A Short history of Siena

«Beaten up and tricked by the celebration of a false funeral during his official visit to Sena Julia, which was a small military colony in the Tuscia area, Senator Manlio Patruito reported the insult suffered to Rome. The Roman Senate decided to punish the main offenders, and to rigorously reprimand the Sienese for their lack of respect for authority. This episode, which took place in 70 BC at the time of Emperor Vespasian, was narrated by Tacitus in the 4th volume of his Historiae, and marked the singular historiographic beginning of the Sienese community, whose inhabitants were part of the Oufentina tribe. The earlier meagre sources - forgetting the more or less enchating legends on the origins of the city - suggested the presence of a small Etruscan settlement, bordering on the territories of Volterra, Arezzo and Chiusi, where the Roman military colony had settled at the time of Augustus. While we have to wait until the epoch of Graziano and Theodosius to establish with reasonable certainty the existence of the Sienese diocese, after the period of evangelization of this area by Ansano, a young martyr, who took the first place in the canonical order of Sienese patron saints, followed by Crescenzio, Savino and Vittore...» (Giuliano Catoni)