2The Etruscans

Between Tiber and Arno there flourished, while Rome was still a collection of mud huts above the Tiber ford, a rich, energetic, and mysterious people, the Etruscans, whose civilization was to influence Rome profoundly. Their riches have been known to the modern world ever since the systematic looting of the fabulous wealth of their underground tombs began, as early as 1489. Visitors to the Vatican and Villa Giulia Museums in Rome, and, better still, the Archaeological Museum in Florence, can marvel at the splendid weapons, rich gold-work, and handsome vases with which more or less scientific grave-robbers have enriched the collections in the last hundred years. Travellers to Tarquinia, on the Tuscan seaboard, can wonder at the strange, vivid paintings and seemingly indecipherable inscriptions on the walls of mysterious and intricate underground chambers. Etruscan bronze-work inspired the sculptors of the Renaissance, Etruscan tombs were drawn by the pen of the great engraver Piranesi, Etruscan cities and cemeteries were described by perhaps the most interesting author, certainly the best stylist, who ever wrote on archaeology, the Englishman George Dennis.

Dennis’Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, though its lastedition appeared in 1883, is still the best general introduction to Etruscology. His achievement is the more remarkable in the light of the conditions under which he worked: execrable roads, worse lodging, and malaria stalking the whole countryside. In his day Etruscan tombs were exploited exclusively in the interest of the art dealers, with methods utterly unscientific. Artifacts without commercial value were ruthlessly destroyed: it is heart-rending to read Dennis’ account of the rape of Vulci:

“Our astonishment was only equalled by our indignation when we saw the labourers dash [coarse pottery of unfigured and ... unvarnished ware, and a variety of small articles in black clay] to the ground as they drew them forth, and crush them beneath their feet as things ‘cheaper than seaweed.’ In vain I pleaded to save some from destruction; for though of no remarkable worth, they were often of curious and elegant forms, and valuable as relics of the olden time, not to be replaced; but no, it was allroba di schiocchezza—‘foolish stuff’—the [foreman] was inexorable; his orders were to destroy immediately whatever was of no pecuniary value, and he could not allow me to carry away one of these relics which he so despised.”

Unfortunately, looting of this kind produced much of the material in our museums, whose precise findspots (from the GermanFundort, the precise place where an archaeologically significant object was found) are consequently often not known. On the other hand scientific excavation, when it came, in the mid-nineteenth century found still some tombs unplundered.

Our knowledge of Etruscan civilization is almost entirely a triumph of this modern scientific archaeology, since written Etruscan, with no known affinities, is still largely undeciphered, though scientific methods have made large stridespossible. In the last three generations archaeologists have attacked and in great measure solved the problem of the origin of the Etruscans, the nature of their cities, their political organization, their religious beliefs and practices, the degree of originality in their creative arts, their life and customs. The result is a composite picture of the greatest people to dominate the Italian peninsula before the Romans.

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As to origins, the Etruscans might have been indigenous, or come down over the Alps, or, as most of the ancients believed, have come by sea from Asia Minor. The difference of their burial customs and, probably, their language from those of their neighbors makes it unlikely that their ruling class was native like, for example, the Villanovans; the archaeological evidence for their links with the North is very late, and the Northern theory has tended to fall along with the discrediting of Pigorini’s notions (based, as we saw, on unwarranted reconstruction of theterremare) about a single line of descent for Etruscan and Italic peoples. There remains the theory of Near Eastern origin, first stated in the fifth centuryB.C.by the Greek historian Herodotus, and recently (in the 1930’s) given some slight support by Italian excavators’ discovery of an inscription dated about 600B.C.on the island of Lemnos, off the coast of Asia Minor opposite Troy. Though the Lemnian dialect is non-Indo-European, and therefore, like Etruscan, cannot be read, its archaic letters can be transliterated. Beginning with the bottom center line (Fig. 2.1), continuing with the line on the far left, and readingboustrophedon(alternately from right to left and from left to right, like an ox plowing), it readsevistho zeronaith zivai/ sialchveiz aviz/ maraz mav/ vanalasial zeronai morinail/ aker tavarzio/ holaiez naphoth ziazi. The resemblance to the alphabet and the art-forms of the Aules Feluskes stele from Etruscan Vetulonia (Fig. 2.2) is obvious. The particular letter-form transcribed asthoccurs elsewhere only in Phrygia in Asia Minor. Thevery words and word-endings of the Lemnian stele can be found on Etruscan inscriptions. Thus the inscription shows at the very least that on an island “geographically intermediate between Asia Minor and Italy a language very similar to Etruscan was employed by some persons.” The ancient tradition localizing the original home of the Etruscans somewhere in or near northwest Asia Minor receives here some archaeological support.

