L Sprague De Camp, in his non-fiction article “Lost Cities”, refers to a city named Crustumius , allegedly lost beneath a sea.
Online, I find the name, but it refers to a region, or to a river.
Which would make a kind of sense, if an ancient city in the region had been destroyed.
Can anybody tell me about Crustumius?
Could it be referred-to by a different name?
De Camp preferred old terminology, & could be a tad prolix. I wouldn’t put it past him to use an archaic name, now obsolete.
Input?
The only Crustumius I can find is a river.
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) William Smith, LLD, Ed.
CRUSTU´MIUS a river of Umbria, flowing into the Adriatic Sea between Ariminum and Pisaurum. It is noticed by Pliny as in the vicinity of Ariminum, but in a manner that would have rather led to the supposition that it was on the N. side of that city. There can, however, be no doubt that it is the same river of which the name is corrupted in the Tabula into “Rustunum,” and which is there placed S. of Ariminum. It may therefore be pretty safely identified with the Conca, which enters the sea at La Cattolica, and is described as a mountain stream, liable to sudden and violent inundations when swollen by the melted snows. Hence the epithet given it by Lucan, of “Crustumium rapax” (Luc. 2.406; Plin. Nat. 3.15 s. 20; Tab. Peut.). Vibius Sequester (p. 8) asserts that there was a town of the same name at its mouth, but this is probably a mistake.
So the river, now called the Conca, was given to flooding, and someone once mistakenly asserted there was a town of the same name at its mouth. I think we’ve run this one down.
The only ancient city I can think of which is claimed to have sunk is one mentioned by either Herodotus or Thucydides. Hekkale, was it?
Perhaps it was Crustumerium , an ancient town of the Sabines north of Rome. Crustumerius was the adjective form of the name. The site of the town was once considered lost but was rediscovered in the 1970s.
Correction: It was a Latin town near Sabine territory, not a Sabine town.
An aly spelling!
Hmmm–any legends of all or part of it being flooded, or submerged, or lost to the sea by landslide?