Arpaia

The gorge of Arpaia is, by tradition, the place of the Caudine Forks, where the Roman army was made to pass under the yoke; and the clues lie partly in the ground and partly in the words, because around here the places are called Costa Cauda, Santa Maria del Giogo, Forchia — the yoke and the fork. The same source that reports it, however, gives warning: that Arpaia was the ancient Caudium was believed in error, and on the gorge the discussion is not closed. The comune nevertheless uses a coat of arms, without any decree of concession, with two towers and at the base the word CAUDIUM. It has put on its shield the name of the city it was thought to be.

The first name appearing in the documents is Appadium, in the twelfth century, and it suggested a derivation from the via Appia, which does indeed pass through here; but the root is the same as Arpino and Arpaise, and some have proposed an Etruscan word meaning a mountainous place. Of the road two Roman milestones remain, numbered fourteen and sixteen. There was a bishopric too: the see of Caudium, held to have had its centre here and not at Montesarchio, was suppressed around the year 600, and in 1970 the Church restored it as a titular see, that is, as a name without a diocese. Then came the wars between Angevins and Aragonese, which sacked and burned the town more than once, and the earthquake of 1456 destroyed it. Today the castle that watched over the Appia is a ruin, of the convent of Sant'Agostino a single wall remains, the church of Sant'Antonio Abate is half destroyed and buried, and the little church of the Annunziatella, abandoned, keeps a fragmentary cycle of frescoes.