Tarquitius Priscus wrote at least two
ostentaria, a form of arcane literature that collected, described, and interpreted signs (
ostenta), including an
ostentarium arborarium, a book on signs pertaining to
trees, and an
ostentarium Tuscum, which may have been translated from
Etruscan. He translated, or perhaps transcribed, the prophecies of
Vegoia, which were kept in the archives of the
Palatine Apollo; one fragment of this work attributed to Tarquitius survives. Tarquitius has been regarded as the probable author of a conjectural bilingual Etrusco-Latin version of Etruscan writings that would have been in use by Latin authors ranging from
Lucretius in the 1st century BC through
Johannes Lydus (6th century AD) and perhaps
Isidore of Seville (d. 636 AD). Based on the two preserved fragments, Tarquitius appears to have written in
prose, but because a
clausula can be scanned as a
trimeter at the end of one, verse composition is not impossible.
Bormann proposed that Tarquitius wrote in verse forms such as
senarii;
Ovid mentions a Priscus and
Catalepton 5 a Tarquitius in the company of verse writers. Pliny names Tarquitius as a source for the second book of his
Natural History and associates him with
Aulus Caecina, who also wrote on Etruscan religion and who lived in the time of
Julius Caesar. As one indication that his books were still being used in
late antiquity, the
haruspices consulted Tarquitius under the title
De rebus divinis ("On Divine Matters") before the battle that proved fatal to the
emperor Julian — because he failed to heed them, according to
Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus mentions comets as one topic in the works of Tarquitius.
Macrobius quotes Tarquitius twice, and these quotations are the only direct examples of his writings. In one instance, Macrobius elucidates a portent that
Vergil includes in his "Golden Age" eclogue (
Eclogue 4) by quoting the
Ostentarium Tusco of Tarquitius: "if the fleece of a ram or a sheep is spattered with gold or purple, it portends good fortune to the leader." ==Notes==