City
Grumento
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Grumentum was a town of inland Lucania, set where the Sciaura flows into the Agri, and its ruins lie close to the modern village of Grumento in southern Italy. It was fiercely contested in the Second Punic War. In 207 BC Hannibal tried to win it back, and the Roman historian Livy says the Carthaginian rampart seemed almost to touch the town walls. An older Roman annalist told of a siege of the town, in which two slaves, at a moment of utter despair, deserted to the enemy and did a valuable service. The Roman writer Pliny praised the wine grown nearby.