Acta Herpetologica 16(1): 59-60, 2021 DOI: 10.36253/a_h-10870 Book Review: Mariella Turrini – La tartaruga nella cultura dei popoli – Miti, leggende e Folklore Sebastiano Salvidio1,*, Massimo Delfino2,3 1 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, dell’Ambiente e della Vita (DISTAV), Università degli Studi di Genova, I 16132 Genova, Italy 2 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Torino, I 10125 Torino, Italy 3 Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain *Corresponding author. E-mail: sebastiano.salvidio@unige.it The title of this book, written in Italian, may be the Lyra). Moreover, the testudo described a Roman mili- translated as: “Turtles in people’s Culture – Myths, Leg- tary tight formation, in which rectangular shields were ends and Folklore”. The author, Mariella Turrini, is an interlocked around and over soldiers underneath, to pro- Italian literature teacher loving animals and travels and tect them completely. this book is clearly the outcome of the cross-over of these After this “Introduction”, four short chapters “Sym- two beloved passions. bolism”, “Etnomedicine”, “Christianity” and “Medieval There are nearly no books entirely dedicated to tur- Age to the Renaissance” are dedicated to the historical tles, tortoises and terrapins in culture, art and myth, and use, the popular tales, and the ancient legends associated therefore this volume seems to fill a real cultural gap. to turtles, terrapins and tortoises, in the Mediterranean Among the exceptions, worth mentioning is “Tortoise” area. It is noteworthy, that in some of these historical by Peter Young (2003), an interesting small book with a societies the turtles, and their symbolic representations, very different structure and with a much narrower scope. were often associated with a negative belief, in the sense Remarkable, but focused on a single topic, is also the that these animal were often considered belonging to booklet edited by Del Cimmuto (2013) that nicely illus- the “Tartarus” the infernal region created by the ancient trates a thematic collection of art objects and painting Greek mythology. However, in more recent cultures these portraying turtles, tortoises and terrapins. Conversely, animals assumed a much more positive symbolic mean- Mariella Turrini’s book is a lengthy, comprehensive work ing and, as stated by Andreone in the “Presentation”, are composed by 337 pages of text, 14 pages of notes and 60 now the only reptiles generally appreciated by humans. illustrations, many of which are original colour artworks Indeed, in many different societies all over the World, and line drawings by the author herself. The long lists these animals are considered harmless, calm, and wise of acknowledgments and references testify for a genuine creatures. Moreover, they often became associated with research effort and a solid bibliographic background. personal longevity, character stability and in general This volume has a well-defined structure. There is a with popular wisdom. Finally, in many societies turtles short “Presentation”, written by Franco Andreone, her- and tortoises became also the symbolic representation of petologist from the Regional Museum of Natural Scienc- human fertility. es of Torino. Then the “Introduction” recalls that it was The book “La tartaruga nella cultura dei popoli”, con- from the Latin term Testudo that the Italian title word tinues with a complete cultural tour around the World “testuggine” was derived. In the Latin language, testudo representing the core of the volume both in terms of was associated not only with the animal, but also to a number of pages and amount of information. Indeed, the stringed musical instrument, obtained from its shell (i.e., central and main chapters are dedicated to a well-docu- ISSN 1827-9635 (print) © Firenze University Press ISSN 1827-9643 (online) www.fupress.com/ah 60 S. Salvidio, M.Delfino mented and in most cases first-hand description of turtles in art, literature, poetry, myth and cultural traditions of “Europe”, “Africa”, “Middle East”, “Asia”, “Oceania”, North America”, “Central America - Pre-Columbian Societies” and, in the final chapter “Southern America - Circum- Caribbean and sub-Andean Societies”. It is clear that this book is the result of many years of passionate work and to the many travels all around the globe, completed by the author Mirella Turrini over the years. All persons attracted to the many humanistic and cultural aspects related to these strange and very peculiar reptiles could be interested in reading this book, although it is written in Italian and therefore could have a limited distribution. An English translation, maybe omitting or shortening the purely geographical introductory notes to each country in order to avoid a certain dilution of the turtle topics, would be therefore very welcome. The book “La tartaruga nella cultura dei popoli – Miti, leggende e Folklore” is edited and available from Edizioni Belvedere (Latina, Italy) that with this new pub- lication consolidates furthermore its position as a leading publisher of herpetological books. REFERENCES Del Cimmuto, M. (Ed.) (2013): Tartarughe tra arte e sci- enza: la “Collezione Teresita Olivares Paglione”. Quad. Mus. Univ. “G. d’Annunzio” Chieti, 2: 1-111. Young, P. (2003): Tortoise. Reaktion Books, London.