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A bird for a king

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

The future
Also in Rome the problem to know what would happen in the future, and what one had to do was important. The Romans, who were neighbors of the Etruscans, did accept all their tenets and systems: thus they examined the innards of the victims that were immolated before undertaking anything and analyzed the flights of the birds, a practice for which the Etruscan aruspices were famous. After all the birds did have a fundamental role in the foundation of Rome, so, also if they did not neglect all the other prodigies that fills their history, the Romans always kept an eye to the sky

A nice eagle.
It was often with prodigies that the gods turned up and it was through the natural phenomena or the flight of the birds that they sent their messages to men. The eagles were the birds that had the task to be the messengers of Jupiter and they indicated to the mortals what he wanted them to do. So it was just an eagle the one that designated and nearly crowned the man who had to become Rome’s king, the one that afterward was called Tarquinius Priscus. Tis man was a Greek called Lucumon who having moved to Etruria had married a noble etruscan lady, Tanquilla. This bright wife, well understanding that also if with all her family backing, never in his life, he could hope to have a successful career in Etruria, persuaded him to move to Rome, a new town where an able and intelligent man could easily become very important. Thus they started toward their new location and during their trip, Jupiter with a prodigy manifested to him what would have been his destiny.
They had just arrived on the Gianicolo and Lucumon was laying on the lectern beside his wife, when an eagle, descending slowly over them, took in its claws the future king’s hat, then rose and emitting high shrieks continued to circle over the lectern. Then, as if it had completed a mission given to it by the god, the eagle put again the hat on Lucumon’s head and, having so done, resumed its flight. The scene how it is described by Titus Livius is idyllic. In the lectern not an exclamation, not a start, and yet anyone who should have seen a big eagle plunge on his head would have reacted with a sign of terror and when, after this, the noble winged creature had taken his hat he would certainly have sworn at it.
Instead the two spouses didn’t lose their detached manner and they were still cool, calm and collected when, being an highly well behaved animal, the perplexed eagle that maybe thought to have caught a rabbit, seeing that the hairy thing that it had in its claw wasn’t a real bunny, not only brought it back, but straight away put it again on the head of the future Tarquinius Priscus
We can admit this tranquillity in Tanaquilla, who Etruscan and noble was accustomed to big birds of prey, but can it be possible that Lucumon seeing that his hat was taken away didn’t even try to kick the bird of Jupiter?
However after that this prodigy had happened, Tanaquilla, who was brought up among people who passed their time to conform themselves to what the birds did, happy of what she had seen, perfectly interpreted the phenomenon. Embracing her husband she confirmed its good omen and to him she explained clearly what had happened: The bird came down from the sky and also from the higher part of it, then from the most powerful part of heaven; besides the eagle was the classic messenger of Jupiter who always used this bird for this kind of things; not counting that the holy bird brought his message to the highest part of the body of Lucumon and, having taken the top decoration off his head, he had put it there again. Evidently he dit it by an order of the divinity. Practically he had crowned Tarquinius Priscus.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
R.BLOCH, Prodigi e divinazione nel mondo anttico: Greci-Etruschi -Romani, Roma 1978, p.56
TITO LIVIO, I. 34. 8-10