ANZIO. - A Volscian city 58 km from Rome, with a famous port (Caenon), subdued by the Romans in 338 BC, 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 the port and built a new imperial villa on the western shore.
The necropolis, in the area west of the lighthouse, with groups of tombs from the 8th to the 7th century BC, with furnishings very similar to those of the Alban Hills, suggests a primitive Latin rather than Volscian population. But more important is the hypogeal tomb with three chambers, with niches arranged even in double rows on the walls; a tomb discovered in 1938, just north of the present cemetery, of which the right chamber has the shape of a catacomb gallery. As in Etruscan tombs, the three entrance doors open at the end of an uncovered dromos. The funerary equipment of the more than 50 dead, buried intact and wrapped in bandages, consisted of Etruscan-Campanian pottery, mirrors, strigils, necklaces, spindle whorls, etc., of excellent craftsmanship, so that we can assign it to the period between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century BC.
If we leave aside those pagan remains, the archaeological memories of the early Anziate church are very meagre: an inscription (SPES IN DEO [CIL, X, 6762]) on travertine, surmounted by a large ivy leaf, and this in turn by two palmettes.
Because of the ductus of the letters and the formula typical of the age of persecutions, the inscription is to be considered prior to the Constantinian peace.
Among the first Christian memories of A. must also be counted the “massa urbana in territorio antiatino prasestans solidos CXXL,” 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 (189–190) relegated Callistus upon his return from Sardinia. But from the cited passage it cannot be deduced with certainty that by the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the following century a Christian community already existed there, still less a church attached to a cemetery, as Harnack believes, even if it cannot be excluded that Callistus, during his stay, may have spread the Christian faith there.
The names of three of its bishops are known who attended the Roman synods of 465 (Gaudentius), 487 (Felix), and 499–502 (Vindemius).
During the schism under Pope Boniface (418–422), his rival Eulalius withdrew to A., near the sanctuary of St. Hermes, known only from the Liber Pontificalis (I, p. 227) and of which every local trace has been lost.
At the beginning of the 6th century the history of Antium comes to an end; it declines, together with the diocese, and is depopulated by the barbarian invasions, especially the Lombard (Procopius, De bell. got., I, 26). The territory, reduced to a simple massa, was transformed by Pope Zachary into a donnasculta (Lib. Pontif., I, p. 435).
Along the route of the ancient Via Severiana, to the east of the modern settlement, the ruins of an oratory were uncovered in 1877, with paintings judged to be from the 12th century, which had been adapted from a 2nd-century AD Roman brick tomb.