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The Date of Vegoia's Prophecy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Jacques Heurgon
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Extract

Among the collection of documents on limitation in the ‘Corpus agrimensorum Romanorum’, a very rare and strange piece of writing has been handed down as it were by miracle: the fragment, in Latin, of an Etruscan prophecy which is supposed to have been delivered by Vegoia to Arruns Veltumnus. Vegoia was an Etruscan ‘nymph’ to whom a part of the Etruscan revelation was attributed. There were libri Vegoici, which were kept together with the libri Sibyllini in the temple to Apollo on the Palatine. As Egeria had inspired Numa, so Vegoia had communicated the secrets of Etruscan discipline to Arruns Veltumnus, who seems to have been a seer or a prince from Clusium.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1-2 , November 1959 , pp. 41 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Jacques Heurgon 1959. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

*

This paper was given as one of a course of lectures at the University of London in March, 1958. I am very much indebted to A. Momigliano and S. Weinstock for valuable suggestions.

References

1 Lachmann, , Grom. Vet. I, 350Google Scholar. It may be convenient to reproduce the text: ‘Scias mare exaethera remotum. Cum autem Iuppiter terram Aetruriae sibi uindicauit, constituit iussitque metiri campos signarique agros. Sciens hominum auaritiamuel terrenum cupidinem, terminis omnia scita esse uoluit. Quos quandoque quis ob auaritiam prope nouissimi octaui saeculi data sibi homines malo dolo uiolabunt contingentque atque mouebunt. Sed qui contigerit moueritque, possessionem promouendo suam, alterius minuendo, ob hoc scelus damnabitur a diis. Si serui facient, dominio mutabuntur in deterius. Sed si conscientia dominica net, caelerius domus extirpabitur, gensque eius omnis interiet. Motores autem pessimis morbis et uulneribus affcientur membrisque suis debilitabuntur. Tum etiam terra a tempestatibus uel turbinibus plerumque labe mouebitur. Fructus saepe laedentur decutienturque imbribus atque grandine, caniculis interient, robigine occidentur. Multae dissensiones in populo. Fieri haec scitote, cum talia scelera committentur. Propterea neque fallax neque bilinguis sis. Disciplinam pone in corde tuo.’

2 On Vegoia, in recent years, see Grenier, Les religions étrusque et romaine 16 ff., 22, 77; Weinstock P-W VIII, A 1, 577 ff.

3 Heurgon, , ‘Traditions étrusco-italiques dans le monnayage de Trébonien Galle’; in St. Etr. XXIV, 1955–1956, 102 ff.Google Scholar; Vegoia herself seems to have been particularly honoured in that district (Grenier, l.c. 27).

4 CIL XI, 3370 and 7366; Pallottino, , ‘Gli Elogia Tarquiniensia,’ St. Etr. XXI, 1950–1951, 168Google Scholar ff.; Heurgon, , ‘Tarquitius Priscus,’ Latomus XII, 1953, 402 ffGoogle Scholar.

5 The language deserves a careful study: Weinstock, l.c. 579, referring to Taubenschlag, P-W v A, 784, has remarked on the verbal reminiscences of the Roman laws ‘de termino moto’ (e.g. malus dolus); but the juridical is subordinated to the oracular style (below, p. 44); Mazzarino, , ‘Sociologia del mondo etrusco,’ Historia VI, 1957, 112Google Scholar, n. 2, insists on its vulgarisms. The preference for adjectives is interesting: dominicus (since Afranius and Varro; in law texts: dominica pars or portio), terrenus: the curious terrenus cupido might be a literal translation from the Etruscan original.

6 The last sentence: ‘disciplinam pone in corde tuo’ is to be compared with Prov. 24, 32: ‘posui in corde meo et exemplo didici disciplinam’ (Zancan, , ‘Il frammento di Vegoia e il nouissimum saeculum,’ Atene e Roma ser. III, VII, 1939, 217Google Scholar). Marrou, , ‘Doctrina et disciplina dans la langue des Pères de l'Eglise,’ Bull. Du Cange IX, 1934, 16Google Scholar, notes that disciplina is common in the Vulgate of the Old Testament, specially in Proverbs, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus, as a translation of παιδεία (‘wisdom’), and with that meaning is alien to Patristic literature, where doctrina is preferred.

7 Weinstock, l.c. 578 ff.

8 Piganiol, , ‘Les Etrusques peuple d'Orient,’ Cahiers d'histoire mondiale 1, 2 (1953), 344 ffGoogle Scholar.

9 Mazzarino, l.c. 111 ff.

10 Mazzarino, l.c. 112 ff.

11 Piotrowicz, , ‘Quelques remarques sur l'attitude de l'Etrurie pendant les troubles civils à la fin de la République romaine,’ Klio XXIII, 1930, 336ff.Google Scholar; Latte, , ‘Randbemerkungen,’ Philologus LXXXVII, 1932, 270Google Scholar; Zancan, l.c. 213 ff. and n. 20.

12 Weinstock, l.c. 579.

13 Thulin, , Die etruskische Disciplin III, 63 ffGoogle Scholar.

14 Varr., ap. Censorin. XVII, 6. Varro's statement is founded on the translation, made for him by one of his Etruscan informers, Tarquitius or Caecina, of an original notice in the ‘Tuscae Historiae’, which he said had been written during the eighth Etruscan saeculum. In his quotation, in oratio obliqua, octauum tum demum agi replaced octauum nunc demum agitur. We possess here an additional reason for believing that the eighth Etruscan saeculum corresponded more or less to our second century B.C. The redaction of the ‘Tuscae Historiae’ may have been contemporary with, and influenced by, the growth of Latin annalistic historiography (edition of the ‘Annales Maximi’ in 123 B.C.). We know that then the Roman Senate, being afraid of the indifference with which the Etruscans themselves neglected their own discipline, took measures for imposing throughout their aristocracy its study and maintenance (Cic., Diu. 1, 92Google Scholar).

