Unearthing a Forgotten Roman Town

A stretch of Italian farmland concealed one of the small cities that powered the empire

- JASON URBANUS

SOMETIME IN THE LATE FIRST century B.c., a man by the name of Marcus Novius Tubula left the Italian countryside and moved to Rome. Tubula was from a town called Interamna Lirenas, located 75 miles southeast of the capital, and was chasing his dreams of something bigger.

Tubula found political success and was elected as a tribune of the plebs, once one of the most important offices in Rome. To publicize his achievement to those back home, he had a limestone sundial erected in Interamna's forum. The timepiece, which was inscribed with Tubula's name and elected office, functioned as an ancient billboard, announcing that he was now someone with clout. A small-town boy had made it in the big city.

Rome has been called a civilization of cities, and it seemed especially so during the first through fifth centuries A.D. Doubtless, large cities were a cornerstone of the Roman Empire and served as crucial centers for the administration of its vast territory. At the empire's height, Roman borders held an estimated 70 million people, many of whom lived in around 2,000 cities, from Iberia to the Middle East and from Britain to NorthAfrica. Rome itself is thought to have reached a population of one million in the first century A.D., while other imperial urban centers, such as Antioch and Ephesus in Anatolia, Carthage in North Africa, and Alexandria in Egypt, had populations estimated in the hundreds of thousands.