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Part II.

The Abodes Of Man.

L' Étrurie, par la civilisation Romaine, a hâté la civilisation de l' humanité toute entière, ou du moins elle lui a laissé par une tongue suite des siècles l' empreinte de son caractère.

Humboldt, Cosmos (II.).

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Section I.

Various Finds.

Taking Bologna as a centre, the whole circle, with a radius of 22 kilometres, and especially the line of the VIA AEMILIA, appears to be one vast repository of Etruscan antiquities. As early as 1848 Sig. G. Dozza discovered on the Ronzano hill, 4 kilometres westsouthwest of the city, various bronzes; a sword, with broken blade and handle; two bridlebits, with small figures of horses; and a fragment of the fusiform and hatted rod before alluded to. Three years afterwards Sig. P. Calari unearthed human skeletons, bronzes, and coloured glass, near Sta. Maddalena di Cazzano, 15 kilometres on the riverine plains to the eastnortheast. In 1854 the property of Marchese Amorini, 13 kilometres eastsoutheast of Bologna, and 6½ from Villanova, disclosed a sepulchre containing FIBVLAE, and a hairpin adorned with glass. In this neighbourhood an estate belonging to the Marchese Lodovico

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Mariscotti yielded such a quantity of laminated gold wire ‑‑ an article found for the first time in the Bolognese ‑‑ that it was secretly sold for a good round sum, and to the great loss of archaeologists: presently an ossuary disclosed the true character of the find. In 1860 a slab and pebble rivetted kistvaen came to light in the parish Delle Lagune, where the small torrential Rio Mavor breaks through the Castlar gorge. It contained black pottery; clay dumbbells (see Section IV) marked with a wedge (V); hairpins; and a score of bronze FIBVLAE adorned with amber and figures of birds. Six kilometres farther from the capital, in the parish of Canovella, nearly opposite Marzabotto, appeared two crescent shaped CVLTRI or NOVACVLAE, and brooches (FIBVLAE), with beads of glass and amber. At Ramonte, in the opposite mountains of Medelana, were found pottery; circular bones with engraved lines; two bridlebits; a fusiform, hatted rod; and a bronze ladle with a handle like an S inverted. In 1865 at Pontecchio, along the Reno, about 7 kilometres distant from Bologna, and beyond Ronzano, a kistvaen, resembling those of Villanova, was opened by Sig. C. Monari, who gave the contents to the Communal

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Museum; here also Sig. Marconi found a crescent shaped cutting instrument. In 1866, below the hills near the Ghiaie torrent, close to the village of Bazzano, 22 kilometres westnorthwest of FELSINA appeared ossuaries, fusiform rods, cylinders, FIBVLAE, stamped pottery, and other articles. At the Comune di Liano, near the VIA AEMILIA, in 1869, ossuaries and bronzes, and shortly afterwards other similar articles brought from the mountainous parish of Riosto, distant 15 kilometres, became the property of Doctor L. Foresti.

Finds were made inside the new and outside the ancient city, at the Piazzale San Domenico; in the Via di San Petronio Vecchio; in the Cà de' Tortorelli (now Palazzo Malvasia); at the Pradello; and in the Arsenale Militare. The three latter are especially interesting, because they disclose the remains of Old FELSINA to the broad daylight of the nineteenth century; they define the eastern, western, and southern limits of what Pliny, describing the Padan or eighth region of Italy, calls (N. H., III, 20) BONONIA FELSINA VOCITATA CVM PRINCEPS HETRVRIAE ESSET. [Footnote 1: The translators, Bostock and Riley (Bohn, 1855), remark (volume I, page 241) upon the word BONONIA: The modern Bologna stands on its site, and there are but few remains of antiquity to be seen. A score of years has brought with it many changes.] And here I would warn my readers that

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Bologna is split, Etruscologically speaking, into two camps. These, under Gozzadini, the man of science and literature, everywhere see the necropolis and the sepulchre. Those, headed by Zannoni, the man of practice and experiment, find remains of house and home where their opponents detect only the long home. This difference will be especially noticed when we visit Marzabotto.

