than the time of the Constantinian peace.
Among the earliest Christian records of A. must also be counted the « massa urbana in territorio antiatino praestans solidos CCXL », donated by Constantine to the Lateran basilica (Lib. Pontif., I, ed. L. Duchesne, p. 174).
At A., according to the testimony of Hippolytus (Philosophumena, IX, 12), Pope Victor (189-99) relegated Callistus as soon as he had returned from Sardinia. But from the cited passage one cannot deduce with certainty that between the end of the 2nd century and the beginning of the following one a Christian community already existed there, and much less a church attached to a cemetery, as Harnack holds, even if it should not be excluded that Callistus, during his stay, propagated the Christian faith there.
The names are known of three of its bishops present at the Roman synods of 465 (Gaudentius), 487 (Felix) and 499-502 (Vindemius).
During the schism under Pope Boniface (418-422), the rival Eulalius withdrew to A., near the sanctuary of St. Hermes, known only from the Liber Pontificalis (I, p. 227) and of which every trace has been locally lost.
At the beginning of the 6th century the history of Antium comes to an end; it declined, together with the diocese, and was depopulated by the barbarian invasions, especially the Lombard one (Procopius, De bell. got., I, 26). The territory, reduced to a simple massa, was transformed by Pope Zachary into a domusculta (Lib. Pontif., I, p. 435).
Along the line of the ancient via Severiana, east of the modern settlement, the ruins of an oratory came to light again in 1877, with paintings judged to be of the 12th century, which had been made out of a Roman brick tomb of the 2nd century A.D.
Bibliography7 works
Alberto Galietti