- chapter 15: Etruria on the Po and the Adriatic Sea –
The unique trading system created by the Etruscans of the Po region was based on
availability, as return goods of agricultural products, particularly wheat (which, like all
great cities, Athens needed) and also of other products related to food supply such as
livestock, are mentioned in the literary sources and documented archaeologically. Pig-
raising was defi nitely a very common type of farming, as well as the rearing of smaller
animals, reminding us of the “chickens of the Adriatic,” already known to Hecataeus. It
is likely then that metal, too, carried weight in this kind of exchange, and it would have
come from Tyrrhenian Etruria.
MANTUAMantua, which is located north of the Po, was the northernmost of the Etruscan cities of
the Po Valley. It was the base for the routes from this area aimed primarily toward the
Italic populations (Veneti, Raeti and Celts of Golasecca) and later to transalpine Europe.
Its Etruscan origin is widely attested in the sources, but we know the city very much
from archaeological evidence. While a little further south, at the confl uence of the Po
and the Mincio, in the town of Forcello di Bagnolo San Vito, on a hillock of artifi cial
origin, there was brought to light a town of about 12 hectares whose relationship with
Mantua is still under discussion. This town is characterized by a regular grid of street-
blocks, located along roads or canals that intersect at right angles, by houses built with
perishable materials (wood and clay), and by intensive activities of production and trade.
The exploration also found in several locations the presence of a solid artifi cial terrace
fi tted with a palisade, an agger terreus (earthen embankment), which in addition to playing
a defensive role was also to protect the town from the frequent and intense fl ooding
of the Mincio. Here, as in Spina, in a far from favorable environment, the Etruscans
decided to found a settlement on the basis of connections, especially by river; on the
one hand to the Adriatic and the port of Spina, and on the other to the interior, with a
strategic role in the system of exchanges between the Mediterranean and Europe that the
Etruscans themselves had created and tightly controlled. The town has a regular plan,
like other newly founded cities in Etruria Padana, and was crossed by canals, which are
also navigable. One excavated area produced the traces of a house made of wood and
occupied by individuals dedicated to the most sophisticated practices of the symposium,
as evidenced by the Attic vases and wine amphorae found there.
THE END OF ETRURIA PADANAAt the beginning of the fourth century bc, Gauls from Europe and the Transpadane
region fell heavily on the territory of the Etruscans and the Umbrians and then pushed on
to Rome, which was besieged and taken. The invasion of the Gauls had strong, disruptive
effects, at least in its early stage, on the entire system of cities created by the Etruscans
in the Po Valley. This started with Marzabotto, which lost its urban identity, becoming
a sort of outpost to control the valley of the Reno. In Bologna, events were probably
less traumatic, at least in appearance. The city seems to maintain a prominent position
within the territory controlled by the Gauls, but in its urban structure signifi cant changes
occurred, including a clear general impoverishment. The Gauls undermined at its base the
urban model created by the Etruscans in the Po Valley with the consequent fragmentation
of the territory within, which both the routes and the characteristics and distribution of