SUESSULA  , an

ancient town of Campania, Italy, in the plain 12 m . W. of the modern Cancello, 9 m . S.E. of the ancient Capua . Its earlier history is obscure . In 338 B.C. it obtained Latin rights from Rome . In the Samnite and Hannibalic wars it was strategically important as commanding the entrance to the Caudine pass . Sulla seems to have founded a colony here . It is frequently named as an episcopal see up till the loth century A.D., and was for a time the chief town of a small Lombard principality . It was several times plundered by the Saracens, and at last abandoned by the inhabitants in consequence of the malaria . The ruins of the town lie within the Bosco d'Acerra, a picturesque forest . They were more conspicuous in the 18th century thanthey now are, but traces of the theatre may still be seen, and debris of other buildings . Oscan tombs were excavated there between 1878 and 1886, and important finds of vases, bronzes, &c., have been made .

The dead were generally buried within slabs of tufa arranged to

form a kind of sarcophagus (see F. von Duhn in Romische Mitteilungen, 1887, p . 235 sqq.) . Suessula lay on the line of the Via Popillia, which was here intersected by a road which ran from Neapolis through Acerrae, and on to the Via Appia, which it reached just west of the Caudine pass . On the hills above Cancello to the east of Suessula was situated the fortified camp of M . Claudius Marcellus, which covered Nola and served as a post of observation against Hannibal in Capua . (T .