Tarquinia
Tarquinia Corneto, is an old city in the province of Viterbo, Italy known chiefly for its ancient Etruscan tombs in the widespread necropoleis or cemeteries which it overlies, for which it was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status. In 1922 it was renamed after the ancient city of Tarchna. Although little is visible of the once great wealth and extent of the ancient city, archaeology is revealing glimpses of past glories; the Etruscan and Roman city is situated on the long plateau of La Civita to the north of the current town. The ancient burial grounds, dating from the Iron Age to Roman times, were on the adjacent promontories including that of today's Tarquinia. Tarquinii was one of the most important Etruscan cities. Basing on archaeological finds, Tarchuna eclipsed its neighbours well before the advent of written records, it is said to have been a flourishing city when Demaratus of Corinth brought in Greek workmen. Descendants of Demaratus, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus and Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, became kings of ancient Rome.
Numerous Roman religious rites and ceremonies derived from Tarchuna, in imperial times a collegium of sixty haruspices continued to exist there. The emergence of Tarchuna as a trading power as early as the 8th Century BC was influenced by its control of mineral resources located in the Tolfa Hills to the south of the city and midway to the Caeretan port of Pyrgi. In 509 BC, after the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the family of Tarquinius Superbus went into exile in Caere, he sought to regain the throne at first by the Tarquinian conspiracy and, when that failed, by force of arms. He convinced the cities of Tarchuna and Veii to support him and led their armies against Rome in the Battle of Silva Arsia. Although the Roman army was victorious, it is recorded by Livy that the forces of Tarchuna fought well on the right wing pushing back the Roman left wing. After the battle the forces of Tarchuna returned home. At the end of the 5th century and during the first half of the 4th century BC a brief revival took place, both in the political and artistic sphere under the ascendancy of the Spurinna family, whose members contributed to the renewed expansion of Tarchuna and the repopulation and growth of towns in the hinterland.
The Spurinnas' tomb, known as the Tomba dell'Orco, is decorated with frescoes of a banquet uniting members of the family who are identified by inscriptions. The Spurinna family was prominent in Tarquinii up to the 1st century AD. Two fragmented slabs, known as the Elogia Tarquiniensis, pay tribute to Velthur Spurinnas and Aulus Spurinnas, give a rare glimpse of Etruscan history, including the mention of one King Orgolnium of Caere, recalling the family name of Urgulanilla, which included among its members the wife of the emperor Claudius. During this period, Tarchuna overtook Caere and other Etruscan cities in terms of power and influence. In this period colossal walls were built around the city in response to threats from the Celts and from Rome. Tarchuna, not affected by Celtic invasions colonised all its held territories in about 385 BC; this new flourishing state allowed a rapid recovery of all activities. Large burial monuments decorated by paintings, with sarcophagi and funerary sculptures in stone, reflect the eminent social position of the new aristocratic classes, but several inscriptions on walls and sarcophagi show the gradual process of an democratic transition was taking place.
However, during the 4th century BC when Tarchuna's expansion was at its peak, a bitter struggle with Rome took place. In 358 BC, the citizens of Tarchuna put to death 307 Roman soldiers; when Tarchuna came under Roman domination is uncertain, as is the date at which it became a municipium. Little is known about Tarquinii in Roman times, but the flax and forests of its extensive territory are mentioned by classical authors, Tarquinii offered to furnish Scipio with sailcloth in 195 BC. A bishop of Tarquinii is mentioned in 456 AD; the ancient city had shrunk to a small fortified settlement on the "Castellina" location during the early Middle Ages, while the more strategically placed Corneto grew progressively to become the major city of the lower Maremma sea coast after the destruction of the port of Centumcellae. The last historic references to Tarquinii are from around 1250, while the name of Corneto was changed to Tarquinia in 1922. Reversion to historical place names, was a frequent phenomenon under the Fascist Government of Italy as part of the nationalist campaign to evoke past glories.