Fig. 2.1Lemnos. Inscription in local dialect, similar to Etruscan.(M. Pallottino,Etruscologia, Pl. 4)

Fig. 2.1Lemnos. Inscription in local dialect, similar to Etruscan.

(M. Pallottino,Etruscologia, Pl. 4)

Fig. 2.2Vetulonia. Aules Feluskes stele.(M. Pallottino,Etruscologia, Pl. 21)

Fig. 2.2Vetulonia. Aules Feluskes stele.

(M. Pallottino,Etruscologia, Pl. 21)

But the important thing is not where they came from, but how their culture was formed. The archaeological evidence justifies the hypothesis that they were a small but vigorous military aristocracy from the eastern Mediterranean, established in central Italy, where they built, by borrowing and merging, upon a structure created by the Villanovans. A new approach, the analysis of bones from Etruscan tombs to ascertain the blood types of their ancient occupants, may, by comparison with the persistent blood types of modern Tuscans, enable the archaeologist to determine what proportion of the ancient population was native and what intrusive.

Fig. 2.3Early Italy, to illustrate Etruscan and other sites. Inset: early Rome. (V. Scramuzza and P. MacKendrick,The Ancient World, Fig. 32a)REPUBLICAN ROMEROMAN NUMERALS INDICATE THE FOUR REGIONS (*CITY TRIBES)I SUCUSANAII ERSQUILINAIII COLLINAIV PALATINE— CITY OF THE FOUR REGIONS---- SERVIAN CITYKEY1 TABULARIUM2 ARX3 COMITIUM AND CURIA4 BASILICA ÆMILIA5 T. OF VESTA6 REGIA7 CLOACA MAXIMA8 T. OF GREAT MOTHER9 T. OF JUPITER VICTOR10 FORUM BOARIUM11 SUBLICIAN BRIDGE12 ÆMILIAN BRIDGE13 Pta. FLUMENTANA14 Pta. CARMENTALIS15 CAPITOLIUM16 FORUM HOLITORIUM17 T. OF TELLONA18 CIRCUS OF FLAMINIUS19 POMPEY’S THEATRE20 T. OF QUIRINUS21 T. OF FORTUNE22 FABRICIAN BRIDGE23 BRIDGE OF CESTIUSEARLY ROME AND ITALY

Fig. 2.3Early Italy, to illustrate Etruscan and other sites. Inset: early Rome. (V. Scramuzza and P. MacKendrick,The Ancient World, Fig. 32a)

REPUBLICAN ROMEROMAN NUMERALS INDICATE THE FOUR REGIONS (*CITY TRIBES)

I SUCUSANAII ERSQUILINAIII COLLINAIV PALATINE— CITY OF THE FOUR REGIONS---- SERVIAN CITYKEY1 TABULARIUM2 ARX3 COMITIUM AND CURIA4 BASILICA ÆMILIA5 T. OF VESTA6 REGIA7 CLOACA MAXIMA8 T. OF GREAT MOTHER9 T. OF JUPITER VICTOR10 FORUM BOARIUM11 SUBLICIAN BRIDGE12 ÆMILIAN BRIDGE13 Pta. FLUMENTANA14 Pta. CARMENTALIS15 CAPITOLIUM16 FORUM HOLITORIUM17 T. OF TELLONA18 CIRCUS OF FLAMINIUS19 POMPEY’S THEATRE20 T. OF QUIRINUS21 T. OF FORTUNE22 FABRICIAN BRIDGE23 BRIDGE OF CESTIUSEARLY ROME AND ITALY

EARLY ROME AND ITALY

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Archaeology tells us, too, that Etruscan civilization is a culture of cities. Ancient literary sources speak of a league of twelve Etruscan places (Fig. 2.3), most of which have yielded important archaeological material: from Veii, the great terracotta Apollo; at Cerveteri, Vetulonia, Orvieto, and Perugia, the remarkable rock-cut tombs; at Tarquinia, Vulci, and Chiusi, strikingly vivid tomb-paintings; at Bolsena, Roselle, and Volterra, mighty fortification walls; at Populonia, the slag-heaps from the iron works which made Etruria prosperous. But the most interesting, and some of the latest, evidence for Etruscan city-planning and fortifications comes from three sites, two in the northern Etruscan sphere of influence: Marzabotto on the River Reno, fifteen miles south of Bologna; Spina, near one of the seven mouthsof the Po; and one in northern Etruria itself, Bolsena, ancient Volsinii.

