Dennis, George: The cities and cemeteries of Etruria: in two volumes (Band 2) (London, 1848)

chap, lv.] IS AREZZO AN ETRUSCAN SITE 1 427

It has been stated that there were three Eoman colonies
of the name of Arretium, distinguished by the epithets of
Vetus, Fidens, and Julium. The first was evidently the
Etruscan city, and has always been identified with Arezzo ;
the other two are supposed to be in the neighbourhood, but
their sites are not satisfactorily determined.3 I am per-
suaded, however, that Arezzo does not occupy the original
site, but merely that of one of the colonies. Its position,
for the greater part on the very level of the plain, only
rising a little at the northern end,4 is so unlike that of
Etruscan cities in general, as to raise, at the first glance,
strong doubts of its antiquity in my mind. Every other
Etruscan town in this district is on a lofty height—Fiesole,
Volterra, Cortona, Perugia, Chiusi—why should Arretium
alone be in the plain 1 Necessity did not here, as at Pisa,
dictate such a site, for there are high grounds suitable for
a city in the immediate vicinity.

This view is confirmed by the discovery, within a few
years, of the walls of an ancient city in the neighbourhood
of Arezzo,—discovery, I say, because though within sight
of the town, and familiar, perhaps, for ages to the
inhabitants, they were unheeded, and no one had made
them known to the world.5 They lie two or three miles

Museum of Leyden. See Mieali, Ant. 4 The height of the upper part of

Pop. Ital. tar. XLII. Inghir. Mon. the city above the lower is said to be

Etrus. III. tav. XX.; Gori, Mus. Etrus. 74 braccia, or 142 feet (Repetti, I. p.

I. tab. CLV. 112) ; but it does not appear nearly so

3 CluYer (II. p. 571) did not attempt much,

to assign a site to either. Holstenius 5 Repetti appears to have been the

(Annot. ad Cluver, p. 72), however, first to make them known ; and that

placed the Julian colony at Subbiano was in 1833 (I. p. S85). Even Alessi,

on the Arno, some ten miles north of who in the fifteenth century made

Arezzo, and the Fidens at Castiglion diligent search for local antiquities,

Fiorentino, on the road to Cortona. makes no mention of them in his

He is followed in tins by Cramer, I. Cronaca d' Arezzo, a MS. in the

p. 213. Dempster (II. p. 423) placed Biblioteca Riccardiana, at Florence.

the Fidens at Montepulciano. Mieali, Mon. Ined. p. 410.