The main necropolis of Tarchuna, part of which can be visited today, is the Monterozzi necropolis with some 6,000 tombs, at least 200 of which include beautiful wall paintings, many of which were tumulus tombs with chambers carved in the rock below. The painted scenes are of a quality unrivalled elsewhere in the Etruscan world and give a valuable insight into the secretive world of the Etruscans, docume
Interpretatio graeca
Interpretatio graeca is a discourse in which ancient Greek religious concepts and practices and myths are used to interpret or attempt to understand the mythology and religion of other cultures. It is thus a comparative methodology that looks for shared characteristics; the phrase may describe Greek efforts to explain others' beliefs and myths, as when Herodotus describes Egyptian religion in terms of perceived Greek analogues, or when Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch document Roman cults and practices under the names of equivalent Greek deities. Interpretatio graeca may describe non-Greeks' interpretation of their own belief systems by comparison or assimilation with Greek models, as when Romans adapt Greek myths and iconography under the names of their own gods. Interpretatio romana is comparative discourse in reference to ancient Roman religion and myth, as in the formation of a distinctive Gallo-Roman religion. Both the Romans and the Gauls reinterpreted Gallic religious traditions in relation to Roman models Imperial cult.
Jan Assmann considers the polytheistic approach to internationalizing gods as a form of "intercultural translation": The great achievement of polytheism is the articulation of a common semantic universe.... The meaning of a deity is his or her specific character as it unfolded in myths, rites, so on; this character makes a deity comparable to other deities with similar traits. The similarity of gods makes their names mutually translatable. … The practice of translating the names of the gods created a concept of similarity and produced the idea or conviction that the gods are international. Pliny the Elder expressed the "translatability" of deities as "different names to different peoples"; this capacity made possible the religious syncretism of the Hellenistic era and the pre-Christian Roman Empire. Herodotus was one of the earliest authors to engage in this form of interpretation. In his observations regarding the Egyptians, he establishes Greco-Egyptian equivalents that endured into the Hellenistic era, including Amon/Zeus, Osiris/Dionysus, Ptah/Hephaestus.
In his observations regarding the Scythians, he equates their queen of the gods, Tabiti, to Hestia and Api to Zeus and Gaia and Argimpasa to Aphrodite Urania, whilst claiming that the Scythians worshipped equivalents to Herakles and Ares, but which he doesn't name. Some pairs of Greek and Roman gods, such as Zeus and Jupiter, are thought to derive from a common Indo-European archetype, thus exhibit shared functions by nature. Others required more expansive theological and poetic efforts: though both Ares and Mars are war gods, Ares was a minor figure in Greek religious practice and deprecated by the poets, while Mars was a father of the Roman people and a central figure of archaic Roman religion; some deities dating to Rome's oldest religious stratum, such as Janus and Terminus, had no Greek equivalent. Other Greek divine figures, most notably Apollo, were adopted directly into Roman culture, but underwent a distinctly Roman development, as when Augustus made Apollo one of his patron deities.
In the early period, Etruscan culture played an intermediary role in transmitting Greek myth and religion to the Romans, as evidenced in the linguistic transformation of Greek Heracles to Etruscan Hercle to Roman Hercules. The phrase interpretatio romana was first used by the Imperial-era historian Tacitus in the Germania. Tacitus reports that in a sacred grove of the Nahanarvali, "a priest adorned as a woman presides, but they commemorate gods who in Roman terms are Castor and Pollux." Elsewhere, he identifies the principal god of the Germans as Mercury referring to Wotan. Some information about the deities of the ancient Gauls, who left no written literature other than inscriptions, is preserved by Greco-Roman sources under the names of Greek and Latin equivalents. A large number of Gaulish theonyms or cult titles are preserved, for instance, in association with Mars; as with some Greek and Roman divine counterparts, the perceived similarities between a Gallic and a Roman or Greek deity may reflect a common Indo-European origin.
Lugus was identified with Nodens with Mars as healer and protector, Sulis with Minerva. In some cases, however, a Gallic deity is given an interpretatio romana by means of more than one god, varying among literary texts or inscriptions. Since the religions of the Greco-Roman world were not dogmatic, polytheism lent itself to multiplicity, the concept of "deity" was expansive, permitting multiple and contradictory functions within a single divinity, overlapping powers and functions among the diverse figures of each pantheon; these tendencies extended to cross-cultural identifications. In the Eastern empire, the Anatolian storm god with his double-headed axe became Jupiter Dolichenus, a favorite cult figure among soldiers. Roman scholars such as Varro interpreted the monotheistic god of the Jews into Roman terms as Caelus or Jupiter Optimus Maximus; some Greco-Roman authors seem to have understood the Jewish invocation of Yahweh Sabaoth as Sabazius. Interpretatio germanica is the practice by the Germanic peoples of identifying Roman gods with the names of Germanic deities.
