Tages: Etruscan Prophet Who Revealed Sacred Knowledge Before He Vanished

Ellen Lloyd - AncientPages.com - The Etruscans had many prophets, and Tages was the most important one. The Etruscan religion was based on the idea that the destiny of man was entirely determined by the moods of the many deities worshipped by them.

The Etruscans believed in predestination. Although you could sometimes postpone an event, there was no way to escape your destiny. The existence and lifespan of a human being had a fixed timescale determined by the gods.

Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia. Image credit: Unesco

The central myth of the Etruscan prophecy lies in the story of Tages, who was said to be the son of Genius and the grandson of Jupiter. The Romans referred to the prophet as Tages, but his Etruscan name may have been Tarchies. According to the 44 B.C writings of Cicero and other ancient authors, the whole of the Etrusca Disciplina was revealed by Tages to a mortal man, named in Latin Tarchon, the founder-hero of the significant Etruscan city of Tarquinia was named.

According to a legend, Tages was a wise child who sprung up from the freshly plowed earth. Later he taught Etruscans divination.

Cicero reports the myth in this way:

"They tell us that one day as the land was being ploughed in the territory of Tarquinii, 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 - from the Etruscan Museum of Gori - A book entitled "Etruscan Roman Remains" in Popular Tradition, by Charles Godrey Leland (T Fisher Unwin, 1892).

"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). It 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 the augurial discipline is deduced from it."

As a child, Tages revealed many things to his listeners. These things were written down. What happened to Tages remains a mystery, as various accounts of his disappearance exist. According to one story, he disappeared and died the same day. Another tale tells Tarchon took the child home and kept him in sacred places, continuing to learn from him.

In the ancient city of Tarquinii, archaeologists from the University of Milano made a horrible find in an area identified as sacred. They discovered the skeleton of a child, 7-8 years old, buried around the end of the ninth century B.C., by inhumation, a rite quite unusual at the time. The child was wearing a pendant around his neck. His bones showed signs of deformation that experts have associated with epilepsy.

In ancient times, people with epilepsy were perceived to have special spiritual powers manifested when they were under the effects of a seizure. It was the reason why the child had been sacrificed.

Representations of Tages are scarce, and scenes tied to the Tages myth are almost as rare, and yet, he was the most important of the Etruscan prophets.

Written by - Ellen Lloyd – AncientPages.com

Updated on November 24, 2022

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