inspired the Etruscan tomb-paintings. In the Tomba del Morto and the
Tomba degli Auguri, the representation of the death lament showed
plainly that the main theme was the festival in honour of the dead; and
the memorial feast itself should probably in most cases be recognized
in the banquet accompanied by the symposium or—as in the Tomba delle
Iscrizioni—the preparations for it. This conception is also clearly
expressed in the sepulchral paintings of the fifth century B.C.,
such as the Tomba del Letto funebre, where the main picture (fig.
34) represents an enormous couch with a footstool in front[72]; on
the tall pile of bolsters and coverlets rest two pairs of cushions,
each of them supporting a green chaplet encircling a pointed cap
(_tutulus_). Green festoons and a long red cord hang on the walls: to
the right of the couch are two symposiasts and two slaves; the slaves
face the big central couch, and hold one an egg, the other a loaf in
their raised hands. To the left of the picture are the flute-player
and the sideboard with vases. Here we get an idea how a lectisternium
was spread in honour of the dead, in connexion with the symposium at a
memorial feast. The dead are represented by their headgear; to that the
slaves to the right are offering sacrifice, to that the flute-player
to the left sounds his notes. How deeply, in this direction also,
tradition influenced the Romans, and how long the practice lingered, is
seen from the description which the satirist Persius gives (iii. 103)
of a noble Roman lying in state:
Hinc tuba, candelae, tandemque beatulus alto
compositus lecto crassisque lutatus amomis
in portam rigidas calces extendit: at illum
hesterni capite induto subiere Quirites.
And then the horns, the candles! and the dead,
Smeared with thick balms, lies stiff on lofty bed,
Heels pointing doorwards, till he’s borne away
By new-capped citizens[73] of yesterday.
But the pictures in the Tomba Golini seem to indicate that the
symposium is not only a ceremony on the funeral day or at memorial
feasts, but that the purpose is, by means of the painting as well as by
the undoubtedly splendid accessories of the tombs, which were rifled
and removed long ago, to secure to the dead or the whole of the family,
who in course of time were interred in the tomb, a happy and festive
existence hereafter; the same idea as in the Egyptian tomb-reliefs,
the object of which was to safeguard the deceased against ‘the second
death’, that is, annihilation. And just as the Egyptian tomb-reliefs
extend to all aspects of life in order that the dead may enjoy
without restriction the sight of everything which made his life rich
and festive, from the industry of the slaves and artisans occupied in
his service to his own boating and hunting expeditions in the papyrus
thickets of the Nile, so the Etruscan sepulchral paintings have a
further object and treat subjects which are only intelligible if the
end in view is to procure for the dead a full enjoyment of the delights
of life, and which cannot in any way be associated with funeral or
funeral feast. This applies especially to the hunting pictures of the
sixth and fifth centuries B.C., found respectively in the Tomba della
Caccia e della Pesca and in the Tomba Querciola.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] Footstools were also used in Rome for mounting the high couches.
Varro, _De lingua Latina_ v. 168.
[73] i. e. slaves made free by his will, and entitled to wear the cap
of liberty.