According to Rudolf Simek, this occurred around the 1st century AD, when both cultures came into closer contact. Some evidence for interpretatio germanica exists in the Germanic translations of the Roman names for the days of the week: Sunday, the day of Sunnǭ, the sun, was earlier the day of Sol Invictus, th
Urn
An urn is a vase with a cover, that has a somewhat narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms reflects its use rather than any particular shape or origin; the term is often used for funerary urns, vessels used in burials, either to hold the cremated ashes or as grave goods, but is used in many other contexts. Large sculpted vases are called urns, whether placed outdoors, in gardens or as architectural ornaments on buildings, or kept inside. Funerary urns have been used by many civilizations. After death, corpses are cremated, the ashes are collected and put in an urn. Pottery urns, dating from about 7000 BC, have been found in an early Jiahu site in China, where a total of 32 burial urns are found, another early finds are in Laoguantai, Shaanxi. There are about 700 burial urns unearthed over the Yangshao areas and consisting more than 50 varieties of form and shape; the burial urns were used for children, but sporadically for adults.
The Urnfield culture, a late Bronze Age culture of central Europe, takes its name from its large cemeteries of urn burials. The discovery of a Bronze Age urn burial in Norfolk, prompted Sir Thomas Browne to describe the antiquities found, he expanded his study to survey burial and funerary customs and current, published it as Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial. In ancient Greece, cremation was usual, the ashes placed in a painted Greek vase. In particular the lekythos, a shape of vase, was used for holding oil in funerary rituals. Romans placed; the interior of a dovecote has niches to house doves. Cremation urns were commonly used in early Anglo Saxon England, in many Pre-Columbian cultures. In some European traditions, a king's heart, sometimes other organs, could be placed in one or more urns upon his death, as happened with King Otto of Bavaria in 1916, buried in a different place from the body, to symbolize a particular affection for the place by the departed. In the modern funeral industry, cremation urns of varying quality and cost are offered, urns are another source of potential profit for an industry concerned that a trend toward cremation might threaten profits from traditional burial ceremonies.
Biodegradable urns are sometimes used for both animal burial. They are made from eco-friendly materials such as recycled or handmade paper, cellulose or other natural products that are capable of decomposing back into natural elements, sometimes include a seed intended to grow into a tree at the site of the burial. Besides the traditional funeral or cremation ashes urns, it may be possible to keep a part of the ashes of the loved one or beloved pet in keepsake urns or ash jewellery, although this might be banned in some localities as the law of certain countries may prohibit keeping any human remains in a private residence, it is in some places, possible to place the ashes of two people in so-called companion urns. Cremation or funeral urns are made from a variety of materials such as wood, nature stone, glass, or steel. Scattering of ashes has become popular over recent decades; as a result, urns designed to scatter the ashes from have been developed. Some are biodegradable, some recyclable after being used.
Some cremation urns have been made out of wood. A Figural urn is a style of vase or larger container where the basic urn shape, of either a classic amphora or a crucible style, is ornamented with figures; these may be attached to the main body, forming handles or extraneous decorations, or may be shown in relief on the body itself. The Ashes, the prize in the biennial Test cricket competition between England and Australia, are contained in a miniature urn. Urns are a common form of architectural garden ornament. Well-known ornamental urns include the Waterloo Vase. In mathematics, an urn problem is a thought experiment in probability theory. A tea urn is a heated metal container traditionally used to brew tea or boil water in large quantities in factories, canteens or churches, they are not found in domestic use. Like a samovar it has a small tap near the base for extracting hot water. Unlike an electric water boiler, tea may be brewed in the vessel itself, although they are likely to be used to fill a large teapot.
