Arretium
ARRETIUM (Ἀρρήτιον: Eth. Ἀρρητἰνος, Aretinus, Plin.; but inscriptions have always Arretinus: Arezzo), one of the most ancient and powerful cities of Etruria, situated in the upper valley of tie Arnus, about 4 miles S. of that river. Strabo says that it was the most inland city of Etruria, near the foot of the Apennines, and reckons it 1,200 stadia from Rome, which rather exceeds the truth. The Itineraries place it on the Via Clodia, 50 M. P. from Florentia, and 37 from Clusium. (Strab. 5. p. 226; Itin. Ant. p. 285; Tab. Peut.) All accounts agree in representing it as in early ages one of the most important and powerful cities of Etruria, and it was unquestionably one of the twelve which composed the confederation (Muller, Etrusker, vol. 1. p. 345), though, in consequence of its remoteness from Rome, we hear comparatively little of it in history. It is first mentioned during the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, when we are told that five of the Etruscan cities, Arretium, Clusium, Volaterrae, Rusellae, and Vetulonia, united their arms with the Latins and Sabines against the growing power of the Roman king. (Dionys. 3.51.) From this time we hear no more of it for more than two centuries, till the extension of the Roman arms again brought them into collision with the more distant cities of Etruria; but among these Arretium seems to have been the least hostile in its disposition. In B.C. 309 we are told that it was the only one of the Etruscan cities which did not join in the war against Rome, and though it appears to have been subsequently drawn into the league, it hastened in the following year to conclude a peace with the Republic for 30 years. (Liv. 9.32, 37; Diod. 20.35.) It would seem that the Arretines were again in arms with the other Etruscans in B.C. 294, but were compelled to sue for peace, and purchased a truce for 40 years with a large sum of money. (Id. 10.37.) Livy speaks of Arretium at this time as one of the chief cities of Etruria, capita Etruriae populorum ;b ut we learn that they were agitated, and probably weakened by domestic dissensions, which in one instance involved them in open war. (Id. 10.3.) The occasion on which they passed into the condition of subjects or dependents of Rome is unknown, but it was apparently by a peaceful arrangement, as we hear of no triumph over the Arretines. In B.C. 283 they were besieged by the Senonian Gauls, and a Roman army which advanced to their relief was defeated, but the city did not fall into the hands of the enemy. (Plb. 2.19.)
After the Romans had completed the conquest of Italy, Arretium was regarded as a military post of the highest importance, as commanding the western entrance into Etruria and the valley of the Tiber from Cisalpine Gaul. The high road across the Apennines from thence to Bononia was not constructed till B.C. 187 (Liv. 39.2), but it is clear that this route was one previously frequented; hence, in the Second Punic War, Flaminius was posted at Arretium with his army in order to oppose the advance of Hannibal, while Servilius occupied Ariminum with the like object. (Plb. 3.77, 80; Liv. 22.2, 3.) During a later period of the same war suspicions were entertained of the fidelity of Arretium; but Marcellus, having been sent thither in haste, prevented an open defection, and severe precautions were taken for the future. (Liv. 27.21, 22, 24.) But a few years afterwards (B.C. 205) the Arretines were among the foremost of the cities of Etruria to furnish arms and military stores of various kinds for the armament of Scipio. (Liv. 28.45.) In the civil wars of Sulla and Marius they took part with the latter, for which they were severely punished by Sulla, who deprived them of the rights of Roman citizens, and confiscated their lands, but did not actually carry out their partition. Many of the inhabitants afterwards joined the cause of Catiline. (Cic. pro Caec. 33, pro Muren. 24, ad Att. 1.19.) At the outbreak of the Civil War in B.C. 49, Arretium was one of the first places which Caesar hastened to occupy immediately after he had passed the Rubicon. (Caes. B.C. 1.11; Cic. ad Farm. 16.1. 2) From this time its name is scarcely mentioned in history; but we learn from the Liber Coloniarum that it received a colony under Augustus, apparently the same to which Pliny gives the title of Arretium Julium. (Lib. Colon. p. 215; Plin. Nat. 3.5. s. 8.) That author, indeed, describes the Arretines as divided in his time into the Aretini Veteres, Aretini Fidentes, and Aretini Julienses. That these constituted separate municipal bodies or communities is certain from an inscription, in which we find the Decuriones Arretinorum Veterum( Orell. Inser. 100), but it is not clear that they inhabited altogether distinct towns. Strabo makes no allusion to any such distinction, and other inscriptions mention the Ordo Arretinorum,w ithout any further addition. (Ib. 1300; Mur. Inscr. p. 1094. 2.) It is probable, therefore, that they were merely the names of distinct colonies or bodies of settlers which had for some reason received a separate municipal organisation. The Arretini Julienses were evidently the colonists settled by Augustus: the Arretini Fidentes probably dated from the time of Sulla, or perhaps from a still earlier period. But there seems reason to believe that Arretium Vetus, the ancient Etruscan city, did in fact occupy a site different from the modern Arezzo, which has probably succeeded to the Roman city. The ruins of the former have been pointed out on a height called Poggio di S. Cornelio, two or three miles to the SE. of Arezzo, where there are some remains of ancient walls, apparently of Etruscan construction. The only ruins visible in the modern city are some small portions of an amphitheatre, decidedly of Roman date. (Repetti, Diz. Geogr. di Toscana, vol. 1. p. 585; Micali, Mon. Ined. p. 410; Dennis's Etruria, vol. ii. pp. 421--431.)
