Concept
Etruscan religion
Overview
Etruscan religion comprises the religious beliefs and practices of the Etruscan civilization. The Etruscans were polytheistic, and although there is some syncretism between their mythological traditions and those of the Greeks and Romans, the Etruscan conception and worship of these divinities is individual and not an adoption of other cultures' practices. Because there are no surviving Etruscan sacred texts, with the exception of the Liber Linteus, it is impossible to fully understand their religion, however we can gain some insight from archaeological evidence. The Etruscans appear to have had specific religious personnel, and to have engaged in a reciprocal practice of offerings, rituals including divination, and funerary rites. As the Etruscan civilization was gradually assimilated into the Roman Republic from the 4th century BC, Etruscan beliefs and mythologies were often incorporated into ancient Roman culture, following the Roman tendency to absorb local gods and customs of other civilizations. The first attestations of an Etruscan religion can be traced back to the Villanovan culture.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
But by sacred things one must not understand simply those personal beings which are called gods or spirits; a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred. A rite can have this character; in fact, the rite does not exist which does not have it to a certain degree.
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
States what Etruscan religion is.
From this usage it has also come to pass that God Himself is called pious,[369] in which sense the Greeks never use εὐσεβεῖν, though εὐσέβεια is applied to works of charity by their common people also.
of Hippo Augustine, The City of God, Volume I
States what Etruscan religion is.
Finally, there is another theory which, like the ancestor hypothesis, seeks to derive gods, or at least the beings generally regarded as gods, from more primitive mythological ideas. This theory, which was developed by Hermann Usener, the most prominent student of the science of religion among recent classical philologists, might perhaps be referred to, in distinction from the soul and ancestor hypothesis, as the…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Etruscan religion is.
Related ideas
- Aphrodite
- Athena
- Heracles
- Polytheism
- Greek mythology
- Myth
- Religion
- Roman Republic
- Revelation
- Siena
- Roman mythology
- Apollo
- Divination
- Ancient Egypt
- Nigidius Figulus
- Vulci
- 6th century BC
Place in the tradition
Part of Polytheism.