The River Tiber at Rome flows between the gentle, converging slopes of two extinct volcanoes, the M. Sabatini to the northwest and the complex known as the Alban Hills to the southeast. On the southern flanks of the M. Sabatini lie the Etruscan cities of Veii and Caere (modern Cerveteri) as well as many smaller Etruscan settlements. To the south on the western and southern slopes of the Alban Hills are such ancient towns of northern Latium as Ardea, Lanuvio and Velletri. In these same areas is an extensive development of underground passageways locally known as cuniculi, structures which are the subject of this report.The cuniculus was widely used for a variety of purposes during classical and pre-classical antiquity in central Italy. Livy reports on cuniculi driven as military devices to gain access to besieged cities. The traditional account of the lowering of the Alban Lake, as reported by Livy, dates from the early 4th century B.C. Excavations in urban centres have demonstrated that the Etruscans and later the Romans used cuniculi for drainage purposes, and also as lateral collectors of underground water in wells.This report deals with extensive systems of cuniculi found in the Roman Campagna but not directly related to urban or domestic development.
The conquest of Veii by Rome in 396 B.C. was an event of far-reaching importance. The city of Veii was captured and sacked, and may even for a short while have been deserted. Its territory was appropriated to the Roman state, and those of its inhabitants who were friendly to Rome were incorporated in the four new tribes that were created on this occasion.It would be idle to deny the long-term significance of these events. Rome's closest political rival had been eliminated and her frontiers extended overnight to the edges of the Great Ciminian Forest. She was inexorably launched on the career of northward expansion which was to lead ultimately to the conquest and annexation of the whole of Etruria. These were indeed epoch-making happenings; but it would be a mistake to exaggerate their immediate impact upon the daily life of the Veian countryside. The fact that a great many of the inhabitants were considered to be sufficiently friendly for incorporation within the Roman franchise suggests that they may also have been left in whole or partial possession of their lands; and even where the land did fall to new masters, the latter would not necessarily have been in any hurry to change the basis of what was evidently a flourishing agricultural economy.
This report is a further contribution to the publication of the survey of the country surrounding Veii. The area is bounded in the north by the watershed of the Roman Via Clodia; on the east by the line of the Via Cassia, also a watershed; on the south by the Valle della Torre Spaccata and the stream it joins, the Fosso dell'Acquasona, to the latter's junction with the Fosso Galeria; and on the west by the river known from north to south as the Fosso di Cesano, Rio Galeria, Valle Galeria and Fosso Galeria. It is a compact area as the roads which originate in its north-east corner terminate within it, apart from the cross country Etruscan road which goes off across the Fosso Galeria towards the lower Arrone (Route I) and the Etruscan road down the long ridge to the Via di Boccea crossing of the Fosso Galeria (Route VI), neither of whose onward courses has yet been studied in detail. The Roman road down the last mentioned ridge may have been a useful link in local communication, but it was probably not a through road.
There can be little doubt that down to the beginning of the Early Iron Age the greater part of the Ager Veientanus, in common with the adjoining territories, was still covered by the primeval forest of which the Ciminian Forest of early Roman history was the still-considerable surviving remnant. There were doubtless trails through the forest, and the activities of hunters and charcoal burners would account for sporadic finds of stone implements (in so far as these have been correctly identified as of Neolithic or Bronze Age date). But the main centres of settlement at this early date lay elsewhere, along or near the coast and a few of the larger river valleys. One of these was, inevitably, the Tiber itself; another the river Fiora and the uplands around Lake Bolsena, forming a link between the coast and the middle valley of the Tiber. Outside these clearly defined areas of settlement the prehistoric archaeological record is largely a blank.
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