The Inscriptions of Pyrgi

Jacques Heurgon

The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 56, Parts 1 and 2. (1966), pp. 1-15.

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T H E INSCRIPTIONS O F PYRGI * By JACQUES HEURGON

(Plate I)

The great honour, which the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies has done me in entrusting me with this first ' M. V. Tavlor Memorial Lecture '. is the last. not the least. benefit for Ghich I am indebted to our veierable and most regret& friend. I do not think it is my duty, indeed I think it would be very improper for me to set about reminding you here of who she was and what she did. I suppose I am expected to try to dedicate to her memory a paper which would not be too unworthy of her. I shall try to do my best. But I must confess at once that I am not quite sure that my subject is one of those she would have entirelv a ~ ~ r o v e d of. Not that she had confined herself to Koman Britain. Of course I am

i 1 1

sorry not to be able to present her today with a new enameled patera enumerating all the forts of the Wall, like the Amiens patera which, fifteen years ago, inspired her benevo- lence towards me. I am sorry not to be able to guide her through the halls of the Baths of Cluny, as I had the pleasure of doing in September, 1963, when she came to Paris for the last time on the occasion of the Archaeological Congress. I know her range of curiosity and learning was limitless indeed. Only I wonder whether Etruscan matters would not have raised hher a sort of smiling and sck~tical reluctance. as somethinp which is not altogether serious. I might plead, withUprofess& h4omigliano's authority, t h g the Emperor ~lauudius, though the father of these queer researches, did something after all for Roman Britain. Still, as I cannot help imagining Miss Taylor sitting here in the front of my audience, I shall be exceptionally careful not to say anything which could arouse her sometimes passionate severity. If I fail, as is probable, I appeal in advance to her, and your, indulgence.

Among the various factors which contributed to the making of Italic civilization in the archaic age, Phoenician and Punic influences seem now to be more willingly recognized than in a not very remote past. The ' phoenicomania ' associated in the nineteenth century with RlIovers and at the beginning of the twentieth with, for instance, Victor BCrard in his book, Les Plzinirie~zs et I'Ody~ske,~ in the end brought about a reaction, to be summed up in the names of J . Beloch and Salomon Reinach, who, in Le 114i~age O ~ i e n t a l , ~ 'trumpeted the necessity of advocating the rights of Europe against the claims of Asia '. For many years it became fashionable, in the field of classical archaeology and history, to reduce the impor- tance of Phoenician contributions to Hellenism and of Phoenician trade and colonization in the Western Mediterranean. Professor Rhys Carpenter and Luigi Pareti have been the most authoritative representatives of this modern ' phoenicophobia '. They lowered to the seventh century the full flowering of Phoenician colonization, vindicated for the Greeks a priority in discovering and controlling the riches of Tartessos, denied that the Phoenicians, in spite of Thucydides, had occupied the whole coast-line of Sicily before the arrival of the Greeks, maintained that Chalcidians, not Phoenicians, had been responsible for the importa- tion of Oriental objects in Etruria. ' T o the Phoenicians,' as George Vallet puts it in his Rhkgio~z et Zanrle, ' a prominent place must not be attributed as has been done for so long.'

I t was just at this time that, to punish, it seems, this anti-Phoenician ' hybris ', a Phoenician god, NIelqart, or more probably Resheph, sprang up from the sea : not far from Selinus, off Sciacca, a small harbour on the Sicilian south coast, a fisherman brought up in his net a copper statuette of the god, wearing an Egyptian crown, brandishing his axe, very much like the Resheph or Adad of Ras-Shamra in the fourteenth to thirteenth centuries. Though the date of this statuette, or more exactly, of its later use at the prow of a wreck, is disputed, the find seemed to confirm, in a symbolic way, that the tradition of the early

" The first ' A t . V. Taylor hlemorial Lecture ', * 1893, :. given to the Roman Society in London on 14th June, Rhys Carpenter, ' The Phoenicians in the West ', 1966. AJA LXII (1958), 35 ff.

F. C . Movers, Die Phoenizier, Bonn, 1841-49. L . Pareti, L a tonzba Regolini-Galassi e In civiltd. 1903 ; 2nd ed. 1927. dell'ltalia centrale nel sec. V I I a . C . (1947)~ 33 ff. J. Beloch, ' Die Phoenizierim aegeischen Meer ', G. Vallet, RhLgion et Zancle (1gj8), 182.

R h . 144~~s.(1894), 111 ff.

2 JACQUES HEURGON

presence of Phoenician fleets in the Western Mediterranean was not as false as had been thought.

After such a period of disparagement, we can witness now a sort of Phoenician and Punic revival : all around the Mediterranean new excavations are being carried out in many Phoenician and Punic places, not only at Carthage, where Dr. Donald Harden,lo between the two wars, had opened in the precinct of Tanit the researches which have been pursued by Pierre Cintas,ll but also in Motya, where Dr. B. S. J. Isserlin l%as resumed the celebrated work of John Whitaker ; l3 in Sardinia,14 where the archaeological explora- tions, at Tharros, Sulci, and Monte Sirai, are in full swing ; in Algeria at Rachgoun,15 in Morocco at Mogador,16 and in Spain, where the recent discovery of a necropolis at AlmuiiCcar,l7 the ancient Sexi, has revealed an astonishing Phoenician settlement of the eighth century with alabaster jars bearing cartouches of Pharaohs of the ninth.

The new wave of interest has touched Italy itself. Last year Dr. J. A. Bundgbrd,18 from Copenhagen, has taken up again the problem of the diffusion of the art of writing in Etruria. which he ascribes to a direct initiative of the Phoenicians : the ivorv tablet of Marsiliana with its alphabet of twenty-six letters had been sent by a merchant from Tyre or Byblos, at the middle of the seventh century, to one of his Etruscan correspondents, to ~e r suade him that writ in^ would make their mutual business-transactions easier and more I 0

profitable ; and so the Etruscan people had learnt to write, copying Phoenician models on every pot they could seize on, dropping only those characters which were of no use in their language. Needless to say, this brilliant hypothesis raises many objections from different points of view, and the discovery of the Nestor cup in Ischia,lg with a Greek inscription of the eighth century, has given the followers of the old theory of a Cumaean origin of the Etruscan alphabet the occasion of scoring a point.

But I should like to mention here above all, as a sign of this general curiosity in quest of Phoenician influences, the inquiry Professor D. Van Berchem," from Geneva, has under- taken on the origin of the Herculean cult in Rome, the results of which are to be published in Syria. Though he is resolved to leave to them as much as possible the aspect of a hypo- thesis, he has collected a great many facts which seem to show that the sanctuary of the Ara Maxima was at the start a temple of Melqart, founded at an early date by the Phoenicians in the Forum Boarium, and akin in its ritual and disposition to other Melqart sanctuaries in Thasos, Gades and elsewhere. Leaving his other evidence aside, I shall only mention here a suggestive interpretation of the name of the Potitii, one of the so-called families in charge of the cult, who never existed as a real gem, but whose name is a Latin equivalent of the Greek ~a-roxo~,the Possessed ', which designated the priests of the temple of Zeus ' Ouranios at Baetocaece in Syria. We are then invited to imagine the market-place on the

St. Chiappisi, I1 Melqart d i Sciacca e la questione l4 G. Pesce, Sardegna Punica (Cagliari, 1961). fenicia i n Sicilia (1961) ; D. B. Harden, The Phoeni- The latest reports in Oriens Antiquus 111 (1964), 135, cians (1962), 62, pl. 93 ; F. Benoit, Hecherchessur l'hel- 1 3 p . ; IV (1,9651, 130. ldnisation du midi de la Gaule (Publications de la G. Vu~llemot, Reconnaissances alix khelles Facultd des Lettres d'ilix-en-Prooence) ( I 965), 3 I , puniques d'Oranie (Autun, 196j ) . n. 19. The statuette had been re-employed and fixed Jodin, ' Note prCliminalre sur 1'Ctablissement on a new socle, a reversed bronze cup, at a later date. prkromain de Mogador', BAAl 11 ( 1 9 5 7 ) ~ 9 f f . ; Degenerate statuettes of this type, of the Roman F . Villard, ' CCramique grecque du ILlaroc , B A M. - .

period, have been found in Morocco (A. Jodin, IV (1960), I f f . Bull . d'Arch. May. IV (1960), 427 f f . ) . l7 &I. Pellicer Catalan, Excavaciones en la necrd-

G. Garbini, L'espansione fenicia nel NIediter- *aolis au'nica 'Laur i ta ' del Cerro de S a n Cristdbal raneo ', Cultura e S5uola (1963), 92 f f . (AlmuZbcar, Granada) (1962) ; ' Ein altpunisches

lo D. B. Harden, Punic urns from the Precinct of Graberfeld bei AlmuiiCcar ', fwadrider Mitteil. IV