Fig. 2.4Marzabotto: grid plan. (J. B. Ward Perkins, “Early Roman Towns in Italy,” Fig. 5)

The first recorded excavations at Marzabotto date from the 1860’s, but the ruins had been known since 1550. The striking discovery at Marzabotto was that the site (dated by pottery in its necropolis to the late sixth or early fifth centuriesB.C.) had a regular, oriented, rectangular grid of streets (Fig. 2.4), enclosing house-blocks (insulae) averaging 165 × 35 yards. The main north-south street, orcardo, and the main east-west street, ordecumanus, were each over forty-eight feet wide, the minor streets one third as broad. The streets were paved, as they were not in Rome until 350 years later. Drains ran beneath all the streets except the reserved area (the Romans were to call it thepomerium) just inside the circuit-wall. The house-plans resemble closely the fourth-century ones discovered in the1930’s at Olynthus, on the Chalcidice Peninsula in Greece, by an American expedition. The house-doors had locks and keys. A number of the buildings were recognizable as shops, with back rooms for living quarters.

Bearing in mind the sobering experience of Pigorini’s unwarranted claims about a grid plan for theterremare, we might be tempted to scepticism about Marzabotto, except for two facts: Brizio, the excavator, himself expressed doubts, as early as 1891, about Pigorini’s reconstruction; furthermore, a re-examination of the site in 1953 confirmed the authenticity of Brizio’s findings.

The city is dominated, on the high ground to the northwest, by anarx, bearing the footings, some of considerable size with impressive moldings, of five structures, temples or altars. One of them, facing south, and divided at the back into threecellae, is the prototype of the Roman Capitolium, decorated by an Etruscan artist, and dedicated to the triad Jupiter, Juno, Minerva (in Etruscan, Tin, Uni, Menerva). Until World War II, when they were wantonly destroyed, the finds in terracotta from the arx were preserved in the local museum. There were revetments, plaques forming a thin veneer of fired clay, with nail-holes for affixing them to the wooden frame of a typical Tuscan temple. They included archaic antefixes: ornamental terracotta caps to mask the unsightly ends of half-round roof tiles. Terracotta revetments like these, for wooden construction, continue to be canonical in Roman temples down to the first centuryB.C.: marble as a building material does not come into use until after the middle of the second centuryB.C.Under the lee of the arx was a necropolis with contents like those found in Gallic graves, mute evidence of the occupation of Marzabotto by the wave of Gauls that brought terror into Italy early in the fourth centuryB.C.In sum, Marzabotto is so perfect an example of an Etruscan town-site that it merits the name of the Etruscan Pompeii.

Marzabotto remained for many years the only knownEtruscan site with a grid plan. Lying as it does outside Etruria proper, it was clearly the product of Etruscan expansion northward. Since 1922 reclamation by drainage canals has revealed the necropolis of another northern outpost, Spina, near one of the mouths of the Po. Working under the greatest difficulties from mud and seepage, archaeologists had unearthed the contents of no less than 1213 tombs, often finding golden earrings and diadems gleaming in the mud against the skulls in the burials. These precious ornaments, together with necklaces of northern amber, perfume-bottles in glass paste and alabaster from Egypt, and Greek black- and red-figured vases, are now the pride of the Ferrara Museum. Though the vases are Greek, both Etruscans and Greeks lived in the site together, as is proved bygraffitiin both languages scratched on the pottery. The spot, commanding the Adriatic, would be the ideal port of entry for foreign luxury goods imported to satisfy the taste for display of wealthy Etruscans. Wealthy as they were, they were all equal in the sight of Charun: the skeletons were regularly found with small change, to pay the infernal ferryman, clutched in the bony fingers of their right hands. Pathetic graves of children contained jointed dolls and game counters.

Fig. 2.5Spina, plan.(S. Aurigemma,Il R. Museo di Spina in Ferrara, Pl. 4)

Fig. 2.5Spina, plan.

