Aplu and Artumes

Also Known As: Etruscan Aplu or Apulu, borrowed from Greek Apollon; Etruscan Artumes or Aritimi, borrowed from Greek Artemis; the divine twins, children of Letun, the Etruscan Leto
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Etruscan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Aplu is the Etruscan god of the Delphic oracle, the laurel, the lyre and the bow, with a strong reach into the world of the dead, and Artumes is a mistress of wild animals, especially wolves, and a guardian of human gatherings.
Role in Mythos: They are a twin pair taken into the Etruscan pantheon from Greek religion, the brother bound up with Uni, Hercle and the sun god Usil, the sister often worshipped on her own in major city sanctuaries.
Relation to Humans: Etruscans gave Artumes votive statuettes and weapons, and the great temple at Tarquinia may have been hers. Aplu watched over prophecy and purification, and as the Apollo of Mount Soracte his worshippers walked across burning coals.

The god is walking forward on bare feet. He has come down off a temple roof, or rather the roof has come down around him: he was found in 1916, broken into pieces, in the ruins of the sanctuary of Portonaccio outside Veii, and now he stands again in Rome, a figure of fired and painted clay taller than most men. His cloak hangs in heavy pleats. One arm reaches ahead, the other drops at his side, and the whole body leans toward something just out of frame.

What he is walking toward is a quarrel. Around 510 to 500 BCE the people of Veii set a row of life-size terracotta gods along the ridge of the Portonaccio temple, in a way no Greek builder would have done, and this one was Aplu, the Etruscan Apollo. Facing him stood Hercle, the Etruscan Heracles, with the hind he had captured. Nearby was Turms, the Etruscan Hermes, of whom only the head survives, and a goddess carrying a small child, probably Letun holding the baby Aplu as she fled from the serpent Pytho. The museum in Rome assigns the Aplu to the so-called Master of Apollo, one of the last clay sculptors trained in the workshop of Vulca of Veii. The German archaeologist Erika Simon read the smiling Turms as a messenger sent by Tinia to settle the argument between the two gods before it came to blows.

Aplu had a twin. The Etruscans called her Artumes, or in older spellings Aritimi, and both names are simply the Greek Artemis passed through Etruscan mouths, just as Aplu and Apulu are Apollon. The scholars who have worked through the Etruscan inscriptions, among them Carlo de Simone, Giuliana Bonfante and Larissa Bonfante, sort the Etruscan gods by where their names came from. Tinia, Turan and Thesan are native. Uni and Menrva are thought to have come in from the Latins and Italic neighbours. The twins came from Greece, Aplu probably by way of Latium. Their mother appears too, as Letun, on two engraved mirrors.

The borrowing does not mean the twins stayed Greek. Aplu turns up again and again on the backs of engraved bronze hand mirrors, and De Simone counted thirty-three places where his name is written. He is easy to spot: a good-looking young man with a laurel branch or a laurel crown, a lyre or a bow, and around his neck and wrist the necklace and amulet bracelet that Etruscan youths wore. On one mirror from Vulci, now in Berlin, he stands to one side while Semla embraces her son Fufluns, the Etruscan Dionysus, a small satyr piping beside him. A mirror dug up in 1989 near Orvieto repeats the design with new names: Aplu in the middle, a winged love god called Turnu beside him playing with an iynx, the magic love charm, and Turan in the arms of her young lover Atunis. On another he is present at a purification. Orestes, who killed his mother, is cleansed with the sacrifice of a piglet at the sacred navel stone of Aplu, and the winged underworld goddess Vanth stands by.

That last scene points to something the Greek Apollo largely kept out of sight. Etruscan gods leaned toward the dead, and Aplu leaned further than most. North of Rome rises Mount Soracte, and Latin writers knew its god as Apollo Soranus, sometimes calling him Dis Pater, lord of the underworld. In the eleventh book of the Aeneid the Etruscan warrior Arruns prays to him as highest of the gods and guardian of holy Soracte, and describes the rite: a fire of piled pine, and the faithful walking through the middle of it, pressing their feet into the glowing coals. Apollo hears him and grants half the prayer. Arruns kills the warrior maiden Camilla, and the wind scatters the other half, his safe return home. The Italian Etruscologist Giovanni Colonna identified Soranus with Suri, a god known from votive inscriptions across Etruria, who carried the wolf as his sign. Erika Simon linked the dark side of Aplu to his overlap with Usil, the sun god, who appears on a mirror from Tuscania with a bow and a halo, an Aplu in all but name. Etruscan families painted laurel groves, the trees of Aplu, on the walls of their tombs.

There was another friendship the Greeks never recorded. At Gravisca, the harbour of Tarquinia, an anchor dedicated to Apollo by the Greek merchant Sostratos of Aegina was found inside the sanctuary of Uni. The same pairing of Uni and Aplu appears at Pyrgi. And when the Roman general Camillus stood before Veii, the historian Livy has him pray first to Pythian Apollo, vowing him a tenth of the plunder, and then to Queen Juno, who now lives at Veii, begging her to follow the victors to Rome. Veii fell. The dedications to Aplu that Jean MacIntosh Turfa lists in her survey of Etruscan votive gifts are Greek ones, like the Sostratos anchor.

