Vegoia

In Etruscan tradition as preserved in later Roman commentaries, Vegoia (Vecu) is a prophetic female figure credited with revealing and authoring parts of the Etruscan sacred books, the Libri Vegoici. Her revelations are presented in an origin-register: they are framed as ancient, foundational instructions that instituted methods for founding cities and shrines, measuring and dividing land and time, establishing laws (including those governing hydraulic works), and interpreting divine signs. These attributions come to us through Roman-era summaries of the Etruscan sacred-books tradition rather than through surviving original Etruscan texts.

The surviving sources do not preserve a detailed physical description or pictorial iconography of Vegoia. Later summaries variably label her a 'sibyl,' 'prophet,' or, in one account, 'barely' a 'nymph,' but the provided material contains no further descriptive attributes, emblems, or consistent visual representations.

Vegoia's primary role is revelatory and prescriptive: tradition attributes to her the Libri Vegoici, said to include the Libri Fulgurales and parts of the Libri Rituales (especially the Libri Fatales). From Roman-era summaries she is credited with assigning sectors of the horizon to deities (a celestial cartography used in omen interpretation), prescribing lawful methods for land surveying and property boundaries, establishing ritual-technical norms for founding settlements and shrines, and laying down laws relating to hydraulic works. Her dicta were framed as authoritative rules that specialists consulted and that were to be upheld 'under threat of dire woe or malediction.' These attributions are preserved in later commentary on the lost Etruscan sacred books.