Thomas Ashby

“ A conception of the size of the whole necropolis may be gathered from the fact that nearly three thousand Etruscan inscriptions have come to light from Clusium and its district alone, while the part of Etruria north of it as far as the Arno has produced barely five hundred. Among the later tombs bilingual inscriptions are by no means rare, and both Etruscan and Latin inscriptions are often found in the same cemeteries, showing that the use of the Etruscan language only died out gradually. ”

“ Of tombe a fosso there are none, and the next stage is marked by the so-called tombe a ziro, in which the cinerary urn (often with a human head) is placed in a large clay jar (ziro, Lat. dolium) . These belong to the 7th century B.C., and are followed by the tombe a camera, in which the tomb is a chamber hewn in the rock, and which can be traced back to the beginning of the 6th century B.C. From one of the earliest of these came the famous François vase; another is the tomb of Poggio Renzo, or della Scimmia (the monkey) , with several chambers decorated with archaic paintings. ”

“ In imperial times we hear little of it, though its grain and grapes were famous. Christianity found its way into Clusium as early as the 3rd century, and the tombstone of a bishop of A.D. 322 exists. In A.D. 540 it is named as a strong place to which Vitiges sent a garrison of a thousand men.
Of pre-Roman or Roman buildings in the town itself there are few remains, except for some fragments of the Etruscan town walls composed of rather small rectangular blocks of travertine, built into the medieval fortifications. ”