I'm willing to believe it, but do you have a citation? Google is useless here, too many results for non-ancient Rome, but when I can find one that is properly about the ancients they all claim the same thing: the Romans had things that could be considered pasta-like (pancakes used for a sort of lasagna dish) but those were not actually the ancestors of Italian noodles.
Again, though: did the various dough concoctions turn into pasta the way that we think of it today, or did modern pasta come from the East? Boiled dough balls and pancakes are a far cry from the thin, stretchy, glutenous noodles that we call pasta.
