[...]... mark, the priest could guess the future or even bend it to his will The Etruscans were particularly skilled in this haruspicina,* or science of reading omens, and the Romans respected, hired, and imitated them The sections of the liver correspond to the sections of the sky that were under the protection of each of the gods There 11 Etruscan Inscriptions for example, the right lobe contains the gods of. .. in the description of the skies by Martianus (See Appendix B, Source no iii.4.)12 The lower (venal) side of the liver has two names: Usil, the name of the Sun god, and Tivr, the Moon.13 A number of the names of these gods are familiar from various sources: Tin (Tinia), Uni, Hercle, Cath (Cautha/Kavtha), Usil, and Tivr Others may represent epithets of gods The placement of the different clusters of divinities... introduction to their individual subjects and include as well some of their own latest frontline research in the field The participants fulfilled their assignments admirably and, after lively discussions and ideas for further additions to the book, proceeded to do a formal written version of their papers, taking into account the contributions of others The table of contents for The Religion of the Etruscans. .. in our atten- During the spring term of 1999, the Department of Classics at The Florida State University organized and hosted a conference, the title of which was ‘ The Religion of the Etruscans, ’’ in honor of Erika Simon, who was in that year the Langford Eminent Scholar in Classics The Eminent Scholar’s chair and the expenses of the conference were made possible by funding from the George and Marian... were, the god’s writing in the sky.11 Each of the forty-two sections of the liver contains the names of one or more gods; there are fifty-one names, but several are mentioned two or three times The sixteen sections in the margin of the upper (visceral) side correspond to the sixteen regions of the heavens, according to Martianus Capella (fifth century ce) Further, a number of names of divinities on the. .. many of the archaeological remains of the Etruscans and the literary sources about the Etruscans in Latin and Greek have a connection, in one way or another, with religion The well-known statement of Livy describing the Etruscans as being the nation most devoted to religion, excelling others in their knowledge of religious practices (5.1.6; see Appendix B, Source no i.1), provides evidence that the. .. 57.) the god to whom the object is dedicated, or the mythological character depicted The longer texts are technical, religious, and ritual, confirming the reputation of the Etruscans as being skillful in dealing with the gods, and related to the various books of the Etrusca disciplina.* Many of these longer inscriptions have been the objects of recent studies.8 Let us briefly survey them here and then... Roman Religion. 31 At the time, the book introduced a novel attitude toward the Etruscans, rather contemptuously removing them from forming background to Roman religion and placing them at the end of his study Dumézil was eager to prove that Roman religion conformed to an Indo-European scheme and found the Etruscans inconvenient for his theory.32 A useful contri- 5 bution to the study of sources was the. .. scholars are investigating the ties of the Etruscans with external cultures: Italic, Greek, and Oriental For the rest, the reader may deduce the state of the field from the manifold articles; twentytwo scholars of international status published their latest insights there, all translated into French Not one native speaker of English was on the program As of the year 2005 there still does not exist a... Yet these events transpired, if Cicero is honest in recounting them, at the very time when Polybius was informing the Greek world of the Romans’ punctiliousness in all matters religious, an attitude he described as their ‘‘fear of the gods.’’ The apparent contrast matters By the end of the century, however, the consultation of Etruscan haruspices had been assimilated to the mechanisms of civic religion: . h0" alt="" THE RELIGION OF THE ETRUSCANS THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK THE RELIGION OF THE ETRUSCANS Nancy Thomson de Grummond and Erika Simon, Editors University of Texas Press Austin Selections. Publications of the University of Pennsylva- nia Museum). Ingrid E. M. Edlund-Berry is Professor of Classics and Classical Archaeology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of The Iron. term of 1999, the Department of Clas- sics at The Florida State University organized and hosted a conference, the title of which was ‘ The Religion of the Etruscans, ’’ in honor of Erika Simon,