Lucumo

Lucumo (Etruscan lauchumes, with variants lauchme, luvchme) is a term that Roman antiquarian tradition, above all the late antique commentator Servius (4th–5th century AD), glossed as the Etruscan word for rex, "king".¹ This equivalence is now generally regarded as a late construction rather than a genuine Etruscan royal title. In the Etruscan epigraphic record lauchumes occurs chiefly as a personal name, and modern scholarship interprets the "king" gloss as the personification of a personal name, most likely that attributed by tradition to Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, whose original name is given by Roman sources as Lucumo.²³

Roman literary sources (Livy 1.34; Strabo 5.2.2) report that the future Tarquinius Priscus, born at Tarquinii to the Corinthian exile Demaratus and an Etruscan woman, bore the name Lucumo before moving to Rome.³ The same name is also given to other figures, including an Etruscan ally of Romulus and a leading man of Clusium.³

In Etruscan inscriptions of the fifth to second centuries BCE, the form appears as a personal name, functioning as a praenomen but also as a nomen or cognomen; it underlies the gentilic names lauchumni (attested at Perugia) and lauchumsni (in the territory of Clusium).⁴ A related form, lauchumna (locative lauchumneti), appears once in the Liber Linteus and has traditionally been rendered "in the palace"; this reading, dependent on the Servian gloss, has been questioned.⁵

Roman tradition describes the earliest phase of Etruscan history as monarchical, and the monarchical traditions are most strongly attached to the cities of southern Etruria.⁶ During the transition from the late sixth to the early fifth century BCE most Etruscan city-states are thought to have replaced their kings with republican magistracies. In the epigraphic record the supreme city magistrate of the fourth to second centuries is the zilath (zilath mechl rasnal), interpreted by Helmut Rix as a praetor rei publicae; the standard survey of Etruscan magistracies does not include lucumo among the attested offices.⁷

Etruscan and Roman sources also mention a (con)federal organism embracing the twelve populi of Etruria. In the monarchical period the league is said to have been headed by a king elected from among the rulers of the twelve peoples; the ancient authors refer to this figure with a range of terms, including rex, lucumo, basileus and hegemon. With the advent of republican institutions the federal leader was chosen from among the zilath of the member cities, possibly bearing the title zilath cechaneri.⁸