Tanit at Carthage ', A J A xxx~ (1927), 297 f f .; (12$3), 9-38. 'Pottery from the Precinct of Tanit at Salammbo, J. A. Bundgird, ' Why did the art of writing Carthage ', Iraq IV (1937), 59 ff. ; The Phoenicians, spread to the West : reflexions on the alphabet of 95 f f . Marsiliana ', Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 111

l1 P. Cintas, ' Un sanctuaire prkcarthaginois sur (1965), I I--$.

la gr&ve de Salammb6 ', Rev. Tun . (1948), I ff.; l9 G. Buchner-C. F. Russo, Rendic. Lincei (1955), Chamique punique ( ~ g j o ) , q g o f f . ; C. Picard, 21.5 f f . Carthage ( 1 9 j 1 ) , 2 o f f . ; G. Picard, Le monde de D. van Berchem, ' Hercule-Melqart 1'Ara Carthage (1956), 24 ff. ; G. and C . Picard, L a Vie Maxima ', Rendic. Pontif. Accad. Rpm. d i Arch. quotidienne (i Carthage'(1958), 36 f f . xxxrr (1959-60), 61-8 ; A. Piganiol, Les origines

l 2 B. S. J. Isserlin, Motya ,P B S R (1958), I ff. ; dlHercule', Hommages Albert Grenier (1962), III, A t t i V I I Congr. intern. di Arch. class. 11 ( 1 9 6 1 ) , 43 ff. 1261 f f .

la J. I . S. Whitaker, Motya, a Phoenician colony in Sicily (1921) .

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PYRGI 3

bank of the Tiber as frequented of old by Phoenician trade, even inhabited by a Phoenician colony, and protected by a Phoenician god to whom tithes were paid for guaranteeing security in transactions. This unexpected, scandalous and alluring prospect has already convinced a young French archaeologist, RenC Rebuffat, to go farther in the same direction : he will publish in the next volume of the Mt!langes de I'Ecole frangaise de Rome a paper entitled ' Les PhCniciens B Rome '.20a He considers it probable that the Phoenicians had possessed at Rome, since the seventh century, an anchorage and a factory placed under the protection of Melqart. Moreover, he notices that, in Virgil, Aeneas offers a sacrifice to Iuno Maxima, Maxima like the Ara, a very rare epithet of Juno which occurs only there 21

and in Dido's imprecations at Carthage.22 Who was Iuno Maxima ? ' Quaesitum est,' Servius said, ' quae sit Iuno Maxima.' 23

I t is time now to come to the Pyrgi inscriptions. But Pyrgi, the modern Santa-Severa, was one of the harbours of Caere, and I should like first to emphasize the importance of Caere among the other Etruscan cities of the archaic age. I t seems to have been indeed the chief metropolis of Etruria. When Herodotus 24 tells us of the famous sea-fight at Alalia off the east coast of Corsica, in which, about 535 B.c., the Phocaeans won a Cadmean victory over the combined Punic and Etruscan fleets, he curiously identifies 25 Etruscans (Tyrsenoi) and Caerites, whom he calls A g y l l a i ~ i , ~ ~ as if Caere-Agylla alone or principally had furnished the sixty ships of the Etruscan contingent, or had held the supreme command over them. The battle of Alalia, with which Caere makes its entrance into history, sets forth at once one of the two aspects of what seems to be its double genius, its close links with Carthage in the conflict of powers which ranged them both in opposition to the Greeks for the domination of the Western Mediterranean in the sixth century. This alliance may have been prepared, during the orientalizing period, by commercial relations, to which the Regolini-Galassi tomb, in the second part of the seventh century, bears testimony, in spite of the obstinate tendency I have mentioned to ascribe to Greek trade the importation of its Phoenician silver bowl 2 7 and ivories.2s But this theory, as I have said, has been recently discussed by young archaeologists, among them Alain H U S , ~ ~ who has brought to light some examples of direct relations between Etruria, Cappadocia and Northern Syria about 600, and RenC R e b ~ f f a t , ~ ~who, studying an ivory pyxis from the Regolini-Galassi tomb in Baltimore, has proved the continuance of the Phoenician trade in the seventh century. The lamented W. Llewellyn Brown also considered it highly probable that ' Syrian ivory-workers actually settled in Southern Etruria and Latium in the early seventh century and planted the craft there '.31 In this respect, it must be remembered that another harbour of Caere, at Santa- Marinella, is mentioned in the Peutinger Table under the name of ' Punicum ', the meaning of which as a Punic factory cannot be doubted any longer.

But the strong appeal Phoenician objects made on Caere and its Punic alliance cor- respond but to one aspect of its complex figure. Another was decidedly Hellenic. Caere was, more than any other Etruscan city, engrossed by a passionate admiration for and emula- tion of Greek civilization. A small colony of Athenians was settled there since the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century.32 Ionian ceramists, between 540 and 530, produced there the famous series known as Caere H ~ d r i a i . ~ ~ Its Banditaccia necropolis is

See now M E F R LXXVIII (1966), 7-48. 2 7 L. Pareti, 312 ff., no. 324, pl. XLIV. On these 21 Virg., Aen. VIII, 85-5 ; cf 60. bowls, D. B. Harden, O.C. (n. 8), 186 ff. ; Clark 2 2 Virg., Aen. IV, 371. Hopkiy, ' Two Phoenician bowls from Etruscan 23 Serv., ad Aen. VIII, 84. tombs ,Studi in onore d i Luisa Banti (1965), 191-203. 24 Hdt. I, 166 ff. 28 L. Pareti, 228 ff., nos. 168-176, pl. XVIII-XIX ; 2 5 Hdt. I, 167. It is generally agreed that a few Y. Huls, Ivoires d'Etrurie (1957), 31 ff., nos. 1-6,

words are missing (J. Brunel, ' Marseille et les pl. 1-111. fugitifs de P+cke ' , " R E A , L (1948), 9, n . 3). By; 29 A. HUS, ' Quelques cas de rapports directs J . Jehasse, La victoire B la cadmkenne entre Etrurie, Cappadoce et Syrie du Nord vers d'Hkrodote et la Corse dans les courants d'expansion 600 av. J-C.', M E F R LXXI (1959), 7-42. grecque ', R E A LXIV (1962), 241-286, especially 249, 30 R. Rebuffat, ' Une pyxis d'ivoire perdue de la thinks that the text can be kept as it is, and that tombe Regolini-Galassi ', M E F R LXXIV (1962)~' par Tyrshnes, d&s le dkbut, Herodote sous-entend 349-43 I , especially 41 3 ff. les Agyllkens '. 31 W. Llewellyn Brown, The Etruscan Lion (1960),

26 Agylla, supposed to be the oldest name of 2. Caere, might be a Phoenician name, meaning ' the 3QRll. Guarducci, ' Iscrizioni greche su vasi round city ' ; A. J . Pfiffig, Uni-Hera-Astarte (see locali de Caere ', Arch. class. IV (1952), 241 ff. n . 531, 139 n. 34- 33 F. Villard, Les Vases grecs (1956), 60.

4 JACQUES HEURGOK

full of black- and red-figured vases which prove that Caere was one of the chief market- places of Attic ceramics in the West.34 And the tombs themselves, built in the image of the houses of the living, tended to be organized into regular streets and squares which seem to reflect a pre-Hippodamean rectangular urbanism. More than that, Caere had its treasury at Delphi. We are told that, after the battle of Alalia, the Caerites stoned to death the Phocaean wrisoners who had fallen to their lot-an act of crueltv which reminds us of the barbaric legend of their old king Mezentius, ' contemptor deum '.35 They were severely punished by a pestilence which ceased only when, on the advice of the Delphic Apollo, thev had instituted funerarv Pames for the souls of their victims. And it was on this occasion

1 0

thaz they dedicated at Delphi a treasury the foundations of which have been detected in the temenos of the temple of A p o l l ~ . ~ ~ From then on they enjoyed in Greece a most honourable reputation, and it was even denied that they had ever practised piracy.