XIV
[Sidenote: ETRUSCAN IMPERIALISM]
[Sidenote: THE POWER OF ETRURIA]
[Sidenote: ETRUSCAN INFLUENCE IN ROME]
In the older group of tombs of the latter part of the sixth and the
earlier part of the fifth centuries B.C. we find a bright and cheerful
delight in the material pleasures of life, and a clear confidence in
the belief that the race, whose means are sufficient to provide and
adorn a sumptuous sepulchral chamber, will also be permitted to enjoy
all this—from wine and women to hunting and sanguinary games—in the
hereafter. Thus it is not for nothing that these tombs synchronize with
the time of Etruscan imperialism. Previous to this, the maritime power
of Etruria had made it dreaded and hated by the Greeks, whose ships
were exposed to seizure and piracy as often as they ventured across the
‘Tyrrhenian Sea’, so that the Greeks had only one colony on the north
coast of Sicily, and had great trouble in keeping up communications
with the Campanian Kyme and with Massilia.[74] ‘The savage Etruscan’
already appears in post-Homeric poetry, where Circe bears Odysseus
two children, Latinus and Agrius (the savage), who represent the two
principal races of Italy, the Latins and the Etruscans. At length, in
474 B.C., the Kymeans, in alliance with Hieron, the ruler of Syracuse,
succeeded in gaining a sea victory over the Etruscan fleet, which
Pindar has celebrated in the first Pythian Ode (i. 72 ff.), and after
which Hieron sent to Olympia a bronze helmet with an inscription
recording the victory, now in the British Museum. This defeat was the
first warning that the Etruscans had reached the zenith of their power,
but as late as the latter part of the fourth century their piracy was
still dangerous and troublesome to Greek shipping, as is seen from
a passage of Aristotle and an inscription of 325-324 B.C.[75] As a
bulwark of their maritime power, as early as the sixth century they had
conquered Corsica, and on land they ruled from the plain of the Po,
which they likewise conquered in the sixth century, to the southernmost
part of Campania, where they made Capua itself submit to their
power.[76] Cato was justified in saying that almost the whole of Italy
in the days of old had been ‘in the power of the Tuscans’,[77] and when
Sophocles[78] would enumerate the districts of Italy he mentions only
three: Oinotria (South Italy), the Tyrrhenian, and the Ligurian land.
When the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War undertook the desperate
campaign against Syracuse, they allied themselves in 415 with the
Etruscans, whose auxiliaries were amongst the bravest in the Athenian
offensive force.[79] In the period of the wall-paintings in question,
Rome herself was also made subject to them and had to pay contributions
to the powerful Etruscan confederation, after the king of Clusium,
Porsenna, had seized the city in 508 B.C. As is well known, attempts
were made by later historians to gloss over this capture of the town,
and the honorary decrees of the senate to Porsenna are described as
voluntary, but tell quite plainly their own tale of subjection.[80]
Against the background of this event the contemporary Tomba della
Scimmia at Chiusi acquires a new interest; it was constructed for
one of those families which took part in the victory over Rome. But
previous to this, the names of the Roman kings: Lucius Tarquinius and
Tarquinius Superbus—Tarquinius is the Etruscan Tarchna[81]—bear witness
to the dependence of Rome, which is also evident from the permanent
Etruscan occupation of the Janiculum. It is quite possible that the
expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus does not mark the fall of the national
monarchy, but was simply an attempt to throw off the foreign yoke, an
attempt which led to Porsenna’s occupation of the city two years later
and thus did not bring about the emancipation of the Romans.[82] It is
in this period of dependence that the Etruscans left their mark on the
laws and customs of Rome, that the three oldest Roman tribes, Ramnes,
Tities, and Luceres, got their names, which, as stated by Varro,[83]
on the evidence of an Etruscan tragedian Volnius, are Etruscan, a view
shared by the modern philologist Wilhelm Schulze.[84] The insignia
also of the Roman officials, such as the curule chair and the toga
praetexta,[85] and the twelve consular lictors with the fasces,[86]
are rightly traced back to Etruria. For the Etruscan confederation
consisted of twelve towns, and each of these chose a king who appeared
at the gatherings followed by a lictor, and only when they chose a
common overlord and war-leader could he appear with twelve lictors.
It is therefore rather improbable that the Roman kings appeared with
twelve lictors in their train; more probably this large retinue only
became the privilege of the _consuls_ after the suppression of Etruria.
