Marrana (or marana in Roman dialect) is a term that derives from the name of the ancient ager maranus, the fields that surround the Via Appia, and refers to the drainage channels that flow through the countryside near Rome.

[10][nb 2] The Almone's importance in Roman times was linked to the annual festival of the lavatio (ceremonial washing) of the sacred stone of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, which was held on March 27, the dies sanguinis, "day of blood".

[12] Based on the discovery of a small tuff basin in the Temple of Magna Mater on the Palatine, some have hypothesized that the ritual bathing of the black stone originally occurred there, and that its annual journey to the Almone was only begun during the reign of Augustus.

[10] Hic iuvenis primam ante aciem stridente sagitta, natorum Tyrrhi fuerat qui maximus, Almo, sternitur; haesit enim sub gutture volnus et udae vocis iter tenuemque inclusit sanguine vitam.

The stream lends its name to one of the heroes in Virgil's Aeneid, the eldest son of Tyrrhus and one of the first casualties of the war between the Trojans and the Latins in Book VII.

[10][2][14] Cicero, in his treatise De Natura Deorum, names the Almo as one of the local rivers and streams invoked by the Roman augurs.