Tages
Tages was claimed as a founding
The religious texts recording the revelations of Tages (and a few other prophets, mainly a female figure known as Vegoia) were called by the Romans the Etrusca Disciplina at least as early as the late republic. They were written in the Etruscan language, despite their Latin titles. None presently survive. The last author claiming to have read elements of the disciplina is the sixth-century John the Lydian, writing at Constantinople.[1] Thus, knowledge of Tages comes mainly from what is said about him by the classical authors, which is a legendary and quasimythical view; John the Lydian suggested Tages is only a parable.
Etymology
As the Etruscan alphabet had no 'G', Tages is most likely a Latinization of an Etruscan word. The reverse of a third-century BC bronze mirror from Tuscania depicts a youthful haruspex in a conical hat examining a liver. He is labeled pavatarchies. A second, older haruspex with a beard listens and is labeled avl tarchunus. Massimo Pallottino made the generally accepted suggestion that the first name is to be segmented pava Tarchies and means "the child, Tarchies." The second name is "the son of Tarchon", where Tarchon is the legendary king of Tarquinia, location of Tages' revelation, and also one of the founders of the Etruscan League. [2]
Gm. M. Facchetti proposed an alternative hypothesis linking the name to the repetitive Etruscan stem thac-/thax, which he interprets as 'voice'.[3]
Legend
There are multiple versions of the origins of Tages.
In Ovid's version,[7] Tyrrhenus arator ("a Tyrrhenian ploughman") observed a clod turn into a man and begin to speak of things destined to happen and how the Etruscan people could discover the future.
Etrusca disciplina
Representations of Tages
Labeled Etruscan representations of Tages are very rare, and scenes clearly tied to the Tages myth are almost as rare. Figures leaning on the lituus, the crooked staff of the augur, or examining entrails wearing the conical cap of the haruspex, are common, but are not necessarily Tages. Winged figures, representing divinity, are also common, especially on funerary urns from Tarquinia, but whether any depict Tages is questionable. Assuming that a certain percentage of these representations are, in fact, Tages, there appears to be no standard way to depict him. Art historians have inserted Tages freely among them but entirely in a speculative fashion.
In addition to the labelled scene on the bronze mirror described above, which must have been repeated many times without labels, a type of scene engraved on fourth-century BC gemstones, once set in seal rings, appears to describe the Tages myth. A bearded figure (Tarchon?) bends over as though listening at the head or head and torso of another, beardless figure embedded in or arising from the ground.[8] On a similar theme is a third-century BC bronze votive statuette, .327 m (1.07 ft) high, from Tarquinia, of a sitting infant peering upward with an adult's head and visage.[9]
References
- ^ a b Lydus (1897). "2.6.B". De Ostentis. Lipsiae, in aedibus B.G. Teubneri.
- ISBN 0-292-70687-1.
- ^ Facchetti, Giulio Mauro. "Alcune osservazioni linguistiche sul nome di Tagete, in "AION", 9 (N.s.), 2020 (Giulio M. Facchetti)".
- ^ Pallottino, Massimo (1930). "Uno Specchio di Tuscania E la leggenda di Tarchon". Rend. Acc. Real. 6: 49–87.
- ^ Festus. "359.14". De significatu verborum.
A boy named Tages, the son of Genius, grandson of Jupiter ...
- ^ Cicero, Marcus Tullius. "II.50-51". On Divination.
- ^ Ovidius Naso, Publius. "15, lines 553-559". Metamorphoses.
- ^ Thomson De Grummond, Nancy (2006). Etruscan myth, sacred history, and legend. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. pp. 26–27.
- ^ "Museo Gregoriano Etrusco II". Musei Vaticani e Cappella Sistina. 1994. Archived from the original on 25 June 2009. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
- Thomson De Grummond, Nancy; Simon, Erika, eds. (2006). The Religion of the Etruscans. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70687-1.
External links
- Media related to Tages at Wikimedia Commons
- Schmitz, Leonhard (2009) [1867]. "Tages". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 3. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, ancientlibrary.com. p. 971. Archived from the original on 14 May 2008. Retrieved 23 June 2009.