In Neoclassical furniture, it was a large wooden vase-like container, set on a pedestal on either side of a side table. This was the characteristic of Adam designs and of Hepplewhite's work. Sometimes they were "knife urns", where the top lifted off, cutlery was stored inside. Urns were used as decorative turnings at the cross points of stretchers in 16th and 17th century furniture designs; the urn and the vase were set on the central pedestal in a "broken" or "swan's" neck pediment. "Knife urns" placed on pedestals flanking a dining-room sideboard were an English innovation for high-style dining rooms of the late 1760s. They went out of fashion in the following decade, in favour of knife boxes that were placed on the sideboard. Bridge spouted vessel Crematory Pithos Urn problem Viewlogy Daily Mail article on a Roman cinerary urn Getty. Art & Architecture Thesaurus. Urns
Sybille Haynes
Sybille Edith Haynes, is a British expert on Etruscology. She was educated in Germany and Austria before moving to the UK in the 1950s, she worked with Etruscan artefacts at the British Museum for many years as well as publishing numerous books, for fellow scholars and for the general public. In the 1980s she joined the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Born Sybille Overhoff on 3 July 1926 to Edith née Kloeppel, her German mother, Julius Overhoff, her Austrian father, she was one of five siblings including her twin sister Elfriede Knauer, an archaeologist, she grew up in a cultured family in Berlin and Austria but her schooling was interrupted by the Nazi regime. She had to join Nazi youth organisations and spent a year doing compulsory labour in harsh conditions. After the war things remained difficult for some time and she studied Chinese while waiting for Frankfurt University to reopen in 1947. However, she had always been interested in the antiquities collected by her maternal great-grandfather, the sculptor and art historian Melchior zur Straßen, had a long-standing wish to study classical archaeology, in particular, Etruscology.
Once at the Goethe University Frankfurt she studied classical archaeology, ancient history, art history and ethnology and found vacation work in museums in Paris and London before graduating summa cum laude in December 1950. She went on to write a thesis on Etruscan bronze mirrors and encouraged by Guido von Kaschnitz. While she was helping at the British Museum in 1950, where the Greek and Roman department had suffered severe bomb damage, she met Denys Haynes Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, whom she married in January 1951, she had come to know the previous Keeper, Bernard Ashmole, who offered her a voluntary position in the department where her work included answering questions about Etruscan subjects and handling correspondence in German and Italian. She described this as an opportunity to learn. Amongst her writings were two booklets for the museum on Etruscan bronze utensils and Etruscan sculpture. In 1985 she published Etruscan Bronzes, an Etruscan novel called The Augur's Daughter in 1987 and Etruscan Civilization in 2000.
She published in international journals and was made a foreign member of the Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici in 1965. In 1976, the year she was awarded an MBE, Haynes was responsible for the opening of the first Etruscan gallery in the classical department of the British Museum. In 1981 she was honoured by the Order of the Dignitari dell'Ombra della Sera in Volterra. In 1985 she moved to Oxford where she was invited to join Corpus Christi College and the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity. In the same year she was made a corresponding member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. In 2000 her book, Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural History was well-received, has been described as "definitive and comprehensive" as well as "authoritative, precise and articulate". Neil MacGregor, while director of the British Museum, called Haynes an "Etruscologist of international repute" in the introduction to a 2011 festschrift. A Sybille Haynes Lecturership in Etruscan and Italic Archaeology at Somerville College, Oxford was created in 2013, the university hosts a established annual Sybille Haynes lecture series open to the public.
The current Sybille Haynes lecturer is Charlotte Potts. As well as writing numerous articles, Haynes published these books: 2008, Die Etruskerin, Mainz 2005, Kulturgeschichte der Etrusker, Mainz 2000, Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural History, London 1987, The Augur’s Daughter, London 1981, Die Tochter des Augers, Frankfurt as Die Etruskerin. 1985, Etruscan Bronzes and New York 1985, Zwischen Mäander und Taurus: eine archäologische Reise in Kleinasien, Munich. 1981, Die Tochter des Augurs. Aus dem Leben der Etrusker, Mainz 1974, Land of the Chimaera. An Archaeological Excursion in the SouthWest of Turkey, London 1971, Etruscan Sculpture, London 1965, Etruscan Bronze Utensils, London
Underworld
The underworld is the world of the dead in various religious traditions, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld; the concept of an underworld is found in every civilization, "may be as old as humanity itself". Common features of underworld myths are accounts of living people making journeys to the underworld for some heroic purpose. Other myths reinforce traditions that entrance of souls to the underworld requires a proper observation of ceremony, such as the ancient Greek story of the dead Patroclus haunting Achilles until his body could be properly buried for this purpose. Persons having social status were equipped in order to better navigate the underworld. A number of mythologies incorporate the concept of the soul of the deceased making its own journey to the underworld, with the dead needing to be taken across a defining obstacle such as a lake or a river to reach this destination. Imagery of such journeys can be found in both modern art.
