Picenum

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Regio V - Picenum

Picenum was a region of ancient Roman Italy. Picenum was the birthplace of such notables as Pompey the Great and his father Pompeius Strabo. It was situated in what is now the region of Marche in modern Italy.

The little-known Piceni were one of the ancient Italic peoples who lived in that Adriatic coastal plain of the southern Marche, before the cultural supremacy of Rome. Their territory lay between the rivers Foglia and Pescara. They maintained a religious centre near Grottamare; their name continued in Roman times as Picenum.

Strabo, Pliny's Natural History and Sextus Pompeius Festus agreed that the Piceni bore similarities in culture with the Sabines and accounted for the observation with a founding myth. Modern archaeologists tend to the opinion that the Piceni were a pre-Indo-European people.