Road station
Literno
bei Lago di Patria
Listen to the story
Literno is Liternum, by the lagoon now called Lago di Patria, a lonely colony on a marshy, fever-ridden coast. Here Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal, withdrew in bitterness from Roman politics and spent his last years; Livy and Strabo knew his tomb here, and tradition gave him the epitaph: ungrateful fatherland, you shall not have my bones. Centuries later the philosopher Seneca visited his villa and marvelled at its tiny, dark bath.