Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University

see himself reflected in animal behavior, and sometimes expresses relationships using totemism,
a way of thinking that is considered a characteristic of cultures that have not advanced to the
stage of worshipping anthropomorphic divinities. 10 Due in part to these reasons, scholarship
dealing with the religion of the ancient Etruscans and Romans has neglected an important class
of the divinities of ancient Italy. Gods and goddesses who possess the form of an animal
(theriomorphic) or a combination of human and animal bodies (therianthropic), were an
important part of Etruscan and Roman religion and deserve closer study. For the purposes of this
dissertation, three categories of divinity are considered. These are gods whose bodies are part
human and part animal, gods who wear an animal skin as a conspicuous part of their
iconography in relation to their cult, 11 and gods who are commonly represented in human form
but sometimes take the form of a sacred animal in art and/or literature.
Does the notion that the classical world, especially the pragmatic Romans, rejected the
practice of worshipping animals or composite figures hold true under careful examination of the
literary and archaeological sources? R. Turcan indicates that “… Egyptian zoolatry remained an
inexhaustible topic of mockery or indignation among Rome’s pagans” 12 until the High Empire.
One famous passage written by Valerius Maximus, which is often quoted by scholars, seems to
bear this statement out as it does indeed vilify the cult of Isis.
Now I come to those whose safety was procured by a trick. The Plebian Aedile
Marcus Volusius was proscribed. After donning the costume of a priest of Isis,
he made his way through the streets and public roads begging for small offerings
and did not allow any of those whom he met to know his true identity, and, with
this type of trick, he arrived at the camp of Marcus Brutus. Even more wretched
is that he did this out of necessity, which forced a magistrate of the Roman
people to cast aside the mark of his office and go through the city hidden behind
the trappings of a foreign cult! O, they were too desirous of their own well-being
10 Lang 1968, 105; Lévi-Strauss (1963) discusses the problems with defining the term totemism.
11 Lada-Richards (1998, 51) discusses the wearing of animal masks in initiatory rituals and comes to the conclusion
that “masks… when placed on the face of human ritual celebrants, transform them into hybrid beings.” I propose
that the conspicuous use of animal skins in the iconography of a divinity function in the same way. The possibility
of the same figure represented as a true hybrid blending human and animal iconography or a human donning an
animal skin can be found in Chapter Three in my discussion of lupine deities. I must note, however, that I have
excluded Hercules from this study due to his acquisition of the Nemean Lion’s skin as a component of his
iconography. This lion skin serves as a trophy for Hercules and it thus fulfills a different role than the other uses of
animal skins in this study.
12 Turcan 1996, 124.
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