TAGES

The son of a Genius and grandson of Jupiter, said to be a boy with the wisdom of an old man, who, at Tarquinli, in Etruria, suddenly rose out of a freshly ploughed field. He taught the chiefs (lucumones) of the twelve Etruscan tribes, who were summoned by the ploughman Tarchon, how to interpret the sacrifices, together with the lore of thunder and lightning and other kinds of divination which in later times were practised by the haruspices (q.v.). Having done this, he disappeared again as suddenly as he had appeared. The lore of Tages was at first transmitted orally from generation to generation in the chief families, but was afterwards handed down in a comprehensive literature [Cicero, De Div. ii 50, 51; Ovid, Met. xv 558 ff; Lucan, i 637].