A treasure trove of objects and inscriptions are once again accompanied by stories and intriguing mysteries.
At the bottom of the Bagno Grande pool, which was Etruscan and then Roman, archaeologists found themselves faced with a sea of snakes forged in bronze.
One which stands out, majestic and monumental, is a specimen almost a metre long, just like the splendid statues that have already made the Tuscan site known throughout the world.
“An infinite surprise,” smiles Jacopo Tabolli, the professor at the University for Foreigners of Siena, who together with Emanuele Mariotti, director of the excavation and Ada Salvi, point woman for the superintendency, has been leading the adventure of this excavation since 2019.
It’s nothing scary: with its sinuous body, shiny scales, horned and bearded head, the large serpent, Tabolli points out, “almost seems to smile”.
It’s a good demon, one of those that the Romans called agathodaemons, like the cute snakes that adorn many larariums in the houses of Pompeii.
Even its location here makes sense: it was placed at the point where the water flowed, because with its coils it represented the sacredness of the source.
Here is another element of novelty: the serpent has been associated with divinity since ancient times.
And its discovery is the confirmation that people also came to the source “to have a direct relationship with the divinity”, to question the serpent, or the springs, about the unknowns of the future.
“It is as if the little snakes and the agathodaemon, with the waters that flow continuously, brought a message to the divinity of the springs and to those of health,” explain Salvi and Mariotti.
In short, it was not only health that was on the minds of those who frequented this very special place, nestled between the blue of the sky, the greens and the ochre of the Tuscan hills.
Among the gifts returned by the mud were nymphs and chicken eggs, in some cases incredibly intact.
And then coins, over 10 thousand, piled up as if they had been immersed in large containers that have dissolved over the centuries.
The gold crowns, one whole in the shape of a tapeworm, the other in fragments, were among the novelties, as was a ring with amber and other jewels.
But once again it is the statues and the bronze heads that strike the heart, with the refinement of their workmanship and the cargo of life that accompanies them, the inscriptions in Etruscan or Latin like messages in bottles from a world thousands of years away.
Among the many - there are four of the largest - the trunk of a male body cut in half offered to the springs by a certain Gaius Roscius, who lived in the 1st century BC.
A type of offering, Tabolli begins, that has a long tradition behind it: “The healed part was offered,” he explains.
What is surprising, rather, is the very high quality of the artifact, a model that is even inspired by Alexander the Great.
And yet, if the half body of Gaius Roscius isn’t amazing enough, what is perhaps most touching is a statue of a child, forged in the 2nd century BC.
The child is standing with his little dress: in his hand he holds a ball that the craftsman has reproduced impeccably, even reproducing the tiny stitching in bronze.
The ball moves incredibly, today as it did more than 2 thousand years ago, rotating on the palm.
The statue of a child holding a ball. (Photo: ANSA)
It is useless to look for the history of this little boy because he too, like the snake, seems linked to divination.
“Children who had the role of little augurs,” explain the archaeologists, pointing to the bracelet, coincidentally in the shape of a snake that wraps around his little wrist.
And then the inscription on the leg, which mentions for the first time the Etruscan city-state of Cleusi, today’s Chiusi.
A statue that certainly had an important role, so much so that the golden crown, they hypothesise, could have belonged to him.
It is difficult to say now, even as specialists from all over the world are already busy studying every aspect of the new findings.
In the summer, excavation will resume while work is being done to create the Thermal Archaeological Park, the Museum and the International Research Hub that will make it possible for everyone to enjoy the wonder from the end of 2026.
But in the meantime, one discovery after another, this very special place seems to constantly re-emerge from the vapours of its waters, repopulated with faces and human stories, with joys, sorrows, hopes for the future.
A distant world, which is not so distant after all.
Silvia Lambertucci via ANSA
