Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/686

 670 PROBALINTHUS. 42, viii. 1.) This was soon after divided among the licman plebeians. (Id. viii. 1 1 .) They do not ap- pear to have taken any part in the general war of the Latins and Campanians against Rome ; but in b. c. 327 the Privernates again took up arms .single- handed, with only the as.sistance of a few of the Fun- dani. Notwithstanding tliis, the war was deemed of sufficient importance to employ two consular armies ; and it was not till after a long siege that Priver- num was reduced by C. Plautius, the consul of the following year. The walls of the city were destroyed, and the leaders of the defection severely punished ; but the rest of the people were admitted to the Ro- man citizenship, — probably, however, in the first in- stance without the right of suffrage, though this also must have been granted them in the year b. c. 316, when the Ufentine tribe was constituted, of which Privernum was the chief town. (Liv. viii. 19 — 21, ix. 20: Fast. Capit; Val. Max. vi. 2. § 1; Festus, s.v. Ufentina ; Niebuhr, vol. iii. p. 176.) According to Festus (p. 233) it became a Praefectura ; but notwithstanding this subordinate condition (which was perhaps confined to the short period before it attained the full franchise), it seems to have been a fiourisliing municipal town under the Roman govern- ment, its tiTiitory was one of those which the agrarian law of Servilius Rullus proposed to assign to the Roman populace (Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. 25); but though it escaped upon this occasion, it sub- sequently received a military colony {Lib. Colon, p. 236). The period of this is uncertain : according to Zumpt {de Colon, p. 401) it probably did not take place till the reign of Trajan. In inscriptions it bears the title of a colony; though others term it a municipinm ; and neither Pliny nor Ptolemy assign it the rank of a colony. (Plin. iii. 5. s. 9 ; Ptol. iii. 1. § 63; Zumpt, I. c.) It was noted, as well as the neighbouring Setia, for the excellence of its wine (Piin. xiv. 6. s. 8); but we hear little of Privernum under the Roman Empire, and have no subsequent account of its fate. From its secluded position, no mention occurs of it in the Itineraries. The ruins of the ancient city, which according to Cluverius are considerable, are situated about 2 miles N. of the modern Piperno, on the site still called Piperno Vecchio. The period or occasion of the abandonment of the ancient site is unknown; but it is certainly erroneous to connect it with a great earthquake which is alluded to by Cicero as taking place at Privernum (Cic. de IHv. i. 43). On that occasion, we are told, the earth sank down to a great depth, — a phenomenon which may have given rise to a remarkable chasm or cavity still visible in the neighbourhood of Piperno. The ancient city was more probably deserted in con- sequence of the ravages of the Saracens in the tenth century, from which all this part of Latium suffered severely (Rampoldi, Corografia d' Italia, vol. iii. p. 258), and the inhabitants sought refuge in more elevated and secure positions, such as that of the modern town of Piperno. [E. H. B.] PROBALINTHUS. [Marathon.] PROBA'TIA. [BoEOTiA, p. 412, b.] PROCERASTIS, the more ancient name of Chalcedon, according to Pliny (v. 32. s. 43). PRO'CHYTA (npoxuTTj: Procida), a small island off the coast of Campania, situated between Cape Misenum (from which it is distant less than 3 miles) and the larger island of Aeiiaria or I.whia. In common with the latter it is of volcanic form- ation, and appears to have been subject in ancient times to frequent earthquakes. Pliny and Strabo PROERNA. even tell us that it was a mere fragment broken off from the neighbouring island of Aenaria by one of the violent convulsions of nature to which it was subject. But this statement certainly has no his- torical foundation, any more than another, also re- corded by Pliny, that both islands had been thrown up by volcanic action from beneath the sea. Such an event, however true as a geological inference, must have long preceded the historical era. (Strab. i. p. 60, ii. p. 123, v. pp. 248, 258 ; Plin. ii. 88.) The same phenomena led the poets to associate Prochyta with Aenaria or Inarime, in connection with the fable of the giant Typhoeus [Aenaria] ; and Silius Italicus even assigned it a giant of its own, Mimas. (Virg. Aen. ix. 715; Sil. Ital. viii. 542, xii. 147 ; Ovid. Met. xiv. 89.) Virgil's epithet of " Prochyta alta" is less appro- priate than usual, — the island, though girt with perpendicular cliffs, being flat and low, as compared either with Ischia or the neighbouring headland of Misenum. There does not appear to have been any town on the island in ancient times. Statins {Silv. ii. 276) terms it a rugged island, and Juvenal {Sat. iii. 5) speaks of it as a wretched and lonely place of residence. At the present day, on the contrary, it is one of the most fertile and flourishing spots in the Neapolitan dominions, its whole area being cultivated like a garden and supporting a popu- lation of 4000 inhabitants. It is distant between 2 and 3 miles from Cape Misenum, but only about a mile and a half from the nearest point of the mainland, which is now known as the Monte di Procida. [E. H. B.] PROCONNE'SUS {UpoKuwriiTos, or UpoiKdwi]- aos in Zosim. ii. 30, and Hierocl. p. 662), an island in the western part of the Propontis, between Priapus and Cyzicus, and not, as Strabo (xiii. p. 589) has it, between Parium and Priapus. The island was particularly celebrated for its rich mjirble quarries, which supplied most of the neighbouring towns, and especially Cyzicus, with the materials for their public buildings; the palace of Mausolus, also, was built of this marble, which was white intermixed with black streaks. (Vitruv. ii. 8.) The island contained in its south-western part a town of the same name, of which Aristeas, the poet of the Ari- maspeia, was a native. (Herod, iv. 14; comp. Scylax, p. 35; Strab. I.e.) This town, which was a colony of the Milesians (Strab. xii. p. 587), was burnt by a Phoenician fleet, acting under the orders of king Darius. (Herod, vi. 33.) Strabo distingiiishes be- tween old and new Proconnesus; and Scylax, besides Proconnesus, notices another island called Elapho- nesus, with a good harbour. Pliny (v. 44) and the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (ii. 278) consider Elaphonesus only as another name for Proconnesus ; but Elaphonesus was unquestionably a distinct island, situated a little to the south of Proconnesus. The inhabitants of Cyzicus, at a time which we cannot ascertain, forced the Proconnesians to dwell together i-ith them, and transferred the statue of the goddess Dindymene to their own city. (Pans. viii. 46. § 2.) The island of Proconnesus is mentioned as a bisiiopric in the ecclesiastical historians and the acts of the Council of Chalcedon. The celebrity of its marble quarries has changed its ancient name into Mermere or Marmora ; whence the whole of the Propontis is now called the Sea of 3Iarmora. Respecting some autonomous coins of Proconnesus, see Sestini, Man. Vet. ,. lb. [L.S.] PROERNA (n^Jepj/a), a town of Phtfaiotis, in