RUSELLAE
Tuscany, Italy.
About 9 km inland and N of Grosseto, one of the twelve cities of the
Etruscan federation. Its position controlled the valley
of the Ombrone at the mouth of which was probably the
city's harbor. The site was perhaps sparsely occupied
during the Villanovan period, but the first urban center
dates to the 7th and 8th c. B.C. A second period, to
which the oldest sections of the circuit walls belong, begins in the 6th c. and continues until the 4th c., probably until the Roman conquest.
Ancient sources make mention of it for the first time
when, along with Chiusi, Arezzo, Volterra, and VetuIonia, it promised help to Rome against Tarquinius
Priscus (Dion. Hal. 3.51). Later, it appears to have
become part of various Etruscan alliances against Rome
and because of that was defeated in 298 and, after a long
siege, captured in 294 B.C. (
Livy 10.4, 37.3). Evidently
it was quickly rebuilt, for in 205 it was able to furnish
grain and wood for Scipio's fleet (
Livy 28.45.14). The
inhabitants were inscribed in the tribus Scaptia. From
inscriptions and from Pliny's list, it is known that it
became a colonia, but the date is not known. (Plin.
HN
3.51; Ptol. 3.1.43;
CIL XI, 2618). It had a period of
prosperity and new public buildings in the Julio-Claudian period. It continued to thrive into the 4th c. A.D.,
but in the 5th c. it appeared half-abandoned (Rut. Namat.
1.220). Later notices refer more often to the county
(or district) of Roselle, which belonged to the Aldobrandeschi and later to Siena, than to the ancient city. It
was the seat of a bishop, mentioned in 499 and on the
occasion of the synods of 649 and 680.
The city occupies the summit of a small hill formed
by two projections that enclose a central valley. Here
the forum stood in the Roman period and, in the Etruscan period, the center of the city. Almost the entire
circuit of the city walls (ca. 3 km) is preserved, in some
places more than 7 m high. In the N and NE sections
are undressed polygonal blocks. Elsewhere squared or
roughhewn polygonal blocks, with various refacings, date
to the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Remains of mudbrick structures of the 7th c. B.C—perhaps from an
older circuit wall or from a terrace wall—have been
noted beneath a section of the 6th c. walls. There are
no towers; of the five gates, only the N gate has been
excavated.
Excavations have brought to light some buildings of
the 8th and 7th c., constructed simply of mudbrick with
pavements of beaten earth. One of these buildings, surrounded by a large rectangular enclosure, is perhaps, to
judge from its site and careful workmanship, a public
building with a tholos inscribed in a square structure
which buttresses at the corners the spring of a domical
covering. Other square rooms are preserved almost to the
impost of the roof. The 6th c. city, its houses with plinths
of stone and with the side walls of mudbrick, spread into
the valley and onto the two elevations. A district of potters on the SE hill dates to this period. The Hellenistic
city, whose large central square was supported by wide
terracing along the W end of the valley, in several areas
crowds right up to the circuit wall with its houses and
artisan shops. The Roman colony appears to have been
more restricted, even after the reconstructions of the
beginning of the Empire. Among these were the paved
square of the forum, the basilica, the office of the Augustales decorated with statues of the Julio-Claudian
emperors, and the small amphitheater set on the summit
of the N hill. From the early Middle Ages only the remains of a church and various tomb groupings are extant; after that, the area was completely abandoned.
The objects discovered in the city and in the cemeteries
that surround it, excavated for the most part during the
last century, are kept in the museums at Grosseto and
at Florence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Micali,
Antichi Popoli d'Italia
(1832)
M; G. Dennis,
Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria,
II (1883); R. Bianchi Bandinelli, “Roselle,”
Atene e
Roma 6 (1925); D. Levi in
Boll. Soc. Stor. Maremmana
3 (1926); C. Laviosa in
StEtr 27 (1959) see also vols.
28, 29, 31, 33, 37, 39
MPI; Naumann-Hiller,
RömMitt
66 (1959)
MPI see also vols. 69, 70; L. Banti,
Il mondo
degli Etruschi (1960); P. Bocci in
StEtr 31 (1963) see
also vols. 33, 39
PI;
EAA 6 (1965) s.v. Roselle, with complete bibliography.
C. LAVIOSA