The Tortorelli mine was struck in 1856 when Count Ercole Malvasia was strengthening the foundations of the old palace (Number 262) to support new buildings. The site is the Via Maggiore, doubtless a section of the VIA AEMILIA, outside the two chief leaning towers, Asinelli and Garisanda. These donkeys' ears formed in the sixteenth century the Ravennese gateway, which was probably added to the city in the eleventh century. Of the Torr dai Asnie I may remark that it is the seventeenth tallest building in the civilised world ‑‑ only 2½ metres lower than Saint Paul's. A local poet sings of it as follows: ‑‑

In sta Città al fra quel d' i Strazzarno

Ch' ha la Torr dai Asnie, e la Mozza indrito.

The Tortorelli excavations were directed and

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described in detail by Count Gozzadini (Di alcuni antichi sepolcri felsinei, volume IV, pages 74 and following, in the Neapolitan paper Giambattisto Vico, 1857, and in the opuscule Di alcuni sepolcri della necropoli felsinea, Bologna: Fava e Garagnani, 1868). Remains judged to be Roman were found at the usual depth of two metres; eight sepulchres, of which three were intact, lay one metre below their successors, and extended two metres in depth, forming the normal total of five below the actual surface. Judging from the known cemeteries about Bologna, a small part of this mine has been worked and much is still hidden underground. The mortuary vases were eight ossuaries, sometimes set obliquely; POTORIA, possibly, for the SILICERNIVM; [footnote 1: this mortuary feast, which survives in our cake and wine, consisted of meat, bread, eggs, beans, lettuce, lentils, salt, and cakes, especially the MVSTACEA and the CRVSTVLA (Kirchm., DE FVNER. and the rest, page 521)] the CRATER of purely Etruscan shape, and the various tazze, cups, cup covers, and accessories of the tomb. Many were beautifully shaped, wheelmade, hand smoothed, polished not varnished, and adorned with graffiti. [Footnote 2: The English reader, accustomed to our sense of this word ‑‑ scrawlings or scribblings on walls and so on ‑‑ will note that in this paper it also is used after the Italian fashion (graffito being opposed to liscio, smooth) for denoting such marks as toolings on pottery.] The metals are represented

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by a single piece of oxidised iron, arguing a higher antiquity than the more distant tombs; and by many bronzes, crescent shaped knives, fusiform rods, FIBVLAE, nails, and an ARMILLA: a bit of amber, and part of the dorsal column of a young pike

The Malvasia Calves.

(Exos Lucius, Linnaeus), which may have contributed towards the banquet, were also picked up. The most curious article is a STELA, showing, in very flat relief, two calves erect and facing gardant, each

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with the near forehoof on the bracts of a CAVLIS. The shape is to the highest degree archaic. This curious monument was presented by Count Ercole Malvasia to the Archaeological Museum of the Municipality.

At the Pradello (Pratello) on the opposite or western side of FELSINA, within the modern gate Santa Isaia, upon the properties Borghi Mamo and Casa Grandi, appeared in 1873 certain remains, which Count Gozzadini judged, from a gold and figured mirror, to be sepulchres (Rapporto alla R. Deputazione di stor. patria per la Romagna, 1873), and which Cav. Zannoni seems to have established as huts (Cenno sugli Scavi della Via del Pratello and the rest: Bologna, Gamberni e Parmeggiani, 1873). The man of practice compares them with the five capanne (hovels) of the Mamolo find to the south, and with the 216 neolithic, and the 16 bronze age huts discovered by Cav. Concezio Rosa in the Vibrata river valley, [footnote 1: this Abruzzian Valley extends from the Apennines at Montefiore, or Civitella del Tronto, to the Adriatic. A description of the finds, especially a fish hook and lilliputian knives, will be found in pages 25‑27 of the Congrès. See also Professor Capellini's L' età della pietra nella Valle della Vibrata. Quarto, three plates: Bologna, 1871] which also yielded traces of the early iron period.

