The Brontoscopic Calendar preserved in John Lydus’ De ostentis (27–38; sixth century a.d.) is an astonishing document that has been of interest up until now mainly to scholars of Byzantine texts, historians of Roman Republican literature and specialists in Etruscan religion. The Greek purports to be a translation of a Latin work by the first-century b.c. Roman antiquarian Nigidius Figulus, who, in turn, had made a translation ‘word for word’ from a book by the Etruscan prophet Tages. Jean MacIntosh Turfa has reclaimed the text for modern scholarship by making the first translation in English (N. de Grummond and E. Simon (eds), The Religion of the Etruscans (2006), 182–90), which has been presented anew in the book under review, polished in every detail and contextualized in a thorough and wide-ranging manner by scholarship on the sources for brontoscopy in the ancient world, on the way in which such lore was transmitted to Etruria, and on the nature of the Etruscan society in which the Calendar took root.

The literal centre-piece of the volume is the Greek text and authoritative English translation (Part II, 73–101), but the introductory Background (Part I, 3–70) and the Thematic Analysis (Part III, 105–313) are of great importance for beginning to understand this text — mysterious and, at the same time, amusing at first sight. The Calendar, beginning in June and running through May, systematically provides predictions that may be consulted on any day when thunder occurs. Typical entries from the month of February convey the range of predictions about politics, health, fertility, food supply, weather and other natural phenomena:

The format is of crucial importance: ‘If X occurs, then Y will occur.’ This is the formula used over and over in a vast body of Mesopotamian divination texts running from Sumerian to Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian: that is, through different languages and different scripts, from the third millennium b.c. down to the Hellenistic period, in what was called by A. Leo Oppenheim a ‘stream of tradition’. There can no longer be any doubt that the Etruscans entered into that stream. T. has traced the course from Nippur and Nineveh (as demonstrated by texts from the library of Ashurbanipal, seventh century b.c.) to the Phoenician coast of the eastern Mediterranean and from there to Etruria, a route that is completely convincing given all the evidence about Phoenician activity in the West and specifically in Etruria, much of it assembled by T. herself in the past and in this volume. She courageously tackles the issue of transmission of multilingual divination literature, hypothesizing the exchange as taking place through close personal contacts of powerful families, perhaps including rulers, ambassadors and traders. This reviewer would also stress the possibility of itinerant religious figures, not exactly apostles or missionaries, but on a model suggested by W. Burkert, mobile doctors and seers summoned from afar and accorded more respect than local prophets (The Orientalizing Revolution, Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (1992), 41–6).

Not quite as convincing, but absolutely intriguing, are T.’s hints that this kind of text may have been transmitted from the East as early as the eighth century b.c., the time of the earliest urbanization in Etruria, for which she reconstructs an extreme period of weather that would have made the calendar particularly relevant. Her hypotheses on the numerous conditions of society, health and agriculture in the Etruscan Iron Age are brilliant and useful, but the dots do not quite connect with a sophisticated text like Lydus’ Calendar, especially since the earliest known Etruscan inscription dates to around 700 b.c. Just how much the conjectured text may have been edited and adjusted to fit later conditions under which it was used remains problematic. For example, the colophon states that Nigidius said the calendar was valid for Rome (not Etruria); and there are various details that simply cannot go back to Etruscan Tages: for example, the month of August is referred to as AϒΓΟϒΣΤΟΣ.

The book contains a treasury of appendices of texts on Etruscan religion, sample Mesopotamian documents of divination, other brontoscopia, a time-line and a glossary. The carefully selected album of images at the front of the book is useful (though the publisher by reducing them to postage-stamp size has not done them justice). Divining the Etruscan World is a stimulating and pioneering work of interest and value for all Etruscan researchers and to a wide spectrum of scholars of ancient religion in Etruria, Italy and the Mediterranean. T. has pointed out in an authoritative way the specific path of divination from the Near East to Etruria, and now it is a challenge to others to test her conclusions by tracing the route (was there a significant stage along the way on Cyprus, an idea floated by T.?), by applying the proposed chronology, and by examining anew the evidence for other types of attested Etruscan divination (for example, augury, hepatoscopy, scrying) and whether and how they too may have been transmitted to Etruria at an early date via the Mesopotamian stream of tradition.