- Daniele F. Maras –
and said that the comet meant the end of the ninth saeculum and that, having revealed a
secret against the gods’ wishes he would die immediately (Serv., in Buc., 9, 46).^23
We can thus infer that Etruscan attitudes on time were deeply intertwined with
religion; and further evidence comes from references to the calendar in sacred texts such
as the Liber Linteus of Zagreb or the tabula from Capua, both providing prescriptions of
ceremonies and rituals to be held in certain parts of the year.^24 Even Latin terminology
is a debtor to Etruscan for such an important calendar-word as idus (the half-way point
of a month), which according to Macrobius came from an Etruscan verb iduare, “to
divide.”^25
At this regard it is interesting to compare the two Etruscan gold tablets of Pyrgi:
the major one gives to us two dates, referring to a month (ilacve tulerase) and to a day
(teśiameitale ilacve alśase), translated into Phoenician respectively as “in the month of the
sacrifi ce to the sun” and “in the month of KRR in the day of the god’s burial”;^26 both dates
(especially the latter) seem actually to refer conceptually to Punic rituals and religion,
though they have been transferred into the Etruscan calendar system.
The minor tablet refers to a month (masan, occurring in the Liber Linteus too), which
is said to have become tiur unias, probably “month of Uni’s festivity”;^27 the decision
took place twelve years (snuiaφ, see above) after the dedication of the temple, what was
confi rmed by the number of bullae, golden-headed nails, driven into its door (see above).
The last remark refers to the so-called ritual of clavifi xio, the insertion of a nail at a
fi xed time of every year, which took place in Volsinii in the sanctuary of Nortia as well as
in Rome in the cella of Minerva in the Capitoline temple.^28 Once again religion is linked
with the fl ow of time and its regulation (Fig. 23.3).
Figure 23.3 Mirror with the goddess Athrpa, corresponding to the Greek Athropos, driving the nail of
Fate in the head of a boar between two unhappy pairs of the myth whose end was decided during a hunt
(from A. J. Pfi ffi g, Religio Etrusca, Graz, Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1975).