Luca
Luca, located in western Italy along the river Auser (Serchio), has a rich historical background reflecting its evolution from Etruscan origins to a significant Roman municipality. Initially inhabited by the Ligurians, the region saw Etruscan influence in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, leading to its establishment as a notable Etruscan city. Throughout its history, Luca gained prominence during key historical events, particularly during the Second Punic War, when it served as a base for Roman generals. In 56 BC, it became famous as the meeting place for the members of the First Triumvirate—Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus—signifying its political importance.
The city thrived due to its strategic location along major Roman roads, which facilitated trade and military movement. It evolved into a Roman colony in 180 BC and later, under Augustus, became part of the province of Tuscia et Umbria. Archaeological discoveries reveal a layered history of settlements, with remnants of Etruscan and Roman infrastructure, including walls, forums, and theaters. The early Christian baptistery attached to the Church of San Giovanni further indicates Luca's long-standing historical significance. Overall, Luca embodies a blend of cultural influences and historical milestones, making it a focal point for understanding ancient Etruria and Roman Italy.
Subject Terms
Luca
(Lucca)
A city in western Italy, situated on the river Auser (Serchio), thirteen miles from the Tyrrhenian Sea. In early times the region was inhabited by a Ligurian population, but as the Etruscan influence expanded northward the Ligurians kept mainly to the hills, and even if there was originally a Ligurian settlement of theirs in or near Luca (as is uncertain, though a pre-Etruscan ritual burial has been uncovered at Buca della Fate, Massarosa), numerous recent discoveries—including fine gold jewelry and coins, see below) in the surrounding area make it virtually certain that it was an Etruscan city (amalgamating earlier villages) in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. Thus the poet Lucan attributes his Etruscan seer Arruns to Luca; it was probably an outpost or market town of Volaterrae (Volterra), the principal city-state of northwestern Etruria. Volaterran objects have been found in the neighborhood, as well as artifacts from Rusellae (Roselle), Caere (Cerveteri) and Latium.
In the early phase of the Second Punic War (218–202) Livy describes Luca as a base of the Roman general Tiberius Sempronius Longus, retreating before Hannibal; presumably it already offered a river crossing, and may have housed a garrison from this time, or not long afterward. The town became a Latin colony (possessing rights at Rome) in 180 (for walls dispelling doubts on this point, see below). The status of a Roman municipium was conferred in 90, and a passage in Strabo refers to Luca's large population, including numerous equites (knights); although the authenticity of this assertion has been questioned.
In 56 the city gained fame when the members of the First Triumvirate, Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar and Crassus (his presence has been unjustifiably doubted) met there to patch up differences and confirm their partition of the Roman world. Luca was selected for this purpose because at that time it lay just outside Italy in Cisalpine Gaul (a fact obscured by the changed course of its borderline, the river Auser, which now flows past the city on its northern and no longer on its southern side), since Caesar, whose proconsular sphere included Cisalpine Gaul, would have risked prosecution—for serious offences his political enemies claimed he had committed—if he moved outside that region into Italy.
Luca had become important because of its position on an extension of the Via Cassia (continuing to Florentia [Florence]) and because of its accessibility to roads along the coast (Via Aurelia, Via Aemilia Scauri) and northward through the Apennines and Apuan Alps. The town also controlled the Bientina area that lay to its southeast and had earlier attracted the interest of the Etruscans (and of people long before them); its flooded marshlands were drained and cultivated, and in the lowest area no less than fifty pre-Roman and Roman settlements have been discovered, ranging from the third century BC to after AD 200. Attached to the Seventh Region of Italy (Etruria) by Augustus, who granted it Roman colonial status, Luca during the later empire formed part of the province or district of Tuscia et Umbria, and possessed a state-owned factory for the production of swords.
Five Etruscan find sites in the immediate neighborhood—including Pozzuolo (Gattaiola) which displays a continuous stratigraphy from c 500 to c 250 BC—and has yielded a find of Etruscan coins of the early third century, a potsherd inscribed ETALE (Aethalia, Elba), and fragments of haematite and iron slag that may be of Elban origin—indicating the presence of villages later amalgamated into an Etruscan city, which probably lies beneath the subsequent Roman town. The rectangular plan of the latter can be reconstructed from surviving portions of a towered wall made of great square stone blocks, dating back to the Latin colony of the second century BC. Remains of the forum survive (under the Piazza San Michele and church of San Michele in Foro), and the shape of the amphitheater of the later first century AD (or after)—together with a recently disinterred block of seats—has been preserved by medieval houses, while parts of the substructure of a theater (Piazza delle Grazie) can also be seen. The origins of the Christian baptistery attached to the Church of San Giovanni are believed to go back to the fifth or sixth century.