The descent to the underworld has been described as "the single most important myth for Modernist authors". This list includes underworlds in various mythology, with links to corresponding articles; this list includes rulers or guardians of the underworld in various mythologies, with links to corresponding articles. Afterlife Hollow Earth Otherworld World Tree–A tree that connects the heavens, the earth, the underworld in a number of spiritual belief systems
Orvieto
Orvieto is a city and comune in the Province of Terni, southwestern Umbria, Italy situated on the flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff. The city rises above the almost-vertical faces of tuff cliffs that are completed by defensive walls built of the same stone called Tufa; the ancient city, populated since Etruscan times, has been associated with Etruscan Velzna, but some modern scholars differ. Orvieto was a major centre of Etruscan civilization. An interesting artefact that might show the complexity of ethnic relations in ancient Italy and how such relations could be peaceful is the inscription on a tomb in the Orvieto Cannicella necropolis: mi aviles katacinas, "I am of Avile Katacina", with an Etruscan-Latin first name and a family name, believed to be of Celtic origin. Orvieto was annexed by Rome in the third century BC; because of its site on a high, steep bluff of tuff, a volcanic rock, the city was impregnable. After the collapse of the Roman Empire its defensible site gained new importance: the episcopal seat was transferred from Bolsena, the city was held by Goths and by Lombards before its self-governing commune was established in the tenth century, in which consuls governed under a feudal oath of fealty to the bishop.
Orvieto's relationship to the papacy has been a close one. By the thirteenth century, three papal palaces had been built. Orvieto, sitting on its impregnable rock controlling the road between Florence and Rome where it crossed the Chiana, was a large town: its population numbered about 30,000 at the end of the 13th century, its municipal institutions recognized in a papal bull of 1157, from 1201 Orvieto governed itself through a podestà, as as not the bishop, acting in concert with a military governor, the "captain of the people". In the 13th century bitter feuds divided the city, at the apogée of its wealth but found itself at odds with the papacy under interdict. Pope Urban IV stayed at Orvieto from 1262-64; the city became one of the major cultural centers of its time when Thomas Aquinas taught at the studium there. A small university, had its origins in a studium generale, granted to the city by Pope Gregory IX in 1236. After teaching in Orvieto Aquinas was called to Rome in 1265 to serve as papal theologian to the newly elected Pope Clement IV, as Regent master of the Santa Sabina studium provinciale, the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.
The territory of Orvieto was under papal control long before it was added to the Papal States. On 15 November 1290, Pope Nicholas IV laid the cornerstone for the present building and dedicated it to the Assumption of the Virgin, a feast for which the city had a long history of special devotion; the design has been attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio, but the prevailing modern opinion is that the master mason was an obscure monk named Fra' Bevignate from Perugia. The church is striped in white travertine and greenish-black basalt in narrow bands, similar in many ways to the cathedral of Siena and other central Italian cathedrals of that era. In the following decade, cathedral authorities called Sienese architect and sculptor Lorenzo Maitani to stabilize the building and design a façade, he enlarged the choir and planned a transept with two chapels, spaces that were not finished until long after his death. The Cathedral has five bells, tuned in E flat; the façade is striking and includes some remarkable sculpture by Lorenzo Maitani.
Inside the cathedral, the Chapel of San Brizio is frescoed by Fra Angelico and with Luca Signorelli's masterpiece, his Last Judgment. The Corporal of Bolsena, on view in the Duomo, dates from a eucharistic miracle in Bolsena in 1263, when a consecrated host began to bleed onto a corporal, the small cloth upon which the host and chalice rest during the canon of the Mass. From the 11th century onward, the popes maintained an aggressive political presence in the papal territory which occupied central Italy. Together with his court, the pope moved from palace to palace in the manner of his European secular counterparts. Several central Italian cities hosted the pope and his retinue during the years of wandering, housing them in the bishop's palace. Outside Rome, only Orvieto and Viterbo had papal palaces. Pope Adrian IV was the first pope to spend significant time in Orvieto, his successor, Pope Innocent III, was a militant opponent of the Cathar heresy, which had infiltrated the city, took measures to eradicate that heresy.
