- Nancy T. de Grummond –
his reports on the interpretation of the activities of birds,^53 and his section on lightning
bolts is regarded as “most valuable of all” the sources of information about the practices
of lightning divination (NH 2.138–144).^54 Pliny’s identity is that of the encyclopedic
who researches all topics that have to do with Natural History. Seneca (d. 65 ce), on
the other hand, writes as a philosopher, devoting space in his Quaestiones Naturales to a
searching review of Etruscan beliefs about lightning as a scientifi c subject. Both authors
had consulted the writings of Caecina, but they show some points of disagreement.^55
A resurgence of interest in the religion and antiquities of the Etruscans occurred in
Late Antiquity, in the third, and especially fourth and fi fth centuries ce. Many of the
works known during the Republic were still consulted, within an ambient of theological
and philosophical inquiry in the critical years of the decline of the pagan system. Though
now remote from the actual practice of the Etrusca disciplina, scholars often used works
that have since been lost, and transmitted antiquarian information worth sifting through.
The grammarian Censorinus, using Varro, described the Etruscan doctrine of the cycles of
time and how to calculate the periods of time allotted to cities and to the Etruscan nomen
(Etruscan civilization) itself (De die natali, 238 ce).^56 Arnobius, a rhetorician and apologist
for Christianity from North Africa, while attacking and refuting pagan religion, preserved
curious details regarding Etruscan beliefs in his Adversus Nationes (circa 297–303 ce).^57 He,
too, consulted Varro, as well as Cicero. Very reliable and diverse are the notes of Servius,
the pagan grammarian regarded as one of the most learned men of his generation, in his
commentary on works of Vergil, written around 400 ce.^58 A priceless document is the text
of Martianus Capella called by modern scholars De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, created
in the 420s ce, wherein Mercury marries Philology in a charming fantasy. Invitations are
sent out to all the gods who are described in a most unusual way to dwell in a sky divided
into 16 regions.^59 This information resonates on the one hand with a comment by Cicero
that the Etruscans uniquely divided the heavens into 16 parts so that they might identify
the region from which a bolt of lightning came^60 and on the other hand with the 16 cells
running around the top side of the Piacenza liver, each designated as the place of presence
of one or more gods. Last to be mentioned of the late antique savants is Johannes Lydus, the
Byzantine scholar of the sixth century ce who assembled a bonanza of divinatory material
in his De ostentis, including the Tonitruale and myth of Tages culled from Fonteius, and the
most important of all surviving Etruscan religious documents, the brontoscopic calendar
of Nigidius Figulus,^61 said to derive from Tages.
PROCEDURES AND COMPARISONSThere can be no doubt that there was a connection between divinatory practices in the
ancient Near East and those in Greece and Italy. There are many valid comparisons
and cross-references among the types of divination practiced – extispicium, augury,
brontoscopy, the reading of prodigies – and the procedures followed. Somehow practices
in Mesopotamia from as early as circa 2000 bce were transmitted to the Etruscans, fi rst
becoming visible in the archaeological record in Italy by around 500 bce,^62 but probably
beginning earlier than that date. The date and route of diffusion of these procedures
cannot be proven, but it is certain that the arts that developed in early Babylon remained
continuously in use in the Near East down into Seleucid times, and had particular
vitality at the courts of the Neo-Assyrian kings in the eighth and seventh centuries
bce.^63 This is the time of the “Orientalizing” phenomenon when a vast array of cultural