Religion

Abstract

This chapter investigates Etruscan religion by means of the evidence for cult practices, sacred architecture, and divine names and iconography, as displayed in the archaeological record. Remarks in Latin literature about the devoutness of the Etruscans, their expertise in religious matters, and the existence of books whose contents had been revealed to them by the gods are also considered, within the context of the historical evolution of votive practices, illustrated with concrete evidence from the proto-historic age to the Roman period. Major issues are the cult of the ancestors and heroization in private as well as public contexts; the development of anthropomorphism; transformations of the pantheon through the centuries, with the insertion of divine figures from Greek and Italic religion; the history of votive offerings and dedications as evidenced by the epigraphic sources; and cult practices, and their relationship with sacred architecture and the apparatus of cult. Finally, there is a discussion of the integration of Etruscan religion into the Roman world, as a consequence of the insertion of local aristocracies into the Senatorial class. Particular significance is attached to divination and haruspicy, the latter of which would have been regarded as an Etruscan specialism through to late antiquity.