Florentia - Clickable Map of the Roman Empire - First Century AD

Florentia
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Ancient Florentia Florence (Firenze). Important commercial city in ancient Rome. Florentia was located on the famous Via Cassia road which was the main route between Rome and the north.

Florentia
The modern Firenze, or Florence; a town in Etruria, sprung from the ancient Fiesol�, and subsequently a Roman colony, situated on the Arnus (Arno). The Florentini are mentioned by Tacitus ( Ann. i. 79) as sending a deputation to Rome in A.D. 16. Its greatness as a city dates from the Middle Ages. See Perrens, Histoire de Florence (1877-80); Yriarte, Florence (1882). - Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. New York. Harper and Brothers.

Florentia Florence was originally established by Julius Caesar in 59 BC as a settlement for his veteran soldiers. It was named Florentia ('the flourishing') and built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated at the Via Cassia, the main route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. The Emperor Diocletian is said to have made Florentia the seat of a bishopric around the beginning of the 4th century AD, but this seems impossible in that Diocletian was a notable persecutor of Christians.. - Wikipedia

Florentia FLO�RENTIA
(Φλωρεντία, Ptol.: Eth. Florentinus: Florence; in Italian, Firenze, but in old writers Fiorenza), a city of Etruria, situated on the river Arnus, about 3 miles S. of Faesulae. Though celebrated in modern times as the capital of Tuscany, and in the middle ages as an independent republic, it was not a place of much note in antiquity. No trace of its existence is found in Etruscan times; and it is probable that it derived its first origin as a town from the Roman colony. The date of the establishment of this is not quite clear. We learn from the Liber Coloniarum that a colony was settled there by the triumvirs after the death of Caesar (Lib. Colon. p. 213); but there seems some reason to believe that one had previously been established there by Sulla. There is indeed no direct authority for this fact, any more than for that of the new town having been peopled by emigrants who descended from the rocky heights of Faesulae to the fertile banks of the Arnus; but both circumstances are in themselves probable enough, and have a kind of traditionary authority which has been generally received by the Florentine historians. (Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 135.) A passage of Florus also (3.21.27), in which he enumerates Florentia (or, as some MSS. give the name, Fluentia) among the towns sold by auction by order of Sulla, is only intelligible on the supposition that its lands were divided among new [1.904] colonists. (Zumpt, de Colon. p. 253.) But he is certainly in error in reckoning Florentia at this time among the �municipia Italiae splendidissima:� it could not have been a municipal town at all; and from the absence of all notice of it during the campaign of the consul Antonius against Catiline, in the immediate neighbourhood of Faesulae, it is evident that it was not even then a place of any importance. But from the period of the colony of the triumvirs it seems to have rapidly become a considerable and flourishing town, though not retaining the title of a colony. The Florentini are mentioned by Tacitus in the reign of Tiberius among the municipia which sent deputies to Rome to remonstrate against the project of diverting the course of the Clanis from the Tiber into the Arnus; a proceeding which they apprehended, probably not without reason, would have the effect of flooding their town and territory. (Tac. Ann. 1.79.) We subsequently find the Florentini noticed by Pliny among the municipal towns of Etruria; and the name of Florentia is found in Ptolemy, as well as in the Itineraries. (Plin. Nat. 3.5. s. 8; Ptol. 3.1.48; Itin. Ant. pp. 284, 285; Tab. Peut.) These scanty notices are all that we hear of it previous to the fall of the Western empire; but its municipal consideration during this period is further attested by inscriptions (Orell. 686, 3711, 3713; Gori, Inscr. Etrur. vol. i.), as well as by the remains of an amphitheatre still visible near the church of Sta. Croce. It is probable that its favourable position in the centre of a beautiful and fertile plain on the banks of the Arnus, and on the line of the great high road through the N. of Tuscany, became the source of its prosperity; and it is clear that it rapidly came to surpass its more ancient neighbour of Faesulae. In the Gothic Wars Florentia already figures as a strong fortress, and one of the most important places in Tuscany. (Procop. B. G. 3.5, 6.)

The remains of the amphitheatre already noticed, which are in themselves of little importance, are the only vestiges of Roman buildings remaining in the city of Florence.  - Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, William Smith, LLD, Ed.