TUDER
(Todi) Umbria, Italy.
A site on the
left bank of the Tiber at the confluence of the Naia,
served in Roman times principally by the Via Amenina.
Grave goods show that this city, which inscribed its coins
TVTERE, early prospered as a middleman between the
Etruscans and Umbrians. Fine bronzes of the 6th c.,
Attic cups, and bucchero appear. In the Hellenistic
period its wealth increased. The city must have come
under Rome in the 3d c.; in 89 B.C. it was inscribed in the tribus Clustumina and under the triumvirate received the colonia Julia Fida Tuder.
The walls are in two circuits, one enclosing the hilltop and an extension around the S and E fronts; the
work in both is very similar. There are no towers, but
a sewer in one stretch, evidently original, is nicely
engineered and vaulted. If they are not of the Roman
colony, they can be not much earlier.
The forum has been located under Piazza del Popolo,
but the city plan is elusive. There are poor remains of
a theater and amphitheater and a number of cisterns and
miscellaneous finds. The pride of Todi is an ancient
terrace wall in Piazza del Mercato Vecchio in which open
four beautiful half-domed niches. Above the crown of
these runs a Doric frieze under a row of dentils. The
date must be mid 1st c. B.C.
There is an archaeological museum in Palazzo del
Capitano and tomb groups in the Museo Archeologico
in Florence and the Villa Giulia in Rome. The Late
Classical Mars of Todi is in the Vatican's Museo
Gregoriano.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Forma Italiae VII.1 Tuder-Carsulae
(1938) (G. Becatti)
MPI;
EAA 7 (1966) 893-95 (U.
Ciotti).
L. RICHARDSON, JR.
