CLUSIUM (mod. Chiusi, q.v.), an ancient town of Italy, one of the 12 cities of Etruria, on an isolated hill at the South end of the valley of the Clanis (Chiana). It first appears in Roman history at the end of the 7th century B.C., when it joined the other Etruscan towns against Tarquinius Priscus; and at the end of the 6th century B.C. it placed itself, under its king Lars Porsena, at the head of the attempt to re-establish the Tarquins in Rome. At the time of the invasion of the Gauls in 391 B.C., the Roman en voys who had come to intercede for the people of Clusium with the Gauls took part in the battle which followed; and this de termined the Gauls to march on Rome. Clusium came under Roman supremacy before 225 B.C., when the Gauls advanced thus far. The Via Cassia, constructed after 187 B.C., passed just be low the town. In imperial times its grain and grapes were famous. Christianity found its way into Clusium as early as the 3rd cen tury. In A.D. 540 it is named as a strong place to which Vitiges sent a garrison of a thousand men.
Fragments of the Etruscan town walls are built into the medi aeval fortifications. Under the town extends an elaborate system of rock-cut passages, probably drains. Extensive Etruscan ceme teries surround the city on all sides. The prevalence of cremation in the early period led to the development of 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). This was followed by the tombe a camera, in which the tomb is a chamber hewn in the rock. From one of the earliest of these came the famous Francois vase; another is the Tomba della Scimmia (the monkey), with a painted frieze in the central chamber. The most remark able group of tombs is, however, that of Poggio Gaiella, 3m. to the N., where the hill is honeycombed with chambers in three storeys, partly connected by a system of passages. Other note worthy tombs are those of the Granduca, with a single subter ranean chamber carefully constructed in travertine, and contain ing eight cinerary urns of the same material; of Vigna Grande; of Colle Casuccini (the ancient stone door of which is still in working order), with two chambers, containing paintings repre senting funeral rites. Nearly 3,00o 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 500. Among the later tombs bilingual inscriptions are by no means rare, and both Etruscan and Latin inscriptions are often found in the same cemeteries. Many inscriptions are painted upon tiles which closed the niches containing the cinerary urns. In Roman times the territory of Clusium seems to have extended as far as Lake Trasimene. The local museum contains important objects from the necropolis, bucchero, sepulchral urns, painted vases, and stone cippi with reliefs.
Two Christian catacombs have been found near Clusium, one in the hill of S. Caterina near the railway station, the inscriptions of which seem to go back to the 3rd century; another 1m. to the E. in a hill on which a church and monastery of S. Mustiola stood, which goes back to the 4th century, among its numerous inscriptions being one with the date A.D. 303, and the tombstone of L. Petronius Dexter, bishop of Clusium, who died in A.D. 322. To the west and north-west of Chiusi-at Cetona, Sarteano, Chianciano and Montepulciano other Etruscan cemeteries have been dis covered; the objects from them have mostly passed to large museums or been dispersed.
See R. Bianchi-Bandinelli in Monumenti dez Lincei for a detailed account of the tombs; and cf. D. Randall Maclver, Villanovans and Early Etruscans (Oxford, 1924). (T. A.)