BACCANO (Ad Baccanas, ad Vacanas). — Name of a postal station at the twenty-first mile of the Via Cassia, where near the ascent called Clivus Parralis, Annio Fusco, father of Pescencio Nigro, a rival of Septimius Severus, owned a villa.
In the Acta SS. Septembris, VI, Antwerp 1695, pp. 230-235, under September 21, the Passion of a certain Bishop St. Alexander is reported, unknown to the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. This passion lacks historical value, though it does mention the existence at B. of a sepulchral basilica where this Bishop Alexander, martyr, was said to have been buried, along with an inscription placed on his tomb. G. Morin proposed to identify this Alexander with the one commemorated on October 22 in the Constantinopolitan Synaxaria (Notes on Tuscan hagiography in Revue bénédictine, 24 [1907], pp. 112-17); a more plausible hypothesis by Lanzoni (pp. 529-30) suggests he was bishop of Forum Clodii. The memory of a veneration of St. Alexander at B. is confirmed up to the 11th century by a bull of Leo IX from the year 1053, in which, among the properties of the Vatican Basilica, a Massa Clo- diana with the lake of Baccanas... and the church of St. Alexander which is in Bacchanis is mentioned. In B. in 1874, sepulchral remains and two square marble pilasters, 0.75 m high, with three smooth faces and the fourth containing a graffito vine tendril between two monograms K. G. B., were discovered. De Rossi identified them as altar bases and secured them for the Christian Museum of the Lateran.