But it was upon the nobility of Rome that those years of Etruscan
predominance left their deepest impress, and it has thus been possible
for Wilhelm Schulze, through his investigations of Etruscan and Latin
proper names, to throw a remarkable light on the earliest history
of Rome and to prove that a great number of the oldest patrician
families of Rome were descendants of the Etruscan ruling race, and
that intermarriage with Etruscans, and Etruscan influence on Rome,
persisted down to the end of the Roman republic.[87] It is also beyond
doubt that the peculiar Roman system of patron and client, by which
clients attached themselves to a nobleman as followers (_cluentes_),
added his name to their own, and paid him dues in peace time, though
they were originally immune from military service,[88] was of Etruscan
origin, nay, was the essential feature in the structure of the Etruscan
community. In course of time the Roman clients became liable to
military service, obtaining at the same time civic rights, and it is
presumably this fact which accounts for Rome’s final victory over the
Etruscans, whose proud Lucumones reserved to themselves both civic
privileges and military skill, and were therefore doomed to extinction
when luxury and effeminacy had sapped their strength.
[Sidenote: ETRUSCAN NOBILITY AND CLIENTS]
But at the period of the tombs in question the blood of the nobility is
still healthy and is in no need of regeneration. This is the nobility
whose long lances controlled Italy, and whose cavalry was so terrible
in onset.[89] The pictures of the tombs show them at the death lament,
at feasts, and on hunting expeditions, at symposia, where men and women
freely indulge in wine and love, and finally in the Tomba delle Bighe
as spectators seated on the stands. On the other hand, the horsemen,
the dancers, the dancing-women, and the athletes are certainly of lower
extraction, hired servants like the corresponding performers in Rome,
perhaps, to some extent, clients.
FOOTNOTES:
[74] Strabo vi. p. 410 (= Ephorus, _fragm._ 2 in Müller, _Fragmenta
historic. graec._ i. p. 246). The ingenious etymologist Philochorus
even derived the word ‘tyrant’ from Tyrrhenians (Philoch. _fragm._ 5 in
Müller, _op. cit._).
[75] Dittenberger, _Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum_,^{3} 305, with
note 1.
[76] Polybius ii. 17. Livy v. 33. 7-8.
[77] _Origines_ 62.
[78] Dionys. Halic. i. 12.
[79] Thucydides vi. 88, and vii. 54-5.
[80] Dionys. Halic. v. 26, 35, 39.
[81] Schulze, _Zur Geschichte latein. Eigennamen_, p. 95 f., 262 ff.
[82] Dionys. Halic. iii. 45, 47 ff.
[83] Varro, _De lingua Latina_ v. 5; Livy i. 13. 8.
[84] Cp. E. Kornemann, _Klio_ xiv. 1914-15, p. 190.
[85] Livy i. 8. 3.
[86] Dionys. Halic. iii. 61-2.
[87] Wilhelm Schulze, _Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen. Abh. der
kgl. Gesellsch. der Wissensch. zu Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Kl._, Neue
Folge, Bd. 5, No. 5, p. 62 ff.
[88] Dionys. Halic. ii. 8, 10.
[89] Livy iv. 18. 8. Cp. ix. 29. 2, where the Etruscans are described
as the most dangerous enemies of the Romans.
XV
[Sidenote: DECLINE AND FALL OF ETRURIA]
But domestic and foreign enemies destroyed this race of rulers. At the
beginning of the fourth century they were attacked simultaneously by
the Gauls from the north, by the Samnites[90] from the south-east, and
by the Romans from the south. The Gauls inundated for some time the
whole of Etruria and presently captured Rome as well, but were driven
back again to North Italy. The Samnites seized Capua; but a far heavier
blow was the loss of the great city of Veii, the southernmost city
of Etruria proper, which was captured by the Romans in 396 B.C.[91]
In spite of the alliance with Carthage, the maritime power of the
Etruscans also declined in the course of the fourth century, but it
was not until the third century that they received the death-blow at
the hands of the Romans and Latins. That they were still dangerous
antagonists at the beginning of the third century may be seen from
Livy’s account, but at the end of the century, during the second Punic
war, their rebellious spirit was easily quelled, and even Hannibal
could not tempt them to unite in revolt.[92] At that time the country
was still rich, as is plainly shown by the requisitions for Scipio’s
army.[93] It was not until the following century that Etruria sank
into deep poverty; in the time of the Gracchi the country was almost
a waste.[94] Plautus describes the Etruscan people as very immoral;
in the _Cistellaria_ (562) the poet speaks of those who procure their
dowry ignobly, like the Tuscans, by selling their bodies, and in the
_Curculio_ (482) the Etruscan quarter of Rome is referred to as
‘inhabited by persons who sell themselves’. Then followed in the first
century B.C. the military colonies of Sulla,[95] which gradually
Romanized the country. Inscriptions, especially from the borderland
of Umbria, which had been partly Etruscan, bear ample witness to
the way in which the language changed even within the old Etruscan
families. About the middle of the first century parts of the country
were ravaged by P. Clodius Pulcher and his bands of soldiers.[96] Then
comes the foundation of new military colonies by Caesar and, finally,
the complete Romanization of the country under Augustus. Propertius[97]
describes, not without pathos, the extermination of the last Etruscan
strongholds during the Perusian war in the year 40 B.C.: ‘eversosque
focos antiquae gentis Etruscae’.
