Aplu, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

Aplu was the Etruscan form of the Greek Apollo, and one of the more visible signs of the deep Greek influence on Etruscan religion. The cult was imported from the Greek city of Cumae on the Bay of Naples, which had been founded in the eighth century before our era by Greek colonists from Euboea, and which served thereafter as a major channel of Greek religious and cultural influence into central Italy. Through Cumae, Apollo became Aplu, and the figure of the god of prophecy, music, and healing entered the Etruscan pantheon.

The famous Apollo of Veii — a near-life-size terracotta sculpture of c. 510 BCE, recovered from the Portonaccio sanctuary of Veii in 1916 and now one of the masterpieces of the Villa Giulia — gives us the clearest visual record of the Etruscan Aplu. The figure is depicted in the act of striding forward to confront Hercle (the Etruscan Heracles) over the body of a deer (the Hind of Ceryneia, of the Greek myth). The iconography is Greek in derivation but Etruscan in execution: the smile, the patterned hair, the powerful stride, the elaborate robe with its flowing folds, all show the Etruscan sculptural genius working on Greek mythological material.

Aplu was particularly associated with prophecy in Etruria. The disciplina etrusca, the great Etruscan science of divination, included branches under Apollo's patronage — the interpretation of oracles, the augury of the future, the reading of sacred signs. The Etruscan haruspices, who became the great Roman experts on divination, traced part of their tradition back to Aplu's instruction; and the Sibylline Books, which Tarquinius Superbus (the last of the Etruscan kings of Rome) was said to have purchased from the Cumaean Sibyl, were a Cumaean-Apolline text imported through Etruscan channels into Roman state religion.

After the Romanization, Aplu was simply absorbed into Apollo, a deity who needed no introduction in the Roman world; the cult continued with little change of name or character, its Etruscan-mediated origin largely forgotten. But the Apollo of Veii remains as a witness to the period when Greek religion came to Italy by way of Etruria, and acquired its first non-Greek expression in the great terracotta sculptures of the Etruscan temples.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

Aplu is named on the Piacenza Liver and on numerous mirrors and inscriptions. The Apollo of Veii from the Portonaccio temple was excavated by Massimo Pallottino in the 1916 campaign; it is now in the Villa Giulia in Rome, one of the great surviving works of pre-Roman Italian sculpture. The transmission from Cumae to Etruria is described in many ancient sources (Livy, Strabo, Dionysius of Halicarnassus); the Sibylline Books episode is in Livy 1.34, 1.56, with the famous story of the Sibyl burning books to drive up the price. The connection between Aplu and the disciplina etrusca is treated in Jean MacIntosh Turfa's Divining the Etruscan World (2012). The standard art-historical treatment of the Apollo of Veii is in Erika Simon's various works and in Stephan Steingräber's surveys of Etruscan art.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

Named as the same god asApolloAplu was the Etruscan form of the Greek Apollo
Merged intoApolloAfter the Romanization, Aplu was simply absorbed into Apollo
Compared withHeraclesstriding forward to confront Hercle (the Etruscan Heracles) over the body of a deer

The same god in other rooms

The ancient sources themselves name these as one god under different names. See Resheph, Helios, Apollo, Simios, Aplu, Belenos, Maponos and Grannus and Sirona hung together

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for The Gods of Love, Wine, War and Craft. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 900–750 BCE: Villanovan communities establish the Iron Age background from which historically Etruscan cities emerge.
c. 750–600 BCE: Orientalizing exchange and urban growth transform elite ritual, iconography, writing, and sanctuary display.
c. 600–475 BCE: Etruscan city-states reach their widest political and artistic influence; temples and mythic imagery proliferate.
c. 474 BCE: The defeat at Cumae marks changing Etruscan power in Campania and the Tyrrhenian world.
5th–4th centuries BCE: Tomb painting, mirrors, votive deposits, and regional cults provide dense evidence for divine and funerary imagery.
396–264 BCE: Roman conquest progressively incorporates Etruscan cities while Etruscan priestly expertise remains prestigious.
2nd–1st centuries BCE: Late inscriptions and Roman antiquarian interest document cultural integration and the persistence of divinatory traditions.
1st century BCE–1st century CE: Cicero, Varro, Livy, Seneca, and others preserve testimony about haruspicy, lightning, and prodigies.