Atella is not mentioned until the Second Punic War, when, although an independent city striking its own coinage, it was allied with Capua and the other Campanian cities in siding with Carthage after the battle of Cannae. It was occupied by Rome in 210 BC, the chief citizens executed and the survivors enslaved or exiled to Calatia; the city was refounded as a home for the refugees from Nuceria. In the 1st century BC, Cicero speaks highly of it and appears to have been its patron; it continued into imperial times as a "municipium".