The knowledge of the Etruscan language was preserved all through
antiquity by the Etruscan soothsayers. The emperor Claudius was versed
in Etruscan, and delivered a long address in the Senate about the
preservation of the old Etruscan ritual against the invasion of new,
oriental elements. The other emperors had, as a rule, an Etruscan
soothsayer in their suite, whom they consulted before taking any
important step, and this custom survived down to the introduction of
Christianity. Julian the Apostate was accompanied by hosts of Etruscan
soothsayers, who, however, undoubtedly read the sacred books in the
Latin translation by Tarquitius Priscus,[98] and, as late as 408, we
learn that Tuscan soothsayers and scribes still existed. If any of them
at that time could still read the language, then Etruscan, as a dead
and sacred language, had survived the disappearance of the people by
about half a millennium.[99]
[Illustration: FIG. 35. DEMON IN THE TOMBA DELL’ ORCO]
FOOTNOTES:
[90] Livy iv. 37. 1-2.
[91] Livy v. 22. 8.
[92] Livy xxvii. 21. 6; 38. 6.
[93] Livy xxviii. 45. 14-18.
[94] Plutarch, _Tiberius Gracchus_ 8.
[95] As a punishment because the country had joined the party of
Marius. Plutarch, _Marius_ 41.
[96] Cicero, _Pro Milone_ 26, 74, 87.
[97] ii. 1. 29. The later authors speak of nothing but the corpulency
and imbecility of the Etruscans. Catullus, _Carm._ 39. 21. Virgil,
_Georg._ ii. 193; _Aen._ xi. 732. Diodorus v. 40.
[98] Thulin, Pauly-Wissowa, vii. 2434.
[99] The best summary view of the Etruscan civilization is still to
be found in Ottfried Müller, _Die Etrusker_, in the second edition by
Deecke.
XVI
To this long, sad period of national decline the later group of
Etruscan tomb-paintings and reliefs on cinerary urns form a remarkable
and melancholy accompaniment.
[Sidenote: TOMBA DELL’ ORCO]
The continuity is unbroken; the new creeps in, at first, without
superseding the old subjects. This is especially clear in the front
room of the Tomba dell’ Orco, which dates from the latter part of the
fifth century, and from which we reproduced the beautiful married
couple at the symposium (figs. 28, 29); in the same sepulchral chamber
we see in a corner, beneath a finely stylized vine, a terrible death
demon, with large wings and a shock of wildly fluttering reddish hair,
which is sharply outlined on a blue background as if it were surrounded
by a halo. His beard is pointed, his nose terminates in an eagle’s
beak; over his shoulder a snake rears itself, and the latchets of his
shoes are snakes. His dress consists of a sleeved chiton with belt and
shoulder-straps, and in his hand he carries a torch or a hammer. The
eyes roll horribly in the bluish face; the colour of the skin recalls
the blue-bottle fly (fig. 35).
