Instead of giving information on ancient ruins or on archaeological finds, as we have done till now, we want to speak about a place: the plain of Pratola, at a distance of 6, 7 km from Montecalvo Irpino (in the country district of Tressanti). Over that plain very probably rose once a Roman community founded after the dictator Cornelius Sulla conquered definitively Hirpinia (at the beginning of the I° cent. B.C.)
The truth is that there are ruins at Pratola, but they may be found only at a 80 – 90 cm. depth in the cultivated soil. And still today, when peasants plough the soil deeply with tractors, there come up out of it ancient kind of bricks and tiles, and other artefacts that soon disappear again; and in the past, since the XVIII cent., when the new larger ploughs allowed for the first time to till the soil more deeply, numerous stone tablets with Latin inscriptions have been unearthed and registered in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Lipsia, 1883, vol. IX; even if the greatest part of them has been hoarded by the owners of the land and transferred to the town, where they have been used as ornament for walls, gardens, etc. For a recent example see Pratola’s fountain head stone,in this site.
Our hypothesis is based first of all on the etymology of place names (historic toponymy), on the archaeological finds, and finally on the geography and the history of the local landscape, taking into account especially the ancient roads and the mountain passes built by the Romans through the Apennine range (the Appian Road reached Aeclanum in 190 B.C. and the Trajan Road was built in 109-110 A.D.)

Hypothesis based on historic toponymy. In 1911, at the same place we are studying it was found a funereal tombstone which , as it was specified in the archaeological review “Notizie degli Scavi”, fasc. 9, year 1911, was unearthed at “Piano di Anzano”. That is, at Anzano, which was, we believe, the original Latin name of the place. Anzano derivation is, we are sure, as follows: AGER ANTIANUS(“Antianus being an adjective stating land possession by a certain Antius)-ANTIANUS-*ANZ(I)ANO-ANZANO. In our territory there are many other examples of place names with the same derivation: Ariano from “Ager Arrianus”, Corsano from “Ager Curtianus”, Savignano from “Ager Sabinianus”, etc. everyone of them demonstrating by evidence that this part of Hirpinia was deeply colonized by Roman settlers.

Hypothesis based on geography and history of landscape. “Pratola” corresponds to the Latin noun “pratula”, nominative plural, and means “small pastures”. It was probably the name given to the place at one time after the town was abandoned because of some disastrous event or destructive conquest, and its ruined house walls still emerged from the ground delimiting many small squares which became in the course of time as many small pastures.
Pratola is a square ground whose side is circa 800 m. A measure quite enough sufficient to contain one square Latin centuria whose side was 710,4 m. Other signs of the existence of a buried city are the track trails which show still today the original main crossing of an urbanized colony, and are oriented, as it was the case then, East/West and South/North.
Anzano was also part of a name still used for indicating a place at the outskirts of Pratola plain: Macchia di Anzano”, (Anzano wood). We believe that most probably there was the saltus (Latin for “wood”), which was complementary to the urbanized ager in the economic system of the ancient township.

A brief note on the name of the founder of Anzano. He was probably Antius Restio or his son C. Antius Restio. The father was a knight allied with Sulla and made a senator by his patron for his services in the Civil War (83-81 B.C.)
Antius Restio obtained one of the first latifundia (“large estates”) in the history of republican colonization, perhaps because of the necessity to control a land (Hirpini’s territory) which had resisted more strenuously to the Roman conquest. There exists today an Anzano di Puglia township, in Foggia province, but this is another story. We think that it was just one minor presidium at the limits of Antius’ vast estate. However, at Anzano di Puglia there haven’t been found Latin epigraphs, civil artefacts and other objects pertaining to that period. (cfr. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Lipsa, 1883, vol IX). (Sez. n. )