Environment and natural hazards in Roman and Medieval texts: presentation of the CLEMENS database project EUTIZIO VITTORI 1 , SABINA FULLONI 2 & LUIGI PICCARDI 3 1 Geological Survey of Italy, Italian Agency for Environmental Protection and for Technical Services (APAT), via Vitaliano Brancati, 48 – 00144 Roma, Italy (e-mail: eutizio.vittori@apat.it) 2 APAT consultant 3 CNR—Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources, via G. La Pira, 4–50121 Firenze, Italy Abstract: CLEMENS, acronym for Corpus Latinorum Et Mediaevalium Naturae Scriptorum, is a new electronic archive of excerpta reporting environment-related data contained in the literary and epigraphic sources of classical Roman and Medieval age. The aim is to fill a gap in infor- mation about environmental disruptions or memorabilia that occurred in ancient times within the Mediterranean basin, and to verify whether any useful information has eluded our knowledge. One of the main purposes of the systematic gathering and cataloguing carried out by CLEMENS is to become an extensive easy-to-search tool, offering the scientific community complete annotated documentation of what is available inside ancient sources about the natural environment in the Mediterranean. This information, currently dispersed in a variety of publications that may be dif- ficult to access, has often proven essential for hazard assessment in several areas of the former Roman empire. It also contributes significantly to the understanding of changes caused by environ- mental events over the centuries, and of their incidence on natural habitats and on cultural heritage. The analysis of such interconnections may lead to a much improved understanding of either natural environment, hazards and cultural setting, as shown by interdisciplinary investigations merging together science, archaeology and history or even myth. Considering the vast amount of documentation, the work is still far from completion. However, the encouraging preliminary results will soon be available on the web. multaque praeterea ceciderunt moenia magnis motibus in terris et multae per mare pessum subsedere suis pariter cum civibus urbes. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, liber VI and many a walled town, besides hath fall’n by such omnipotent convulsions on the land and in the sea engulfed hath sunken many a city down with all its populace. (translation by Leonard 2004) When dealing with recursive natural phenomena, a question comes to mind: how far back in time can we go to find evidence of similar occurrences? Answering such a question would help us to estimate, for example the return period of such events, to see if larger (and how much larger) events have taken place in the past, to find out the incidence of phenomena now unknown in a given area, to reconstruct climate changes, and to verify astronomical calculations. People’s interest in natural forces, often seen as manifestations of divinity, has prompted many written records about the most powerful or myster- ious natural phenomena, since the very beginning of civilization. Scientists and historians have spent entire lives trying to interpret citations in the Bible: a typical example is the deluge, described in the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh and in other codes. Astronomers have found confirmations of their calculations of eclipses and discovered pas- sages of comets, falls of asteroids, even explosions of supernovae. Geologists have found data on earthquakes, eruptions—Pliny’s description of the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius is renowned—and floods; climatologists on climate evolution, and so on. However, still in the sixteenth century many natural events were prodigia, as made evident in the famous book by Konrad Wolffhart, better known as Lycosthenes, entitled Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon (Chronicle of Omens and Portents), published in 1557 (Fig. 1, available at: www.propheties.it/nostradamus/prodigiorum/ prodigiorum1.html). Some drawings from the Lycosthenes’ book are reproduced here to illustrate the most common phenomena (Fig. 2). At present, a wide knowledge on the environment and hazard information reported in most of the ancient written sources has been developed. However, this information is largely subject-specific and specialized, hence only accessible to specialists in humanities. As an example, we report a passage From:PICCARDI, L. & MASSE, W. B. (eds) Myth and Geology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 273, 51–59. 0305-8719/07/$15.00 # The Geological Society of London 2007.