- Giuseppe Sassatelli and Elisabetta Govi –
fabric, to the north of the monumentalized northern entrance of the road that came from
Bologna. The temple, a large peripteral structure (35.50 x 21.75 m), which is connected
to important developments in the Tyrrhenian area (Vulci and Pyrgi), was probably a
combination of political and social center for the citizens, like the agora of Greek cities.
The town had important infrastructure that ensured a high quality of life for its
citizens: wells present in all homes; channels to the sides of roads to ensure the smooth
fl ow of rainwater, a water system structured as a castellum aquae for purifi ed water from a
natural spring with special settling basins that drained it clean into the city below. To the
north and east of the urban area were located two necropoleis, on both sides of two major
roads into the city, one that came from Bologna and the other from Tyrrhenian Etruria.
To the north-east on the small plateau overlooking the city was placed the acropolis with
a complex of religious buildings (temples and their altars). One of these in particular, a
podium-altar with stairs and a central well, which was found fi lled with the remains of
sacrifi ces; it corresponds to the mundus (offering pit) for worship of the infernal deities
and sacred in particular to Dis-Pater, a deity to whom Tarchon had dedicated the newly
founded cities in Etruria Padana (Fig. 15.19).
SPINAThe Etruscan town of Spina is the answer to the early Greek presence in the northern
Adriatic, well documented in the fi rst half of the sixth century bc at Adria. Founded
around 540 bc, Spina is certainly an Etruscan town (the epigraphic evidence shows that
the majority of its inhabitants spoke and wrote in Etruscan), despite the presence of many
individuals of other ethnic groups, especially Greeks, and as such it seems to inherit the
function of control over the Adriatic port, Verucchio, that in previous ages had exerted
but now entered a phase of relative decline. With Spina a new chapter in relations with
the Greek world, and especially Athens, opens to the Etruscans of the Po Valley.
Figure 15.19 Acropolis of Marzabotto, altar D (Soprintendenza per i Beni
Archeologici dell’Emilia Romagna).