In 1227, Pope Gregory IX confirmed the Dominican studium generale in Orvieto, a school of theology, one of the first in Europe. Pope Urban IV, a Frenchman, crowned in the Dominican church in Viterbo and who spent most of his papacy in Orvieto left important legacies in the city. In 1263, he began a papal palace the first outside Rome, consecrated the new Dominican church in Orvieto. Pope Nicholas IV chose Orvieto over his hometown of Rome as seat of the Curia in 1291-92, establishing the meeting of the Curia in Orvieto as a tradition, he was rewarded
Etruscan religion
Etruscan religion comprises a set of stories and religious practices of the Etruscan civilization, originating in the 7th century BC from the preceding Iron Age Villanovan culture influenced by the mythology of ancient Greece and Phoenicia, sharing similarities with concurrent Roman mythology and religion. As the Etruscan civilization was assimilated into the Roman Republic in the 4th century BC, the Etruscan religion and mythology were incorporated into classical Roman culture, following the Roman tendency to absorb some of the local gods and customs of conquered lands; the Etruscan system of belief was an immanent polytheism. Long after the assimilation of the Etruscans, Seneca the Younger said that the difference between the Romans and the Etruscans was thatWhereas we believe lightning to be released as a result of the collision of clouds, they believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning: for as they attribute all to deity, they are led to believe not that things have a meaning insofar as they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have a meaning.
Around the mun or muni, or tombs, were the man or mani, the souls of the ancestors. In iconography after the 5th century BC, the deceased are shown traveling to the underworld. In several instances of Etruscan art, such as in the François Tomb in Vulci, a spirit of the dead is identified by the term hinthial " underneath". A god was called an ais; the abode of a god was a sacred place, such as a favi, a grave or temple. There, one would need to make a fler, or "offering". Three layers of deities are portrayed in Etruscan art. One appears to be lesser divinities of an indigenous origin: the sun. Ruling over them were higher deities that seem to reflect the Indo-European system: Tin or Tinia, the sky, Uni his wife, Cel, the earth goddess; as a third layer, the Greek gods were adopted by the Etruscan system during the Etruscan Orientalizing Period of 750/700-600 BC. Examples are Aritimi and Pacha, over time the primary trinity became Tinia and Menrva; the Etruscans believed their religion had been revealed to them by seers, the two main ones being Tages, a childlike figure born from tilled land, gifted with prescience, Vegoia, a female figure.
The Etruscans believed in intimate contact with divinity. They did nothing without proper consultation with the signs from them; these practices were taken over in total by the Romans. The Etruscan scriptures were a corpus of texts termed the Etrusca Disciplina; this name appears in Valerius Maximus, Marcus Tullius Cicero refers to a disciplina in his writings on the subject. Massimo Pallottino summarizes the known scriptures as the Libri Haruspicini, containing the theory and rules of divination from animal entrails; the last was composed of the Libri Fatales, detailing the religiously correct methods of founding cities and shrines, draining fields, formulating laws and ordinances, measuring space and dividing time. The revelations of the prophet Tages were given in the Libri Tagetici, which included the Libri Haruspicini and the Acherontici, those of the prophetess Vegoia in the Libri Vegoici, which included the Libri Fulgurales and part of the Libri Rituales; these works did not present prophecies or scriptures in the ordinary sense: the Etrusca Disciplina foretold nothing itself.
The Etruscans appear to have had religion and no great visions. Instead they concentrated on the problem of the will of the gods: questioning why, if the gods created the universe and humanity and have a will and a plan for everyone and everything in it, they did not devise a system for communicating that will in a clear manner; the Etruscans accepted the inscrutability of their gods' wills. They did not attempt to rationalize or explain divine actions or formulate any doctrines of the gods' intentions; as answer to the problem of ascertaining the divine will, they developed an elaborate system of divination. These revelations may not be otherwise understandable and may not be pleasant or easy, but are perilous to doubt; the Etrusca Disciplina therefore was a set of rules for the conduct of all sorts of divination. Cicero saidFor a hasty acceptance of an erroneous opinion is discreditable in any case, so in an inquiry as to how much weight should be given to auspices, to sacred rites, to religious observances.
He quipped, regarding d
