The Etruscan brontoscopic calendar and modern archaeological discoveries

Abstract

by J e a n M a c I n to sh T u r fa T he brontoscopic calendar of P. Nigidius Figulus, preserved in a Byzantine Greek translation by John the Lydian, 1 but believed since the Late Republican period to have descended from the etrusca disciplina, represents, at two removes, the longest coherent Etruscan document known, albeit no longer preserved in its original language. Its predictions cover not only the success or failure of crops, but touch on virtually all areas of Etruscan social and political life, referring even to servile revolts and urban classes. A superficial reading may tempt one to discount its authenticity -revolts, after all, seem to belong to the waning Etruscan states described by the Roman historians for the fourth through second centuries BC. Yet recent discoveries in the field, laboratory and museum are beginning to restore to the ninth through seventh centuries, the period when the calendar, and the disciplina, were codified and recorded, all the dramatic trappings of the calendar's imagery. Further, recent studies by classicists have greatly enhanced our understanding of the milieu of first century Roman religious scholarship that generated the translation and preservation of Etruscan religious texts. Their findings emphasize the magnitude of Etruscan contributions to the culture of Rome, and have elevated the number of Etruscan literati and politicians known to have worked within the framework of the Late Republic. 2