[Sidenote: UNDERWORLD SCENES]
This death demon is painted isolated, unconnected with the subjects
of the rest of the paintings, and could indeed be explained away as
a decorative figure, created, to be sure, by an imagination inflamed
with terror. But in the third room of the same tomb, the pictures of
which belong to the transition from the fifth to the fourth century,
a similar demon of the nether world is already represented in action
(fig. 36). The inscription gives his name, Tuchulcha; he has asses’
ears, two snakes rear themselves like horns above his brow, and with
a huge snake he threatens a long-haired youth who sits sorrowful on
the rock, with a himation round his loins; his name, according to the
inscription, is ‘These’. He is the Greek Theseus, and the young man
opposite to him is Pirithous; the motive is their sufferings in the
Underworld, where they had ventured down in order to abduct Persephone.
But there broods over the scene a sinister spirit which is not Greek.
Thus we see behind the rock on which Theseus is seated a loathsome
snake with winged head, and the remains of a blue demon with staff and
chiton, a kinsman of Tuchulcha. The appearance, to the left of this
weird phantasmagoria, of the peaceful sideboard with its fine metal
bowls[100] and with a handsome naked slave as cup-bearer in front of
it, has undeniably a somewhat odd effect. This is a reminiscence of
the old joyous symposium scenes, and a remarkable witness to the lack
of clearness in the Etruscan mind and to the fragmentary character of
Etruscan pictorial art. A similar mixture of everyday life and myth
would be inconceivable in Egyptian or in Greek art.
Similarly, in the Tomba Golini, we see the side-table and the slave in
immediate continuation of the picture representing the two enthroned
rulers of the Underworld—Hades and Persephone (inscriptions: Eita
and Phersipnai). Hades has a wolf-helmet and a snake-sceptre and is
caressing Persephone, who has a bird-crowned sceptre in her left hand,
and rests her right hand on the knee of Hades (see above fig. 32). Her
dress, her face, and her yellow hair under the golden diadem are all
splendidly painted.
[Illustration: FIG. 36. PICTURE IN THE TOMBA DELL’ ORCO AT CORNETO]
[Illustration: FIG. 37. HADES, PERSEPHONE AND GERYON IN THE TOMBA DELL’
ORCO]
In later Etruscan paintings we come upon two new groups of
motives—fantastic pictures of the Underworld, and scenes from Greek
mythology. Sometimes they mingle as in the Theseus and Pirithous scene
and in the pictures of Hades and Persephone. Hades and Persephone
recur in a painting in the third chamber of the Tomba dell’ Orco
(inscription: Aita and Phersipnei), where weird mists roll about them,
and a figure with three heads, Gerun, is standing before their throne
(fig. 37). It is the Geryon of the Greeks, but he is not the cowherd on
the far-distant island Erythra, but a warrior in complete armour who
seems to be receiving the commands of Hades. Evidently the Etruscans
have made him the servant and champion of Hades. Persephone has snakes
in her hair and a curious collar which we meet again on the chitons
of women in white Attic lekythoi of the fifth century B.C.[101] Hades
wears the traditional wolf-helmet. It is remarkable that a head exactly
similar to that of Hades is found among Michelangelo’s sketches (fig.
38), which seems to indicate that Michelangelo somewhere in Tuscany saw
and sketched an old Etruscan tomb. To be sure, the snout of the animal
reminds one of a pig’s, but the long ears and the fur are those of the
wolf.
[Sidenote: TOMBA DELL’ ORCO]
[Illustration: Fig. 38. Head of man surmounted by that of a pig.]
In the other paintings of the Tomba dell’ Orco we meet furthermore with
Agamemnon in the underworld, and in front of him Tiresias (Hinthial
Teriasals it reads, i. e. the shade of Tiresias). But in the second
chamber of this tomb, dating from the fourth century B.C., there
is also a scene from Greek mythology which has nothing to do with
death and the underworld; Odysseus blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus
(inscriptions: Uthuste and Cuclu). We can here speak of a renaissance,
in so far as a scene from a Greek myth formed the subject of the big
picture of the beginning of the sixth century in the Tomba dei Tori
(cp. fig. 2). But the aim of the later school of Etruscan painters is
not so much to adorn the tomb with a beautiful decorative panel after
some Greek prototype; on the contrary, they turn to the Greek myths
for the sake of their subjects and pick out motives which also give
expression to the curious strain of cruelty inherent in the Etruscan
mind.
