Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jean-René Jannot is professor emeritus of history and archaeology at the University of Nantes, France. Jane K. Whitehead is an assistant professor at Valdosta State University and director of the La Piana excavation in Italy.

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Religion in Ancient Etruria

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

Contents

Illustrations........................................viiTranslator's Note....................................xiiiPreface..............................................xv1 The Etrusca Disciplina.............................32 Rites of Divination................................183 Sacrificial and Funerary Rites.....................344 The Afterworld.....................................545 Sanctuaries........................................726 The Buildings......................................967 Worshippers........................................1258 Gods...............................................1439 The Divine.........................................171Conclusion...........................................182Notes................................................187Thematic Bibliography................................203Glossary.............................................215Illustration Credits.................................219Index................................................221

Chapter One

The religious knowledge of the Etruscans was contained in a group of texts collected into books and called generically the etrusca disciplina. These texts, known today only from small and out-of-context fragments, are of the utmost importance. They were regarded a posteriori, by the Etruscans themselves, as both the theoretical foundation and the justification for Etruscan civilization as a whole.

KNOWLEDGE REVEALED

The Etruscan religion has often been called a "revealed" religion because it has "prophets" such as Tages and Vegoia. This term is both accurate and ambiguous. What is "revealed" is not the existence of god; it is not even a theology, a mythology, or an explanation of the order of the world. It is exclusively a series of rites and sacred techniques that permit one to enter into contact with the world of the divine, and to receive its signs and its complex cosmology, which defines the space in which the gods act. It is a revelation of cultic and divinatory practices, of religious customs and acts. These were eventually written down and formed a veritable literature.

Tages

Several stories involve supernatural contacts with the world of the gods, the most famous being that of Tages. Cicero and Ovid preserve the story: while he was working his field, a peasant of Tarquinia discovered, to his astonishment, a child with the features of a sage old man, a puer senex, emerging from the earth in the middle of the furrow that the farmer had just plowed. A consecrated place in front of the famous Ara della Regina Temple at Tarquinia may mark this founding event (see chapter 5). This story clearly shows that the Etruscans wanted to present themselves as autochthonous. The child expert in things divine is a very widespread theme, even extending into Christianity.

The farmer could not help but cry out, and at his call came all the inhabitants of Etruria, or, more exactly, "all the peoples"-that is, the Twelve Peoples comprising the nomen etruscum, who thus would appear to be religious dependents of Tarquinia. They then received from the lips of this earthborn child-sage named Tages the immense knowledge of sacred things that would become the religious patrimony of the whole Etruscan people. The words of Tages were collected, transcribed, and disseminated, and they came to form the basis for the religious science of the principes of Etruria: those local kings whose political power was founded in part-probably in great part-on the knowledge of ritual. One might say that from this time on all the kings of Etruria had the same beliefs and the same customs.

In all likelihood it was thus that the Etruscan people was formed and defined: that nomen etruscum whose uniqueness had so impressed the ancients. This, too, is how the most prestigious of the sacred books appeared-the libri tagetici, whose redaction was believed to have been undertaken by Tarchon, the mythical founder of Tarquinia. If one credits the various traditions, only the libri haruspicini can be traced to this source with any certainty, but the libri acherontici are frequently included with them, since they were also part of Tarquinian tradition.

This topographic precision is important. Revealed at Tarquinia and carefully compiled by one of its kings, the precepts of haruspicy seem strongly attached to that city where, at the beginning of the Imperial period and under the stimulus of Roman power, the college of sixty haruspices was later reestablished. A relatively late (end of the fourth or beginning of the third century B.C.) engraved mirror (fig. 1.1), found in a tomb at Tuscania, depicts Tages, called Pava Tarchies, wearing the hat of the haruspex. His left foot is resting on a rock to ensure contact with the earth, the Etruscan goddess Cel, the mother of all revelation. He is holding a liver in his left hand and is bending over it, examining and interpreting signs on its lobes. He is surrounded by gods, among them the famous Veltune, who is identified with the Etruscans' chief or primary deity (deus Etruriae princeps), Voltumna (Varro, Ling. 5.46). Also present is a young man labeled Rathlth, who seems to have some of the attributes of Aplu/ Apollo. Tarchunus, holding the long cane that is the sign of his rank, is centrally placed. He is attentively watching the "lesson" in haruspicy given by the mythical author of the libri tagetici.

Vegoia

These sources chiefly rely on Tarquinian traditions. But other cities had their prophets and their revelation, too. At Chiusi, a prophetess named Vegoia (or Vegoe), whom some describe as a Muse, revealed the laws and practices relative to hydraulic works, surveying, and delimiting property, and transmitted these rules to Arruns Veltymnus. Also attributed to her were the most important texts on the interpretation of lightning.

It is tempting to believe that this tradition of a revelation at Chiusi was part of the religious patrimony of a local royal family and contributed to its prestige. The fragments that have come down to us evoke a sort of cosmology and mention the calculation of the Etruscan saecula. Ten of these time measurements were supposed to enfold the whole of Etruscan history. These texts became important; Augustus in fact had a copy transferred to the Temple of Palatine Apollo, where they lay next to the Sibylline Books and the Books of the Marsi. The prophetess Vegoia calls to mind the nymph Egeria, who similarly counseled King Numa at Rome.

SACRED TEXTS AND GREAT FAMILIES

Thus it seems that the great families who ruled the city-states at their foundation enjoyed privileged relations with the world of the divine, and the prestige of this relationship reinforced their power. Several representations, difficult to interpret, depict the two Vibenna brothers, Aulus and Caelius, fierce opponents of the Roman regime of Tarquin. They are shown capturing or holding prisoner a certain Cacu, who was a bard, soothsayer, or prophet, and who probably served the Etruscan tyrant of Rome. One such scene occurs on an engraved mirror from the end of the fourth century B.C., found at Bolsena and now in the British Museum (fig. 1.2). Here one can easily discern the preoccupied soothsayer, prisoner of the Vibenna brothers. His prophetic discourse is...