FALERII VETERES
(Civita Castellana) Italy.
The easternmost city of the tufa region of Etruria and
the most picturesque in site. It lies on a long, narrow
tongue where several tributaries of the Treia unite to
flow N to the Tiber; the Rio Maggiore and its tributary
the Purgatorio bound it on the N, the Rio Filetto on the
S. Its sheer red cliffs are some 90 m high except on the
W; the gorges of the streams are narrow and now choked
with vegetation.
It was the chief city of the Faliscans, a people who
considered themselves Etruscan though their language
was akin to Latin. In the wars between the Etruscans and
Rome in the late 5th c., Falerii was allied with Veii,
Capena, and Fidenae, her near neighbors (
Livy 4.17.12;
5.8; 5.13.9-11); and when Rome besieged Veii, only
Falerii came to her help (
Livy 5.17.6-10; 5.18.7-11),
for which it was attacked by Camillus and fell the year
after Veii's fall (
Livy 5.26-27; Plut.
Vit. Cam. 1; Val.
Max. 6.5.1). Later it was allied with Tarquinia (
Livy
7.16.17) but in 351 made a 40 years' truce with Rome,
changed to a foedus in 343 (
Livy 7.22; 7.38.1). With
other Etruscan cities it rebelled in 293 (
Livy 10.46.5）
and again in 241 (Polyb. 1.65). This time Rome sent
both consuls against the Faliscans; in six days they were
forced to surrender (Livy
Epit. 20), having lost 15,000
men (Eutropius 2.28; Oros. 4.11). They were punished
by the sequestration of half their territory (Eutropius
2.28; Zonar. 8.18), and later they were forced to leave
their ancient and impregnable city for a site more accessible (Zonar. 8.18). Although this fact is recorded only
by Zonaras, it is confirmed by the grave goods from the
necropoleis, which include nothing later than the 3d c.
B.C. The new city, Falerii Novi (S. Maria di Falleri)
lay 4.8 km W of the old, on the left bank of the Rio
Purgatorio.
The most extensive necropoleis are on the hills of
Montarano and Celle to the NE of the city and Penna
and Valsiarosa to the SW. The earliest graves are cremation burials of the early 7th c.; the latest, chamber tombs
of the 4th-3d c. with rock-cut facades. The early material
is like that from Narce: dark impasto with incised decorations and a partiality for ducks and horses drawn in
lively shorthand; red-slipped ware, local painted ware and
imported Protocorinthian and Corinthian pieces. Falerii's
wealth in the 6th and 5th c. is attested by the many fine
Attic vases, both black- and red-figure. Late in the 5th c.
S Italian red-figure vases appear, and about 400 B.C. a
local school began to turn out specimens so close in style
to Attic work of the early 4th c. that the first Faliscan
painters may have been Athenian immigrants; this workshop was active through the 4th c.
The original settlement may have been on the hill of
Vignale NE of the present city, to which it is joined by
a saddle; the Rio Maggiore sweeps around it to the W
and N; the Treia, reinforced by the Filetto, on S and E.
Its steep cliffs provide good natural defense; and late
archaic terracottas, apparently from two temples, were
found there in 1896. But the city that surrendered to
Rome in 241 was on the site of Civita Castellana.
Stretches of its walls are preserved, of rectangular blocks
of tufa like those of the nearby Roman colonies of
Sutrium and Nepet, probably built in answer to theirs.
There is still an ancient gate (now in the convent of S.
Maria del Carmine) on the N, serving a path that led
down to the bed of the Maggiore. The path took advantage of a gap in the cliff; the wall was carried over it on
a tall, narrow corbeled vault. This is the only reasonably
complete Etruscan city gate earlier than the introduction
of the arch to central Italy.
Three more temples are known; one at Lo Scasato is
within the city walls on the S side of the plateau. The
terracottas divide into two groups: one of fragments of
the complete series of revetments for a large Hellenistic
temple; these must date from the early 2d c. The second
series is made up of figures of two sizes modeled by hand;
the smaller were parts of antefixes, the larger perhaps
pedimental but more probably from columen and mutule
plaques. They are in an eclectic style that suits the late
2d c. better than the 4th, to which they are usually assigned, and they are exceptionally handsome. Both series,
certainly to be dated later than 241 B.C., indicate that the
temples were not abandoned when the city was transplanted.
Two other temples in the valley of the Maggiore also
survived after 241. One, at Sassi Caduti on the left bank
of the stream, was apparently a Temple of Mercury. The
attribution is based on the evidence of 14 black-glaze
sherds inscribed TITOI MERCVI EFILES from a Hellenistic
votive deposit, and the lower part of a statue of the god,
apparently an acroterion. The oldest terracottas, of the
early 5th c., include an acroterion representing two fighting warriors and antefixes showing pairs of silens and
maenads; the later terracottas, including the Mercury, are
Hellenistic; and some fragments of Campana plaques
bring the date of the temple's survival down to the time
of Augustus.
The other temple, at Celle on the left bank of the
Maggiore where it turns E above Vignale, is usually identified as the Temple of Juno Curritis (Ovid
Am. 3.13),
the chief divinity of the city. Excavated in 1886, its foundations were the first Etruscan temple foundations known:
a great platform of rectangular tufa blocks supporting
a massive wall at the rear, from which five walls project
forward. These are taken to be the remains of a triplecella temple with alae, like the Capitolium at Rome. This
was built over an older temple, and votive finds from the
site are older still, going back to the Bronze Age. The
temple terracottas preserved date from the 5th to the 1st c.
Mount Soracte, on the fringe of the Apennines W of
the Tiber, lay in Faliscan territory (Plin.,
HN 7.19). A
cult of Apollo Soranus (Varro,
ap. Servius,
Aen. 11.787)
is attested by one inscription found near Falerii recording
a dedication to the god; otherwise our knowledge of him
is purely literary.
The temple terracottas and much of the tomb furniture from Falerii are at the Museo di Villa Giulia at
Rome.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. Taylor & H. C. Bradshaw,
BSR 8
(1916) 1-34; L. R. Taylor,
Local Cults in Etruria (
PAAR
2, 1923) 60-96; L. A. Holland,
The Faliscans in Prehistoric Times (
PAAR 5, 1925); A. Andrén,
Architectural
Terracottas from Etrusco-Italic Temples (1940) 80-148;
J. D. Beazley,
Etruscan Vase Painting (1947) 70-112,
149-62; M. Frederiksen & J. B. Ward-Perkins,
BSR 25
(1957) 128-36.
E. RICHARDSON
