The end of haruspicy under Constantine, Julian and Alaric
From the laws of Tiberius and Constantine to the bans of Theodosius: how Etruscan divination survived into the fifth century and then vanished with paganism.
Etruscan haruspicy had an extremely long life: many centuries passed between the earliest archaeological evidence and the last literary notices. Its disappearance did not happen suddenly but through a series of legal restrictions, dictated first by political and then by religious reasons. Following this decline means observing at close quarters the passage from the pagan to the Christian world.
The suspicions of the emperors
The first emperors already looked with concern on private consultations. Suetonius relates that Tiberius forbade haruspices to be consulted in secret and without witnesses. The fear was political: a diviner could be asked about the death of the ruler or the success of a conspiracy. Official divination remained respected, but divination practised in private became suspect and, in some cases, dangerous.
Constantine, the first Christian emperor, maintained this distinction. One of his laws, preserved in the Theodosian Code and dated to 319, forbade haruspices to enter private houses, under severe penalties. Another provision issued shortly afterwards established instead that, if lightning struck the imperial palace or a public building, haruspices could still be consulted according to ancient custom.
The last haruspices
In 363 the emperor Julian, who had tried to restore pagan worship, took some Etruscan haruspices with him on his expedition against the Persians. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus relates that they repeatedly advised him not to go on, interpreting unfavourable signs according to their books. Julian did not listen to them and died during the campaign, wounded in battle.
At the end of the fourth century the emperor Theodosius banned all pagan sacrifices, and with them the examination of entrails. The last known episode dates from 408 and 409, during the siege of Rome by Alaric's Goths. The Greek historian Zosimus relates that some Etruscan diviners offered to drive away the enemy with rites connected with lightning, claiming that they had already saved the town of Narnia in this way.
According to Zosimus, Innocent, the bishop of Rome, would have agreed to private rites in order to save the city, but the public ceremonies did not take place because no one dared to take part in them. The account, written by a pagan author hostile to the Christians, must be treated with caution. Shortly afterwards, in 410, Rome was sacked by Alaric's troops all the same.
A legacy of study
Christian writers such as Arnobius and Augustine long cited Etruscan doctrines in order to refute them, and it is precisely through their polemics that some fragments have been preserved. Interest in Etruria revived many centuries later, when the scholars of the Renaissance and the modern age began to study Etruscan inscriptions and monuments, without however being able to reconstruct the lost books.
With the end of sacrifices and the dispersal of the families who guarded it, the Etrusca disciplina died out. All that remained were the quotations of ancient authors and a few original documents such as the Liver of Piacenza. It was the fate of many religious traditions of the ancient world, which survive today mainly as objects of historical study and as evidence of a different way of looking at nature.