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Sinuessa () was a city of Latium, in the more extended sense of the name, situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea, about 10 km north of the mouth of the Volturno River (the ancient Vulturnus). It was on the line of the Via Appia, and was the last place where that great highroad touched on the sea-coast.Strabo v. p. 233. The ruins of the city are located in the modern-day comune of Sessa Aurunca. The city ruins are located, as the crow flies, 12.24 km SSW from the modern city of Sessa Aurunca and 41.43 km from the Province of Caserta. It is 26.71 km from the regional capital (Naples/Napoli) Campania, Italy.
Sinuessa sat on a site that was part of the territory of the Ausones. The cities belonging to the Ausonian league were Ausona, Vescia, Minturnae, and Sessa Aurunca. However, there are various controversies about the extent of the territory and composition of the league. During the Latin war, the cities of the league, like the Volsci and Campanians, supported the Latins against Rome and their Samnites allies. The war, fought between 340 BC and 338 BC, ended with a Roman victory. The cities of the league again fought against Rome during the Second Samnite War which began in 326 BC and ended in 314 BC with another victory for the Romans. The cities of the league were completely destroyed, but were later founded as the colonies of Sessa Aurunca and Minturnae, cities that retained the name and similar location of those of the Aurunci.
Sinuessa seems to have rapidly risen into a place of importance; but its territory was severely ravaged in 217 BCE by Hannibal, whose cavalry carried their devastations up to the very gates of the town.Livy xxii. 13, 14. It subsequently endeavored, in common with Minturnae and other coloniae maritimae, to establish its exemption from furnishing military levies; but this was overruled, while there was an enemy with an army in Italy. At a later period (191 BCE) Sinuessa again attempted, but with equal ill success, to procure a similar exemption from the naval service.Livy xxvii. 38, xxxvi. 3. Its position on the Appian Way doubtless contributed greatly to the prosperity of Sinuessa; for the same reason it is frequently incidentally mentioned by Cicero, and we learn that Julius Caesar halted there for a night on his way from Brundisium to Rome, in 49 BCE.Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum ix. 1. 5, 16, xiv. 8, Familiar Letters xii. 20. It is noticed also by Horace on his journey to Brundusium, as the place where he met with his friends Varius and Virgil. Sat. i. 5. 40.
The fertility of its territory, and especially of the neighbouring ridge of the Mons Massicus, so celebrated for its wines, must also have tended to promote the prosperity of Sinuessa, but we hear little of it under the Roman Empire. It received a body of military colonists, apparently under the Triumvirate, Liber Coloniarum p. 237. but did not retain the rank of a colonia and is termed by Pliny as well as the Liber Coloniarum only an oppidum, or ordinary municipal town.Pliny iii. 5. s. 9; Lib. Col. l. c.. It was the furthest town in Latium, as that geographical term was understood in the days of Strabo and Pliny, or Latium adjectum, as the latter author terms it; and its territory extended to the river Savo, which formed the limit between Latium and Campania.Strabo v. pp. 219, 231, 233; Pliny iii. 5. s. 9; Mel. ii. 4. § 9. At an earlier period indeed Polybius reckoned it a town of Campania, and Ptolemy follows the same classification, as he makes the Liris the southern limit of Latium;Polybius iii. 91; Ptolemy iii. 1. § 6). but the division adopted by Strabo and Pliny is probably the most correct. The Itineraries all notice Sinuessa as a still existing town on the Appian Way, and place it nine miles from Minturnae, which is, however, considerably short of the true distance.Antonine Itinerary § 108; Itin. Hier. § 611; Tabula Peutingeriana. In his Meditations, written around AD 180, the emperor Marcus Aurelius notes that his friend Junius Rusticus sent a letter to Marcus's mother from Sinuessa.
The city was the (purported) location of the Pseudo-Council of Sinuessa in AD 303. The period of its actual destruction is unknown.
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