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The 29 Bolognese huts, distant about a metre from the road, mostly circular and some oblong, occupied an area sunk one metre below the actual road and 0∙80 metre (= 2 feet 7∙5 inches) under the ancient horizon, which may be called the virgin soil. A few were isolated, others communicated by passage or corridor 0∙85 metre (= 2 feet 9∙5 inches) wide, and a little raised above the level of the flooring; and the latter in both kinds showed either dark grey earth, chiefly animal matter, contrasting with the yellow calcareous soil, based on water‑rolled pebbles, sometimes in double layers, which suggest that the pavement of the kistvaen was a mere imitation of the house. Some of the hovel foundations had holes to admit the perpendicular supports of the conical or the pent shaped roofs; and the walls were probably wattle daubed with clay, the adobe of which we shall presently see a specimen. Two huts had steps descending from north to south, and number 25 seemed to be provided to the west with that manner of porch which the man of central Africa loves. The earthen flooring carried in depth from 0∙45 metre (= 2 foot 5∙7 inches) to 0∙80 metre (= 2 feet 7∙5 inches), and a section showed a number of small strata, sometimes separated

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by thin layers of sand. Each bed was a conglomerate of remains. Amongst them, the principal were the AES RVDE, mostly scoriform, then the laminated and the cylindrical; bronzes, FIBVLAE, plain and decorated; women's ornaments; and a fine spearhead. The pottery, which composed most of the conglomerate, was red, brown, and rarely black; a few bore graffiti, and some of the ANSAE wore the semblance of equine heads. The makers' marks appeared on many fictiles, whose forms were either absolutely new, or resembled those of the Villanova, Tortorelli, and Arnoaldi tombs. The clay dumbbells were not wanting, and there were pendeloques (pendants) of the same material. A few stone implements were found, and an extraordinary quantity of split bones of beasts, especially the stag, then the pig, sheep, goat, and ox. One cervine horn bore the tally as still used by the rustic world, and a handle was engraved with a rude sketch of some quadruped; there were also rings and thin disks of deer horn: Cav. Zannoni ends his interesting letter to Professor Calori with expressing an opinion that the remains are those of the peoples who had occupied, and who left their tombs at, Villanova, Cà de' Bassi, Cà de' Tortorelli, San

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Polo, the Scavi Arnoaldi, and other adjoining sites. He leaves to that learned archaeologist the task of determining the race. The general opinion seems to be that these 29 huts were remains of the oldest or Umbrian settlement.

The Mamolo find precedes, in point of date, the Pradello. It was worked in January‑April by Cav. Zannoni. The site is the Villa Bosi, outside the Porta San Mamolo, or southern city gate, extending towards the Áposa rivulet, which is generally made the eastern limit of FELSINA, and at the base of San Michele in Bosco, where the Arsenale Militare all' Annunziata now stands. When ditchdigging near the right bank of the Áposa, and close to the modern road of circumvallation, the labourers, at a horizon of about three metres, came upon a huge doliform and ansated urn containing the covered OSSVARIVM of coral‑red clay ‑‑ a double precaution also noticed in the Tortorelli finds. Professor L. Calori examined the bones, and judged them, from a tooth fang, to be those of a woman aged 30‑40. Cav. Zannoni transmutes the sepulchres into five hut foundations. Here the yield is comprised in 26 gold earrings of full size, 6 ARMILLAE, including one of iron, a bronze

