- Nancy T. de Grummond –
illustrious polymath Varro (116–27 bce) is a leading fi gure in antiquarian study of
religious traditions. His Antiquitates rerum divinarum, unfortunately known mainly from
fragments quoted or passages alluded to by other authors, passed on information about
the Etruscan art of interpreting lightning, priesthoods in early Rome, and the use of
divination in relation to the four elements of air, fi re, earth and water. In other works he
recorded information about the rituals of laying out a city, as well as information about
omens provided by fi sh, in his libri navales.^38 An elusive fi gure whose name seems to have
been C. Fonteius Capito,^39 evidently a contemporary of Varro and close friend of Antony,
was recorded to have written a thunder calendar and to have disseminated the story of
Tages and Tarchon.
No individual is more important for problems of Etruscan divination than Publius
Nigidius Figulus (circa 98–45 bce), also a contemporary of Varro as well as a friend of
Cicero, an enormously prolifi c writer whose works have mostly disappeared.^40 Nigidius
probably came from Etruscan Perugia to Rome, where he enjoyed a respectable political
career and moved in intellectual circles in which religious and philosophical systems of
explaining the universe were much studied and discussed. His posture on philosophy and
Roman government in the fi rst century bce – Pythagorean, magus, astrologer and supporter
of Pompey – sometimes put him at a disadvantage, and he found himself exiled after Caesar
came to power. Nigidius is viewed as someone interested in the occult and magic, a serious
scholar of religion who wrote a treatise De augurio privato and another De extis, directly
concerned with extispicy. Most signifi cant for this discussion is his Latin translation of
an Etruscan brontoscopic calendar attributed to Tages himself, which has survived in a
Byzantine Greek translation by Johannes Lydus, made in the sixth century ce.^41
Tarquitius Priscus,^42 from a distinguished family of the fi rst century bce and friend of
Varro, was known for having made a Latin translation of the libri Vegoici. The one surviving
fragment of an Etruscan prophecy, recorded in the Gromatici Veteres and said to have been
delivered by Vegoia to a certain Arruns, is thought to derive from the scholarship of
Tarquitius.^43 He also produced an Ostentarium Tuscum, as well as a work on prophesying
from trees, and Libri Tarquitiani were still available in the fourth century ce. For ostenta
from the period of the Late Republic, the obscure Julius Obsequens is important. Details
of his life are quite unknown, except that he compiled a Liber prodigiorum; it contains
entries from 190 to 11 bce and bears a close relationship to the various prodigy lists in
Livy’s history.^44
Yet another signifi cant fi gure of the period of the later Roman Republic was Aulus
Caecina, who studied Etruscan texts and attempted to transmit tenets of the Etruscan
discipline.^45 Like Nigidius, he came to Rome from an Etruscan city (Volaterrae), and
was in the circle of Cicero, participating in philosophical and religious inquiries. Cicero
defended him in regard to a claim on property at Tarquinii (69 bce), but his position
as an opponent of Caesar hindered him until he recanted and was helped by Cicero to
be pardoned. He had intimate knowledge of Etruscan teachings, having learned from
his father in the traditional Etruscan manner, and he passed on his knowledge in a
Latin treatise, De etrusca disciplina, which has been described as a “major event” in the
intellectual life of the Late Republic.^46 The loss of this document is felt keenly by those
trying to understand Etruscan religion. He was especially important as a source on
Etruscan interpretation of lightning.^47
The case of Cicero is diffi cult for other reasons. Himself an augur of the Roman state
(from 53 bce), he nevertheless had an ambivalent position on the nature and effi cacy of