NEPI (anc. Nepet or Nepete)  , a town and episcopal see of Italy, in the province of Rome, 71 m . S.W. of the town of Civita Castellana, 738 ft. above sea-level Pop . (root) 2973 . The site, surrounded by ravines and accessible only on the W., is naturally strong and characteristic of an Etruscan town; on this side there is a considerable fragment of the ancient Etruscan wall, built of rectangular blocks of tuf a (whether the rest of the site was protected by walls is uncertain), and a ruined castle, erected by Antonio da Sangallo the elder in 1499, for Pope Alexander VI., and restored by Pope Paul III . The municipio (town hall). is from the designs of Vignola, and contains some ancient inscriptions . The cathedral was burnt down by the French in 1789 and restored in 1831 . A mile and a half E.N.E. is the Romanesque church of S Elia, founded about A.D . 1000, with frescoes of the period . It contains a pulpit of the time of Pope Gregory IV . (827-844), the sculptures:of which are scattered about the church (F . Mazzanti in Nuovo Bollettino d'Archaeologia Cristiana, 1896, 34) . Nepet had become Roman before 386 B.C., when Livy speaks of it and Sutrium as the keys of Etruria .

In that

year it was surrendered to the Etruscans and recovered by the Romans, who beheaded the authors of its surrender . It became a colony in 383 B.C . It was among the twelve Latin colonies that refused further help to Rome in 209 B.C . After the Social War it became a municipium . It is hardly mentioned in imperial times, except as a station on the road (Via Amerina) which diverged from the Via Cassia near the modern Settevene and ran to Ameria and Tuder . In the 8th century A.D. it was for a short while the seat of a dukedom . See G . Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (London, 1883, i . 82) . (T .