This is seen most clearly in the famous picture from the François
tomb at Vulci, discovered in 1857 by the Italian painter Alessandro
François. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek possesses a facsimile, executed by
the painter Mariani after the original in the Palazzo Torlonia, whither
the Prince Torlonia had it removed together with other wall-paintings
from the same tomb: but the copy is too smooth to be trustworthy.
Unfortunately, permission to obtain another copy from the inaccessible
Palazzo is certainly not to be had. The picture (fig. 39) represents
the sacrifice of Trojan captives on the grave of Patroclus. Achilles
(Etruscan Achle) slaughters with his own hands the captured Trojans
(Etruscan Truials); Ajax, son of Oileus (Aivas Vilatas), and Ajax, son
of Telamon (Aivas Tlamunus) stand by, Agamemnon (Achmemrun) is also
present, and the shade of Patroclus, thirsting for the blood (Hinthial
Patrucles), as well as two truly Etruscan figures, a female winged
genius of death, Vanth, and the Etruscan death-god, Charun, coloured
like the blue-bottle fly, with hammer uplifted.
[Sidenote: TOMBA FRANÇOIS] [Sidenote: ETRUSCAN CRUELTY]
This subject was chosen for the sake of the slaughter.[102] Sex and
cruelty are, to use a chemical expression, the ‘basic group’ of the
Etruscan mind. Thus the same subject is found repeatedly on Etruscan
sarcophagi and vases, and in the relief on a cinerary urn, and may be
compared with the most common and popular representation in Etruscan
reliefs: Eteocles and Polynices killing each other. Even a motive like
Ajax falling on his own sword constantly recurs in Etruscan art, as
well as the barbarous subject, maschalismos (maiming of slain enemies),
which is especially common on Etruscan gems.[103] A characteristic
feature of the picture in the François tomb is the deep wounds in the
legs of the Trojan captives; they are meant to prevent attempts to
escape and were evidently in keeping with Etruscan custom. For stress
is laid on the cruelty of the Etruscans towards prisoners of war by
Greek as well as by Latin authors; thus, as early as the fifth century,
the inhabitants of Caere, after a sea victory, stoned to death their
Phocaean captives[104]; and yet Strabo writes of the Caeretans that
they were highly respected for their bravery and love of justice, and
because, powerful as they were, they refrained from piracy. The Romans
knew better when they personified Etruscan cruelty in Mezentius, King
of Caere, who had living and dead tied together to rot side by side;
nor did the Romans ever forget that the inhabitants of Tarquinii once
slaughtered three hundred and seven Roman captives,[105] and they took
bloody revenge on them. The Greeks also knew of the massacring of
prisoners of war, but they always cherished scruples about it and felt
qualms, as when Themistocles was compelled to pay a tribute of slain
captives to ‘Dionysius, the eater of raw flesh’.[106]
Before we leave the François tomb we must remind the reader of the
existence of a remarkable series of pictures with subjects taken
from the conflicts between Etruria and Rome in the time of the Roman
kings.[107]
FOOTNOTES:
[100] Cp. for the well-appointed table Plautus’s description of a
liberal host (_Menaechmi_ 102): ‘tantas struices concinnat patinarias.’
[101] Walther Riezler, _Weissgründige attische Lekythen_, pl. 70.
[102] It is to be observed that the Etruscans thrust with the sword;
this also the Romans inherited; whereas the Gauls cut and the Iberians
thrust as well as cut. Polybius ii. 33. 6, and iii. 114.
[103] Cp. Beazley, _Lewes House Collection of Gems_, p. 38, 74 f.
[104] Herodotus i. 167.
[105] Livy vii. 15. 10; 19. 3.
[106] Plutarch, _Themistocles_ 13.
[107] Körte, _Jahrbuch des archäol. Instit._ xii. 1897, p. 58 ff.
XVII
[Sidenote: CHARUN AND THE LASAS]