Vulci

the Etruscan Velcha

A city of southwestern Etruria (now Lazio), standing on a hill protected by steep cliffs, above a loop made by the river Armenta (Fiora) and two of its tributaries, six miles from the sea. The Armenta valley had known human habitation since early in the second millennium BC, and cemeteries at Vulci containing material going back at least as far as the ninth century bear witness to the early existence of approximately five separate villages on the site.

Their inhabitants already produced bronze work, suggesting exploitation of the metals of Mount Amiata, some thirty miles up the river (before Clusium [Chiusi] took over the major part of these mines). The villages at Vulci coalesced into a single city shortly before or after 700, at a time when the metal resources of the local inhabitants may have been increased by the acquisition (jointly with Caere [Cerveteri]) of part of Mount Tolfa—previously owned by Tarquinii (Tarquinia); and perhaps they also gained access to the more northerly Catena Metallifera (Metal-Bearing Chain). As was also the case elsewhere in Etruria, what prompted the Vulci villages to amalgamate was the desire to acquire these metals, and pay well for them, shown by Greek traders and settlers from Campania; and since these Greeks were in close touch with their compatriots at eastern Mediterranean trading posts, early Vulci tombs include gold and ivory objects decorated with various Syrian and other near-eastern motifs, as well as a scarab of the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus (Psamtik) I (c 663–610).

To judge by the magnificence of one of these graves, the Cuccumella (see below), Vulci must have reached the height of its grandeur at the time of its construction (c 560–550). The Vulcentines became the principal Etruscan mass-imitators of Corinthian vases, and developed their own attractive black-figure style—misleadingly known as `Pontic,’ owing to an erroneous interpretation—dispatching oil and wine far and wide, and exporting their own agricultural produce as well. Vulci was also the main Etruscan center of stone sculpture, and, in addition, expanded its traditional bronze work into an unequalled industry, of which examples are found in widespread areas far outside Etruria.

The rivers Armenta and Albinia (Albegna, further to the north) were not only the bases of Vulci's hinterland, containing dependent towns such as Suana (Sovana) and Statonia (Poggio Buco) beside the Armenta and Aurinia (the Etruscan Urina, now Saturnia) beside the Albinia, but also provided it with its ports, Regae (or Regisvilla, now Le Murelle: where traces of the Etruscan harbor have now been found) and Calusium (?) (qv; Orbetello) respectively. By sea and land alike Vulci possessed intensive connections with more southerly regions of Italy. Wall paintings from the François Tomb (c 300) reveal extensive glimpses of a rich historical and legendary tradition, related to the city's wars with the Romans, in which a certain Cneve Tarchunies Rumach—a `Cnaeus Tarquinius of Rome,’ clearly related to the Tarquin dynasty expelled from that city c 510—is slain by a Vulcentine; and other links appear on these paintings as well, strongly suggesting that Rome may have been dominated by men not only from Tarquinii (the Tarquins) and probably Clusium (Lars Porsenna), but also from Vulci—where, it should be noted, the Romans' mythical hero Aeneas was greatly revered.

There is also archaeological evidence that men from Vulci—no doubt with Rome as a convenient staging point—were principal agents and pioneers in the Etruscan expansion into Campania. One of its towns was known to the Romans as Volcei or Vulcei (now Buccino) and Campanian coins were inscribed with the name of `Velecha,’ which seems to be of similar derivation; while other pieces from the territory bear the name of Urina, presumably taken from Vulci's dependency Aurinia.

The overthrow of Etruscan interests in Campania by the Samnites, in the fifth century BC, must have been a serious blow to the Vulcentines, but they evidently succeeded in transferring their trading relations to northern Italy instead, where some of the best bronze work and jewelry found at Spina came from Vulci or imitated its techniques; while, conversely, numerous `red-figure’ vases from Greece continued to arrive at Vulci, probably often by way of Spina, until the middle of the same century. Like other Etruscans, the Vulcentines failed to help their compatriots at Veii against the Romans (c 396), so that their own turn came later. In 280 BC a Roman consul, Titus Coruncanius, celebrated a Triumph against not only Volsinii (Orvieto) but Vulci—which shortly afterward lost part of its territory to provide land for the new Roman colony at Cosa (Ansedonia). Thereafter its continued existence, although far below the glories of earlier times, received some encouragement from its position on the Via Aurelia, which led into the city over a five-arched bridge (The Ponte Rotto, poorly preserved); there is also a famous Abbadia Bridge of three arches, going back in part to the first century BC.

The hill of Vulci rises above a deserted countryside, and apart from a bare record in geographers' itineraries, Greek and Latin writers have left no account of its history and might. The habitation site has yielded a fourth-century temple and a first-century house. But in contrast to these sparse traces, the finds that have come out of Vulci's cemeteries since the 1820s have been gigantic. In 1842 it was observed that their yield even exceeded the riches of Pompeii and Herculaneum combined: by 1856 more than 15,000 tombs had been excavated and that was only a beginning. Forty per cent of all Athenian black-figure pots found in Etruria, and fifty per cent of all red-figure, come from Vulci's graves. The largest of them, the Cuccumella, of sixth-century date, has already been mentioned: it was a huge mound over two hundred feet in diameter, honeycombed by labyrinthine passages and originally surmounted by two thirty- or forty-foot-high towers of uncemented masonry, one cylindrical and the other conical. A smaller tomb of about the same period, the Cuccumelletta—with a roof carved to imitate woodwork—has recently been restored.

The fourth century witnessed the construction of large graves (culminating in the François Tomb) in which cells were built round a central T-shaped chamber. After 300, further burial places, of more modest dimensions and character, bear witness to the diminished importance of Vulci.