[3] In the 3rd c. BC, the most famous religious festivities in Italy took place here,[4] with great yearly gatherings of worshippers and excavations have shown that the town expanded considerably in this period.

[5] As Strabo (writing around 10 AD) says: At the foot of Monte Soratte is the city of Feronia, which has a common name with a divinity of that place, greatly honoured by the surrounding inhabitants, and of which there is a temple where it is made an admirable cult.

Because some possessed by that Goddess walk barefoot through a large bed of hot ash and burning coals, without being offended; and a large number of men compete for it, as well for the fair that is celebrated there every year, as for the spectacle just mentioned.In Imperial times the sanctuary became part of the larger town of Feronia under the radical restructuring that the site underwent as Colonia Iulia Felix Lucoferensis after receiving a colony of Octavian's veterans.

Inscriptions show that the sanctuary or lucus of Feronia lay behind the eastern wall of the forum and was accessible through a small portico built in the early Augustan period by the duumvir A.

The wall of the temenos on the northeast was also found, consisting of a sturdy structure in opus incertum with beautiful plaster with imitation marble stucco.