Misenum

▪ ancient port, Italy

      ancient port of Campania, Italy, located about 3 miles (5 km) south of Baiae at the west end of the Gulf of Puteoli (Pozzuoli). Virgil in the Aeneid says the town was named after Aeneas's trumpeter, Misenus, who was buried there. Until the end of the Roman Republic it was a favourite villa resort dependent on Cumae. Agrippa made the fine natural harbour into the main naval station of the Mediterranean fleet (31 BC). Pliny the Elder commanded the fleet there in AD 79 and died trying to rescue those fleeing the eruption of the nearby volcano Vesuvius. His nephew and adopted son, Pliny the Younger, described the event in two letters to the historian Tacitus. In 890 Misenum was destroyed by the Saracens.

      The harbour consisted of the outer basin, or Porto di Miseno, protected by moles (mounds of large stones used as a breakwater), of which remains still exist, and the present Mare Morto, separated from it by a comparatively modern embankment. The harbour was abandoned in the 5th century AD. The town lay on the south side of the outer harbour, near the village of Miseno, where remains of a theatre and baths have been found. Remains of villas can also be traced; the largest of these, which occupied the summit of the promontory, belonged first to Marius, then to Lucullus, and then to the imperial house. Tiberius died in it.

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