ARTENA
1. A city of the Volscians, known only from the account in Livy (Liv. 4.61) of its siege and capture by the Romans in B.C. 404. It appears that it had a very strong citadel, which held out long after the town had fallen, and was only taken by treachery. Both town and citadel were destroyed, and the name never again occurs. Gell and Nibby have supposed the remains of ancient walls found on the summit of the hill above Monte Fortino, still called La Civita, to be those of Artena; but they are regarded by Abeken, with more probability, as belonging to the far more important city of Ecetra. (Gell, Top. of Rome, p. 110; Nibby, Dintorni, vol. i. pp. 263—265; Abeken, Mittel Italien, p. 75.) [ECETRA.]
2. From the same passage of Livy we learn that there was another small town of the name in Etruria, between Caere and Veii, and a dependency of the former city. It was destroyed by the Roman kings, and no other trace of its existence preserved. The positions ascribed to it by Gell and Libby (ll. cc.) are wholly conjectural. [E.H.B]