T o sum up, Caeritan culture in the archaic age was no simple matter. At the very moment, about 540-530 B.c., when the Caerites scoured the high seas, fought at Alalia and stoned their Phocaean orisoners to death. there were in Caere itself Ionian artists. who

I

painted quietly and humorously the Busiris hydria, and Etruscan ladies felt a strong relish for Nicosthenes amphorae, which they piously deposited in their graves." It would be perhaps an error to conclude that the families of Caere were quarrelling about Greek and Punic affairs. that their Tanaauils were decidedlv uro-Greek. while their husbands-let us call them ~ h e f a r i e Velianas, fkr instance-were &ilopunic. 1t is more reasonable to admit of the possibility of multifarious artistic tastes and even religious trends which were not always in harmony with politics. Some historians, applying perhaps modern ideologies to ancient times, have imagined that Caere was rent between Punic and Greek influences, ' Fra Oriente e Occidente ', as Santo Xlazzarino puts it. After Alalia and the massacre of Phocaean prisoners, the Caerites, severely warned by Apollo and deeply repenting, had definitely amended, and consecrated themselves to Hellenic philosophy and art. Even Punic imports seemed to have ceased al t~gether .~" Fra Oriente e Occidente,' as an excellent scholar put ' Caere had chosen the West.' That was said in 1962. In 1964 the Pyrgi inscriptions were discovered, and they showed, at the beginning of the fifth century, the liing or supreme magistrate of Caere dedicating a temple or a shrine to the Punic goddess A ~ t a r t e . ~ ~What did that mean ? An unexwected relawse into the inveterate errors ? An obscure counter-attack from the East ? Or, in those times, could Phoenician religion and Greek gods coexist in spite of politics ? That is only one of the difficult problems the inscriptions have raised. 41

All we knew of Pyrgi until this discovery, or nearly all, was that at the beginning of the fourth century, in 384 B.c., Dionysius of S y r a c ~ s e , ~ h n d e r the pretext of stopping piracy, landed there in arms and plundered a sanctuary consecrated to Leukothea, as the Pseudo- Aristoteles called her, or Eilythia, according to Strabo and others,43 and brought back an enormous booty which attested its richness.

The Institute of Etruscology and Italic Antiquities of Rome University, under the guidance of Professor &/I.Pallottino and Dr. G. Colonna, had begun in 19 56 the excavation of a sacred area which extends along the shore at the south of S a n t a - S e ~ e r a . ~ ~ Seven campaigns

3 4 G.Ricci, AIofz. A n t . Lincef x1.11 (19 jg), 241-313 " 3s. Arist., Oecon. 11, 2, 20 - 1349 b ; Strab. V, (tomb of the Attic vases) and passim. 2, 8 = 226; Polyaen v, 2, 21 ; Ael., V . H . I, 2 0 ;

3 V i r g . ,Aen. ~ I I ,648 ; VIII, 481 ff. Serv. ad Aen . X, 184. On the goddess, L. Ross 3n Strab. v, 2, 3 = 230 ; P. de La Coste Messeli&re, Taylor, Local Cults in Etruria (1933)~ 115 ff. ;

Azc ItIushe de Deb? (1936), 476 ff. Quentin F. Maule-H. R. W. Smith, Votive Religion 37 J . Heurgon, Valeurs fCminines et masculines at Caere (~ggg) , 82ff. : the authors think Ino

dans la clvilisation Ctrusque', !WEFR LXXIII (1961), Leultothea 'was an Etruscan double of Mates 146 ff. Matuta ' ; A. J. Pfiffig, Uni-Hera-Astarte (o.c.,

3 8 E. Colozier, ' Les Etrusques et Carthage ', n. 5 3 ) >49 ff. li/IEFR LXV (1953)~ 66. " M Pallottino, ' Scavi nel santuarjo etrusco di

JB J. Jehasse, 1.c. note 25, 251. Pyrgi , Arch. class. IX (1957)~ 206 ff. ; x (1958)~ 40 M. Pallottino-G. Colonna-G. Garbini-L. Vlad 316 ff.; XI ( ~ g j g ) , 251 ff.; XIII (1961), 24off.;

Borrelli, ' Seal-i nel santuario etrusco di Pvrgi e YV (1963), 248 ff. ; ' Le scoperte di Pyrgi ', A t t i scoperta di tre lamine d'oro iscritte in etrusco e in V I I Congr. intern. d i Arch. class. (1961) 11, 153-163 ; punico ', Avch. class. XVI (1964), 39-11?. R . Bartoccini-M. Paliottino-G. Foti-G. Colonna-" 1 have tried to discuss this problem in CR,4I A. Ciasca, ' Santa Severa, Scavi e ricerche nel sit0

(19651, 115 f f . dell'antica Pyrgi (1957-1958) ', hTot. S c . x r I I (1959)~ 3 2 Diod. YV, 14, 3 ff. 143-263.

5 THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PYRGI

had already proved, first, that it had been occupied, as early as the middle of the sixth century, by some shrines or small temples, the terracotta decoration of which had left a few remains. At the end of the century the sanctuary seemed to have undergone a great develop- ment : a great quantity of architectural tiles, and fragments of antefixes and acroteria of the so-called second period, were found scattered all over the ground or heaped up in filling layers."& Among these, two inscribed sherds belonging, as it seems, to the late sixth century and dedicated to uni-z~nial in the genitive case-had revealed the mistress of the place.45 Uni is the same as the Latin Iuno and the Greek Hera. However, at Pyrgi, we have seen that the ' interpretatio Graeca ' of this uni would be in the long run another goddess, Leukothea or Eilythia.

But the excavation had also brought to light the basement of two temples a both facing the sea, one larger, A, with the deep and broad pronaos and the three parallel cellae of the typical Tuscan scheme, and another, El, a little smaller, about 20 by 30 yards, peripteral, tetrastyle, with seven columns along each side, and a cella opening into the adyton. It must be added that the svstem of measurement used bv the architect of the two t e m ~ l e s is the Attic foot of 296 mm., approximately I 1 2 inches, as in the contemporary Capitoline temple. Moreover, the proportions of B are exactly based on a 3-feet module (66 feet, 99 feet, the cella being

Q 27

I feet broad). But no module of that sort is to be met with in A. On the whole

B seems to be an almost perfect example of Greek architecture, which Dr. Colonna, in his accurate restoration, compares with the temples of Selinus. In Italy itself, outside of Magna Graecia, of course, there were only three peripteral temples, at Pompei, at Satricum in the neighbourhood of Anzio, and the temple B at Pyrgi.

Now the temple A dates from 480-470 : among the architectural terracottas which lay in the rubbish behind it, an alto rilievo group has been recovered of Athena fighting with Giants," undoubtedly a masterpiece of archaic classical sculpture, only equalled, for instance, by the Zeus and Ganymede from Olympia.

The temple B goes back to a quarter of a century earlier, according to its plan and proportions as compared with the temple of Satricum which was rebuilt at the end of the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century. This dating is confirmed by the fragments of its fictile decoration : 4 S an Amazon who has her countemart at Caere.4g a female bust which served perhaps as an acroterion, as well as terminal tiles of pediment and revetment plaques of a type current about 500 B.C.

All these fragments, which are supposed to have belonged to B, were found in a rectangular niche between the two temples, carefully and piously disposed in later times to protect some precious relics from the destroyed temple B : 50 there, between large blocks of tufa coming from the walls of its cella, and three slabs of its terminal tiles in front, under a heap of terracotta fragments, three sheets of gold leaf, with inscriptions on the outer face, had been hidden.

And still, before looking at them, please allow me one more short parenthesis. Together with these gold leaves, there was a mysterious fourth inscribed sheet of bronze, in very poor condition, of course, of which nevertheless the Italian Istituto del Restauro has been able to make a few lines readable. Professor Pallottino is to publish it in the next

4" O f peculiar interest i s a small series o f antefixes t o a t emple o f small d imensions (G. Colonna, &Vat. S c . (;\/I. Pallottino, Arch. class. IX (1957)~ 216-218 ; ~ I I I(rgjg), 252). A s t h e y belong t o t h e end o f t h e G. Fot i , N o t . S c . XIII (19;9), 183-188) o f a t y p e s ix th century or t h e beginning o f t h e fifth,i t wou ld h i therto u n k n o w n ; n o t surrounded b y t h e usual n o t b e chronologically impossible t o attribute t h e m t o shell, b u t w i t h a figure standing o n a background o f T h e f a r i e Velianas' shrine. radiating lanceolate leaves or w i t h a mou lded edge 4 5 M. Pallottino, Avck. class. IX (1957)~ 222 ; x (' a bordo sagomato '). T h e y represent runn ing (1958), 319, pl. c x ~ ,3 ; G . Colonna, N o t . S c . XIII Victories , winged horses, and a strange h u m a n (1959); 225 ff., fig. 79-81. winged figure w i t h a cock head, running t o r ight , 4 6 G. Colonna, I1 santuario d i Pyrgi alla luce w h i c h i t has b e e n impossible t o trace back t o any delle recenti scoperte ', S t . Etr . XXXIII (1965), 92-201 . analogue : t o t h e references given b y Pallottino w e 47 M. Pallottino, Arch. class. x (19j8), 319-322, could add t h e Cicirrus w h o i n t h e Atellan show-an pl. 108-110. Etruscan tradition-was disguised as a cock (Hor. , 4 s G. Colonna, Arch. class. XVI (1964), j 4 ff., S a t . I , 5, 52; w i t h I-Iesych. 11, 481, 2647, S c h m i d t : P I . 30-33. ' Cicirrus ' i n Oscan m e a n t ' cock ') and , perhaps, t h e 49 A. AndrCn, A~chitectural Tevvacottas . f ~ o n ~ cock w h i c h plays a curious part i n t h e Atargatis cul t Etrlrsco-Italic temples (1939), 44, pl. 12 (42). at Hierapolis (Luc . , De Dea Syria 48 ; G. Goossens , 50 For a very precise description o f t h e c ircum- Hitfrapolis de Syvie (19431, 6 0 , n. I) . T h e s e antefixes, stances o f t h e find, G . Colonna, Arclz. class. XVI,

o f a mediocre and hasty workmansh ip , are ascribed 53 ff. ; S t . Etv. XXXIII (1965), 202 ff.

