Traces of a Roman presence in Pesaro are still evident today: just think of the mosaics, the old bridge, and the many finds of road paving and boundary stones.
After all, Pesaro and its surrounding territory have always played a key role in the geopolitics of the ancient world, for many reasons, among them the proximity to land and sea trade routes and a strategically favourable position for controlling those same trade routes and the ford across the river Foglia. But the Roman occupation of the Pesaro area was simply one of many conquests that saw a succession of cultures holding sway over the territory; the Roman one was simply the most incisive conquest, the one that left the most traces of its presence.
One of the most obvious examples is the via Flaminia, the ancient consular road that still links Rimini to Rome. Its use dates back to times well before the Roman conquest, but it was named by the consul Gaius Flaminius in 220 BC and kept that name throughout the following centuries.
Without going too far back in time, about a thousand years before the birth of Christ the Pesaro area was inhabited by indigenous peoples who, judging from the archaeological finds, already possessed the features typical of a civilisation, which took the name of Picene. In the locality of Novilara in particular, numerous burials have been found which suggest a settlement of about 250 people; weapons are very common in male graves, mainly knives, spearheads and javelin heads, confirming the warlike character of these people, whose activity as mercenaries is known from several sources (including the famous Novilara stele, which is thought to depict a naval battle). The historic centre of Pesaro has also yielded archaeological finds relating to indigenous Picene peoples: in the area between via Mazza and via Galligarie, behind the “Picciola” school, Mario Luni and his collaborators were able to identify some structures, recognised as dwellings built on a very solid wall base (0.85 m thick, made of river pebbles and earth using the “dry” building technique). On this base stood walls made of a timber frame with woven reeds, plastered with clay both inside and out as a kind of “render”, while the roof was covered with flat tiles (tegulae) and semi-cylindrical cover tiles (imbrices). The lucky discovery of this render, which made it possible to understand the building technique used, was probably due to a dramatic event, namely a fire, which fired the clay and so preserved it to the present day in its original shape, allowing the identification of an inner timber frame and a smooth outer surface. One of the hypotheses put forward by L. Mercando to explain the fire that destroyed the Picene dwellings is the presence of groups of Gauls who invaded the Adriatic coast from the end of the 5th century BC, carrying their destruction across the whole of central Marche and, crossing the Apennine range, reaching Chiusi and Rome (c. 390 BC), a few years after the presumed fire at the two Pesaro dwellings. Ancient tradition has it that a rich merchant from Chiusi called Arruns, seeking revenge on Lucumo, who had seduced his wife, and denied any chance of obtaining justice from his own city, made a journey beyond the Alps taking with him oil, figs and wine, thus luring the Gauls into Italy and to Chiusi in particular (Livy 5, 33; Plutarch Cam, 15; Dionysius 13, 10-11). When the Gauls arrived at Chiusi, the Romans are said to have sent an ambassador to negotiate, who then took part in a sortie against a Gallic warrior, who was killed and then stripped; the Gauls responded to this impiety by demanding justice from Rome, which refused, provoking the Gallic wrath that, under the leadership of Brennus, overwhelmed the City. Legend then has it that, after a lavish payment, the Gallic commander was persuaded to leave Rome and fell back as far as Pesaro, where he was intercepted by the general Camillus, who, at the head of Roman troops, faced Brennus and his army and recovered the treasure belonging to Rome (aurum gallicum). This legend even gave rise to a false etymology of Pisaurum, which was said to derive from the act of weighing the gold to check that the whole booty had been recovered: “[…] nam Pisaurum dicitur, quod illic aurum pensatum est”, according to Servius (Commentary on the Aeneid, 6, 825).
This episode would have strange and unsettling effects on the history of Pisaurum: it seems, in fact, that the cursed gold with which the ransom was paid to the Gauls also infected the place where it was weighed. Three events in particular are recorded by classical authors, who were evidently so struck by them that they wrote about them in their works: in 163 BC “nocte species solis Pisauri adfulsit“: according to an eyewitness, one Julius Obsequens, the sun lit up the night, evoking images of terror far deeper than those caused by a solar eclipse, when darkness takes the place of sunlight. Julius Obsequens is again the witness: “Pisauri terrae fremitus auditus. Muri pinnae sine terrae notu passim deiectae civiles portendere discordias”: in Pesaro a great roar was heard and the battlements of the walls were seen to fall for no apparent reason; this was in 97 BC. The last episode is witnessed by Plutarch and took place in 41 BC: suddenly a chasm opened in the ground and swallowed up part of the city. To all these ill-omened events, which seem to weigh on Republican Pisaurum, must be added the literary accounts that portray its inhabitants as wicked and dishonest: according to Cicero, Mevulanus of Pesaro was a shady conspirator, while Insteius, owner of baths in the city and by some accounts a mild and quiet man, is depicted as a robber. A final but no less famous negative portrayal of Pisaurum comes from Catullus, who writes: “[…] iste tuus moribunda ab sede Pisauri”; in short, a curse that strikes not only the place but also those who live there: the curse on the one accompanies and condemns the others too.
But what are the real causes of this curse? By reading the sources carefully it is possible to understand how far the historical events and their connection with the geographical area where Pesaro stands, together with the political ideologies of the authors and the false etymology of the name, influenced in some way the thinking of many Latin writers, who made Pesaro their chosen city for symbolic, mournful events as well as for ideological and political propaganda.
Returning to the events involving the Gauls: once their wave of expansion had run its course, the tribes withdrew into the territory known as the Ager Gallicus, remaining awkward neighbours for the Romans for some centuries before their defeat in the 3rd century BC.
