Sometimes the Sabine migrations known as the ver sacrum started from this place: a famous instance is that of the seven thousand sacrales led by Comus (or Cominus) Castronius who founded Bovianum following the steps of an ox, thus giving rise to the Samnite nation.
Some notable sites that have fortification walls built in this technique include Norba, Signia, Alatri, Boiano, Circeo, Cosa, Alba Fucens, Palestrina, and Terracina.
There still exists, by the gate leading to Bovianum, an important inscription of about AD 168, relating to the tratture (see Apulia) in Roman days, forbidding the natives to harm the shepherds who passed along them.
Meanwhile Fulvius is said to have won a battle against the Samnites at Bovianum and then attacked and captured first Bovianum and later Aufidena.
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305 BC - Battle of Bovianum ends with Samnite defeat and the end of main Samnite resistance.
The Samnites were led by an ox, bos, after which was named their capital Bovianum, founded upon the hill on which the ox had stopped.
Bovianum |
The legion was disbanded in 45 BC, and its veterans were offered lands at Bojano, which received the name of Bovianum Undecumanorum, "Bovianum of the members of the eleventh".
Grimoald sent Altzek and his followers to his son Romuald in Benevento and they were then granted by Romuald land northeast of Naples in the "spacious but up till that time deserted" towns of Sepino, Bovianum (Boiano), and Isernia, in the present-day region of Molise in the Apennines.