The other relics of antiquity discovered at Arezzo are far more interesting and valuable. Among these are numerous works in bronze, especially the Chimaera and the statue of Minerva, both of which are now preserved in the Gallery at Florence, and are among the most interesting specimens of Etruscan art. Much pottery has also been found, of a peculiar style of bright red ware with ornaments in relief, wholly different from the painted vases so numerous in Southern Etruria. The Roman inscriptions on them confirm the statement of Pliny (Plin. Nat. 35.46), who speaks of Arretium as still celebrated in his time for its pottery; which was, however, re. garded with contempt by the wealthy Romans, and used only for ordinary purposes. (Mart. 1.54. 6, 14.98; Pers. 1.130.) Vitruvius and Pliny both speak of the walls of Arretium (meaning apparently the ancient Etruscan city) as built of brick, and remarkable for the excellence of their construction. (Vitr. 2.8.9; Plin. Nat. 35.14. s. 49.) No remains of these are now visible.
Maecenas is commonly regarded as a native of Arretium. There is not, indeed, any proof that he was himself born there, but it is certain that the family of the Cilnii to which he belonged was at an early period the most powerful and conspicuous of the nobility of that city (Liv. 10.3, 5; compare Hor. Carm. 3.29. 1, Sat. 1.6.1); and the jesting epithets applied to his favourite by Augustus leave little doubt of his Arretian origin. (Macrob. 2.4.)
The territory of Arretium was very extensive, and included not only the upper valley of the Arnus, but a part of that of the Tiber also (Plin. Nat. 3.5. s. 9), as well as the adjacent valley of the Clanis. The latter appears to have been, in ancient as well as modern times, marshy, and subject to inundations; and the Arretinum Stagnum,m entioned by Julius Obsequens ( § 100), must have been a marshy lake in the Val di Chiana. Great part of the Arretine territory was extremely fertile: it produced wheat of the finest quality, and several choice varieties of vines. (Plin. Nat. 14.2. s. 4, 18.9, s. 20.)
[E.H.B]The modern Arezzo; one of the more important of the twelve cities of Etruria, was situated in the northeast of the country at the foot of the Apennines, and possessed a fertile territory near the sources of the Arnus and the Tiber, producing good wine and corn. It was particularly celebrated for its pottery.
An Etruscan town, perhaps called Peithesa, on the height of Castelsecco (Poggio di San Cornelio), a height well fortified by ashlar stone walls, 3 km SE of Arezzo. The Arretines, according to Dion. Hal. (AntRom. 3.51), joined other Etruscans in offering aid to the Latins against Tarquinius Priscus (fl. 616-579 B.C.) and must have been included in the Etruscan decapolis, living there in probable political dependence upon Clusium. The date and circumstances of the migration to Arretium are unknown, but the new citadel was a low eminence now occupied by the Cathedral, public gardens, and Fortezza Medicea above the Castro, a small tributary of the Chiana and Arno. The city wall composed partly of stone, partly of lightly fired brick, and partly of rock escarpment, has been found at points in the E section of the upper modern town, the cemetery, and N outskirts. The cardo of this Arretium was the modern Via Pelliceria and Via San Lorenzo. Whether the brick represents repairs or the stone represents constructional reinforcement at selected points is debated; Vitruvius (2.8, 9), and Pliny (HN 13.13 and 35.19), considered Arretium's “vetustus murus” as essentially constructed “e latere.” The date of the wall is assigned to ca. 300 B.C., the approximate period of a 30-year treaty (321 B.C.) and a treaty of peace and alliance with Rome in 294, the year in which a Roman relieving army was beaten at Arretium by the besieging Senones. Tombs near Poggio del Sole, outside the Etruscan town but just inside the Medicean wall, and the famous 5th c. bronze Chimera, the red-figure krater by Euphronios, the 4th c. bronze Minerva, and fictile revetments of various temples show that Arezzo had acquired and perhaps actually produced considerable evidence of prosperity and culture long before the imminence of Roman expansion.
