Veii (ancient world)
Veii, an ancient city located in southeastern Etruria (modern-day Lazio, Italy), was strategically positioned on a broad plateau surrounded by steep cliffs, providing natural defenses. Established around 1000 BC, it developed from a cluster of villages into a significant urban center by the 6th century BC, second only to Rome in non-Greek Italy. This growth was fueled by its advantageous trade position, particularly with Greek traders from Pithecusae and Cuma, and its access to rich agricultural resources and salt beds near the Tiber River.
Veii was distinguished by its elaborate infrastructure, including a network of roads radiating from its seven gates and an advanced irrigation system evidenced by rock-cut drainage channels. The city also featured impressive temples, such as the triple shrine to Menrva (equivalent to Athena), showcasing its role as a prominent artistic hub, particularly noted for its sculptor Vulca.
Despite its prosperity, Veii's proximity to Rome led to conflict, especially over salt resources, culminating in a prolonged siege that ended in its capture by Roman forces under General Camillus. Following its fall, Veii ceased to exist as an independent state, although remnants of its history can still be explored through archaeological sites that include tombs and temple ruins.
Veii (ancient world)
(Veio)
A city in southeastern Etruria (now Lazio), situated on a broad plateau consisting of two ridges and a southern outcrop (the acropolis), and surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs descending to the river Cremera (Valchetta, a tributary of the Tiber)—which was still navigable in antiquity—and to one of its tributaries. Although objects of the second millennium BC have been found, permanent settlement only seems to have been established after 1000, when three, four or even five villages existed on the site, each with its own cemetery.
These villages coalesced into a city between 750 and 700. Its creation and development, reaching a climax after 600 when Veii was second only to Rome as an urban center in non-Greek Italy, received a strong stimulus from its geographical location at the southeastern extremity of Etruria, which prompted the Greek traders at Pithecusae (Ischia) and Cuma (Cumae), and elsewhere in Campania, to regard the place as a natural intermediary with other metal-rich Etruscan cities further north. From the seven main gates of Veii an elaborate system of routes radiated outward. The wealth of its agricultural resources provided a massive income, enhanced by extremely skillful irrigation, to which an abundance of artificial, rock-cut arched drainage channels (cuniculi) still testifies. Vital revenue was also derived from the highly productive salt beds at the mouth of the Tiber, which, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus records, the Veientines controlled.
Yet this salt was also the cause of eventual friction with Rome, which was far too close for comfort—only just across the Tiber in Latium. Indeed, Veii even had a left-bank outpost of its own, Fidenae (qv), only five miles north of Rome itself. During Rome's regal period relations between the two cities were generally friendly, but after the fall of its Etruscan monarchy, their competing claims to salt beds and commercial markets soon led to serious tension. The people of Veii repulsed a Roman attack on Fidenae c 477/75, but lost the outpost in 435/425.
Then a new king—who had restored the Veientine monarchy after a brief interruption—strengthened the natural defences of the site; and in the last decade of the century, the Romans moved to the attack. Their siege, conducted with forces of unprecedented dimensions on either side, was believed to have continued for ten years; and it may well, as a matter of historical fact, have lasted for at least six or seven. It concluded with the city's capture by the Roman general Camillus, who may not, indeed, have destroyed the place as completely as tradition records, but abolished its existence as an independent state. The other Etruscan states had done little or nothing to help their compatriots, and within hardly more than a century, they, too, had been reduced to subjection by Rome. The construction of the Via Cassia in the second century passed Veii by; but a small town continued to exist beside a local crossroads.
The tombs adjoining the earliest habitation center had been reached by staircases with niches cut into the walls; the Tomb of the Ducks, of late seventh-century date, is the oldest painted grave that has hitherto come to light in Etruria. In addition to the cemeteries, however, there is also archaeological evidence (which is somewhat scarce in Etruscan cities) from the area in which the Veientines lived. This comprised a number of right-angled main thoroughfares on the Greek model juxtaposed with narrow, crooked streets containing modest houses of sun-dried brick and timber constructed on stone foundations.
The acropolis (Piazza d'Armi), at the southern end of the plateau, displays the remains of the earliest of the five temples so far identified at Veii, dating from the mid-sixth century BC. Of more impressive dimensions is the triple shrine dedicated to Menrva (Athena, Minerva) c 520/500, within the Portonaccio sanctuary area outside the walls. On its central beam were perched large terracotta statues, including the famous Apulu (Apollo) of Veii preserved in the Villa Giulia Museum at Rome, based on Greek models but, like all the finest Etruscan sculpture, injecting an element that is alien to Hellenism. At this time Veii was the leading artistic center of southern Etruria. The most famous local sculptor was Vulca, who may have had a workshop in Rome; the Apollo of Veii was perhaps a product of his school.
Inscriptions relating to the diminished Veii of subsequent Roman times bear witness to a theater, a bathing establishment, a building connected with a corporation (collegium), and a Porticus Augusta, to which colossal heads of Augustus (31 BC–AD 14) and Tiberius (AD 14–37), now in the Vatican Museum, may have belonged.