VULSINII, situated on lake Bolsena, was one of the largest Etruscan towns. When after the Gallic war we find Etruria in arms, we must suppose that the Vulsinians were the soul of those undertakings. They were involved in hostilities with Rome even before the Gallic war; afterwards they are, for a time, not mentioned at all, whence their relations with Rome seem to have ceased; the frontier heights between Rome and Etruria were allowed to grow wild and to become covered with an impenetrable forest, as has been the case in modern times in the neighbourhood of Licca, on the frontier between Croatia and Turkish Bosnia. This is the _Ciminian forest_, the description of which in Livy is exaggerated in a ridiculous manner; it often happens that his great imaginative power leads him to make descriptions which would be excellent in a novel, but are ludicrous in a work where truth is the object. The history of Vulsinii is remarkable both for its facts and for its fables. It is a fact that ever since A.U. 440, and for a period of thirty years, Vulsinii offered a resistance to the Romans, which larger Etruscan towns recoiled from, and that at length Rome, in the height of her power, when she was the mistress of Italy, with difficulty conquered and then destroyed it. In later times it re-appears, for Sejanus was a native of Vulsinii. Metrodorus of Scepsis says that the real cause of the destruction of Vulsinii was the circumstance that the Romans wanted to obtain possession of 2000 magnificent statues which existed there. This is a fable, and no doubt the view of a Greek, which he attributed to the Romans. The latter were far from attaching such value to works of art; gold and silver were the things they sought after. The real reason was that Vulsinii, by its thirty years’ resistance, had distinguished itself above all Etruscan tribes; and the Romans, therefore, were determined to take the sap out of the tree, so as to prevent its ever growing again. The ancient inhabitants had called in the Romans against their slaves. These slaves, however, must not be understood to have been domestic slaves, but serfs, or the subdued ancient population, whom elsewhere the Etruscan magnates kept in servitude, while the Vulsinians had given them freedom and the franchise. The commonalty, having thus become free, did not stop short there, but, indignant at the ancient wrong done to them, they attacked their former tyrants; they did not, however, expel, but only weakened them. The latter then applied to Rome, and preferred having their town destroyed to living on a footing of equality with the commonalty. The correct spelling of the name is _Vulsinii_ and not _Volsinii_, for, as I have already mentioned, the Etruscans had no _o_; hence we find _Vulsinii_ in the Capitoline Fasti, though in genuine Roman words it is more correct to write _o_ after _v_, as _volnus_ and not _vulnus_.