Cautano

The name of Cautano comes from Caudium, the city of the Caudini, and tradition has it that the town was founded by inhabitants of that city after their defeat by the Romans. Nearby, between the Camposauro and Taburno groups, lies the plain of Prata, and from the nineteenth century onwards some have maintained that it was there that the Caudine Forks of 321 BC took place. First Iannucci, then Marcarelli, noted that the conformation of the plain matches Livy's account far better than the other proposed sites, and that place names survive such as Pietra Spaccata, which coincides with the cava rupes of the Latin text. But the strangest check is of the last century: towards the end of the nineteen-forties an infantry major from Frasso, a lover of flying and of classical culture, flew over the area again and again, and from up there, comparing distances and the nearness of places, convinced himself that the hypothesis held.

The first official mention of the town is in a writing of Rodelgarius of 852, where one reads Cautano, finibus Folianensibus. The earthquake of 1456 was disastrous for all the hamlets of the valley and changed the balance: the feudatories moved elsewhere, the people came down from the mountain, more fortified zones towards the hills to refound the settlements, and Tocco lost its primacy to Vitulano. Thus was born the State of Vitulano, made of università autonomous for local affairs but with a single mayor for common ones, and with a coat of arms divided into four parts, one for each of the major centres. Cautano and Cacciano were united into a single comune in 1806. The sharing out of the mountain territories, however, did not follow the same logic: the Camposauro went entirely to Vitulano, whose territory today embraces that of Cautano almost up to the houses.