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spillone (pin or bodkin) 0∙38 metre (= 1 foot 2∙96 inches) long; FIBVLAE with transverse sections of bone and amber; bits of amber; glass or vitrified clay, with spiral uniting bands, coloured, as usual, blue or yellow; and a quantity of fictile fragments, vases, PATERAE, VRNAE, and so forth. Count Gozzadini (Intorno ad alcuni Sepolcri scavati nell' Arsenale Militare di Bologna. Bologna: 1875), notices 5 tombs, of which only one was intact, and gives illustrations of two remarkable amber necklaces, (1) of 25 large spheroids, the largest in the centre, like a modern rivière; and (2) also numbering 25. In the latter the forms are very various; some are imitations of the BVLLAE worn by patrician boys, whilst others represent shells (Cypraea, and others), perhaps worn as amulets. He also figures a dwarf head upon a square base pierced with four holes; an image, which he would attribute to Phtah (vulgarly, Harpocrates) [footnote 1: the direct operator, under the Creative Will, in framing the universe]; a band with four heads which appears to be the Egyptian coiffure; a fish shaped ornament, also of amber; a pendant; a wonderfully worked FIBVLA with nine chimaeras courant, retrogardant, and baillant; and two of the hatchet

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shaped bronze plates which have been supposed to be gongs and bistouries.

The find in the Strada San Petronio, near the Via Maggiore, produced only one remarkable object, but it is, perhaps, the most important of the whole.

This virile head, larger than life and cut in the molassa, or common miocene sandstone of the country, is of very archaic type. The sides are abnormally flat, the long hair is combed off the brow, and the bearded chin is of Patagonian dimensions. Its similarity with toreutic works on the banks of the hill reminds us of Strabo's assertion (VIII, 1, § 28) touching the likeness of Egyptian and Tuscan art. I have elsewhere suggested (City Of The Saints, page 555) after observing at the Dugway Station the

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untutored efforts of the white man in the Far West, that rude art seems instinctively to take that form which it wears on the bank of Nilus, as babes are similar all the world over. Dennis (I, LXVIII) also denies that the rigid and rectilinear Etruscan style was necessarily imported from Egypt: Nature, in the infancy of art, taught it alike to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Etruscans, for it was not so much art, as the want of art. My observation was presently confirmed to me by the graven images of Gods in Dahome and on the west coast of Africa. Yet the discoveries made at Bologna have fully justified the assertion of Strabo, an eyewitness; and the evidences of intercourse between the races now so far separated, not only explain a mystery but lead to a highly interesting conclusion. The cosmogonic system of the Etruscans has hitherto been accepted with reserve. Professor L. Calori (Della stirpe and the rest, page 44), terms it Genesi Mosaica corotta, and, with C. Heyne and others, throws doubt upon the accuracy of Suidas, a Greek of the later ages (SVB VOCE ΤΥΡΡ‛ΕΝΙΑ); but the late excavations of Mr. George Smith in Assyria distinctly prove that the Creation and Fall of Man myth extended from the banks of the Nile as far as the Tigris and

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Euphrates; and a cosmogony so widely diffused would readily be introduced into Italy by an oriental race of immigrants, were they Lydians or Phoenicians. Thus we may, upon this point at least, rehabilitate Suidas VERSVS C. Heyne, and explain the 12,000 years' cycle of the old Etruscans. [Footnote 1: Suidas is the only writer who relates that an anonymous Tuscan related to him how the Creator decreed a cycle of 12,000 years, half of which were assigned to the work of creation, and the rest to the duration of the world, the period of subversion, and perhaps of renovation, for Gods and men. In the first millenary the Demiurgus made heaven and Earth; in the second the visible firmament; during the third the sea and waters; in the fourth the great lights, Sun, Moon, and stars; in the fifth, birds, reptiles, and four‑footed animals of the earth, air, and sea; and, finally, during the sixth, man. Here we have the germ of the modern theory which would prolong into periods, even of untold ages, what Genesis expressly asserts to be days, between 'Arab (Gharb or sunset) and Bakar, dawn or morning. The duodecimality of the Etruscan legend probably arises from a connection with the Zodiac:

for the latter, see the Zodiaco Etrusco (with plate) by the late Count Giovanni da Schio: Padova, Angelo Sicca, 1856.] Some writers, I observe, use Mr. George Smith's discoveries to stultify Darwinism, and to establish the universality of a tradition consecrated by revelation: future ages will admire this distortion of fiction into fact.