Arretium's advanced industrialization in the 3d c. B.C. permitted the furnishing of large quantities of bronze (and iron?) weapons and agricultural implements, as well as 120,000 modii of wheat, to Scipio's African expedition in 205 B.C., at which time there must also have been a lively production of Etrusco-Campanian black-surfaced ceramics.
Arretium supported Marius and was punished in territory, civil status, the imposition of a veterans' colony (Arretini fidentiores, contrasted with the native Arretini veteres; Julius Caesar later settled the Arretini Iulienses as well), and, on the evidence of plentiful black pottery but no red Arretine, the dismantling of the city wall and various finely decorated public buildings within it, and perhaps the blocking of the cisterns of the citadel. Later, Arretium (sc. Sulla's veterans) espoused Catiline's conspiracy. Arretium's inhabited and industrial area must always have exceeded the fortified perimeter, but with the colonizations and under the Empire the expansion and reorientation must have been considerable; the new cardo was apparently the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and the forum has been conjectured as near Fonte Pozzolo N of the citadel. Nine roads radiated from the hilltop, and there are traces of a 1st-2d c. aqueduct entering the city at Fonte Veneziana on the F.
Etruscan and Roman graves, mosaics, inscriptions, and minor objects are common in Arretium, but its importance in mediaeval and Renaissance Italy has militated against the preservation and excavation of conspicuous architectural monuments except for those already noted and a large late cistern 23.5 m square in the Giardino Pubblico, a theater and several baths of which remains are scanty, and the 1st-2d c. amphitheater of ca. 7500 sq. m, well-preserved because of its conversion into the Orti and Convento di S. Bernardo, part of which is now the Museo Archeologico.
Already in Augustan times Arretium was famous for its plain and molded red-surfaced pottery of the late Republic and early Empire, superposing manufacturing techniques and artistic themes, imported from the Hellenistic East by a great influx of Greek-named workmen, upon vase shapes of Etrusco-Campanian ancestry. Within the present town numerous factories have been found and their operators identified, most notably the factory of M. Perennius and his successors at the church of S. Maria in Gradi, but also at Carciarelle and Orciolaia, 1 km from town, and as far away as Cincelli and Ponte a Buriano 7 km distant on the Arno. To what extent Maecenas, a native Arretine, was responsible for this artistic and industrial upsurge is not known. Excavations of the 1880s and 1890s produced vast amounts of Arretine ware, now partly in the Museo Archeologico, partly in private hands, partly dispersed to foreign museums; the vases of Ateius found in 1954-57 are at Florence, as is much else from the site. Further, Arretine ware was exported to military and civilian consumers throughout the Roman world and beyond (Britain, India), enriching many local museums of Western and Central Europe and North Africa. Arretium's primacy was Augustan and Tiberian, but even under Augustus an emigration of potters was under way, and by Flavian times Arretium had lost its significance to imitators elsewhere in Italy and in the provinces.
BIBLIOGRAPHYG. Maetzke, Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautorum Acta, II, 25-27 (1959) (Ateius ware in Via Nardi).
Articles by various authors on individual finds, Studi Etruschi, 21, 22, 23, 32; F. Carpanelli, Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (1950) 227-40PI(amphitheater); F. Rittatore & F. Carpanelli, Edizione Archeologica della Carta d'Italia al 100,000 (Foglio 114 [Arezzo]) (1951) MP(exhaustive text and topographical bibliography to 1950); C. Hülsen, PW II, cols. 1227-28 (chiefly historical); CIL XI, 1820-1902; ThLL II, s.v. Arretium.
Arretine ware: H. Comfort et al., Terra Sigillata, La Ceramica a Rilievo Ellenistica e Romana (1968) 49-71PI(with principal bibliography of Arretine ware to 1958); A. Oxé & H. Comfort, Corpus Vasorum Arretinorum (1968) (names stamped on Arretine ware); A. Stenico, La Ceramica Arretina II, Punzoni, modelli, calchi, ecc. (1966) I, and La Ceramica Arretina I, Rasinius I (1960).
H. COMFORT