6 JACQUES HEURGON

volume of Studi E t ~ u s c h i . ~ ~ a But he was kind enough to show me a facsimile of what can be deciphered, and to authorize me to say something about it in privileged anticipation.

Though desperately injured, it presents the end of an inscription with the right, left and bottom edges available, a hole in the middle, and the remnants of five lines. The palaeographical characters ascribe it to a date which is a little earlier than the three other inscriptions, and this is the reason why I mention it first. Of course, the meaning is obscure. I shall not forestall the various suggestions Massimo Pallottino will submit to his readers. Suffice it to say that he insists on the brilliant calligraphic quality of the writing-almost Greek he says-and that the word uneial, twice, confirms the fundamental sovereignty of uni in the sanctuary.

Let us look now at the three gold sheets, not rolled as they were found, but unrolled, side by side (plate I). There is one, on the left, which bears a Punic inscription : we shall call it P. The two others, in the middle and on the right, bear Etruscan inscriptions, one longer, which covers nearly all the sheet, the other obviously shorter. We shall call them E I and E 2. The three sheets have approximately the same dimensions, about 3+ by 74 inches. But they offer a difference in their mode of fixation : P and E I were riveted by ten nails each, through holes of a rather broad diameter ; 51 E 2 had twelve instead of ten nails, and the holes are smaller. This is a first indication that P and E I were closely linked together, and that E 2 stood a little apart. Moreover, an interesting detail has been noticed. T h e nails themselves, of bronze with golden heads, have been partly recovered : they had been carefully gathered and placed inside the rolls formed by the folded sheets, or at least in two of them : eleven nails indeed were found inside E 2, which, with one missing, amounts to the number of the nails with which E 2 had been fixed on its support ; none was found inside P, but eighteen inside E I , which nearly corresponds to the total number, twenty, used for P and E I together ; and this confirms that these two sheets had been placed close to each other, and unfastened at the same time. The conclusion then seems to impose itself that, if there is, as was at once supposed, a bilingual connection between the texts, it must be between P and E I, while E 2, though related to them by the name of the same dedicant, and more or less contemporary, must stand apart by itself. Besides, the presence of the inscription on the bronze sheet with the three others on gold sheets suggests that the niche between the two temples had been made to preserve, among other sacred relics of the sanctuary, a part of its archives, which contained different documents established on various occasions. I t has been calculated that the nails would penetrate to a depth of 14 inches (37 mm.), which involves, for the wooden board into which they were driven, a thickness of at least 12 inches (40-50 mm.) : this support then was not a light coffer or a pocket altar, but in all probability a huge door. Finally, it has been observed that the graffiti which can be seen in the vacant part at the end of the inscriptions, and which no doubt had been scribbled by onlookers trying to improve their hand, fit in with the hypothesis of a location in an accessible place, on the outward door of a temple or shrine.

We shall see in a moment, from the evidence of the Punic text, that the object of dedica- tion it celebrates was ' a holy place ' with a statue of the goddess, the tmia and the heramadva of E I. And the first puzzling question, which still remains unsolved, is what and where was this ' holy place '. Dr. Colonna has from the start and repeatedly assumed that it was the temple B,j2 and the proximity and peculiar connections which exist between this temple and the niche favour in some measure his opinion. In that case the temple B, its terracotta decoration and the gold sheets would constitute a chronological and historical unit, referring to about 500 B.C. Some others, however, among them Dr. Pfiffig in the valuable publication he has lately made of the Pyrgi inscriptions, believe that the dedication of the statue was made in a sort of chapel of a pre-existing temple, na~nely this temple B, but some time in the fifth century after its construction.j3 But, though the meaning of P is far from being

See now S t . Etr . x x x ~ v(1966), 175-209. " 2.Colonna, ' L'identificazione del tempio di G. Colonna, S t . Etr . xxx111 (1965), 203 ff., has Astarte e la questione dello 'QR Q D ~', S t . Etr.

given new and valuable information about these nails. xxx111 (1965), 201-209. Together with the bronze nails which had been used j3 A. J. Pfiffig, Uni-Hera-Astarte, Studien zu den for fixing the inscribed sheets on their support, eight Goldblechen von S . Severa-Pyrgi mit etruskischer i~nd other nails of iron with a larger golden head were pztnischer Inschrift (&err. Akad . der Wissenschaften, found which could only have a decorative function on P/zilos.-Hist. Kl . , 88, z ) , (1965), 42. the door of the temple (bullae aureae ; cf. at Tar- quinia, Tomba degli Auguri ; infra, n . 71a).

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PYRGI 7

clear in this respect, it seems to identify the ' holy place ' with a temple. A third possibility would be to separate entirely the Punic monument from the temple B, and to imagine an independent shrine, somewhere within the temenos of uni, which, owing to the incomplete- ness of the excavations. has not been found vet. I t is difficult indeed to believe that a ' holv place ' dedicated to Astarte with such a stdct observance of all the niceties of ~hoenicia; ritual could resemble this purely Greek temple. We know of course of the overwhelming influence of Hellenism, in Sicily for instance, on Punic architecture, sculpture and coins. Still it is ~ robab le that the Caeretan shrine retained somethina of the characteristic features " of the Phoenician or Punic shrines as they appear in similar ex-votos in Syria and in Cyprus, in the Ma'abed of Nora in Sardinia, in the naos of Thuburbo Maius in Africa : a high socle, approached by steps, a square plan, two columns in the pronaos, a flat roof.54 Then we might represent to ourselves the history of the sanctuary in a different way : temple B built at the end of the sixth century in the full bloom of the Hellenic Caere, contemporary with the Delphic treasury ; temple A a little later, about 480-470, in the typically Tuscan tripartite plan ; and the shrine to Astarte, the date of which then is not deducible any more from archaeological evidence, but must be based on other arguments.

Do the palaeographical characters of the inscriptions afford in this respect sound conclusions ? From this point of view, Professor Garbini for P and Professor Pallottino for E I and E 2 had at once proposed to date the writing from the first half of the fifth century ; Garbini said perhaps from the beginning of it,55 around 500 ; at the latest within the ten years 500-490, Pallottino specified.j6 But there is now a growing tendency towards lowering this date.57 Thus Dr. Kharsekin, in a thorough survey of the inscriptions published in the U.S.S.R., puts it in the third quarter of the fifth century, and Dr. Pfiffig, who thinks, as I have said, that the dedication concerned only a statue to be erected in the pre-existing temple B, develops a series of arguments in accordance with which he decidedly goes down to the end of the fifth century and the time of the Peloponnesian war. This is very important, of course, for the historical interpretation of the Pyrgi inscriptions, and I think it will be worth while to check briefly these arguments, and to state why, though impressive, they are not after all convincing.

