(Modern name: Tivoli, Italy)

Ancient Latin city, located 25 km NE of Rome. In Republican times, Tibur was one of the unincorporated cities of the nomen Latinum. Later, in the waning years of the Republic, and during the Empire, it was a preferred location for the villas of the rich and powerful upper-crust of Roman society. Juvenal had a farm in Tibur, and the Emperor Hadrian built his famous villa there, in an eclectic architectural style reproducing in lesser scale many of the famous buildings of the ancient world.

In his Odes (II,6,5), Horace writes (referring to the tradition that Tibur had been founded by Greeks):

Tibur Argeo positum colono
Sit meae sedes utinam senectae
Sit modus lasso maris et uiarum
militiaeque


Fair Tibur, town of Argive kings,
There would I end my days serene,
At rest from seas and travellings,
And service seen.
(transl. John Conington, 1882)

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