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