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Tages was claimed as a foundingprophet ofEtruscan religion who is known from reports by Latin authors of the lateRoman Republic andRoman Empire. He revealed a cosmic view of divinity and correct methods of ascertaining divine will concerning events of public interest. Suchdivination was undertaken in Roman society by priestly officials calledharuspices.
Thereligious texts recording the revelations of Tages (and a few other prophets, mainly a female figure known asVegoia) were called by the Romans theEtrusca Disciplina at least as early as the late republic. They were written in theEtruscan language, despite their Latin titles. None presently survive. The last author claiming to have read elements of thedisciplina is the sixth-centuryJohn the Lydian, writing atConstantinople.[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.
As theEtruscan alphabet had no 'G', Tages is most likely a Latinization of an Etruscan word. The reverse of a third-century BC bronze mirror fromTuscania depicts a youthfulharuspex in a conical hat examining a liver. He is labeledpavatarchies. A second, olderharuspex with a beard listens and is labeledavl tarchunus.Massimo Pallottino made the generally accepted suggestion that the first name is to be segmentedpava Tarchies and means "the child, Tarchies." The second name is "the son of Tarchon", where Tarchon is the legendary king ofTarquinia, 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]
There are multiple versions of the origins of Tages.[4] Broadly Tages appeared from the earth while an Etruscan was ploughing, and then taught Etruscansdivination. He is sometimes the grandson ofJove.[5]Cicero[6] reports the myth in this way:
They tell us that one day as the land was being ploughed in the territory ofTarquinii, and a deeper furrow than usual was made, suddenly Tages sprang out of it and addressed the ploughman. Tages, as it is recorded in the works of the Etrurians (Libri Etruscorum), possessed the visage of a child, but the prudence of a sage. When the ploughman was surprised at seeing him, and in his astonishment made a great outcry, a number of people assembled around him, and before long all the Etrurians came together at the spot. Tages then discoursed in the presence of an immense crowd, who noted his speech and committed it to writing. The information they derived from this Tages was the foundation of the science of the soothsayers (haruspicinae disciplina), and was subsequently improved by the accession of many new facts, all of which confirmed the same principles. We received this record from them. This record is preserved in their sacred books, and from it the augurial discipline is deduced.
InOvid'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.
Joannes Laurentius Lydus lived in the sixth century AD. Although the last classical-period writer to have read the books, he is the most specific about his sources. He implies[1] that he read "the texts of the Etruscans"; that is, theEtrusca Disciplina, including the report of theharuspex,Tarchon, who was instructed byTyrrhenus. Tarchon's work on Tages, he says, is a dialogue in which Tarchon asks Tages questions in "the ordinary language of the Italians". This is presumablyVulgar Latin, as Lydus cannot mean any early Italic dialect. Tages' recorded response is "in ancient letters", presumably in theEtruscan language. Lydus says it is not very understandable, and that he relies on translations.
Labeled Etruscan representations of Tages are very rare, and scenes clearly tied to the Tages myth are almost as rare. Figures leaning on thelituus, the crooked staff of theaugur, or examining entrails wearing the conical cap of theharuspex, are common, but are not necessarily Tages. Winged figures, representing divinity, are also common, especially on funerary urns fromTarquinia, 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]
A boy named Tages, the son of Genius, grandson of Jupiter ...
Media related toTages at Wikimedia Commons