(S. Aurigemma,Il R. Museo di Spina in Ferrara, Pl. 4)

This rich and crowded cemetery was all that was known of Etruscan Spina until further drainage operations in 1953, in the Pega Valley, south of the original site (Fig. 2.5), brought to light not only 1195 new tombs, but also further surprises. In October, 1956, an air-photograph in color revealed beneath the modern irrigation canals the grid plan (Fig. 2.6), resembling Marzabotto’s, of the port area of the ancient Etruscan city. This time thedecumanusis a canal, sixty-six feet wide, and the marshy site is revealed as a sort of Etruscan Venice. Later air-photographs showed evidence of habitation over an area of 741 acres, large enough for a population of half a million. Since the artifacts of this vast city are a little later in style than thoseof Marzabotto, we assume that Spina flourished a little later. Almost no weapons were found in the graves: Spina apparently felt secure on her landlocked lagoon, but she reckoned without attacks from the landward side. Few vases datable later than the late fifth century are found in the graves: the inference is that Spina fell, about 390B.C., before the same Gallic invasion that despoiled Marzabotto. The two sites together reinforce each other in giving evidence for the use by Etruscan city-planners of the kind of square or rectangular grid of streets later made famous by Roman colonies and Roman camps; unfortunately the question is still open whether the Etruscans invented the grid used in Italy or whether it was a Greek import.

Archaeology tells us something about Etruscan fortifications, too, not least important being some recent negative evidence: many polygonal walls in Etruria and Latium, formerly believed Etruscan, are now proved to be of Roman date. But excavations conducted since 1947 at Bolsena by the French school in Rome have unearthed walls that are genuinely Etruscan, surrounding an Etruscan site, and with Etruscan letters hacked on the blocks. The marks, concentrated on strategic sections of the wall, were probably apotropaic, intended to work as magic charms against the enemy. One section of the wall was only one block thick. It could not have been self-standing; it must have been intended as the spine of anaggeror earthwork. Just such a spine was a part of Rome’s earliest walls, and a similar technique is to be seen in early earthworks at Anzio and Ardea. The discovery of these walls has clinched the identification of Bolsena with Etruscan Volsinii, one of the twelve cities, and the scene of regular meetings of the Etruscan League. On the same site were found some temple foundations, but the district is rich farmland, and it proved impossible to dig over a wide enough area to discover whether Volsinii, like Marzabotto and Spina, had a grid plan.

Grid plans suggest a sophisticated, if rigid, political organization for Etruscan cities. Evidence for the political life of a civilization normally comes from literature and inscriptions, very little from artifacts. Yet the Aules Feluskes stele from Vetulonia, already mentioned, shows a figure carrying a double-headed ax. Later, axes were carried by the consul’s twelve bodyguards whom the Romans called lictors. There seems to be a connection between the number twelve and the twelve cities of the Etruscan confederacy. Vetulonia has yielded another object of great interest to those who would understand Etruscan political organization and Rome’s debt to it. In the Tomb of the Lictor was found, besides a chariot and a metal coffer containing gold objects wrapped in gold leaf, a double-headed iron ax (Fig. 2.7) hafted onto a single iron rod surrounded by eight others. This is obviously the prototype of the Romanfasces, and indeed Silius Italicus, a Roman epic poet of the Silver Age, assigns the origin of the fasces to Vetulonia. Such artifacts suggest that the ruler of an Etruscan city, whether king or aristocrat, was surrounded by considerable pomp.

Fig. 2.6Spina: grid plan, air-photograph. (ENIT,Italy’s Life, p. 91)

Fig. 2.7Vetulonia: fasces from the Tomb of the Lictor.(M. Pallottino,Etruscologia, Pl. 22)

Fig. 2.7Vetulonia: fasces from the Tomb of the Lictor.

(M. Pallottino,Etruscologia, Pl. 22)

