Archaeology tells us, too, that Etruscan civilization is a culture of cities. Ancient literary sources speak of a league of twelve Etruscan places ([Fig. 2.3]), most of which have yielded important archaeological material: from Veii, the great terracotta Apollo; at Cerveteri, Vetulonia, Orvieto, and Perugia, the remarkable rock-cut tombs; at Tarquinia, Vulci, and Chiusi, strikingly vivid tomb-paintings; at Bolsena, Roselle, and Volterra, mighty fortification walls; at Populonia, the slag-heaps from the iron works which made Etruria prosperous. But the most interesting, and some of the latest, evidence for Etruscan city-planning and fortifications comes from three sites, two in the northern Etruscan sphere of influence: Marzabotto on the River Reno, fifteen miles south of Bologna; Spina, near one of the seven mouths of the Po; and one in northern Etruria itself, Bolsena, ancient Volsinii.
Fig. 2.4 Marzabotto: grid plan. (J. B. Ward Perkins, “Early Roman Towns in Italy,” Fig. 5)
The first recorded excavations at Marzabotto date from the 1860’s, but the ruins had been known since 1550. The striking discovery at Marzabotto was that the site (dated by pottery in its necropolis to the late sixth or early fifth centuries B.C.) had a regular, oriented, rectangular grid of streets ([Fig. 2.4]), enclosing house-blocks (insulae) averaging 165 × 35 yards. The main north-south street, or cardo, and the main east-west street, or decumanus, were each over forty-eight feet wide, the minor streets one third as broad. The streets were paved, as they were not in Rome until 350 years later. Drains ran beneath all the streets except the reserved area (the Romans were to call it the pomerium) just inside the circuit-wall. The house-plans resemble closely the fourth-century ones discovered in the 1930’s at Olynthus, on the Chalcidice Peninsula in Greece, by an American expedition. The house-doors had locks and keys. A number of the buildings were recognizable as shops, with back rooms for living quarters.
Bearing in mind the sobering experience of Pigorini’s unwarranted claims about a grid plan for the terremare, we might be tempted to scepticism about Marzabotto, except for two facts: Brizio, the excavator, himself expressed doubts, as early as 1891, about Pigorini’s reconstruction; furthermore, a re-examination of the site in 1953 confirmed the authenticity of Brizio’s findings.
The city is dominated, on the high ground to the northwest, by an arx, bearing the footings, some of considerable size with impressive moldings, of five structures, temples or altars. One of them, facing south, and divided at the back into three cellae, is the prototype of the Roman Capitolium, decorated by an Etruscan artist, and dedicated to the triad Jupiter, Juno, Minerva (in Etruscan, Tin, Uni, Menerva). Until World War II, when they were wantonly destroyed, the finds in terracotta from the arx were preserved in the local museum. There were revetments, plaques forming a thin veneer of fired clay, with nail-holes for affixing them to the wooden frame of a typical Tuscan temple. They included archaic antefixes: ornamental terracotta caps to mask the unsightly ends of half-round roof tiles. Terracotta revetments like these, for wooden construction, continue to be canonical in Roman temples down to the first century B.C.: marble as a building material does not come into use until after the middle of the second century B.C. Under the lee of the arx was a necropolis with contents like those found in Gallic graves, mute evidence of the occupation of Marzabotto by the wave of Gauls that brought terror into Italy early in the fourth century B.C. In sum, Marzabotto is so perfect an example of an Etruscan town-site that it merits the name of the Etruscan Pompeii.
Marzabotto remained for many years the only known Etruscan site with a grid plan. Lying as it does outside Etruria proper, it was clearly the product of Etruscan expansion northward. Since 1922 reclamation by drainage canals has revealed the necropolis of another northern outpost, Spina, near one of the mouths of the Po. Working under the greatest difficulties from mud and seepage, archaeologists had unearthed the contents of no less than 1213 tombs, often finding golden earrings and diadems gleaming in the mud against the skulls in the burials. These precious ornaments, together with necklaces of northern amber, perfume-bottles in glass paste and alabaster from Egypt, and Greek black- and red-figured vases, are now the pride of the Ferrara Museum. Though the vases are Greek, both Etruscans and Greeks lived in the site together, as is proved by graffiti in both languages scratched on the pottery. The spot, commanding the Adriatic, would be the ideal port of entry for foreign luxury goods imported to satisfy the taste for display of wealthy Etruscans. Wealthy as they were, they were all equal in the sight of Charun: the skeletons were regularly found with small change, to pay the infernal ferryman, clutched in the bony fingers of their right hands. Pathetic graves of children contained jointed dolls and game counters.
Fig. 2.5 Spina, plan.
(S. Aurigemma, Il R. Museo di Spina in Ferrara, Pl. 4)