PUTEOLI pū tē’ ə lĭ (οἱ Ποτίολοι). A port on the Campanian coast opposite the ancient watering place of Baiae, and like Baiae, a holiday resort of fashionable Rom. society as well as an important place of ingress to Italy (Acts 28:13), and emporium of trade. Puteoli was also a spa, the name derived either from the smell of sulphur in the air (putere, to smell in a pejorative sense) or from puteus (a well). Sulla, Cicero, and Hadrian had villas there. Modern Pozzuoli.
Puteoli was on the site of the maritime Gr. foundation of Dicaearchia, settled by Samian colonists from Cumae in 521 b.c. When the town acquired its Lat. name is unknown. Writing of the year 215 b.c., when Rome was seeking to deny the Gr. ports of southern Italy to Hannibal, Livy writes: Exitu eius anni, Q. Fabius ex auctoritate senatus, Puteolos, per bellum coeptum frequentari emporium, communiit praesidiumque imposuit, “At that year’s end, by the Senate’s command, Q. Fabius fortified Puteoli, which was a port growing in traffic as the war progressed, and put a garrison there.” Livy prob. found the name in his authorities, and this may indicate the time of change (Livy 24.7, 26.17). Twenty years later, Rome made Puteoli a colony, and put a force of settlers there. Colonies always had a military significance, and the move followed up the garrisoning of the port (34:35). It was still a colony under Augustus and Nero (Tac. Ann. 14.27). By 125 b.c., Puteoli was an important commercial entrepôt, as the recipient of much of Rome’s eastern trade, rivaled only by Ostia. Passenger traffic passed through to Rome that way, joining the Via Appia by the Via Domitiana. Seneca (Ep. 77) tells how the Puteolans watched for the appearance of the Alexandrian grain ships (Acts 27:6). So it was that Paul came that way, as also did Titus after the fall of Jerusalem (Suetonius, Titus, 5.3). It was down the road to Naples that legend associated Paul with Vergil. In the Mass of Saint Paul, recited at Mantua (the poet’s birthplace) until the 15th cent., a Lat. v. pictures the apostle turning aside from the road to Rome to the spot between Puteoli and Naples where Vergil was buried. It is simple Lat., somewhat lushly tr. by T. R. Glover, thus:
Vergil’s tomb the saint stood viewing,
And his aged cheek bedewing,
Fell the sympathetic tear;
“Ah, had I but found thee living,
What new music wert thou giving,
Best of poets and most dear.”
The story, undoubtedly apocryphal, arose from an early consciousness of some link between the deep humanity of Vergil and his longing for a “savior,” and Paul’s dynamic Gospel that answered such a yearning. Inscriptions and visible remains attest the commercial vitality of Puteoli. There are records of trade-guilds, that certain indication of prosperity, of fire-fighting activities, essential in a warehouse center, and of the port’s function as an imperial posting station. There are surviving evidences and references to a lighthouse, extensive harbor installations, a market hall, and an amphitheater—prob. the one where Nero, in a.d. 66, staged a gladiatorial show for Tiridates, the Armenian king.
There was also a Christian church in Puteoli before a.d. 60, for Paul stayed seven days with the “brethren” (Acts 28:14).
Puteoli never recovered, in common with many other busy centers of Rom. life, from the Gothic and Teutonic inroads of Alaric (410), Genseric (455), and Totila (545).
Bibliography K. J. Beloch, Campanien (1890); C. Dubois, Pouzzuoles Antiques (1907).