TICINUM (mod. Pavia, q.v.)

This article appears in Volume V26, Page 934 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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TICINUM (mod. Pavia, q.v.) , an ancient city of Gallia Transpadana, founded on the banks of the river of the same name (mod.

Ticino

TICINO (Fr. and Ger. Tessin)
TICINO (Ger. Tessin, anc. Ticinus)

) a little way above its confluence with the Padus (Po). It is said by Pliny to have been founded by the Laevi and Marici, two Ligurian tribes, while

Ptolemy

PTOLEMY (
CLAUDIUS
PTOLEMAEUS)

attributes it to the Insubres. Its importance in Roman times was due to the extension of the Via Aemilia from Ariminum to the Padus (187 B.c.), which it crossed at Placentia and there forked, one branch going to Mediolanum and the other to Ticinum, and thence to Laumellum where it divided once moreone branch going to Vercellae (and thence to Eporedia and Augusta Praetoria) and the other to Valentia (and thence to Augusta Taurinorum or to Pollentia). The branch to Eporedia must have been constructed before loo B.C. Ticinum is not in-frequently mentioned by classical writers. It was a municipium, and from an inscription we know that a triumphal arch was erected in honour of

Augustus

AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)

and his family, but we learn little of it except that in the 4th century A.D. there was a manufacture of bows there. It was pillaged by Attila in A.D. 452 and by Odoacer in 476, but rose to importance as a military centre in the

Gothic

GOTHIC

period. At Dertona and here the

grain

GRAIN (derived through the French from Lat. granum, seed, from an Aryan root meaning " to wear down," which also appears in the common Teutonic word " corn ")

stores of Liguria were placed, and Theodoric constructed a palace, baths and

amphitheatre

AMPHITHEATRE (Gr. 441, around, and O&arpov, a place for spectators)

and new town walls; while an inscription of Athalaric relating to repairs of seats in the

amphitheatre

AMPHITHEATRE (Gr. 441, around, and O&arpov, a place for spectators)

is preserved (A.D. 528-529). From this point. too, navigation on the Padus seems to have begun. Narses recovered it for the Eastern Empire, but after a long siege, the garrison had to surrender to the Lombards in 572. The name Papia, from which the modern name Pavia comes, does not appear until Lombard times, when it became the seat of the Lombard kingdom, and as such one of the leading cities of Italy. Cornelius Nepos, the biographer, appears to have been a native of Ticinum. Of Roman remains little is preservedthere is, for example, no sufficient proof that the

cathedral

CATHEDRAL

rests upon an ancient temple of Cybelethough the regular ground plan of the central portion, a square of some 1150 yds., betrays its Roman origin, and it may have sprung from a military camp. This is not unnatural, for Pavia was never totally destroyed; even the fire of 1004 can only have damaged parts of the city, and the plan of Pavia remained as it was. Its gates were possibly pre-served until early in the 19th century. The picturesque covered

bridge

BRIDGE

which joins Pavia to the suburb on the right bank of the river was preceded by a Roman

bridge

BRIDGE

, of which only one pillar, in blocks of granite from the Baveno quarries, exists under the central arch of the medieval bridge, the rest having no doubt served as material for the latter. The medieval bridge

dates

DATES

from 1351-1354.
See A. Taramelli in Notizie degli scavi (1894), 73 sqq. and reff.
(T. As.)

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