|
Nortia is the Latinized name of an Etruscan goddess whose sphere of influence was time, fate, destiny〔Massimo Pallottino, "Religion in pre-Roman Italy," in ''Roman and European Mythologies'' (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 30; Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ''Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend'' (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2006), p. 96 (online. )〕 and chance. The Etruscan form was perhaps Nurtia.〔Erika Simon, "Gods in Harmony: The Etruscan Pantheon," in ''The Religion of the Etruscans'' (University of Texas Press, 2006), p. 59.〕 Variant manuscript readings include Norcia, Norsia, Nercia, and Nyrtia. ==Ritual of the nail== Nortia's attribute was a nail,〔For other ritual practices involving a nail, see Curse tablet.〕 which was driven into a wall within her temple at Volsinii annually to mark the New Year. The Roman historian Livy took note of the ritual:
The ritual seems to "nail down" the fate of the people for the year. Cicero refers to a form of timekeeping in which the nail of the year is to be moved ''(clavum anni movebis)''.〔Cicero, ''Ad Atticum'' 4.14.〕 In context, the reference is probably to ''parapegmata'', calendars in which the day is marked by the moving of a peg. Some extant Roman calendars in stone or metal have holes for this purpose.〔Daryn Lehoux, ''Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World: Parapegmata and Related Texts in Classical and Near Eastern Societies'' (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 200.〕 H.S. Versnel conjectured that the ritual of the nail was associated with the annual meeting of the Etruscan league, and that Nortia's consort could have been Voltumna, the counterpart of Roman Vortumnus. 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.〔H.S. Versnel, ''Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph'' (Brill, 1970), pp. 274–276, 295. This is view is shared by Simon, "Gods in Harmony," p. 53.〕 Nortia may thus have been related to the Etruscan Menerva.〔Simon, "Gods in Harmony," p. 59.〕 At Rome, the goddess Necessitas, the divine personification of necessity, was also depicted with a nail, "the adamantine nail / That grim Necessity drives," as described by the Augustan poet Horace.〔Horace, ''Carmen'' 3.24.5 in the translation of David Ferry, ''The Odes of Horace'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), p. 231.〕 In a poem addressing Fortuna and acknowledging her power over all, from the lowliest to the highest,〔Horace, ''Carmen'' 1.35.〕 Horace pictures Necessity carrying nails large enough to drive into wooden beams, and wedges.〔Horace, ''Carmen'' 1.35.16–17, ''clauos trabalis et cuneos manu''.〕 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 who is one of the three Moirai. Athrpa 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 drive in the nail symbolizes "the inexorability of human fate."〔Simon, "Gods in Harmony," pp. 52–52, with line drawing of mirror on p. 22.〕 R.S. Conway compared Nortia to the Venetic goddess Rehtia, whose name seems to be the Venetic equivalent of Latin ''rectia'', "right, correct." Bronze nails finely inscribed with dedications were found within a temple precinct thought to have been that of Rhetia at Ateste (modern Este). The heads of the nails have links that attach them to small objects or charms, perhaps the "wedges of necessity" that Horace said Fortuna carried. Rehtia has been seen as a counterpart of the Roman Iustitia, the divine embodiment of justice,〔R.S. Conway was preoccupied with Rehtia at the beginning of the 20th century; see his article "Italy (Ancient)" in the ''Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics'' (1915), vol. 7, p. 461; "The Pre-Hellenic Inscriptions of Praesos," ''Annual of the British School at Athens'' 8 (1901–1902), p. 147; "Some Votive Offerings to the Venetic Goddess Rehtia," ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'' 46 (1916). The name appears variously in dedicatory inscriptions.〕 or the Greek goddesses Themis or Dikē.〔"Proceedings for September 1904," ''Transactions and proceedings of the American Philological Association'' 35 (1904), p. xxxii.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nortia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|