- Hilary Becker –
Magistrate names are also found on all fi ve boundary stones marking the tular spural,
providing an eponymous date as well as signifying under whose authority these stones
were erected.^71 Added to this picture is the much earlier (seventh century bce) Tragliatella
cippus, which was found on the street that connected Caere to Veii.^72 Only part of the
inscription is legible but it mentions a maru, an offi cial who, if this stone was indeed a
boundary marker, was also certifying a boundary.^73 These boundary markers certainly had
religious import, in that they were marking pomeria but the inscribed names underscore
the legal and political importance of these boundaries and inform us as to the activities
of these offi cials.
Finally, a tular rasnal inscription found about 1.5 kilometers from the city of Cortona
probably once marked the road leading into Perugia.^74 This marker has been traditionally
translated as, “boundaries of the Etruscan people,” and thought to represent an ethnic
boundary separating Etruria from Umbria. However, many scholars have of late balked
at the idea that the boundaries of not even just the city-state, but Etruria itself would lie
nearly at the “gates” of Cortona.^75 We return again to the term rasna, this time without
the accompanying term mechl. If rasna means “people”, what then are the boundaries of
the people?
Colonna has recently suggested that tular rasnal does not mark the boundaries of
Etruria, or even the urban pomerium of Cortona, but the city’s immediate ager. This limit
is comparable to the ager Romanus antiquus, the boundary that was three to six miles
outside Rome, providing an additional layer of defense; it remained largely fi xed over
time.^76 The reason that the term rasna applies to this boundary may be then because
this area is larger than city alone, and contains the resources that are necessary for basic
sustenance and defense; this is the area of the populus, specifi cally those “people” who are
capable of defending the city.^77
As with the magisterial title zilath mechl rasnal, the meaning of the term rasna in these
cases has great political import for understanding how the city-state was conceived and
governed. The jurisdiction of the Liber Linteus was described above in concentric rings,
using a political institutional vocabulary of the city and its larger territory, with the cilth
(the citadel or arx), the methlum (city), and the spura (city-state); the Liber Linteus does
not refer to rasna as a part of these jurisdictional rings, but if this interpretation of the
boundary stone from Cortona is correct, we might add in an additional territorial division.
Maggiani best explained the signifi cance of these boundaries to Etruscan vocabulary, when
he wrote that, “it is highly probable that each of these political-territorial institutional
situations matched a well-defi ned network of administrative offi ces, which for the most
part eludes us, especially as regards diachrony”.^78
Etruscan boundaries were so important that they were even a part of the Etruscan
mythological canon, wherein there is the nymph Vegoia and her prophecy, which
deals with the boundaries that separate private property. This prophecy was said to be
transmitted from the nymph, and was presumably transmitted through Etruscan culture
and came to be recorded among the Latin agrimensores.^79 This text sets the penalties for
moving property boundary markers (termini) and reveals a real anxiety surrounding the
boundaries between people’s property. In the prophecy, Jupiter had helped to survey and
set the limits of fi elds, marking the borders with boundary stones as a check against
human avarice and people who move the boundary markers for their own benefi t. To
discourage such behavior, penalties are detailed for the slave (servus) (and potentially his
master [dominus]) who commits such an offense.^80