Etruscans, Religion of the

ETRUSCANS, RELIGION OF THE. - The religion, and in particular the religious thought, of the Etruscan people - which flourished in central Italy during the 1st millennium B.C. - is unfortunately known in an extremely uncertain and fragmentary way, given the scarcity and one-sidedness of the sources. The original documents in Etruscan are limited to a few ritual texts, among which is a single manuscript on linen of some length (that of the bands of the Zagreb mummy), largely of uncertain interpretation, and to a certain number of dedicatory formulas on statues, vases and other votive objects. The Greek and Latin literary sources imperfectly make up for this, with information for the most part indirect and fragmentary on the divinities, myths, forms of worship, religious customs and sacred writings of the Etruscans. The most reliable testimonies available, although limited by their very nature, are those of an archaeological character: that is to say, the remains of sacred structures (temples, altars, etc.) and of their furnishings, and the representations of divinities, legends and sacred ceremonies that appear in funerary painting, sculpture, urns and engraved mirrors.

Despite these difficulties, it is possible to recognize, or at least to glimpse, some fundamental aspects of the religious world and various particulars of the beliefs and cults of a people whom ancient tradition considered, with general consensus, most religious, to the point of deriving their name, with a naive etymological explanation, from the very act of sacrificing (Tusci from ἀνατάξαν). The Etruscan religion cannot historically be separated, in its entirety, from that of the other pagan peoples of the classical world with whom the Etruscans came into contact and with whom they shared common developments of civilization: still less from the religion of the Italic peoples and especially of the Romans, who summed up and handed down its spiritual legacy. Nevertheless, there is no lack of indications for believing that primitive features, probably linked to the world of Mediterranean prehistory, survive in Etruscan religiosity, and that beliefs and forms of worship spread from the nearby East converge in it. The prevalence of certain irrational tendencies in the relations between the human sphere and the divine sphere, the obscurity of the supernatural forces that continually act upon human life, the importance and variety of divinatory practices, the frequent representation of demigods and monstrous demons, in some way set the religious attitude of the Etruscans, in its most intimate and original core, against the racially and mythologically determined forms of the beliefs of the Greeks. But the Hellenic cultural influence was so strong upon the Italic world, from the very dawn of historical times, as in turn to impose upon Etruria also the personal cults, the divine images and the Greek myths; so that one may affirm that within the sphere of Etruscan religion there coexist various, complex and even contradictory elements. It is probable that an attempt at systematizing and codifying Etruscan religious thought and practice took place only in the Hellenistic age, when Etruria was already under the sovereignty of Rome, through the work of the priestly oligarchies to which was entrusted the interpretation of theological and ritual matters and to which are due the sacred books ("aruspicini", "fulgurales" and "rituales") of which classical literature speaks and which are unfortunately lost.

In the Etruscan pantheon is reflected the variety of traditions and influences to which mention has already been made. We know that divine entities were venerated in relation to phenomena, to places, to the cycles of time, to the forces of generation, to family groups and especially to the obscure and superior powers of fate: these latter, the "dei involuti" or "opartansi", of uncertain name, number and sex, were conceived as true and proper colleges of divinities and were considered as the highest and most fearsome. But public and private worship was directed above all to personal divinities, similar, in conception, in attributes and often also in name, to the gods of the Greek and Roman religion. Among these latter are cited Tin or Tinia (Zeus, Jupiter), Uni (Hera, Juno), Menerva (Athena, Minerva), Turan (Aphrodite, Venus), Sethlans (Hephaestus, Vulcan), Fufluns (Dionysus, Liber), Turms (Hermes, Mercury), Selvans or Selans (Silvanus), Maris (Mars), Nethuns (Neptune), Aphu (Apollo), Aritimi or Artumes (Artemis), Hercle (Hercules), Aita or Mantus (Hades), Phersipnai or Mania (Persephone), etc. In other cases the correspondence is less evident: as in the case of astral or celestial numina (Usil and Cautha or Catha, the sun; Tiv, the moon; Thesan, the dawn), of local divinities received into the national pantheon (Veltha or Veltha, in Latin Volturna, whose sanctuary became the federal center of Etruria; Nortia, goddess of fate of Volsinii, compared to Fortuna, etc.) and finally of divinities of war and death (Letha, Lacan or Larun, Calu, Suri, Vanth, Culsan, etc.). Noteworthy is the belief in deified deceased persons, called "dei animales" or "divine souls", similar to the Manes of the Latin world. Among the demigods are to be considered the female genii, the so-called "lase", in the figure of most beautiful maidens who appear in the retinue of Turan and in many mythological scenes; the little child genii; the furies and the demons of the underworld, among which are depicted in monstrous aspect Charu (Charon) and Tuchulcha.