T o begin with P, Dr. Pfiffig insists, for instance, on the form of the Sin with three branches which, he says, referring to J. Friedrich's synopsis,5s ' appears in Elephantine inscriptions (fifth/fourth century), inscriptions of Jehaumilk (fifth/fourth century), of Shipitbaal I1 (fourth century), of Batnoam (end of the fourth century) and of Abydos (fourth century). But he adds : ' The only older inscription where we find it is Ipsambul (590 B.C. cilfca).' Is that not enough ? There is no reason whatever to date democratically a new document after the majority of the existing comparable documents, above all if we remind ourselves of the large epigraphic gap which remains open between the ancient Phoenician writing and the first texts in middle Phoenician.j9 The same can be said about the Etruscan inscriptions. Nobody denies the strong archaic character of their writing and phonetics.60 Still, it is objected to the high dating that the theta in E I and E 2 was formed by a plain circle without any dot or cross inside. Now it is usually believed that the disap- pearance of the dotted or crossed theta does not occur before the middle of the fifth century.61 I should say, after a new examination, that this is not exact. I could mention examples of

" D. B. Harden, O.C. (n. 8), 91 ff. ; G . Pesce, (1959), 218.-A second argument alleged by Pfiffigis Sardegna Pi~nica, fig. 10 ; A. Lkzine, Architecture that the tau presents at the top of its vertical stem a plcnique (Publications de la Faci~lte' des Lettres de small hook which is only to be found again in the l'l'nie!ersite'de Tunis I , 5) (1961), 19 ff., 40. Batnoam-inscription (end of the fourth century) : in

"W.Garbini, Arch. class. XVI (1964), 76. fact this hook appears only in two out of the fourteen 5",1. Pallottino, Arch. class. XVI (1964), 80 ff 106. tau, it loolrs very different from the flexible stem of " A. I . ICharseliin, Vestnik Dreonei ~ s t o j i i111 Friedr. 19, and can be explained by a particular

(1965), 108-131, especially 115 ; A. J. Pfiffig, zz, attack ' of the stroke. 40 ff. J . Ferron, Oriens Antiquus IV (1965), 194, on b0 The most obvious sign of archaism is the regular the contrary, maintains for P, from the palaeo- expression of interior vowels : tlcruce (E I , lines 6/7, graphical point of view, a date in the second half of later turce). The lead sheet of Magliano ( T L E 3 59), the sixth century. dated fifth/fourth century, has more samples of

js J . Friedrich, Phbnizisch-Punische Grafnfnatik syncopated forms. (Analects Orientalia 32) (1951), Schrifttafel I . b' M. Hammarstrom, A t t i I Congr. intern. Etrusco

jS J. G . FCvrier, Histoire de L'Ecriti~re, 2nd ed. (19291, 254.

8 JACQUES HEURGON

empty thetas as early as the seventh and the sixth centurie~.~"bout 500 B.C. the tomb 434 of the Piazza Incassata in the Caere necropolis contained three sherds of Attic skyphoi with this apparent i n n ~ v a t i o n . ~ ~ And we might point to several thetas of that sort in the bronze Pyrgi inscription. I t is only too natural that the Etruscans should have soon spared themselves the trouble of dotting or crossing their thetas since their alphabet did not use the vowel ' o '. Another objection is the punctuation with a single dot instead of two or three, as was usual in the archaic ~ e r i o d : but it is not difficult to find in Dr. Tefferv's ~ o c a lScripts of archaic G~eece sam'ples of'this punctuation with a single dot in southern Italy, dated from the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century." On the whole, this tendency towards lowering dates, which is frequent among epigraphists, does not do justice here to the prominence of Caere as a cultural centre. Dr. Pfiffig, acknowledging the likeness of the writing on the Pyrgi sheets to that on the Olthos vase and other black- or red-figured vases between 510 and 460, rejoins that we do not know how long these vases had been in use till they were inscribed as funerary offerings.'j5 But even if the space of a generation had elapsed between their importation and their burying, it would be, in my opinion, an error to think that these clumsy graffiti furnished, so to speak, their writing-models to the expert scribes who worked officially at Caere or Pyrgi. I t must have been quite the reverse. Ancient writing did not form or transform itself according to the carelessness or fancy of individual scribblers. Innovations and reforms were introduced in the chief town of the country, under clerical control. 4 s for Caere, Livy speaks of young Romans who were sent to Caere to learn Etruscan letters, ' Etruscis litteris erudiri solitos ' . 6 V e refers to the end of the fourth century, but we may be sure that it was true already two centuries earlier, unless perhaps young Romans were not yet open to erudition. There were certainly at Caere, if I may say so, ' scriptoria ' the abilities of which must, at this time of its apogee in strength and culture, have reached the same level as its architects, its painters and its coroplasts. Having to trace on gold sheets public instruments of this importance, scribes did not trust to mere chance, they chose their characters, conducted their hand, punctuated their words in a manner which was not submitted to the diffuse custom of the vulgar. but might be epoch-making. As I have said, all the palaeographical elements which iive the Pyrgi inscriptions their almost classical aspect were already present at the beginning of the fifth century ; there is no reason to believe that they had not been in regular use in the Caeretan ' ars scriptoria ' before being imitated in graffiti or elsewhere. Let us then stick, quite confidently, to the high date, in agreement with the first feeling of most epigraphists : the first half, even the first quarter, of the fifth century.

From their outward presentation itself, we have seen that there is a strong connection between P and E I ; and there are indeed in both texts correspondences which confirm their data (see fig. I). The name of the dedicant Tiberie Velianas, Thefarie Velianas,

6 2 Not . S C . (1937), 396 and 450 (seventh century) ; 30), at V e i i ( S t . Etu. (1939), 455 ff., nos. I , 4 , 6 ) , at 395 (sixth century). Orvieto (&I.Bizzardi, L a necropoli di Crocejisso del " Not . Sc . ( 1 9 3 7 ) ~ 386 ff.,nos. 21-23 ; iMotz. A n t . Tufo itz Orvieto (1963), 141 ff.,nos. 9, 12 , 14), w e see

Litzcei XLII (1955), 1007, no . 17 and 1029, nos. 65-6. that the letter is generally drawn i n one stroke, 6 3 L. H . Je f fery , The Local Scuipts of archaic starting f rom the foot o f the outer right s tem t o the

Greece (1961) . I t seems t o b e a peculiarity o f Achaian top o f the outer le f t s tem, wi th the result that the colonies ( s o ) , whence i t has spread t o Taras (283, oblique bars touched the extremity o f the stems ; i f pl. 53 ( I ) : graffito o n an Attic eye-kylix, c. 540-530) the hand stopped i n course o f work ( N o t . Sc . ( 1 9 3 7 ) ~ and Lokroi (286, pl. 54 ( 3 ) : bronze plaque, c. 500- 383, no . 12 ) or i f it drew all the stems downwards 480 ?). T w o other examples f rom Petelia and ( M . Bizzardi, 144, no . 14) , the meeting-points were no t Krimissa (261 : t w o bronze plaques (28-29, pl. so) , necessarily at extremities. Besides, it is difficult t o c. 475 ? ; c f . 249, z59).-A third objection concerns place E I or E 2 i n the alleged development : the m and n : they are not o f the oldest form (Vy); the forms I and 2 are mixed : tnzia, E I , 1 . I , has an m o f three vertical strokes go down t o the ground-line (m). the first form ; heuamaiva, 1. 2 , o f the second form ; Pfif f ig n o w distinguishes t w o phases : i n the first, the itanim, 1 . 14, combines a n o f the first form, a nz which oblique bars would extend t o the foot o f the stems ; is o f the second i n its right half and o f the first i n its i n the second they would be shortened and touch the lef t ha l f . T h e drtctus seems t o have been f rom top t o stems i n the middle. From this point o f view, our bottom, and rather hasty, and the point where the inscriptions would b e placed at the transition between oblique bar touched the next s tem was accidental, I and 2. But t h e theory does not seem t o be well no t due t o the evolution o f the letter-form. founded : i f w e consider the documents o f the sixth " A. J . Pfiffig, 4 1 , answering M . Pallottino, Arch. century i n which w e can study the passage f rom the class. XVI (1964). 81 , n . 43. early t o the classical m, for instance at Caere " L i v y IX, 36, 3. ( N o t . Sc.(1937), 383,no. 12 ;386 ,no .zo; 3 8 9 , n o s . q -

JRS vol. LVI ( I 966) PLATE I

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PYRGI

I0 JACQUES HEURGON

appears in P at the third line, and in E I at the fourth and fifth lines (as well as, with a different spelling, Thefarie Veliiunas, at the first and second lines of E 2). The goddess to whom the dedication is made, The Lady Astarte at the beginning of P, may be recognized in unialastres in E I , line 3, as a genitive form of uni-astre which combines in a compound word the name of the Etruscan uni and an Etruscan translation of Astarte. astre. At the middle of the two inscriptions, we cannot but be struck by the correspondence of ' three years ' (P, line 7) and ci avil (E I, lines 9/10), in which ci is a well-known Etruscan numeral for ' three ' and avil the undoubted eauivalent of ' vears '. At the end of both inscri~tions the same word SNT, avil confirms by'its recurrenci that their general course is the s'ame.

I t is understandable that etruscologists first thought it was the long wished-for godsend : a bilingual. But their enthusiasm was soon followed by disenchantment. T o begin with, P did not afford at all the clear and unquestionable basis which was required for guiding an interpretation proceeding from the known to the unknown. After nearly two years of effort, semitists 67 are still divided on the exact meaning of some points of P, and especially on one of the most important, line 6, which concerns the reason why Thefarie Velianas had made his offering. Still, apart from these yet unsolved riddles, the general translation may run as follows :

T o the Lady Astarte, here is the holy place which has made and given Tiberie Velianas, king over Kisry -

(Kisry being an obsolete but attested form for Caere) 68

- in the month of the Sacrifice of the Sun as a gift in the temple and -

(here we stumble on the first difficulty : the last letter of line 5 , damaged by the hole of a nail, has been read as a mem or as a noun, which give totally different meanings : with an ' m ', most semitists translated ' as a gift in the temple and its high place ' ; with a ' n ', as judiciously proposed by Dr. Pfiffig and admitted by Garbini 70 and J. G. F C ~ r i e r , ~ l the mention of the ' high place ' vanishes ; Pfiffig translates : ' as a gift in the temple and at his expense ' ; Fevrier : ' as a gift in the temple, and I have built it . . . ').

