Etruscan Political Center Discovered?
Archaeologists in Italy believe they may have found the long-lost political center of the Etruscan League, that group of city states that fell to Rome many years ago. Fanum Voltumnae is mentioned by the Roman historian Livy as the place where the Etruscans met to pick their leader. It is also the place where they refused to aid one of their member cities besieged by a Roman army. That city, Veii, duly fell to the Romans. As did each of the twelve that made up the Etruscan League.
Fanum was already famous in antiquity as a religious shrine and a meeting place where the 12 members of the Etruscan League, a confederation of central Italian cities, used to gather every spring to elect their leader.
In the autumn of 398BC an extraordinary policy meeting was held in Fanum.
A Roman army had been besieging the town of Veii, a wealthy member of the Etruscan League, which lay only 16km (10 miles) north of Rome.
The citizens of Veii, exhausted by years of warfare, appealed for help and asked the other members of the league to join them in declaring war on Rome.
The gods of the shrine of Fanum were duly consulted, but the vote went against collectively defending Veii.
Two years later the town fell to Rome.
It was the beginning of the end for the Etruscan League, all of whose cities eventually fell to Roman invaders.
We know all this ancient history through the Roman historian Livy, who wrote his famous account of the origins of Rome towards the end of the 1st Century BC.
The scientists have not yet found any inscription that would prove the dig is actually Fanum Voltumnae, but the leader of the team is quite confident they have found it.
By Quilly Mammoth, Thursday, 4 October , 2007 @ 8:43 pm
Archeologist’s are still trying to dechiper why shortly before each member city fell the word “kos” starts showing up.