Potters at Orvieto and …

…the dozen kingdoms of the Etruscan league aid the Athenians in their expedition.

Etruscan Volsinii (Velzna or Velusna; or sometimes in Latin Volsinii Veteres—Old Volsinii) appears to have been one of the most powerful cities of Etruria, the cult center of the god Voltumna, and is doubtless one of the twelve that formed the Etruscan confederation, as Volsinii is designated by Livy and Valerius Maximus as one of the capita Etruriae ("heads of Etruria").

It is described by Juvenal as seated among well-wooded hills.

Volsinii first appears in history after the fall of Veii (396 BCE).

The Volsinienses, in conjunction with the Salpinates, taking advantage of a famine and pestilence that has desolated Rome, make incursions into the Roman territory in 391 BCE.

They are defeated: eight thousand are made prisoners; but they purchase a twenty years' truce on condition of restoring the booty they had taken, and furnishing the pay of the Roman army for a year.

The Etruscans of Volsinii appear next in 310 BCE, when, in common with the rest of the Etruscan cities, except Arretium (modern Arezzo), they take part in the siege of Sutrium (modern Sutri), a city in alliance with Rome.

This war is terminated by the defeat of the Etruscans at the First Battle of Lake Vadimo (310 BCE), a major shock to their power.

The consul Publis Decius Mus had captured several of the Volscinian fortresses in 307 BCE.

In 295 BCE, Lucius Postumius Megellus ravages their territory and defeats them under the walls of their own city, slaying twenty-eight hundred of them; in consequence of which they, together with Perusia (modern Perugia) and Arretium, purchase a forty years' peace by the payment of a heavy fine.

The Etruscans of Volsinii, with their allies the Vulcientes, again take up arms against Rome, but this attempt ends in their final subjugation in 280 BCE.

Pliny tells an absurd story, taken from the Greek writer Metrodorus of Scepsis, that the object of the Romans in capturing Volsinii was to make themselves masters of two thousand statues that it contained.

The story, however, suffices to show that the Volsinians had attained great wealth, luxury, and art.

This is confirmed by Valerius Maximus, who also adds that this luxury was the cause of their ruin, by making them so indolent that they at length suffered the management of their commonwealth to be usurped by slaves.

The attempted revolution apparently began with the admission of freedmen into the army, which must have been in 280 BCE.

The freedman of Volsini have become a powerful plebeian class, having subsequently been allowed members in the Senate and to hold public offices.

They seem to have acquired majorities, using them to shape the law.

Other slaves are set free; they give themselves all the privileges formerly reserved to the Etruscans, such as the rights of intermarriage and inheritance, and aggressively insist on them against the will of the Etruscan patrician class.

There are complaints of rape and robbery.

When the revolutionary party begins to pass laws limiting patrician political activity, certain of the patricians send a clandestine embassy to Rome in 265 BCE asking for military assistance.

On their return they are executed for treason, but shortly a Roman army arrives to lay siege to the town.

The subsequent conflict is intense; the consul and commanding general, Quintus Fabius Gurges, is a casualty.

Gurges’ successor, Marcus Valerius Flaccus, after receiving the surrender of Volsinii through its starvation in 264, razes the town and executes the leaders of the plebeian party.

The first display of gladiators at Rome in 264 is believed to have featured now-captive freedmen from Volsinii.

The Romans rescue and restore the remaining Etruscans of Volsinii, but decide it is necessary to remove them from that location to a new city on the shore of Lake Bolsena.

The new city has none of the natural defenses of the old and is not in any way sovereign.

The portable wealth from the old city is carried off to Rome.

If the old city was in fact Orvieto, it cannot have remained unoccupied for long; however, it is never again to be a threat to Rome.

The new city soon assimilates to Roman culture, including language.

Thomas Aquinas had completed his first regency at the studium generale in 1259, and had left Paris so that others in his order could gain this teaching experience.

He had returned to Naples where he was appointed as general preacher by the provincial chapter of September 29, 1260.

He had been called to Orvieto in September 1261 as conventual lector responsible for the pastoral formation of the friars unable to attend a studium generale.

In Orvieto, Thomas has completed his Summa contra Gentiles, written the Catena aurea, (The Golden Chain) and had produced works for Pope Urban IV such as the liturgy for the newly created feast of Corpus Christi and the Contra errores graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks).

…Martin IV is crowned instead at Orvieto on March 23, 1281.