Veleia (Italy)

Veleia is an ancient town of Aemilia, Italy, about 15 km (9 mi) south of Placentia.

[1] This, the largest inscribed bronze tablet of antiquity (1.3 m by 2.8 m) contains the list of estates in the territories of Veleia, Libarna, Placentia, Parma and Luca, in which Trajan had assigned before 102 CE 72,000 sesterces and then 1,044,000 sesterces on a mortgage bond to forty-six estates.

[2][3] Excavations begun on the site in 1760, and were at first successful; the forum and basilica, the thermae and the amphitheatre and private houses with many statues (twelve of marble from the basilica, and a fine bronze head of Hadrian) and inscriptions were discovered.

The oldest dated monument is a bronze tablet with a portion of the text of the Lex Rubria de Gallia cisalpina of 49 BCE which dealt with the administration of justice in Cisalpine Gaul in connection with the extension to it of the privileges of the Roman franchise, the latest an inscription of 276 CE.

[2] How and when Veleia was abandoned is uncertain: the previously prevalent view that it was destroyed by a landslip was proved to be mistaken by the excavations of 1876.