- Armando Cherici –
in which he lives, an attempt which, for the fi rst time in the history of thought, takes an
organized form. In an era so ancient, the answer can only be religious, yet the different
cosmogonies can give us clues to a crucial aspect of “pre-scientifi c” thought on how a
culture has observed the world around them. And the Etruscan cosmogony handed down
to us by the Suda confi rms a mindset and a mode of observation – and cataloging – that
are paralleled in other manifestations of this culture.
The Universe and Earth are not perceived and interpreted from a spiritual point of
view, there do not appear the primal forces of the Greek theogony, there is a creator,
as in Plato, but not his world of ideas: the primary attention is focused on the physical
world. Of the creative act – presented as religious certainty – it evaluates and ranks what
is physically perceptible, identifying coherent sets: the terrestrial fi re is correlated to
the celestial “great fi res” (similia similibus, “like to like”), animals are classifi ed with an
internal logic that works up to modern science: those that fl y, those who walk or crawl
(quadrupeds and reptiles), those that swim. The waters of the sea are distinguished from
those of the land (thus, salt- and fresh-waters).
We rely on a sample of only a few lines that have survived the overall disappearance
of a great written culture. Although they have perhaps been interpolated, with all due
prudence we can assume that these necessarily meaningful words, dictated by a “wise
man,” confi rm some features of Etruscan culture, features that we fi nd in other sources
and that can defi nitely be classifi ed as pre-scientifi c basics: direct observation of nature,
the classifi cation of its phenomena, the development of a series, the fi nal compilation
of corpora, handbooks that interpret from a religious perspective every phenomenon
visible in the world, from the shape and direction of lightning to the fl ight of birds to
the appearance of the entrails of sacrifi ced animals. Certainly the results are far from a
scientifi c conclusion, and natural phenomena are seen as divine signs, caused or created
by the gods, but the intent in studying them is not simply religious, but rather a magico-
religious approach to achieving human advantage through interpretation and subsequent
action. Of religion we have the evidence of rituals that refer to their collective needs and
fears and contingencies, but we do not fi nd devotion; of magic – and of science – we
have fi rst interpretation, then manipulative intent: a god is not induced to kindness
with piety, or prayer, but one may determine the position that will serve to remove
an obstacle, or create a condition that can be fulfi lled, forcing the fulfi llment of an act
indicated by data from the phenomena observed and classifi ed in a specifi c corpus.^3
Observation, cataloging, recording, the ability to use data from any person who has access
to them, interpretation, channeling forces or events to human benefi t: these are essential
components of science itself, even if accrued and managed with complex incentives and
magico-religious intent. And in fact, in the same Latin sources, not least the passage of
Seneca (Quaest. nat. 2.32.2) usually taken as a symbol of the religious obsession of this
people, we witness that the Etruscans have unwittingly formed their observations into a
complete scientifi c procedure.
However, let us begin with a passage in which the scientifi c value of a typically Etruscan
discipline, haruspicy, is told to us explicitly, by a “technical” author, Vitruvius. The
Roman architect records the method for choosing the site for a new human settlement:
For the ancestors, having sacrifi ced sheep which were grazing in those places where
towns or permanent camps were being established, used to examine the livers, and
if they were pale and infected the fi rst time, they would sacrifi ce another group,