15 Plut., Sull. 7.

16 Thulin, l.c. 65, approved, among others, by Nilsson, ‘ludi saeculares,’ P-W 1, A 2, 1698; Lippold, , Studie materiali V, 1929, 44 ff.Google Scholar; Grenier, l.c. 33. Various interpretations have been given of Plutarch's very obscure text, which combines the Etruscan secular theory with the conception of the ‘magnus annus’ (a ‘magnus annus’, absurdly short: Cicero, for instance, rated it at 12,934 years; cf. Boyancé, Etudes sur le Songe de Scipion 167). We believe, with Thulin, that Plutarch, when he writes that there were in all eight saecula, has mistaken for the total number of saecula the number of those which had been completed in 88 ( = the saecula transacta of Varro). Not that he has wrongly read Varro, who was not his source, as Mommsen, Römische Chronologie 189, n. 372, and Thulin maintain; but see Zancan, l.c. 209, n. 13. Plutarch's sources are given in Suidas' repetition (s.v. Σύλλας IV, 455, Adler) of the same passage and they were said to be Livy and Diodorus Siculus; through them perhaps we are able to go back to Poseidonios, Diodorus' principal source for Roman history and civilization, who, in his ἱστορίαι, ending in 86 B.C., had certainly dealt with the beginning of the first civil war.

17 Mommsen, l.c. 189.

18 Zancan, l.c. 210.

19 Mazzarino, l.c. 112, n. 2.

20 Strange to say, we find it only in Schmeisser, Die etruskische Disciplin 6, n. 10; quoted by Thulin, l.c., 68, n. 2 (prope nouissimi = prope exeuntis), who does not admit it.

21 Varr., LL VI, 59: ‘extremum nouissimum quoque dici coeptum uolgo, quod mea memoria ut Aelius sic senes aliquot, nimium nouum uerbum quod esset, uitabant.’ It is interesting that nouissimus in this meaning of extremus was considered by Varro as a neologism, which might support the hypothesis of a Latin version made by Tarquitius Priscus.

22 Caes., BG I, 15, 2Google Scholar; cf. II, II, 4; Varr., LL, IX, 73Google Scholar.

23 On M. Livius Drusus, Münzer, P-W XIII, 1, 859–884; Carcopino, Histoire Romaine: La République romaine de 133 av. J-C. à la mort de César 349–361.

24 Carcopino, ‘Les lois agraires des Gracques et la guerre sociale,’ Bull. Assoc. Guillaume Budé janv. 1929, 16 ff.; Bernardi, , ‘La guerra sociale e le lotte dei partiti in Roma,’ Nuova Rivista Storica XXVIII–XXIX, 1944–1945, 67 ff.Google Scholar; Badian, Roman Clientelae 221; but see Gabba, , ‘Le origini della guerra sociale,’ Athenaeum XXXII, 1954, 8 ffGoogle Scholar.

25 Carcopino, Histoire Romaine 290 ff.

26 Carcopino, l.c. 359.

27 Sen., Breu. Vit. VI, 1Google Scholar.

28 App., BC I, 36Google Scholar (translated by H. White, Loeb Class. Library). The meaning of this difficult chapter (what was exactly the law, agraria or de ciuitate, which the Etruscans and Umbrians cried down), is acutely discussed by Gabba, l.c. 3 ff.; his conclusions, though adverse to the existing classical interpretation of the events, does not affect the basic fact of the Etruscan and Umbrian exceptional hatred of Drusus. Only Gabba thinks that it was provoked by the rogatio de sociis. Hatred is blind, and does not generally distinguish between this and that motive. Anyhow, if our thesis of Vegoia's prophecy as an Etruscan propaganda pamphlet against Drusus is right, it concerned above all the agrarian aspect of his politics; but see below for the conscientia dominica.

29 Carcopino, l.c. 359, ascribes to Philippus, ‘reminiscent of Opimius' precedent in 121’, the pouring into Rome of all this ‘sinister news’.

30 Pliny, NH II, 149Google Scholar. Cf. Vegoia: ‘tum etiam terra a tempestatibus uel turbinibus plerumque labe mouebitur.’

31 Mazzarino, l.c. 112 ff.

32 Heurgon, , ‘L'Etat étrusque,’ Historia VI, 1957, 94 ffGoogle Scholar.

33 Mazzarino, l.c. 115; Badian, l.c. 222.

34 It does not seem that the word possessio here is to be taken in its technical meaning (Zancan, l.c. 213).

35 No doubt the Haruspices, who knew that a saeculum lasted approximately 120 years (123 for the fith, 119 for the sixth and seventh) and that the eighth had begun c. 207, were conscious, in 91, that it was nearing its close.

36 Liv. XXIX, 10, 5.

37 Enn., Scen. 69 ff., Vahlen.

38 According to certain secular theories, each saeculum was defined by a specific virtue or vice. But here auaritia is permanent; it seems only that the end of a saeculum is marked by wickedness reaching its climax.

39 Auct. de uir. ill. 66; Münzer, l.c. 863, 871, believes that the Magudulsa and Adherbal affairs may have had something true in them.

40 Rhet. Her. 4, 35, 35.

41 Cic., Rosc. Amer. 50; cf. 6; Rosc. Com. 21: ‘incredibile est… Roscium quicquam per auaritiam appetisse.’

42 Sall., Cat. 5, 4Google Scholar; cf. Or. Lep. 17: ‘nisi Vettius Picens et scriba Cornelius aliena bene parta prodegerint.’

43 Sall., Cat. 12, 2Google Scholar.