Nortia
Nortia is the Latinized name of an Etruscan goddess of fate and chance. The Etruscan form was perhaps Nurtia.[1]
Little or no Etruscan evidence for her survives. She appears a few times in Latin literature. She is mentioned in one of Juvenal's satires and identified with the Roman goddess Fortuna,[2] and Martianus Capella lists her along with other goddesses of fate and chance such as Sors, Nemesis, and Tyche.[3]
Nortia's attribute was a nail,[4] which was driven into a wall within her temple at Volsinii annually to mark the New Year. At Rome, the goddess Necessitas, the personification of necessity, was also depicted with a nail.[5] The Roman historian Livy took note of the ritual at Volsinii:
Cincius, an industrious researcher of antiquarian matters, confirms that at Volsinii nails are in evidence at the temple of the Etruscan goddess Nortia, fixed to mark the number of years.[6]
The ritual seems to "nail down" the fate of the people for the year. H.S. Versnel conjectured that it was associated with the annual meeting of the Etruscan league, and that Nortia's consort could have been Voltumna. The rite is analogous to, or a borrowed precedent for, a similar ritual at Rome originally held in the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter, near a statue of Minerva.[7] Nortia may thus have been related to the Etruscan Menerva.[8]
The ritual of the nail illuminates the otherwise puzzling iconography on the back of an Etruscan bronze mirror. Meleager is depicted under the wings of another Etruscan goddess of fate, identified by inscription as Athrpa (the counterpart of the Greek fate goddess Atropos, one of the three Moirai), who holds a hammer in her right hand and a nail in her left. With Meleager is his beloved Atalanta (both names given in the Etruscan spelling), who will be parted by his death in a boar hunt presaged at the top of the composition. Turan and Atunis (the Etruscan Venus and Adonis myth) also appear, as another couple whose love is destroyed by the savagery of the hunt. The hammer ready to strike in the nail symbolizes "the inexorability of human fate."[9]
A name has been deciphered as possibly Nortia among those of other deities in an inscription found within an Umbrian sanctuary at the Villa Fidelia, Hispellum.[10]
References
- ^ Erika Simon, "Gods in Harmony: The Etruscan Pantheon," in The Religion of the Etruscans (University of Texas Press, 2006), p. 59.
- ^ Scholion to Juvenal, Satire 10.74.
- ^ Martianus Capella 1.88: alii Sortem asserunt Nemesimque nonnulli Tychenque quam plures aut Nortiam.
- ^ For other ritual practices involving a nail, see Curse tablet.
- ^ Horace, Carmen 1.35.18 and 3.24.5.
- ^ Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 7.3.7: Volsiniis quoque clavos indices numeri annorum fixos in templo Nortiae, Etruscae deae, comparere diligens talium monumentorum auctor Cincius adfirmat.
- ^ H.S. Versnel, Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph (Brill, 1970), pp. 274–276, 295 (unless otherwise noted, Versnel provides the primary sources used in this article). This is view is shared by Simon, "Gods in Harmony," p. 53.
- ^ Simon, "Gods in Harmony," p. 59.
- ^ Simon, "Gods in Harmony," pp. 52–52, with line drawing of mirror on p. 22.
- ^ Guy Bradley, Ancient Umbria: State, Culture, and Identity in Central Italy from the Iron Age to the Augustan Era (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 100 and 201, citing F. Coarelli, "La Romanizacion de Umbria," in La Romanizacion en Occidente, edited by J. Blázquez and J. Alvar (Madrid, 1996), p. 63.
External links
- Nortia The Obscure Goddess Online Directory