ROMAN TIMES I

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Salernum has grown on itself in a continuous overlapping of the levels of attendance. This succession, commonly referred to as "palinsesto", it has not spared any of the buildings of the historical center, under which lies the whole  old Roman settlement. Anyway the first documented Roman presence in the area was not a city but a Castrum, a stable encampment fortified by legionaries. The position of this stable was probably in Plaium Montis.

Salernum as oppidum is, for the first time, remembered with certainty in the year 197 BC when (with the lex Atinia de coloniis quinque deducendis), Rome decided to found five civium colonies on the coasts of Campania and the neighboring Lucania Tyrrhenian ones, including a brand new close the Castrum Salerni.

So in the first years of life of the "Castrum quo in loco nunc oppidum est", the new Roman trade colony (made by simple citizens) and the ancient military castrum had to coexist, since the latter probably performed the task -the trunk of the Rhegium-Capuam had not yet been built- of mediate the city's relations with the outside world. 

Depopulating the Irpinia lands, an intense migratory flow headed towards the Roman Salernum caused by the transformation of the ager confiscated by the Romans into large estates in the hands of local or Roman aristocracies with large companies - rustic villae - managed mainly by slaves and with the resumption of transhumantic pastoralism.

The port city grew in importance for its trade and in the 4th century AD it was already superior to Paestum as a center of political power for Lucania et Bruttii: the "Sinus Paestanus" became "Sinus Salernitanus".

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