- Armando Cherici –
due to the delayed appearance of the sun from behind the mountain that overlooks the
site. Such evidence – if it is not random – should not surprise us: centuries before, sacred
Sardinian buildings such as the well of Santa Cristina in Paulilatino (Oristano) allowed
the rays of the sun to penetrate the structure on the equinoxes, many centuries before the
oculus of the dome of the Pantheon would project them on the threshold at noon on the
summer solstice, and in the eleventh century ad, a hole in the dome of the Baptistery of
Florence followed the annual motion of the sun, as was observed even two centuries later
by Giovanni Villani (1.61).
I would like to emphasize that the foregoing has outlined only the merits of a
proposition: the documentation available for the Etruscan monuments does not allow
a reliable assessment of orientation with respect to the apparent motion of the sun
visible on the horizon. And as I emphasize, especially in this fi eld, a complete study
would require collaboration between several scientifi c disciplines. The great religious
buildings have long been, in human history, places of celestial observation for reasons
many and complex: their size ensured more accurate readings, their arrangement in the
environment enabled them to escape the demands of everyday life that impose conditions
on civic buildings, only the priests had the available time – and knowledge – to make a
complete series of observations, only the priests were able to transmit and consolidate the
results of such research, and with the ability to chart the year, essential in an agricultural
economy, the priests solidifi ed their power: the calendar in Rome was regulated by the
Pontifex Maximus, and it is precisely in 46 bc, when Julius Caesar holds this position,
that we have his fi rst reform, the Julian calendar that remained valid until 1582, when
again a pontifex, Pope Gregory XIII, reformed it.
From analyzing the literary sources, however, it seems highly probable that the
Etruscans had developed their own research and techniques for tracking and scanning the
calendar year. John the Lydian (De magistratibus 1.1W) informs us that he wrote at length
about this in his book De mensibus: part is unfortunately lost, but the space devoted to this
subject shows that the Etruscan culture had addressed the issue with elements that were
original and substantial enough to provide a wealth of material even in the Byzantium of
the fi fth-sixth centuries ad. And in fact, we know from Servius that the new day began,
in Etruria, with the dawn (ad Aen. 5.738, 6.535); from Varro and Macrobius that the
Roman Ides – a movable date that divided the month – were designed by Etruscans
(Lingua latina 6.28; Saturnalia 1.15); and the jurist Antistius Labeo stated that it would
have been their idea to reduce the days of February (in Lydus, De mensibus 3.10). If we
add to the latter two pieces of information, the ritual of the clavus annalis (“year-nail”)
that was celebrated in Volsinii (Livy 7.3; Festus s.v.), we may reasonably suspect that the
Etruscans had devoted much attention to the problems of the exact measurement of the
calendar year. The rite of the nail provides a chronological fi xed point before and after the
movable date of the Ides, and especially the shortening of February, which allowed them
to adapt the division of the months of the year, perhaps to coordinate with the luni-solar
calendar, which began in February with the fi rst full moon of spring: this most ancient,
pastoral calendar, was easier to follow but not suffi ciently accurate for the strict needs of
a complex agriculture. Choosing to assign a variable, shorter length to February, which
is thus confi gured as the last month, it also meant that there would be less intrusion on
any organized activity: in February farm-fi elds, trade and war are still closed down,^15
which is a socio-economic valuation because the need to link the length of the months
and of the year to the course of the sun is an expression of socio-economic order, and of