The Date of Vegoia's Prophecy

Abstract

Among the collection of documents on limitation in the ‘Corpus agrimensorum Romanorum’, a very rare and strange piece of writing has been handed down as it were by miracle: the fragment, in Latin, of an Etruscan prophecy which is supposed to have been delivered by Vegoia to Arruns Veltumnus. Vegoia was an Etruscan ‘nymph’ to whom a part of the Etruscan revelation was attributed. There were libri Vegoici, which were kept together with the libri Sibyllini in the temple to Apollo on the Palatine. As Egeria had inspired Numa, so Vegoia had communicated the secrets of Etruscan discipline to Arruns Veltumnus, who seems to have been a seer or a prince from Clusium.