- chapter 16: Etruscans in Campania –
Tarquinius Superbus (509 bc), the last Etruscan king of Rome, and the establishment of the
Republic following a war conducted against the city of Porsenna, king of Chiusi; in the Battle
of Ariccia of 504 bc, the Cumaean condottiero defeats Arruns, son of Porsenna, and upon his
return to Cumae succeeds in seizing power. The age of Aristodemus signals both at Cumae
and at Capua a period of development, grandiose public works and expansion of production
in the atmosphere of an inseparable relationship with Cumae, attested by the adoption by
the elites of the same ideologies and of similar categories of luxury. Special importance is
expressed in the production of bronze dinoi (cauldrons) with lids surmounted by fi gural
scenes made of bronze fi gures in the round. The best-known but challenging example of
this class is the so-called “Barone lebes,” dated to the end of the sixth century bc (Fig. 16.8,
no. 2). The conclusion of this phase of artisanal expansion and the contemporaneous waning
of the Campanian architectonic system corresponds to a comprehensive crisis in the history
of the city and of Campania (Cerchiai 2010 with bibliography).
FROM THE SECOND BATTLE OF CUMAE (474 BC) TO
THE ETHNOGENESIS OF THE CAMPANIANSThe historic events that signal defi nitively the end of an epoch and the opening of a
different phase in the history of the region are the assassination of Aristodemus (484
bc) and the second “Battle of Cumae” (474 bc). The Etruscan defeat ends the privileged
relationship between Etruria and Campania and the naval power of Syracuse is affi rmed
along with the role of the new foundation of Neapolis. The crisis that follows is refl ected
in the scope of a much larger process that affects the Tyrrhenian portion of Etruria,
Latium, and Campania, and signals the end of Etruscan thalassocracy in the Tyrrhenian
and the progressive assertion of other realities in the Italic world (Cerchiai 2010 with
bibliography). As a consequence of these events at Cumae and Capua, there occurs a
phenomenon of contraction and of oligarchic closing of ranks.
The expression of dynamics of conservatism and of social strife acquires an ethnic
fl avor and seems to be documented on the archaeological level by radical actions of urban
restructuring, with the appearance of true and proper areas (formal cities or colonies) that
were refounded, and by the concomitant building up or reconstructing of fortifi cations.
A phenomenon of accentuated discontinuity seems signaled in the case of Capua by the
literary tradition and by archaeological evidence that indicates a signifi cant cessation in
occupation within the settlement (the depletion of the “Siepone” quarter) and the erection
of fortifi cations. We are probably dealing with a true and proper act of refounding on
the part of a restricted oligarchy of Etruscan origin that might be paralleled in the new
designation of Volturnum recorded by Livy and in the Etruscan name Velthur documented
in the Tabula Capuana, associated with the erudite tradition of vultur, the vulture that
is linked to auspices in the rite of inauguration. A similar sequence of alterations of
the urban plan with the building of fortifi cations and of a new residential quarter is
documented both at Pontecagnano and at Fratte. The dominance of conservative forces
from the old aristocracies of^ Etruscan and Greek origin results in the escalation of ethnic-
social tensions within urban structures that acquire the appearance of claims of “ethnic
self-consciousness.” The historical-archaeological panorama of Campania from the fi fth
century bc on seems dominated by the confl ict between the two principal ethnic groups
that emerged from the reorganization of the Italic populations of the region and the
neighboring areas, the Campanians and the Samnites. The ethnogenesis of the “people of