Now we come to the crux I have mentioned above : because Astarte 'RS BDY.

Let us go farther : the event is now dated : in the third year of his reign in the month of Karar on the day of the burying of the God (= Adonis).

Something, then, has occurred on this day which accounts for Thefarie Velianas' gratitude. But the exact value of the favour Astarte has bestowed upon him conceals itself in the word 'RS. I t has been generally translated, according to a semitic root which means ' to wish ', ' because Astarte has chosen him, has raised him with her hand.' Another solution has been advanced after an etymology which supports the idea of ' to pay a price, to redeem ', and it led to the hypothesis that Astarte had rescued Thefarie Velianas from a great danger. J. G. FCvrier has also eloquently defended an interpretation which allows one to translate : ' because Astarte has been espoused by him,' thinking of a ceremony of hieros gamos which

" 7.Garbini, Arch. class. x v ~(1964)~ 66-76 (with ' Quelques remarques B propos de l'inscription the suggestions of Prof. L:vi Della Vida) ; G. Gar- phenicienne de Pyrgi ', Or. Ant . IV (1965), 181-198 ; bini-G. Levi Della Vjda, Considerazioni sull'iscri- A. J . Pfiffig, 8-22 ; I . A. Kharsekin, 109-114. zione punica de Pyrgi , Oriens Antiqz~lls IV (1965),35- 68 Verr. Flacc., in Schol. Veron. ad Verg., Aen. x, 52 ; S. Moscati, 'Osservazioni sull'iscrizione fenicio- ;83 : Cisra.-The construction ' king over ', or punica di Pyrgi ',Riv. degli S t . orientali xxx~x(1964), reigning over ', attested at Byblos, Idalion an: in the 257-260 ; A. Dupont-Sommer, ' L'inscription inscription of Mesa, is equivalent to ' king of . punique recemment decouverte k Pyrgi ', Journ. 09 A . J. Pfiffig, 9. Asiat. (1964), 289-299 ; J. G. Fevrier, ' L'inscription 70 G. Garbini, Or. Ant . IV (1965), 41. punique de Pyrgi ', CRAI (1965), 9-1.2 ; ' Remarques 'I In a private letter (15th &lay, 1965). J. Ferron sur l'inscription punique de Pyrgi , Or. Ant . IV defends the reading with a w i m (Or. Ant . IV (1965), (1965)~ 175-180 ; ' A propos du hieros gamos de 186). Pyrgi ', Journ. Asiat. (1965), I 1-13 ; J. Ferron,

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PYRGI I I

would have been celebrated by the king and the goddess, an unexpected but possible inter- pretation which can claim for itself the existence at Carthage of a priest who was called ' Astarte's husband '.

And then the end of the inscription is a wish in order to ensure the ex-voto a perpetual duration :

. . . and may the years of the statue of the goddess in her temple last as long as these stars.

(Which Professor Dupont-Sommer has very aptly compared with Gen. xv, 5 : ' Look up to heaven and number the stars if thou canst. So shall thv seed be '.) 71a

On the other side, etruscologists, when a little sobered, could notJhelp feeling at a loss. They were obliged to confess that many words in E I and E 2 were hapax legomena which did not occur anywhere else, or only in obscure contexts, and that the Etruscan morpholo- gical and syntactical rules which they had mastered in more recent epitaphs, remained in this archaic inscription of no avail. Besides, the faint light they could draw from P, with the questionable meaning of the central part, was more disheartening than inspiring. They saw that in P Thefarie Velianas was King over Caere, but they looked in vain for such a title in E I or E 2. They pondered on all particular chronological data in P and could not find any corresponding mention of months or days in E I . So they came nearly to the conclusion that the inscriptions were not really bilingual, but that, determined of course by the same event which had produced the same Thefarie Velianas upon the stage, they were nevertheless drawn up according to different ways of thinking, different mental structures, different religious traditions. And, as they partly gave up the hope of making P and E I fit and stick together, their imagination took its flight in another direction, trying to elucidate the historical background on which this strange collusion of Etruscans and Carthaginians at Pyrgi stood out. Dreaming on certain potentialities of the word 'RS in P, ' because Astarte has raised him', 'because Astarte has redeemed him', they sought to identify the danger Thefarie Velianas had been freed from, the victory Astarte had given him, perhaps during difficult fights against the lip are an^,^^ or in the part he had played in Sicily during the Peloponnesian war.73 And that could be true, but it was only to postpone the real problem. Happily enough, the literal investigation has lately made some progress, interesting results have been secured which have given the interpretation a new impulse and the research more confidence in the obscure, but narrow, correspondence between P and E I. I t has been the great merit of Dr. Kharsekin 7 4 and Dr. Pfiffig not to despair too soon of translating them word for word ; the translation is not always convincing ; but everybody now is sure that the only escape is to press the bilingual character of these two texts. I shall give a few examples of the problems and of the solutions, considering only P and E I , and leaving alone E 2, which seems to refer to an anniversary commemoration of the dedication of E

But first, what can we expect of such bilinguals ? We know of other dedications of that sort, with undoubted bilinguals, for instance in C y p r ~ s . ~ 6 At Idalion and Tamassos, in the

'la The lines 9-1 I had been first translated : ' And 73 A. J. Pfiffig, 46 ff. the years of the statue of the goddess in her temple 7 4 A. I. Kharsekin believes in the indo-european are as many as these stars.' The stars were under- character of the Etruscan language, and his effort stood in a metaphorical meaning of the word as being consists mainly in explaining the inscriptions through the golden nails, with reference to the Etrusco- not only Greek loan-words but Greek roots.-Prof. Roman use of the clazli annales. This interpretation, Georgiev has also tried an interpretation through after A. Dupont-Sommer's refutation, seems to be Hittite ( L a bilingz~e d i Pyrgi e l'origine ittita delllEtrusco given up. Still, M. Durante (' Le formule conclusive ( A c a d h i e bulgare des Sciences, Linguistique balkanique dei testi etruschi di Pyrgi ', Rendic. Lincei (1965), IX,,JI) (1964),71-75).308-321) has ventured to recognize in pulumxva at M . Pallottino, Arch. class. XVI (1964), 104. the end of E I and E 2 790.the Etruscan equivalent of Masson. Les inscribtions chybriotes s~,llabiyues Latin bullae (supra n . 51).-For a similar wish for the (1961) : 224, no. 215 ; i 2 6 ff., no. 216 j z46-ff., perpetuity of a treaty, cf. the foedus Cassianum in no. 220.-H. Donner-W. Rollig, Kanaam'sche zlnd Dion. Hal. VI, 95, 2 : ' as long as the heavens and the Aramaische Inschriften ( K A I ) : no. 39 (= no. 2 I 5 M ) ; earth shall remain as they are.' no. 41 (= no. 220 M). 216 M is not in K A I , which

7 2 J . Heurgon, ' Les inscriptions de Pyrgi et gives (no. 42) a dedication to Anat, from Lapethos, in I'alliance etrusco-punique autour de 500 av. J-C.', Phoenician and Greek, not Cypriot. See also C R A I (1965), 89-104. The arguments I then 0. Masson, ' Cultes indigenes, cultes grecs et cultes presented for a mention of the Sicilian god Adranos orientaux B Chypre ', in ElPments orientaux dans la in E I do not seem to me as cogent as they once did. religion grecque ancienne ( I 960), I 29-1 42.

