City
Marrubio
S. Benedetto
Listen to the story
Marruvium was the old capital of the Marsi, a mountain people of central Italy, and lay on the eastern shore of Lake Fucinus, where San Benedetto dei Marsi stands today. The Roman writer Pliny called it prosperous. Ancient authors traced its name to the sea, to a legendary general, or to an ancestor said to have founded the art of augury, for which the Marsi were famous, and its citizens were credited with magic learned from Circe. Excavations have revealed a grid of streets, an amphitheatre and a capitol. The road the map draws onward to Subiaco probably never existed, most likely a link invented by the copyist.