The Canon · No. 025
Etruscan Religion
Etrusca disciplina
c.800 – c.100 BCE · Classical Mediterranean · Extinct · Etruria, central Italy
III. THE AXIAL AGE — c.900 – 200 BCE
How many
None.
Who began it
Attributed by the Etruscans themselves to Tages, a child with an old man's wisdom who sprang from a ploughed furrow and dictated the discipline, and to the nymph Vegoia.
What it is for
To read the will of the gods with technical precision. The Etruscans were regarded by Romans as the most religious of peoples, meaning the most obsessed with divinatory procedure.
What it worships
Tinia (sky, the Roman Jupiter), Uni (Juno), Menrva (Minerva), Turan (Venus), Aita and Phersipnai of the underworld, Charun, a hammer-wielding blue demon who escorts the dead, and Vanth, a winged female death-spirit.
What it holds
The cosmos is a legal document written by the gods and readable by experts. The sky is divided into sixteen regions, each belonging to particular deities, so that the direction from which lightning comes determines which god sent it and what it means. History runs in fixed saecula, ages of set length, and the Etruscans believed their own nation had been allotted ten of them and would then end — a self-fulfilling prophecy they appear to have accepted.
What it does
Haruspicy, the inspection of a sacrificed sheep's liver, taught by a bronze model liver found at Piacenza that is marked into forty regions with deity names. Brontoscopy, reading thunder. Elaborate rock-cut and tumulus tombs painted with banqueting scenes. Gladiatorial combat probably began here as a funeral rite.
After death
Early tombs show cheerful banquets, music and dancing. Later tombs, from about the 4th century BCE, turn markedly darker, filling with demons, torment and journeys under escort. Something changed in Etruscan expectations of death and nobody is certain what.
Its texts
The Etrusca disciplina in three parts — libri haruspicini, fulgurales, rituales — all lost. Surviving material is the Liber Linteus, the longest Etruscan text, preserved because it was cut into strips to wrap an Egyptian mummy now in Zagreb; the Pyrgi gold tablets; and the Piacenza liver.
Its branches
Absorbed wholesale into Roman divinatory practice.
Of note
The Etruscan language is only partly understood — it is not Indo-European and has no known relatives. We can read the names and not the theology.
Its timeline
- c.800 BCE Villanovan culture develops into Etruscan civilisation.
- c.616–509 BCE Etruscan kings rule Rome; the Tarquins.
- c.400 BCE Tomb painting turns from banquet to demon.
- 396 BCE Rome destroys Veii and performs evocatio on its goddess.
- c.90 BCE Etruscan language effectively dies; the Social War completes Romanisation.
- 408 CE Etruscan haruspices reportedly offer to defend Rome from Alaric by summoning lightning. The offer is declined.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.