The history of the city of Marino, in the province of Rome, in the Roman Castles area, begins with the appearance of the first human settlements in the municipal territory during the Bronze Age. In the Middle Ages the castle knew its period of greatest splendor under the rule successively of the Counts of Tusculum, the Frangipane, the Orsini, the Apostolic Chamber, the Caetani, and finally the Colonna, of whom it was a historic stronghold. Marinese events have often been of considerable importance in the local and sometimes even international historical context, so much so that several scholars in various eras have tried their hand at collecting the historical memories of this town. The castle was besieged several times, with mixed results, suffering at least four sackings and two destructions a fundamentis. However, the feudal lords and the community have been concerned at all times to erect monuments for public ornament, such as the only example of Gothic architecture in the Roman Castles, the former church of Santa Lucia (13th century), the sanctuary of Santa Maria dell'Acquasanta (13th century), the Frangipane (12th century) and Orsini (14th century) fortresses, Palazzo Colonna (15th-17th century), the collegiate basilica of San Barnaba (17th century), Palazzo Matteotti (19th century), and many other public works. Numerous important personalities in politics, the arts, religion, and finance were also born, lived, or related in some way in Marino.
Ancient age
The pre-Roman period The first human settlements identified in the Marino territory date back to the 1st millennium B.C.: in fact, at the localities Riserva del Truglio and Costa Caselle, on the edge of the municipal territory towards Grottaferrata and Rocca di Papa, some burials belonging to a necropolis dated around the Latian period III were found (770 B.C.-730 B.C.E.).Chiarucci, pp. 39-40 Other necropolises dating to the pre-Roman period were found in the early decades of the twentieth century in the Campofattore, Monte Crescenzo and Pascolari localities of Castel Gandolfo.Tomassetti, vol. IV p. 175
Some archaeologists and historians have arguedNibby, vol. I p. 61Torquati 1976, vol. I pp. 4-21 that at Barco Colonna, at the foot of the modern historic center, Caput Aquae Ferentinum along with Locus Ferentinum, i.e., the place where the delegates of the Latin League gathered in the days of the Prisci Latini -located at the legendary capital of Alba Longa-, would have once stood. Only recently has the location of the Locus Ferentinus been proposed near the hamlet of Cecchina in Albano Laziale. Finds related to the Locus Ferentinae, already identified by the nineteenth-century scholar and archaeologist Girolamo Torquati,Torquati 1976, vol. I cap. I p. 6 have now largely been lost.
Roughly near the present hamlets of Frattocchie and Due Santi the city of Bovillae must have risen as early as the pre-Roman age: its foundation is shrouded in mystery, and placed certainly during the period of existence of the legendary Latin capital of Alba Longa, of which Bovillae was probably a colony.Torquati 1976, vol. I cap. XX pp. 178-179 The city in any case would reach its prosperity in the early period of Roman rule, until about the first century BC.
Not far from Bovillae, near the present hamlet of Santa Maria delle Mole, the location of the pre-Roman settlement of Mugillae has been identified, the residence of a branch of the Papiria gens and in the Republican period the home of at least three consuls:Tito Livio, Ab Urbe condita libri, lib. IV v. 7.Tito Livio, lib. IV v. 52 it was probably destroyed by the Volsci of Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus in 490 B.C. and has never been mentioned since then.Nibby, vol. II pp. 387-388 Today the archaeological area is at risk of unrestrained urbanization.
Roman rule
The monarchical period The conventional date of the destruction of the city of Alba Longa by the Romans, ruled by Rome's third king Tullus Hostilius, is 668 B.C.: in this year Latium vetus, that is, the forty-seven cities confederated in the Latin League, were de facto subjugated to Rome, which formed an ever-stronger bond with them until all their political autonomy was completely stifled.
The population of the destroyed Alban capital that was not deported to Rome apparently took up residence in the former colony of Bovillae,Torquati 1976, vol. I, cap. XX p. 178 and also in Bovillae revived the ancient Latin religious institutions of the Virgines AlbanaeLucarelli, Bovillae - città dimenticata, p. 13. or the Pontifices Albani and the Salii Albani.Del Nero 1994, p. 13 Therefore, the inhabitants of the city in the monarchical and republican ages were called Albani Longani Bovillenses, boasting direct descent from the legendary Alban capital.
The Republican Period
In 490 BC. Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus, at the head of a menacing army of Volsci, besieged and sacked numerous cities in the Ager Romanus loyal to Rome, and among them Mugillae, an ancient settlement located a short distance from Bovillae near present-day Santa Maria delle Mole, and Bovillae itself,Girolamo Torquati, Studi storico-archeologici sulla città e sul territorio di Marino, vol. I, cap. XX p. 180. which put up valiant resistance against him but nevertheless was plundered of its considerable wealth.Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ρομαικη αρχαιη, lib. VIII cap. 21.
In 312 B.C., when the censor Appius Claudius Caecus had the construction of the Appian Way begun by tracing the ancient route between Rome and Campania, which already passed through Bovillae, the city became a taberna midway between Rome and the prima statio, Aricia.
