Massicus Mons
Massicus Mons (Monte Massico), a mountain, or rather range of hills, in Campania, which formed the limit between Campania properly so called and the portion of Latium, south of the Liris, to which the name of Latium Novum or Adjectum was sometimes given. (Plin. Nat. 3.5. s. 9.) The Massican Hills form a range of inconsiderable elevation, which extends from the foot of the mountain group near Suessa (the Mte. di Sta. Croce), in a SW. direction, to within 2 miles of the sea, where it ends in the hill of Mondragone, just above the ancient Sinuessa. The Massican range is not, like the more lofty group of the Mte. di Sta. Croce or Rocca Monfina, of volcanic origin, but is composed of the ordinary limestone of the Apennines (Daubeny On Volcanoes, p. 175). But, from its immediate proximity to the volcanic formations of Campania, the soil which covers it is in great part composed of such products, and hence probably the excellence of its wine, which was one of the most celebrated in Italy, and vied with the still more noted Falernian. (Verg. G. 2.143, Aen. 7.724; ">Hor. Carm. 1.1.19, 3.21. 5; Sil. Ital. 7.20; Martial, 1.27. 8, 13.111; Plin. Nat. 14.6. s. 8; Columell. 3.8.) Yet the whole of this celebrated range of hills does not exceed 9 miles in length by about 2 in breadth.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.