TAGES AND THE REVEALED “SCRIPTURES”
For centuries, Etruscan texts were revered as the basis of Roman religious doctrine. Briquel (1997) has demonstrated that later pagan authors emphasized this theme of received scriptures as a potential counter to Christianity, with its revealed and recorded prophetic base.
Cicero says that the etrusca disciplina was handed down “by the immortal gods” (On the Responses of the Haruspices 10.20), as in the myth of Tages, a supernatural being who emerged from the ploughed earth and prophesied (cecinit, “sang”, thus in verse?) to the people of Etruria. The city-founder of Tarquinia, Tarkhon, wrote his words down; Tages then disappeared into the earth (Cicero On Divination 2.50-51.23; Ovid Metamorphoses 15.552-9; Lydus On Omens 2.6.B, De mensibus [On the Months] 4.2). The story bears the marks of condensation and Romanization (Tages is a Latin version of Etruscan Tarkhies: de Grummond 2006c: 23-7). According to the Augustan scholar Verrius Flaccus (quoted by Festus, Glossaria Latina 492 Lindsay), Tages was the son of the god Genius and grandson of Jupiter.The libri Tagetici (“Books of Tages”), if we accept all the ancient references, comprised several categories of ritual and revelation: libri rituales, fulgurates and haruspicini (books of rituals, lightning-interpretation and liver-divination, Thulin [1906] 1968: I. 1-12); it is assumed that texts were augmented as different specialists studied and wrote analyses of their doctrine. Cicero thought the books of Tages dealt with haruspicina, but in the broadest application, the etrusca disciplina covered, collectively, all the moral teachings and rituals of the cults of the Etruscan states (Epistulae ad familiares [Letters to Friends] 6.6). Columella (De re rustica [Agriculture] X.337-47) cited it for rituals to avert storms, animal sacrifices to ward off mildew, and herbs (bryony) to protect against lightning strikes.
For Varro (De lingua latina [On the Latin Language] 5.143; Rerum rusticarum [On Agricultural Topics] 2.4.9-10), state ceremonies for patrician marriage, sacrifice and the foundation of cities derived from the etrusca disciplina. Other authors refer to libri Acheruntici, “Books of Acheron”, concerning the underworld/afterlife (Pfiffig 1975: 37). Certainly, by the late Republican period the etrusca disciplina contained more texts than those attributed to Tages, and probably included significant Latin texts as well. Later authors (Lactantius, Macrobius, Lydus) assumed that the Etruscan disciplina encompassed divination by lightning (libri fulgurates), thunder, entrails and earthquakes, rules for founding cities, and the system of cosmic gods. Livy (5.15.11, 22.9.8) uses the term libri fatales for the Etruscan “books of fate” and the so-called Sibylline Books of Graeco-Roman origin, the first set acquired by the Etruscan king Tarquinius Priscus. Roman commentators thought that early Etruscan rulers, who they called lucumones, combined priestly and executive functions, and other evidence points to the ability of religious cults to bolster emerging states (cf. Menichetti 1994; Torelli 1997a; van der Meer 2007: 52).An engraved mirror from Tuscania depicts either the myth of Tages’ apparition, or the initiation of an Etruscan youth as a haruspex (Pallottino 1979; Wood 1980; Torelli 1988; de Grummond 2000, 2006a). A youth, Pava Tarkhies, wearing the pointed hat of a haruspex, examines a sheep’s liver, supervised by Avl Tarkhunus, the god Veltune and others. As a historic event in the urbanization of Etruria, Tages’ apparition would have occurred during the Iron Age (Villanovan period, ninth-eighth c. BCE), preceding the introduction of writing, however. Discoveries at the protohistoric sanctuary of Pian di Civita, Tarquinia have been linked by some scholars to the Tages myth (below).
More on the topic TAGES AND THE REVEALED “SCRIPTURES”:
- TAGES AND THE REVEALED “SCRIPTURES”
- THE IMMORTAL ARCHETYPE
- Bredholt Christensen Lisbeth, Hammer Olav, Warburton David. The Handbook of Religions in Ancient Europe. Acumen,2013. — 456 p., 2013