In another part the rugged extent of the rocks, with the bushes, and the difficulty of carrying away the blocks, have preserved portions of the ancient wall of the Etruscan Veii. These are ten or eleven feet in length, and some more than five feet in height. One of the most singular facts attending this wall, is a bed of three courses of bricks, each three feet in length, intervening between the lower course of the wall, and the rock upon which it is built. It requires only a very moderate knowledge of the subject to convince us, that the construction of this wall has no resemblance to anything remaining at Rome, nor yet at Nepi, Falerii, or Tarquinii, where the ramparts were in smaller blocks, and nearly regular. The style of the fortifications at Veii bespeak a much higher antiquity.
Added to what we have already stated, there are vestiges of ancient fortifications and aqueducts, and traces of roads; also fragments of an ancient citadel. There are, also, tombs in a glen near, and upon the rock, called Isola, exhibiting every kind of sepulchral excavation; caves, columbaria, and tombs without number. This was, no doubt, the metropolis of Veii.
There are, also, the remains of other tumuli, which appear to have been the common receptacle of those slain in battle, rather than of remarkable individuals. These all mark the date of Veii in the elder times; but a statue of Tiberius found here, of course denotes the age of the empire.
“The remains of this once populous Etruscan city,” says Sir William Gell, “have, in the course of the last ten years, suffered so lamentably from spoliations, perpetrated or permitted by the owners of the soil, that it is necessary to take particular notice of such relics as still attest the existence of a place of so much importance in the early history of Italy.”
This he has done, in his work entitled “The Topography of Rome, and its Vicinity;” and from that work we glean most that is stated in this abstract[309].
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Dodwell.
[2] Barthelemy.
[3] Dodwell.