In 1861, after the unification of Italy, the town was renamed Aquilonia based on a 16th-century assumption that this was the site of the Battle of Aquilonia between the Rome and the Samnites.
In 282 BC, after a battle against the Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians and Thurii, Roman troops entered the Italian Greek colonies of Croton, Lokroi, and Rhegium.
The battle is described by the Roman historian Livy (59 BC – AD 17) as part of the Book Seven of his history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita where he narrates how the Roman consul Marcus Valerius Corvus won a hard-fought battle against the Samnites at Mount Gaurus, near Cumae, in Campania.
There are remnants of cyclopean walls built by the Samnites, locally called "Civitelle." As the name implies, they were likely part of a small fortress destroyed by the Roman Army in 293 BC; the historian Livy describes the march of two Roman armies, headed by Spurius Carvilius Maximus and Lucius Papirius Cursor, which met at the Civitelle.
It is first mentioned during the Second Samnite War, 321 BCE, when the Samnite army under Gaius Pontius encamped there, previous to the great disaster of the Romans in the neighbouring pass known as the Caudine Forks (Livy ix. 2); and again, a few years later, as the head-quarters occupied by the Samnites, with a view of being at hand to watch the movements of the Campanians.
The name Pre-Samnite refers to the fact that the language was spoken in early times in an area that was later colonised by Samnites, who spoke Oscan.
Meanwhile Fulvius is said to have won a battle against the Samnites at Bovianum and then attacked and captured first Bovianum and later Aufidena.
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.