It is not easy to reconstruct the signs of Gallic civilisation in the Marche because of their nomadic way of life and their inclination to raiding; they are sometimes even described as “uncultured” and savage, accustomed to farming but above all to herding. Their passage therefore left only meagre traces, and their art often blends with local customs and styles, quickly adapting to the cultures already present in the occupied territories or with which they came into contact, such as the Greeks and Etruscans, sometimes losing some of the features that allow us to identify them; as early as fifty years after their arrival, the graves contain products in artistic styles attributable to Greek or Etruscan cultures, or even artefacts imported from them.
What was the relationship between the Picene civilisation, which found itself invaded, and the Gallic one that invaded it? In reality the Picene civilisation had been in slow decline for years, so the Gallic advance met little resistance and soon managed to overpower the Picene towns, which remained on their territory, subjugated and controlled by the warlike Senones. The Senones were organised in largely autonomous villages, each with its own “tribal chief” and a relative independence from the other Gallic tribes in the area. Their rule received a form of “official recognition” in 332 BC with the signing of the treaty between Rome and the Senones (Polybius, 2, 18, 9), which effectively marked the end of their expansionist drive and the transition to a semi-nomadic state, recognising the territory of the Marche as under Gallic rule between 331 and 299 BC. Despite the brief period of hegemony over the Marche, too short to leave significant archaeological evidence, traces of this dominance survive in dialects and place names, even though two thousand years have passed. It is in fact possible to identify a Romagnol element with Celtic forms in the local dialect as far as San Leo, Sant’Agata Feltria and Montecerignone near the river Conca, which therefore covers the whole of lower Montefeltro. Meanwhile the Romans, alarmed by the earlier attack on the City in 390 BC, reorganised their army and managed to confine the Senones tribes to marginal areas of the Marche; according to Livy, in 299 BC the Romans, fearing a further Gallic attack, made an alliance with the Picenes, who also informed them of the Samnites’ war plans. In 295 BC came a battle at Sentinum, where the Roman-Picene alliance inflicted a heavy defeat on the alliance of Senones, Samnites, Umbrians and Etruscans; however, pockets of Gallic resistance remained scattered across the Marche, which was not yet fully Romanised.
At this point the conquest of the territory was almost complete, and in 284 BC the Roman colony of Sena Gallica was founded to secure control of the central Adriatic. According to Pellegrini, Sena is a Gallic word meaning “the old one”, while according to Peruzzi it derives from the river Sena, a pre-Roman indigenous hydronym. In 283 BC the Senones clashed with the Romans again at Arretium (Arezzo), defeating them and killing the praetor Lucius Caecilius Metellus Denter. His successor, Manius Curius Dentatus, sent messengers to the Gauls to negotiate the release of the prisoners, but in reply the messengers themselves were slaughtered; in response to such an act the Romans, led by the consul Publius Cornelius Dolabella, unleashed an offensive that penetrated deep into Gallic territory, inflicting heavy defeats on the Gallic armies led by Britomaris, burning villages, killing the men and taking prisoner the women, the children and Britomaris himself, who was executed in honour of the consul Dolabella’s triumph, according to Roman custom.
By 290 BC the Senones Gauls can be considered almost entirely defeated and forced to migrate to neighbouring territories, above all to the hills and high mountains (Monte Catria, for example), where they finally abandoned their nomadic habits and settled, mixing with the indigenous populations. The Romans were not merciful to the defeated, not even to their old Picene allies: the sources describe massacres amounting to ethnic cleansing of the Senones, groups of Picenes were literally deported to the hinterland of Salerno, and those who were allowed to stay seem to have been granted the civitas sine suffragio (citizenship without the right to vote); the Picenes tried in vain to resist the Roman advance, probably after realising that they had passed from Senonian subjugation to Roman subjugation, which was far more oppressive. In 184 BC Pisaurum was founded, a Roman town named after the hydronym Pisaurus (today’s river Foglia).
Today the traces of the Senones Gauls’ passage through the Pesaro area are very scarce and sometimes hard to identify: inland, four Gallic warrior graves without helmets have been found near Piobbico, recently dated to the late 4th-early 3rd century BC: modest grave goods, since they lack helmets and other items such as strigils and jewellery that characterise the graves of Santa Paolina di Filottrano or Montefortino d’Arcevia. To these can be added the graves found at San Vitale and Cagli.
If we consider the place names of possible Celtic origin (ending in -ico and -aco) in the Pesaro area, we notice a general scarcity in the areas near the coast and a wider distribution in the mountainous parts of the province, perhaps evidence of small communities in the hinterland that survived the genocide carried out by the Romans in the more densely populated areas along the coast.
Bibliography
– Fonti letterarie ed epigrafiche per la storia romana della provincia di Pesaro e Urbino; Antonella Trevisiol; L’Erma di Bretschneider; 1999
– Per la storia romana della provincia di Pesaro e Urbino; Ulrico Agnati; L’Erma di Bretschneider; 1999
– Storia e archeologia di Pitinum Pisaurense; Walter Monacchi; Societa di studi storici per il Montefeltro; 1999
– Pesaro nell’antichita: storia e monumenti; Marsilio; 1984
– Le necropoli di Piobbico; Vitali; in Celti ed etruschi nell’Italia centro-settentrionale dal V secolo a.C. alla romanizzazione: atti del colloquio internazionale, Bologna, 12-14 aprile 1985