A special body of doctrines, called by Latin writers "disciplina etrusca", regulated the relations between the gods and men. It consisted in a teaching that native traditions represented in the form of a true and proper revelation and that summarized the norms of civil life, of worship and of divinatory practices. Some of these notions had been furnished to men, according to legend, in the remotest times by the divine child Tagetes, born from the furrow of a field plowed with a hoary head of hair, and by the nymph Begoe (in Etruscan Lasa Vecuvia). The most notable part of the doctrines gathered in the sacred books already mentioned consisted in the art of interpreting the will of the gods and future events through the examination and study of the entrails of animals and especially of the liver (haruspicy or hepatoscopy), with procedures in part similar to those in use among the peoples of Western Asia; and in the explanation of lightning bolts, considered as the greatest and most terrible manifestation of the power of the gods (fulgural art). Special priests or priestly colleges were assigned to these practices; that is, the haruspices (in Etruscan netsols) and the fulgurators (in Etruscan trutnsu frontac). Among the Romans, haruspicy and the interpretation of lightning bolts were considered as specifically Etruscan divinatory techniques; while the forecasting of the future on the basis of the examination of the flight of birds (auspicy, exercised by the augurs) and in general the interpretation of prodigies (ostenta) were considered as the common heritage of Italic religious practice.

The norms of worship proper, that is, of sacrifices and offerings, likewise fell within the "discipline" and had to be included in the "ritual books." The few surviving Etruscan ritual texts make it possible to recognize the similarities of Etruscan sacrificial ceremonies with Italic and Latin ones. Worship was carried out in sacred places (templa, in Etruscan probably sasni), consisting of enclosures with altars in which actual temple buildings also stood. Orientation was of great importance, in relation to the auspices and the minute norms of the rites: the eastern region (left) was considered benign and propitious; the western (right) hostile and ill-omened. The offerings consisted of animals, foods, liquids, incense; nor are there lacking testimonies of more or less precious gifts (works of art, vases, various objects) dedicated by private individuals in the sanctuaries. Priests officiated, sometimes gathered in colleges, of which certain particular titles are known from Etruscan sacred and funerary inscriptions (cepen or cipen, perhaps to be connected with the Sabine cupenent; cisneve; celu; santi, etc.).

It remains to make mention of the Etruscan doctrines on time and on death. The former were set forth in the "fatal books," the latter in the "acherontic books," which formed part, both the one and the other, of the "ritual books." The conception of the fated term of life applied to men, to cities and to nations and consisted in the belief in a periodic crisis at the end of determinate phases of existence, whose threats could be averted through special ceremonies, and in an unpostponable limit that marked the end of the entire vital cycle. The doctrine of the "centuries" is closely connected with these conceptions. More complex is the problem of the beliefs about death and the afterlife, to which archaeological documentation brings a light, albeit indirect and at times uncertain. From the very origins the funerary rite of cremation is found in Etruria alongside that of inhumation; but the practice of protecting the mortal remains of the deceased, of building the tomb in imitation of the house and placing in it objects of personal adornment, weapons, furnishings, food and other funerary offerings, of adorning the walls with images of life and ceremonies, and finally of faithfully representing the features of the dead (whence the portrait arises) is evident proof that originally the ancient Mediterranean belief survived in the partial vitality of the spirit of the deceased, together with his remains, within the tomb. From the sepulchral paintings there results, later, the affirmation of the conception of an Avernus conceived according to the Greek image, but with a literary intonation, concerning the faith in apotheosis that could be attained through special sacrifices: an Etruscan ritual text, that of the tile of Capua, probably contains the description of such sacrifices. - See pl. XLVIII.

(by courtesy of Prof. M. Pallottino)

ETRUSCANS, RELIGION OF THE - Bronze model of a sheep's liver from Piacenza. It must have served for the teaching of the fulgural divinatory discipline. It is subdivided into 16 compartments with the names of as many divinities who can hurl the thunderbolt from the sky; in the three protuberances some see the symbol of the Earth (globe), of the Sun (cone), of the Sky (pyramid) - Piacenza, Museo civico.

church music and attempts to reduce certain Gregorian melodies to a single syllable per note, as already in the sixteenth-century Editio Medicea.

Anna Maria Gentili