Description : Potentia was a Roman town along the central Adriatic Italian coast, near the modern town of Porto Recanati, in the province of Macerata. Its original position was just north of the main Roman bed of the River Potenza (the ancient Flosis), which now flows more than 1 km (0.62 mi) to the north. In 268 BC the central Adriatic homeland of the local Picene peoples was military dominated and incorporated by the Romans. Later, under emperor Augustus, it was organized as Regio V Picenum. The installation of a series of mostly maritime Latin and Roman colonies during the second part of the 3rd and the 2nd centuries BC was a major impulse for the Romanization of a region that knew no real urbanized society before. In 184 BC with the foundation of Potentia, a coastal colony for Roman citizens (mentioned by Livy), the lower Potenza valley, and with it the whole area of northern Picenum, entered its first phase of real urbanization. By 174 BC the colony probably received a circuit wall with three arched gates, a street network with sewers, an aqueduct, a temple to Jupiter, and a portico with shops enclosing the forum. The flourishing of the town from the Augustan Age onwards far into the late 2nd century AD, is attested by epigraphic evidence. From the 3rd century AD onwards, the lack of significant numbers of inscriptions could point to a decline in the city’s prosperity. Although the city became an Episcopal seat around AD 400 and is still mentioned in sources at the beginning of the 7th century AD, Potentia clearly did not survive into the Middle Ages.
See on map »