I 2 JACQUES HEURGON

fourth century, the Phoenician colony, in two Greek sanctuaries of Apollo, offered bronze statuettes on stone bases to their own god Resheph, and they commemorated their dedication by three inscriptions, in Phoenician and in Cypriot Greek. We observe that, as is only natural, the Phoenician inscription, at the top of the stone, had been drawn up first and is more explicit than the Cypriot version belgw. In Phoenician : 7 7 ' This statue was given and erected by Menahem, son of BNHDS, son of Menahem, son of 'RQ, to His Lord Resheph-Eleios. In the month of Ethanim, in the sixth year of King Milkyaton, King of Kition and Idalion, for he has heard the prayer.' T o this there corresponds in Cypriot Greek : ' This statue was given and erected by Mnaseas, son of Noumenios, to the god Apollo of Helos.' So the Cypriot text is only an abbreviated version of the Phoenician original. All chronological data have dropped off. When occasionally they are expressed, it can only be in an indirect way. For instance, instead of saying the x day of they month, the Idalion bilingual says : ' in the last of the five intercalary days ',78 which is an administrative, not a religious notion. Besides, it has been noticed that the genealogy of the dedicant, which extended to the fourth generation in the Phoenician inscriptions, was reduced in Cypriot to the patronymic, and that the anthroponyms are either translated into Greek, as is BNHDS into Noumenios, or replaced by a Greek name as close as possible to the Phoenician name, as Mnaseas instead of Menahem.79 But above all there is in the rendering of the name of the god a process of adaptation which is nearly mere punning. ~eshe~hvMika1becomes Apollo Amyklos, in which Amyklos has nothing to do with the Laconian Amylilai, but is a Greek name which sounded like Mikal and thus might be used as a satisfactory B-peu-prks.

These Cypriot bilinguals teach us how we are to deal with the Pyrgi inscriptions. Bilingual they are, but with a difference. P was no doubt the original, and E I a necessarily approximate translation. P is a genuine Phoenician or Punic dedication, which could have been made in Byblos, Cyprus or Carthage without changing any word. The Etruscan Thefarie Velianas not only appears as a devotee of Astarte ; he has adopted also, or the Punic priests have adopted for him, the Punic calendar and ritual : ' in the month of the Sacrifice of the Sun, in the month of Karar, in the festival of the God's burying.' Were he a born Carthaginian, he would not have done otherwise. He reminds us of the stories of Anacharsis and Skyles in Herodotus, the Scythians who were so passionately devoted to Greek religion that they knew no greater joy than to sacrifice to Cybele or to celebrate Dionysiac mysteries. But they did it in hiding, and at the cost of their lives.81

This Punic account of the ceremony the Etruscans had to translate into their own language, and that was no easy task : all the resources of periphrasis and approximation had to be used. Curiously enough, P did not care at all for Etruscan institutions. I t called Thefarie Velianas King over Caere, and, a little later, mentioned the third year of his reign. But if we scrutinize the Etruscan version, there is no trace in it of the Etruscan word for ' king ', lauchume, Lat. ' lucumo '. The problem is made more complicated by the fact that we do not know exactly what the Carthaginians meant by their word ' meleli ' .82 If there were ' meleli ' at Carthage-and it seems that n/Ialchus, who made war against the Greeks in Sicily in the sixth century,83 was one of them, like his grandson Hamilcar, who, in the beginning of the fifth century, as Herodotus says,8* became ' king of the Carthaginians because of his valour '-the true nature of their power, not absolute at any rate, remains obscure. I t is probable that the Carthaginians used the word ' melek ' in the manner of the Greeks, who called indifferently ' basileis ' all the barbarian chiefs with whom they came into contact. ' Melek ' then would not mean anything more than the supreme authority in Caere. Now, if, in the Etruscan version, Thefarie Velianas does not bear the title of lauclzume, the reason probably is that Caere was no longer a monarchy, like Rome itself since the end of the sixth century. Was it a Republic ? Then the exact title he bore anlong his countrymen must have been zilath, which is the equivalent of Lat. ' praetor ' . g 5 And we find indeed at the

77 0. Masson, no. 215 ; K A I no. 4 1 . Semitien XII (1962) , 5-43 ; G.Picard, ' Les suytes de 0.Nlasson, no. 220 ; K A I no. 39. Carthage dans Tite-Live et Cornelius Nepos , REL

7'5 0.Masson, 225 8. XLI (1963) , 269-281 ; J . Ferron, 185 . 0.Masson, 248. 8 3 Just. SVIII, 7 .

81 Hdt. IV, 76-80. 8 4 Hdt. VII, 165. 8 2 On the kingship at Carthage, St. Gsell, Hist . M. Pallottino, Etruscologia, 5th ed. (1963) , 226 ;

mzc. de I'Afrique du Novd 11 ( 1 9 1 8 ) , 173-192 ; J. Heurgon, ' L'Etat Ctrusque ', Hist . r I (1957) , 7 9 ff. ; I>. Maurin. ' Himilcon le Maponide : crises et R. Lambrechts. Essai suv les nragistratures des r ibu- mutations a Carthage au dCbut du IVe sickle ', bliques 6trusques ' (~959) , 89 ff.

THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PYRGI I 3

end of E I the word zilacal, in the genitive case, which may correspond to the second mention of kingship in P, and could be translated ' of praetorship '. In the first part of E I , Thefarie Velianas' title must conceal itself either in mex B L L ~ Uor, more probably, in munistas 0z~vas tameresca, as the word tamera is known among Etruscan magistratures ; s6 the expression has been, I think rightly, translated by Dr. Pfiffig : ' as presiding over this country.' 87

I shall not inflict on you the various attempts which have been made to disentangle this knot. But if I may mention one of my oviTn dreams, it is to be noticed that, curiously enough, Thefarie Velianas does not appear in E I in the normal nominative case viTe should expect : he is called Thefaaiei Velianas, and Thefariei is an oblique case.88 The subject in the nomina- tive case is meX Buta. Now, owing to some considerations I cannot dwell upon and which I must say Massimo Pallottino has been good enough not to consider as altogether fantastic, we know mex under the genitive form meXl as meaning ' populus ',sg and 0uta may be the indo-european form which appears in Umbrian,go in Oscan and in Etruscail 9 2 in the sense of ciuitas. mex Butn then rnight be one of these twofold groups which are frequent in Umbrian and Etruscan texts," and I should suggest as a translation : popz~lz~sciuitnsgz~e. ' The people and the city 9--Tlzefaviei Veliunas sal : ' as a gift for ' or ' in name of Thefarie Velianas ' "-ttzdruce : ' have given '. This interpretation would reconcile E I with the hypothesis that Caere, at the time of the inscriptions, was no more a monarchy. But was it a Iiepublic ? We shall see a little later.

Let us come now to the chronological particularities which are so accurately detailed in P. The Cyprus bilinguals have shown us that they could be entirely omitted in the second text. Still, the latest develop~nents in research have succeeded in detecting their reflection there," and indeed it is just because the existence of these chronological data in E I has been more clearly perceived that the comparison between the two texts has taken a new start. I t will be remembered that P referred to two distinct sorts of events : firstly, the month of the dedication : we can only suspect its counterpart in the unknown clz~venias, which, in the genitive case, may be the name of an Etruscan festival. But for the second date, that of the favour granted by Astarte to Thefarie Velianas, we seem to tread on firmer ground. We have already recognized in ci asil the exact translation of the Punic ' three years ', that is ' in the third year ' or ' three years before '. For the rest, it must have been difficult indeed for the Etruscan priests to find in their own calendar anything equivalent to the month of Karar, the days of Adonis' burying, etc., . . . and, more difficult still, if the event itself had been the ritual accomplishment of a izieros gamos, to translate it into their own language. But these lines 8-13 of E I present a strange disposition which Massimo Pallottino at once cleverly noticed : 9G we have in them thirteen or fourteen words which are grouped in two parallel sequences :

ilacve tulerase nac ci avil Xurvar tes'iameitale ilacve als'ase nac atranes zilacal seleitala acnas'vers

-two parallel sequences of the same length, elaborate symmetry, and recurring assonances. Ilacve tz~levase and il~rcve als'ase match together ; then nac, which means ' because ', 9 i

introduces in each case a series of four words with a sort of rhyme : teiiameitale, seleitala. Such a regular construction must not be ascribed to mere chance.

8 V L E98, 170, 172, 19 j . 93 ukvipev.fisiu tntaper ikuvirza : ' for the Fisian arx, A. J . Pfiffig, 30. for the Iguvine state ', in the Tabulae Iguvinae ; M. Pallottino, Arch. class. XVI (1964), 87. spureri rne0lumeric : ' for the city and the people ',

Pfiffig's attemot to interuret it as a nominative with in the inscription of Zagreb. the ' hyperurbanistic ' ending -ei for -e is not O 4 sal occurs several times in the inscription of convincing. Zagreb and other texts ; it is generally translated by

M. Pallottino, Avch. class. x v ~(19641, 86 ; ' gift, offering ' (M. Pallottino, 88 ff., A. J. Pfiffig, cf. T L E , 87 : xila0 mexl rasnal = ' praetor Etrus- 29). It corresponds to BMTN' in P. Pfiffig supposes corum populorum '. it governs the following genitive cluz*enias: ' as a gift

A. Ernout, L e dialecte ombvien (1961), 99. for Cluvenia ', Cluvenia being an epithet of Uni-O 1 E. Vetter, Handb. dev italischen Dialekte (1953)~ Astarte. In our translation, it would be postponed to

Meddix tuticus ' = ' iudex publicus '. the word it governs. 44;; . Olzscha. ' Confronti di varole etrusco- O 6 Owing especially to Pfiffig's commentary, 30 ff. ~unbre', S t . Etv. x x ~ x(1961), 495 : cepen tlr0in 96 M. Pallottino, Avch. class. XVI (19641, 91. - ' sacerdos publicus '.--The metathesis Outs, tu0a O 7 Corresponding to I< in P, line 6. creates no difficulty. Above all the proximity to %ex is interesting.

