ARRETIUM
(Arezzo) Tuscany, Italy.
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.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. 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) 227-40
PI (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) 49-71
PI (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
