- chapter 36: Etruscan town planning and related structures –
but there are a few exceptions. As is often the case in a systematic type of approach –
necessarily simplifi ed and simplifying – there is always “a maverick,” something hard
to fi t in since it is extraneous to the schemes worked out. In the case of Steingräber’s
study the division between the “public” area and the “religious” space is probably not as
distinct as proposed, for what was public had a strong sacred connotation, and vice versa.
It was therefore at times diffi cult to establish the boundaries – a term that in this place is
more than appropriate – and a private sphere that had both sacred and public overtones
at one and the same time is a valid possibility. The most obvious example is the valence
given to the boundary, as a spatial caesura, where the terminus is of such importance that
beginning with Numa,^9 the person who moved the position of the boundary stone was
considered sacrum or accursed: Numa Pompilius statuit eum qui terminus exarrasset et ipsum
et boves sacros esse (Numa Pompilius decreed that who moved – uprooted – a boundary
cippus (marker) would he himself and the oxen become sacer). Sacer, that is, given over to
the gods, no longer belonging to the human sphere:^10 quidquid quod deorum habetur.^11 The
connotation of sacer is in any case negative and prerogatives held by the other members
of the community^12 are lost. The late prophesy of the nymph Vegoia is just as clear and
is proof of how attention to the boundary markers, the ownership of the land and the
relative questions were still very topical even centuries later.^13
At this point the way in which Colonna organized the lexical elements cilth,
spura, methlum, rasna and tuthina can help us understand the solutions adopted by the
Etruscans in defi ning different areas (fi elds), all with a precise physical and public-sacred
connotation,^14 probably marked by cippi. The correlation between spura and tota in the
Gubbio tablets^15 has already been identifi ed, where spura is to be taken in its meaning
of “civic,” within which the cilth assumes a restricted and sacred connotation, perhaps
comparable to the area of the arx. Methlum has been identifi ed as the probable indication
of the urbs, different from the spura but more complex than the arx. The term was found
on a cippus from Bolsena located at one of the entrance roads. There would then be a spura
with subdivisions in methlum and cilth: relative territory – county – city limits and down-
town, with less important satellite centers, pagi, gravitating as a whole around a specifi c
polis, which, if the term is acceptable, could have been the tuthina.
An inscription from Bolsena concerning a gift to Selvans the god of boundaries
(tularias) by Aule Havranas also includes as a parathetic player a tuthina apana, interpreted
by Wylin, I believe correctly, as a paternal pago.^16 So here we have a triad that oscillates
between the private (Aule Havranas), the divinity (Selvans of the boundary cippi) and
a pagus, a settlement known to be of a public nature. Another interesting element is
provided by the travertine cippus from Perugia,^17 found in 1822 on the hill of San Marco.
The inscription is in the alphabet used in northern inland Etruria and dates to the
Hellenistic period. The text regards a legal deed between two families: the Velthina,
probably Perugian, and the Afuna, from the Chiusi area. They divide the property or
the use of the property in which the family tomb of the aristocrats of Perugian origin is
located. What interests us here is that in line 8 there is explicit mention of tularu, the
boundary markers, obviously indispensable elements in a legal act that provides for the
respect and functional presence.
The foundation rites, as taken from the literary sources,^18 are scrupulously organized
in a precise series of consecutive acts: the precatio was the formal addressing of the deity
or deities in a ritual. The word is related by etymology to “prayer,” and Pliny says that
the slaughter of a sacrifi cial victim is ineffectual without precatio, the recitation of the