Volaterrae

the Etruscan Velathri (Volterra)

An inland city in northwestern Etruria, situated on a precipitous hill between the river Era—a southern tributary of the Arnus (Arno)—and the river Caecina (Cecina), of which the valley was rich in metals, exploited, it would appear, by Volaterrae as early as the second millennium BC.

After 1000, Iron Age cemeteries lying on the flanks of the hill suggest that a group of villages existed nearby; they evidently made small bronze figures. These villages amalgamated into a single city shortly before 600—rather late, since Mediterranean influences took some time to percolate so far north—although a huge landslide (Le Balze) has concealed most of the evidence of this process from our inspection. A relief on a gravestone, perhaps of c 500, displays a figure of a certain Avle Tite, wearing an elaborate hairstyle in the near-eastern manner and carrying a long spear and bow or short sword. It was during the Hellenistic period, however, that Volaterrae reached the height of its prosperity, under the guidance, it would seem, of the Ceicna (Caecina) clan, which owned extensive lands and clay pits and salt beds, and lent its name to (or took its name from) the adjoining river, of which the metal-rich valley, containing important burial places (Casale Marittimo, Montescudaio) gave Volaterrae access to the sea; where the city evidently possessed harbors, though their locations (Vada Volterrana, Castiglioncello, or at the mouth of the Fine stream?) still remain conjectural.

Toward the north, it is possible that a chain of further ports possessed Volaterran allegiance, extending upward from Pisae (Pisa) at the Arno estuary. But Volaterrae was particularly noteworthy for its landward expansion into the interior, up the Arno's tributaries the Era and Elsa, and along the Arno itself—where finds at Artemium (Artimino), Quinto Fiorentino and Faesulae (Fiesole) display strong Volaterran influence—and beyond the Arno in the fertile Mugello valley, and even as far north as the basin of the Po, where Misa (Marzabotto) and Felsina (Bononia, Bologna) received its imports, and two horseshoe-shaped gravestones at the latter city are inscribed with the name of the Caecina family.

Like other Etruscan cities, however, the Volaterrans gradually lost their independence to Rome. In 298 they joined the Latins against the Romans, whose consul defeated them and celebrated a triumph. In 205, during the Second Punic War, Livy records their contribution of ships' timber and grain to the Roman cause. After slave revolts at the beginning of the second century, reforms benefiting the middle class gave the city a new lease on life. In common with communities elsewhere in the peninsula, it gained the Roman franchise as a citizen municipium (90/89). After holding out, however, on behalf of the followers of Marius against Sulla (82–80), it was demoted to Latin status (according to which only the elected officials were Roman citizens). But Cicero, who, according to his Letters, enjoyed close links with Volaterrae, defended a native of the town against this loss of rank (63), and its restoration to full Roman citizenship was confirmed by Julius Caesar four years later. The Caecina house still remained rich enough to dedicate a large theater at Vallebona, north of the city. Volaterrae was the birthplace of the poet Persius (AD 34–62). It remained an important township after the beginning of the Middle Ages.

The overwhelming Balze landslide has removed the early buildings. But even before the villages coalesced into a single urban habitation, they reveal trench tombs of north Italian type; and burials between the seventh and fifth centuries have yielded fragmentary discoveries. The characteristic art form of Volaterrae, however, was represented by its great series of funerary urns—receptacles for ashes, since cremation persisted in northern Etruria—of which more than six hundred are to be seen in the local museum. Decorated with lively reliefs depicting scenes from Greek mythology (often portrayed with an Etruscan twist), and originally embellished with brilliant polychrome coloring and gilding, these cremation urns first made their appearance c 400 BC, but mostly date from a century or two later, when the local material of alabaster—a granular form of gypsum—came into extensive use. Volaterrae also retained its reputation as an important center of bronze work, and in the same epoch produced a characteristic type of red-figure pottery, which enjoyed widespread distribution.

The gate known as the Porta dell'Arco or Arco Etrusco, incorporated in the ancient walls, comprises a Roman vault rising from piers dating from the years around 200 BC. During the century that followed, a large increase of exports to the Adriatic port of Atria (Adria), near the mouth of the Padus (Po), bears witness to a revival in the fortunes of Volaterrae, apparently under the auspices of a commercial middle class.