At the end of the troubled civil war between Marius and Sulla (86 B.C.-82 B.C.E.), after the battle of the Colline Gate (November 2, 82 B.C.E.) and the rise to power of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the lex Sullana was enacted, which ordered the centuriation and distribution to his veteran soldiers of the lands south of Rome included between Bovillae, Castrimoenium -the present Marino, of precisely Sillan foundation- and Tusculum.Girolamo Torquati, Studi storico-archeologici sulla città e sul territorio di Marino, vol. I cap. XX pp. 180-181. These areas had been the stronghold of the followers of Gaius Marius and later Gaius Marius the Younger, and the decision to install loyalists to the nascent Sillan dictatorship there was certainly not a random choice. From this moment in history, the slow decline of Bovillae began: even Marcus Tullius Cicero, in his oration Pro Plancio, states that in his day hardly a Bovillian delegate showed up at the religious meetings of the Latin League.ivi, vol. I cap. XX p. 181.
As already mentioned, in the Republican age in the territory of the first district of Marino arose the Roman colony -then municipium- of Castrimoenium, as confirmed by Gaius Plinius Secundus in the Naturalis HistoriaGaius Plinius Secundus, Naturalis Historia, cap. III par. V vv. 63-64. and Sextus Julius Frontinus, in De Coloniis.Antonio Nibby, Analisi storico-topografico-antiquaria della carta de' dintorni di Roma, vol. II p. 314. The existence of Castrimoenium is proven by numerous inscriptions and tombstones found throughout the territory of the first district of Marino, which would lead to the exclusion of the coincidence of Castrimoenium with the Castra Albana founded around 183 by Septimius Severus in the place of the present-day city of Albano Laziale, a coincidence assumed by some historians.Francesco Giorni, Storia di Albano, pp. 98-104. The archaeological controversy thus revolves around the location of the castrum in question near the locality Castel de' PaolisGirolamo Torquati, vol. I pp. 159-171 -at the municipal borders with Grottaferrata and Ciampino- or near the historic center of Marino, in the Castelletto district.Giuseppe Ranghiasci, in Album - Giornale letterario e di belle arti vol. XVII pp. 348-370-385. Both place names have to do with the ancient toponym, and in both places abundant finds of Roman materials have been made: however, while for Castel de' Paolis the Roman remains are believed to belong to a suburban villa of the imperial age owned by the patrician family of Scribonii-Libones, for Castelletto it is more plausible that a settlement of military origin such as Castrimoenium stood there, since much of the current alleys of the ward retain the characteristic orthogonality of Roman castra.
On January 20, 52 BC. Publius Clodius Pulcher, a political opponent for the ascension to the consulship of Titus Annius Milo, was slaughtered by the latter's assassins near the taberna of Bovillae, not far from his own villa identified today at the villa of the Pontifical North American College in the locality of Ercolano in Castel Gandolfo.Luca Fezzi, Il tribuno Clodio, p. 104. Clodius' body was carried on the shoulders of his supporters to the taberna of Bovillae, where it was exposed to popular piety before the public funeral services held in the Roman Forum.
The imperial period
In the days immediately following Octavian Augustus's death in Nola on August 19, 14, a massive funeral procession set out from the Campanian city and traveled all the way north along the Appian Way to Rome. The body was also displayed in Bovillae, where the decurions -the supreme magistracy of the municipium- delivered it to the equites who had come from Rome to bring the deceased Augustus to the capital.Girolamo Torquati, Studi storico-archeologici sulla città e sul territorio di Marino, vol. I cap. XX p. 185. In 17 Augustus's successor in the government of the Roman Empire, Tiberius Claudius Nero, ordered that the Julio-Claudian dynasty and the memory of his stepfather be celebrated in Bovillae, the supposed place of origin of the Gens Iulia, with the solemn Sodales Augustales. For this purpose the imposing circus, theater and shrine of the Gens Iulia were built.ivi, vol. I cap. XX pp. 188-189.Filippo Coarelli, op. cit., p. 71.
The remains of many suburban patrician villas have been found in the territory of Marino. Perhaps the most monumental villa is the one that provided the basis for the medieval structure of Castrum Pauli, at Castel de' Paolis, near the town of Grottaferrata: it is attributed to the patrician Scribonii-Libones family. Another large villa was found in 1880 during the construction works of the Rome-Albano railway: it was excavated in 1884 by Luigi Boccanera and attributed to Quintus Voconius Pollonius: its surface area is estimated at 103 meters x 70,Giuseppe Tomassetti, pp. 176-177 and some archaeological finds were found inside it, such as the Apollo Pythius now preserved by the Province of Rome.Ciampino in Comune, Ciampino rivuole i suoi reperti archeologici e pensa ad un museo (30-07-2003) Two other villas of the imperial age were identified by Thomas Ashby and later by Alban archaeologist Giuseppe Lugli at Torraccio of Due Santi.Giuseppe Lugli, Avanzi di antiche ville sui Colli Albani, in Notizie degli scavi 1921, pp. 269-270.
A possessio Marinas, identifiable with the present town of Marino, appears in the Liber Pontificalis, among the goods included in the donation made by Constantine the Great to the cathedral basilica of St. John the Baptist in Albano Laziale, dating from the pontificate of Pope Sylvester I (314-335).Liber Pontificalis, XXIIII, 30.Alberto Galletti, La Chiesa della Rotonda nella storia, in AA.VV., Il tempio di Santa Maria della Rotonda, nota 11 pp. 59-60.
The Middle Ages
From the early Middle Ages to the 13th century The first mention of a possessio Marinas identifiable with the present town of Marino appears in the Liber Pontificalis, among the goods included in the donation made by Constantine the Great to the cathedral basilica of St. John the Baptist in Albano Laziale, dating back to the pontificate of Pope Sylvester I (314-335).