Vegoia

Vegoia is the voice behind part of the Etrusca disciplina, the body of revealed lore that told the Etruscans how to found a city, site a shrine, read lightning and — the part that survives best — set and keep a boundary. Her prophecy was copied into the Roman land surveyors' handbooks, where it warns in vivid terms what befalls the man who moves a boundary stone. She is variously called a sibyl, a prophetess and a nymph, and she appears on a mirror as Lasa Vecuvia. The surviving text is dated by scholarship to about the time of the Social War, which dates the document rather than the figure.

Variant accounts

• The surviving prophecy is dated to the late Republic.Scholarly discussion places the text of Vegoia's prophecy in the period of the Social War, around 91 BCE, rather than in any older Etruscan stratum. That bears on the text, not on the antiquity of the figure herself, and the record's era reflects the date of the attestation.Scholarly article on the date of Vegoia's prophecy, placing it in the Social War period. (secondary)

Domains

• prophecy
• boundary

Powers

• to lay down the religiously correct method of founding cities and shrines and of fixing boundaries

Sources

• Vegoia is an Etruscan prophetic figure — sibyl, prophetess or nymph — credited with parts of the sacred books of the Etrusca disciplina concerning the founding of cities and shrines, the reading of lightning, and above all the fixing and preservation of land boundaries; her prophecy survives in the Roman land surveyors' corpus.: The prophecy of Vegoia, preserved in the corpus agrimensorum of the Roman land surveyors. (primary); Reference article 'Vegoia', on her role in the Etrusca disciplina; scholarly discussion dating the prophecy to the period of the Social War. (secondary)