I 4 JACQUES HEURGON

Fortunately enough, the word ilacve is not unknown to us. We find it again several times in the great liturgic inscription of Capua, with a slight vocalic difference, ilucve, and the same construction : ilucve apirase, ilucve a n ~ i l i e . ~ ~ No doubt it belongs to the religious vocabulary, designating a ritual performance, maybe a particular festival the nature of which was determined by the following word : tulerase, als'ase, apirase. Dr. K. Olzscha, studying the ' Monatsdaten in der grossen etruskischen Inschrift von Capua '," thought that ilucve might be the Calends. Dr. Pfiffig believes that here it can signify a month of the year,lOO but then we should have two months instead of one. I prefer to return to the fundamental meaning of ' ritual performance ', and to suppose that Thefarie Velianas has accomplished two religious acts or gestures, e.g. one with wine libations, another with incense offerings, the first because . . . , the second because. . . . The dating would then be expressed in an approximate transposition ; the three notions of year, month and day would be divided in two parts, and distributed in the two groups beginning with nac. And at this point complete darkness descends on us. According to a recent idea of Professor Devoto,lol atranes might be derived from the unexplained root we find in the latin ' quinquatrus ', which means ' a space of five days ', and then atranes would refer to the day. Please allow me a last fancy : the word Xurvav is the genitive plural form of an unknown word the nominative case of which is xuru.lo2 XUYU is found in the Zagreb inscription,lo3 where Dr. Olzscha, twenty-five years ago, thought it was a Greek loan-word transcribed from ~ 6 ~ 0 s . ~ ~ ~ Well, the month of Karar is sometimes interpreted in Hebrew as meaning the month of Dances.lo5 Xurvar is perhaps, in the Etruscan version, the word which corresponds to this month of Dances.

And so, though it is impossible yet to give a really literal translation of the two sentences I have just considered, we begin to distinguish faintly the respective position of the three elements of the original date : ' having made this offering because in the third year (ci avil), in the month of Dances (Xuvvar)-teSiameitale-, having made that offering because in such day (atvanes)-seleitala- ; xilacal, ' of magistrature ' corresponds perhaps also to ' of the reign ' in P.

Despite the partial and unsatisfactory character of this preliminary reconnoitring, I should deem myself happy if I had persuaded you that the interpretation of the Pyrgi inscriptions is indeed a worli in progress, and that it has been promisingly entered upon. I t has been a great step forward to be able to ascertain the decidedly bilingual relationship of P and E I . Although E I , as I have said, can only be a defective version of P, the more the correspondences between the two texts are pressed, the more we can hope to understand in the future both of them. I t is only a matter of time.

The latest results seem to insist more on their religious than on their political signifi- cance.lo6 When they were discovered, the mere fact of this dedication to Astarte made by an Etruscan king or xilath at Caere in a city which was thought to have been exclusively devoted to Hellenism, was resented as so paradoxical that it seemed only to be explained by a revolution, the hero or instrument of which was Thefarie Velianas. I t was supposed that the Carthaginians, alarmed at the estrangement of a doubtful ally, whose pro-Greeli bias threatened their hegemony in the Western Mediterranean, had set up there a more obedient Quisling.lo7 The favour he owed to Astarte was to have been chosen and raised by her hand to the head of the State.

Apart from the dubiousness of this interpretation of the keyword 'RS in P, there is an objection to this brilliant hypothesis : the privilege Thefarie Velianas has been favoured with had only occurred in the third year of his reign or of his praetorship, and therefore cannot be his elevation to power. But, from the mention of the third year of his reign or

T L E 2, 8 and 18, where Pfiffig, after Vetter and lol Which Dr. Pfiffig has kindly communicated to Slotty, adopts the better reading anpilie. A gloss tells me (2nd May, 1966). us that ' Ampiles ' was the name of the month of May lo2M. Pallottino, Arch. class. XVI (1964), 93. in the Etruscan calendar (TLE 805). lo3 TLE I, X, 4 and 17.

y 9 K. Olzscha, ' Gotterformeln und Monatsdaten lo4K. Olzscha, ' Interpretation der Agramer in der grossen etruskischen Inschrift von Capua ', Mumienbinde ', Klio, Beih. XL (1939), 55. G1. x x x ~ v(1954), 71-93, especially 83 ff. lo". J. Pfiffig, 19 ; W. Gesenius, Hebr. Deutsches

looA. J. Pfiffig, 30 ff. This interpretation does not Worterbuch, I7th ed ., s.v. KRR. take into account the obvious parallelism of the two lo6J. G. FCvrier, Journ. Asiat . (1965), 13. sentences. lo' M. Pallottino, Arch. class. XVI (1964), 116.

THE IKSCRIPTIONS OF PYRGI I5 magistrature, another consequence follows. When trying to elucidate the lines 4/5 of E I,

I hinted at the possibility that the ' ciuitas populusque Caeritum ' had taken part in the dedication, and admitted that the right title of Thefarie Velianas was xilath or ' praetor ', of which we find a small trace in the lines 13114 (xilacal). But we see now that this praetorship was not a yearly, but a permanent or life-magistrature, and in this respect it was like a kingship without the name. I t reminds us of what Livy says of the restoration of monarchy at Veii after a short period of republic : ' Veientes, taedio annuae ambitionis, regem creauere.' l0"e are in an age in which, on the ruins of the old kingly order, tyrants spring up everywhere, in Sicily, in Magna Graecia, at Cumae and even at Rome, an age in which all the cities of Italy struggle together to invent and try new forms of government. We may then follow Professor Pallottino in admitting that Thefarie Velianas was a tyrant or a dictator, the temporary representative of one of these mixed constitutions which were no longer a monarchy but not yet a Republic.

As I have said, the religious features in the Pyrgi inscriptions seem now to outweigh their political significance. I started with mentioning Denis Van Berchem's theory about the Phoenician origin of the temple of Hercules at Rome, as proving the establishment of a Phoenician colony in the Forum Boarium as early as the seventh century. I recalled the offerings of Phoenician colonies in Cyprus to their god Resheph in the precinct of Apollo's temples. In the same way, the dedication of a shrine to Astarte in uni's temenos at Pyrgi involves the presence there of a Phoenician colony who wanted to pray to their own goddess according to their own traditions.10g But the difference between this and all the other examples is that here the dedicant is the Etruscan government itself, the king or tyrant or life-xilath of Caere. The foundation is that of a public cult, while in Rome the Herculean cult remained a private matter till its confiscation by the State in 312. Though I have insisted on the general independence of politics and civilization, here the leading part played by Thefarie Velianas himself must not have been devoid of political aims or after- thoughts. Above all we cannot help being struck by the abnormal pressure exerted by Punic elements, on this occasion, on Caeritan affairs : they dictate all the minutest details of the ceremony, and the Etruscans have only to translate and obey. This ' dictate ' makes me think of ' Diktat '. We know of other tyrants in Sicily who, at the same period, were submit- ted to the same pressure : Terillos of Himera, on the eve of the battle of 480, sided with the Carthaginians ; Anaxilas of Rhegion sent his two sons as hostages to Hamilcar.llo We may then return to the political interpretation to which I have alluded. I t is to the same period, 500-480, that Thefarie Velianas' conversion to Astarte can be ascribed, and the dedication of her shrine placed between the construction of temple B at the time of the Delphic treasury and the construction of temple A after the battle of Himera which was the end of Carthaginian sea-power. But all these remain provisional conclusions.

LT~zivevsite'de Paris.

l o 8 Liry v, I , 3. llo Hdt. VII, 165 ; T. J. Dunbabin, The Western logJ. Ferron, 195 ff. Greeks (1948), 419 ff. ; G. Vallet, RhCgion et Zancle,

360 ff.

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The Inscriptions of PyrgiJacques HeurgonThe Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 56, Parts 1 and 2. (1966), pp. 1-15.Stable URL:

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5 Phoenicians in the WestRhys CarpenterAmerican Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 62, No. 1. (Jan., 1958), pp. 35-53.Stable URL:

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10 Punic Urns from the Precinct of Tanit at CarthageD. B. HardenAmerican Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 31, No. 3. (Jul. - Sep., 1927), pp. 297-310.Stable URL:

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