(Genoa). A coastal city of Liguria (Cisalpine Gaul, northwest Italy). Finds indicate an early trading post at which the Ligurian inhabitants maintained connections with the Phoenicians (Carthaginians) and Greeks and Etruscans, and at least bythe 4th Century BC a settled community resided on a hill overlooking the harbor (Santa Maria di Castello).

At the beginning of the 2nd Punic War (218 BC) Genua was already under Roman control, but suffered destruction from Hannibal (205). Rebuilt by the praetor Spurius Cassius, it was used during the 2nd Century as a base against the Ligurians, and formed a station on the Via Postumia leading to Aquileia (148) and on the Via Aemilia Scarui to Vada Volterrana (109). An inscription records that in 117 a boundary dispute with neighbors was settled by Roman adjudicators. Strabo refers to the city's exports (cattle, hides, timber and honey) and imports (olive oil and Italian wine: the local wine, mixed with pitch, was unpleasantly harsh). Genua became of greater importance in the later empire, when it was included in the province of the Cottian Alps.