Artumes kept a different kind of company. Before the Etruscans wrote her name, their artists were making a winged goddess holding two wild animals or birds, one in each fist, the figure archaeologists call the mistress of animals. Simon suggested giving her the name Artumes. Two silver reliefs of about 600 BCE, now in the Vatican, pressed from the same mould, show a goddess with her arms stretched out to the shoulders of two young men while a pair of wolves leap up at her. Older scholarship called the scene Helen with the Dioscuri, and the wolves put an end to that. In Italy the mistress of animals is a mistress of wolves, not of lions or panthers, and the young men sheltering under her arms suggest the other side of her office, a guardian of human assemblies, like the Latin Diana whose grove at Aricia hosted the meetings of the Latin League. A small winged bronze of the later seventh century from Cortona, carrying a bird on her head, was called Artumes by the American scholar Emeline Richardson. Her hands are empty now.

Unlike her brother, Artumes was often worshipped alone, and seriously. At Tarquinia the colossal Ara della Regina, the city’s chief temple, was begun around 560 to 550 BCE, and Colonna believed it was probably sacred to Artumes from the start, her cult carried west by Phocaean Greeks. Its cella ended in three small chambers, which suggests a triad or one goddess in three aspects, and hers is the only name on the few votive objects found there. Near the temple, a later deposit yielded a spear point dedicated to Artumes among more than a thousand gifts of clay hands, feet and wombs. At Portonaccio, under the roof where her brother fought for the hind, inscribed offerings suggest a cult of Menrva, Turan and possibly Aritimi.

The strangest gift binds the twins together. A bronze statuette of a young man in a laurel wreath, jewellery and boots, twenty-six centimetres tall and now in Paris, is often taken for Aplu. The words cut into it say something else: I am the offering which Fasti Rufris gave, as the rite requires, to Aritimi Spulare, on behalf of her son. A mother bought the brother’s image and gave it to the sister. On one mirror the name Artumes is even written above a male figure. The engraver may simply have erred.

What the twins could do comes out of the places they stood. Aplu carried the authority of Delphi, with which the Etruscans kept close ties, and a foreign god’s prestige only strengthened it. He purified the guilty, played the lyre, drew the bow, and reached below ground, to the dead in their painted tombs and to the worshippers crossing the coals on Soracte. Artumes ruled the wild animals and the edges of the tame world, sheltering the young and the assembled, perhaps also guarding sacred groves and boundaries.

Their limits are the limits of the record. No Etruscan text tells a story of Aplu or Artumes in words; everything narrative arrives through pictures, and the pictures borrow Greek plots. Even the fight on the Veii roof is a Greek tale of Heracles and the hind. The name Artumes may not even be the right one for the winged mistress of wolves, since the images are older than any inscription that names her. The twins survive as clay, bronze and scratched letters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are Aplu and Artumes in Etruscan mythology?

Aplu and Artumes are the Etruscan forms of Apollo and Artemis, the divine twins whose mother Letun is the Etruscan Leto. Both names were borrowed from Greek. Aplu was the god of the Delphic oracle, the lyre, the bow and the laurel, and Artumes, also spelled Aritimi, was a huntress and mistress of wild animals.

What is the Apollo of Veii?

The Apollo of Veii is a life-size painted terracotta statue of Aplu made around 510 to 500 BCE for the roof of the Portonaccio temple at Veii. It was found in fragments in 1916 and is now in the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome. It showed Aplu striding toward Hercle, the Etruscan Heracles, in a dispute over a captured hind.

How was the Etruscan Aplu different from the Greek Apollo?

Aplu was more closely tied to the dead than the Greek Apollo. The Apollo of Mount Soracte, whom Latin writers also called Dis Pater, is linked by Giovanni Colonna to the Etruscan god Suri, and Aplu overlaps with the sun god Usil on a mirror from Tuscania. Aplu also had a special connection with the goddess Uni, seen at the sanctuaries of Gravisca and Pyrgi.

Why is Artumes associated with wolves?

Artumes was a mistress of wild animals, and in Italy that role was expressed through wolves rather than lions. Two silver reliefs of about 600 BCE in the Vatican show the goddess sheltering two young men while two wolves leap up at her. The same reliefs present Artumes as a protector of human assemblies, like the Latin Diana.

Where was Artumes worshipped?

Artumes had a major cult at Tarquinia, where Giovanni Colonna believed the great temple of the Ara della Regina was sacred to her from about 560 to 550 BCE. Her name is the only one found on the votive objects from that temple, and a spear point dedicated to Artumes came from a deposit nearby. Offerings at Portonaccio in Veii and a bronze statuette dedicated to Aritimi Spulare by a woman named Fasti Rufris also record her cult.