Civita d'Antino is a comune

Comune

In Italy, the comune is the basic administrative division, and may be properly approximated in casual speech by the English word township or municipality.-Importance and function:...

and town

Town

A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...

 in the province of L'Aquila

Province of L'Aquila

thumb|left|200px|Map of the province.The Province of L'Aquila is the largest, most mountainous and least densely populated province of the Abruzzo region of central Italy. It comprises about half the landmass of Abruzzo and occupies the western part of the region...

, in the Abruzzo

Abruzzo

Abruzzo is a region in Italy, its western border lying less than due east of Rome. Abruzzo borders the region of Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east, and the Adriatic Sea to the east...

 region of central Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

.

History

Antinum, a city of the Marsi

Marsi

Marsi is the Latin exonym for a people of ancient Italy, whose chief centre was Marruvium, on the eastern shore of Lake Fucinus, drained for agricultural land in the late 19th century. The area in which they lived is now called Marsica. During the Roman Republic the people of the region spoke a...

ans, was situated on a lofty hill in the upper valley of the Liri river  (now called the Valle di Roveto), about 25 km from Sora and 10 km from the Lake Fucinus, from which it is, however, separated by an intervening mountain ridge. In antiquity, it is mentioned only by Pliny

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

, who enumerates Antinum among the cities of the Marsians.

The numerous inscriptions that have been discovered in the modern village suggest that it must have been a municipal town of considerable importance. Besides these, there remain several portions of the ancient walls, of polygonal construction, with a gateway of the same style, which still serves for an entrance to the modern village, and is called Porta Campanile. The Roman inscriptions confirm the testimony of Pliny as to the city being a Marsic one (one of them has populi Antinatium Marsorum); but an Oscan

Oscan language

Oscan is a term used to describe both an extinct language of southern Italy and the language group to which it belonged.The Oscan language was spoken by a number of tribes, including the Samnites, the Aurunci, the Sidicini, and the Ausones. The latter three tribes were often grouped under the name...

 inscription which has been found there is in the Volscian dialect, and renders it probable that the city was at an earlier period occupied by that people It has been supposed by some writers to be the castellum ad lacum Fucinum mentioned by Livy

Livy

Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

 as conquered from that people in 408 BCE, although this has been disputed