PIPERNO (anc. Privernum)  , a town of the province of Rome, Italy, 61 m . S.E. of Rome by rail . Pop . (1901), 6736 . The medieval town was founded in the loth century (?) on a hill 490 ft. above sea-level, by refugees from the Roman town of Privernum, lower down (118 ft. above sea-level) on the highroad, i m. to the north, at the mouth of a low pass leading through the Volscian mountains to the valley of the Sacco . Here are remains of an arch crossing the road and other ruins (mostly buried) of the Roman period; but the remains above ground are largely medieval . It is improbable, however, that the ancient Volscian town should have occupied so easily accessible a site; it is not unlikely that it stood on the site occupied by the medieval and modern town, but there is no proof of this . Privernum was a Volscian town, and took up arms against Rome after the foundation of a Latin colony at Setia in 382 B.C . It was finally captured in 329 B.C., and eleven years later the635 tribus Oufentina was founded, taking its nl'1ne from the river Oufens (mod . Uffente) in the territory of Privernum . Little is known of it subsequently . The medieval town has a picturesque piazza, with a Gothic cathedral (1283), which pre-serves a fine porch, though the interior was modernized in 178x; a Gothic palazzo pubblico; and other Gothic churches exist in the town .

Polygonal

terrace walls of the Roman or pre-Roman period exist at various places in the vicinity (G . B . Giovenale and L . Mariani in Notizie degli Scavi, 1899, 88) . (T .