- chapter 34: The science of the Etruscans –
author mentions the Etruscan Pharmacopoeia (Aeschylus, El. Fragm. 2, Bergk. 2.571;
Theophrastus, Hist. plant. 9.15.1; Martianus Capella chap. 6.637), and Dioscorides
recalls thirteen plant species for which the Etruscans recognized medicinal value still
accepted today:^9 their identifi cation lies well within the scientifi c capacity of observation,
classifi cation and recording of data that we have proposed to identify as characteristic of
Etruscan culture, and here we may trace the transmission of the results of experiments
conducted on the use of a specifi c plant essence, which was identifi ed over time and
distinguished with its own name: an accomplished scientifi c process.
The hydraulic engineering expertise of the Etruscans, known from ancient sources
and archaeological evidence that is not easy to date,^10 pertains especially to the
organizational-technical realm and that of practical management: an impressive work
force must have been employed, and considerable care must then have been devoted
to the maintenance of complex works, above ground or underground, such as the
drainage systems of the Po delta, the Formello cuniculus (tunnel) at Veii (more than
half a kilometer long) or the Cloaca Maxima in Rome (with a course estimated at
slightly under a kilometer). But if familiarity with the site and the ready availability
of slave labor can explain works of such extension, still, some of their characteristics
imply a scientifi c-empirical process: through digging underground tunnels that could
not be supervised from the surface we can imagine that they had developed specifi c
geodetic techniques based on the ability to survey, to lay out alignments, to measure
angles, capabilities that were assumed theoretically in the doctrines of the limites, of
the founding of cities, of the consecration of temples and altars, and contained in the
procedures of the Libri rituales (Festus 358L).
Even here we are at a severe disadvantage in having, from this wisdom-heritage, only
tiny fragments that we continue to place – perhaps distorted by historical perspective
- in the world of Etruscan religious obsession. It is again Festus (351L), who helps us
to understand how a religious ceremony, the augural ritual, would in fact make the
building a geodesic landmark, that is, a point of reference for reading the landscape (and
sky): “stellam signifi care ait Ateius Capito [...] auctoritatem secutus P. Servilii auguris, stellam
quae ex lamella aerea adsimilis stellae locis inauguratis infi gatur.” In the altars and temples
consecrated according to augural rites was fi xed a bronze “star,”^11 that is a reference to the
two cross-pieces of the groma,^12 the surveying instrument that will allow the Romans to
plan the use of land in all its forms, from laying out the path of the roads, to the slope of
the aqueducts, and the centuriation (precise land division) of the fi elds. That there already
existed in the Etruscan period a cadastral awareness linked to the concept of terminatio,
the design of artifi cial boundaries, is demonstrated by the fi nds of inscribed cippi and
recorded in a document of the knowledge handed down from semi-divine fi gures: the
prophecy of Vegoia. It is perhaps also possible to go beyond an exclusively religious
interpretation here: the termini surely belong in the scope of the sacred, but this is also
true for Rome, where they are protected by Terminus and are celebrated in the Terminalia
festival. If from Roman culture there remained only this last piece of information, we
would have considered the Roman concept of termini only from a religious point of
view (as we tend to do for the Etruscans), whereas we know that they were the concrete
foundation of an agrimensorial science (that of measuring the land), which was based on
a remarkable ability for geometric abstraction and application, in teaching skills that in
Etruscan doctrine are vested in a priest, in his designating a templum in which to observe
and recognize the phenomena of nature.