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Encyclopedia Britannica



CLUSIUM (mod. Chiusi, q.v.)

This article appears in Volume V06, Page 571 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CLI-COM
CLUSIUM (mod. Chiusi, q.v.) , an ancient town of Italy, one of the twelve cities of Etruria, situated on an isolated hill at the S. end of the valley of the Clanis (China). It was according to Roman tradition one of the oldest cities of Etruria and indeed of all Italy, and, if Camars (the
original
  name of the town, according to Livy) is rightly connected with the Camertes Umbri, its foundation would go back to pre-
Etruscan
  times. It first appears in Roman history at the end of the 7th century B.C., when it joined the other
Etruscan
  towns against Tarquinius Priscus, and At the end ofethe 6th century B.C. it placed itself,
under its king Lars Porsena, at the head of the attempt to re-establish the Tarquins in Rome. At the time of the invasion of the Gauls in 391 B.C., on the other hand,
Clusium
  was on friendly terms with Rome; indeed, it was the action of the Roman envoys who had come to intercede for the people of
Clusium
  with the Gauls, and then, contrary to international law, took part in the battle which followed, which determined the Gauls to march on Rome. Near Clusium too, according to Livy (according to
Polybius
  ii. 19. 5, EP Tfl Kaepeimv x6p%, i.e. in Umbria near Camerinum), a battle occurred in 296 B.C. between the Gauls and Samnites combined, and the Romans; a little later the united forces of Clusium and Perusia were defeated by the Romans. The precise period at which Clusium came under Roman supremacy is, however, uncertain, though this must have happened before 225 B.C., when the Gauls advanced as far as Clusium. In 205 B.C. in the Second Punic War we hear that they promised ship timber and corn to Scipio. The Via Cassia, constructed after 187 B.C., passed just below the town. In the first civil war, Papirius Carbo took up his position here, and two battles occurred in the neighbourhood. Sulla appears to have increased the number of colonists, and a statue was certainly erected in his honour here. In imperial times we hear little of it, though its grain and grapes were famous. Christianity found its way into Clusium as early as the 3rd century, and the tombstone of a bishop of A.D. 322 exists. In A.D. 540 it is named as a strong place to which Vitiges sent a garrison of a thousand men.
Of pre-Roman or Roman buildings in the town itself there are few remains, except for some fragments of the Etruscan town walls composed of rather small rectangular blocks of travertine, built into the medieval fortifications. Under it, however, extends an elaborate system of rock-cut passages, probably drains. The
chief
 
interest
  of the place lies in its extensive necropolis, which surrounds the city on all sides. The earliest tombs (tombe a pozzo, shaft tombs) are previous to the beginning of Greek importation. Of tombe a fosso there are none, and the next stage is marked by the so-called tombe a ziro, in which the cinerary urn (often with a human head) is placed in a large clay jar (ziro, Lat. dolium). These belong to the 7th century B.C., and are followed by the tombe a camera, in which the tomb is a chamber hewn in the rock, and which can be traced back to the beginning of the 6th century B.C. From one of the earliest of these came the famous Francois vase; another is the tomb of Poggio Renzo, or della Scimmia (the monkey), with several chambers decorated with archaic paintings. The most remarkable group of tombs is, however, that of Poggio Gaiella, 3 M. to the N., where the hill is honey-combed with chambers in three storeys (now, however, much ruined and inaccessible), partly connected by a system of passages, and supported at the base by a stone
wall
  which forms a circle and not a squarea fact which renders impossible its identification with the tomb of Porsena, the description of which Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 91) has copied from Varro. Other noteworthy tombs are those of the Granduca, with a single subterranean chamber carefully constructed in travertine, and containing eight sarcophagi of the same material; of Vigna Grande, very similar to this; of Colle Casuccini (the ancient stone door of which is still in working order), with two chambers, containing paintings representing funeral rites; of Poggio Moro and Valdacqua, in the former of which the paintingsarealmost destroyed, while the latter is now inaccessible.
A conception of the size of the whole necropolis may be gathered from the fact that nearly three thousand Etruscan
inscriptions
  have come to light from Clusium and its
district
  alone, while the part of Etruria north of it as far as the Arno has produced barely five hundred. Among the later tombs bilingual
inscriptions
  are by no means rare, and both Etruscan and Latin inscriptions are often found in the same cemeteries, showing that the use of the Etruscan language only died out gradually. A large number of the inscriptions are painted upon the tiles which closed the niches containing the cinerary urns, The urns themselves are small, often of terra-cotta,originally painted, though the majority of them have lost their colour, and rectangular in shape. This style of burial seems peculiar to a
district
  which E. Bormann (Corp. Inscr. Lat. xi., Berlin, 1887, p. 373) defines as a triangle formed by the Clanis (with the lakes of Chiusi and Montepulciano, both small, shallow and fever-breeding), on the E., the villages of Cetona, Sarteano, Castelluccio and Monticchiello on the W., and Montepulciano and Acquaviva on the N. In Roman times the territory of Clusium seems to have extended as far as Lake Trasimene. The local museum contains a valuable and important collection of objects from the necropolis, including some specially fine bucchero, sepulchral urns of travertine, alabaster and terra-cotta, painted vases, stone cippi with reliefs, &c.
Two Christian catacombs have been found near Clusium, one in the hill of S. Caterina near the railway station, the inscriptions of which seem to go back to the 3rd century, another 1 m. to the E. in a hill on which a church and monastery of S. Mustiola stood, which goes back to the 4th century, including among its inscriptions one bearing the date A.D. 303, and the tombstone of L.
Petronius
  Dexter, bishop of Clusium, who died in A.D. 322. The total number of inscriptions known in Clusium is nearly 3000 Etruscan (Corp. Inscr. Etrusc., Berlin, 475-3306) and 500 Latin (Corp. Inscr. Lat. xi. 2090-2593). To the W. and N.W. of Chiusiat Cetona, Sarteano, Chianciano and MontepulcianoEtruscan cemeteries have been discovered; the objects from them formed, in the latter half of the 19th century, interesting local collections described by Dennis, which have since mostly passed to larger museums or been dispersed.
See G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria(London,1883),ii.290 seq. ; L. Giometti, Guida di Chiusi (Poggibonsi, 1904). (T. As.)


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