Etruscan political organization, according to Latin literary sources, at one stage embraced Rome, and an Etruscan inscription on a shiny black dish of the ware calledbucchero, in Rome, goes a little way to confirm this. More impressive confirmation comes from a frescoed Etruscan tomb in Vulci, discovered by A. François in 1857. The fresco has a historical subject, a battle scene, portraying two camps, populated with figures labelled in Etruscan letters. The figures in one camp are labelled Aule and Caele Vipina (in Latin, Vibenna), and Macstrna (in Latin,magister); in the other, a figure labelled Cneve Tarchunies Rumach (in Latin, Cn. Tarquinius Romanus), a member of the dynasty of Roman kings which in the historical tradition is alleged to have come from Etruria. Aule Vipina’s name recurs in a votive inscription, from a context datedin the sixth centuryB.C., found at Veii on abuccherosherd. The conclusion is inescapable that A. and C. Vibenna were actual historical figures, Etruscan leaders involved in a political struggle for the domination of Rome. Macstrna is identified in Roman tradition with Servius Tullius, a good king whose rule falls, according to the literary tradition, between the tyrannical reigns of the two Tarquins. The fresco may represent an episode in Servius Tullius’ life unknown to the Roman tradition, before he became king in Rome; he is represented rescuing C. Vibenna from the Romans, and killing Tarquin. Thus archaeology here not only confirms the literary tradition of Rome’s Etruscan kings; it suggests something about the internal policy of sixth-century Etruscan cities, the existence in them, perhaps by a constitutional transformation from an archaic kingship, of a strong military authority, like that of themagister populior dictator of the later Roman Republic. Etruscan tomb inscriptions, with their many personal names, show that official Etruscan nomenclature included—as did the later Roman—the name of the clan. Clan organization is in origin aristocratic. As later in Rome aristocrats with a clan organization overthrew the original monarchy, so too, we may suppose, the clans operated in Etruria.

Fig. 2.8Etruscan alphabet.(M. Pallottino,The Etruscans, p. 259)

Fig. 2.8Etruscan alphabet.

(M. Pallottino,The Etruscans, p. 259)

Fig. 2.9Tarquinia: Tomb of Orcus, inscription.(Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum, no. 5360)

Fig. 2.9Tarquinia: Tomb of Orcus, inscription.

(Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum, no. 5360)

In the example just cited, light is thrown on Etruscan political organization by the inscriptions on the fresco, and it is in fact to inscriptions in the Etruscan alphabet (Fig. 2.8) that we owe most of what we know about Etruscan politics. For, paradoxically, though Etruscan, as a non-Indo-European language, is technically indecipherable (in the sense that the longest inscriptions in it cannot be entirely translated), valid inferences can be made about some of the short ones. For example, one of the inscriptions on the wall of the Tomb of Orcus at Tarquinia, discovered in 1868 (Fig. 2.9), reads in partzilath : amce : mechl : rasnal, at first sight a most unlikely combination of letters. Another Tarquinian inscription, this time from a sarcophagus in thelocal museum (splendidly installed in the fifteenth century Vitelleschi palace) reads in partzilath rasnas. If we extrapolate from the Roman practice of recording on funerary monuments the official career (cursus honorum) of the deceased (beginning with the highest offices held), it appears likely that the termzilathrefers to a magistracy. It occurs often, and, when it occurs in a series, it occurs early; this warrants the inference that it refers to an important magistracy. Certain late Latin inscriptions from Etruria refer to apraetor Etruriae. Might not thezilathbe the Etruscan official corresponding to the Roman praetor? This is the more likely since the wordsrasnal,rasnasclosely resemble the wordRasenna, which a Greek historian tells us is what the Etruscans called themselves in their own language. There remains the wordmechl. A similar word,methlum, occurs next to the wordspurin a curious text, the longest we have in Etruscan, written on the cloth of a mummy wrapping now preserved in the museum of Zagreb, in Jugoslavia. The context appears to list the institutions for whose benefit certain religious ceremonies were performed. Several names of offices are accompanied, and probably modified, by the wordsspureni,spurana. It looks as if the word means “city.” Suppose the other institution, themethlum, mentioned next to thespur, were of larger size. Might it not be the Etruscan for “League”? The Tomb of Orcus inscription, then, might mean, “He was the chief magistrate of the Etruscan League.” It is by inferences like these that we force a language technically indecipherable to tell us something about the political organization of the mysterious people who spoke and wrote it.

Another example comes from a long inscription on a scroll held in the hands of a sculptured figure on another sarcophagus in the Tarquinia museum. It contains the wordlucairce. In the text of the Zagreb mummy-wrapping mention is made of ceremonies celebratedlauchumneti, presumably a noun with an ending showing a place relation,and obviously related in root tolucairce. And both seem connected with the wordlucumo, used in Latin to refer to Etruscan chiefs or kings.Lucaircecontains the ending-cewhich we interpreted on the Tomb of Orcus inscription as verbal; it might mean “was king (or chief).” In that caselauchumneti, with its locative ending, might mean “in the (priest)-king’s house” (LatinRegia). Thus by reasoning from the known to the unknown we can find evidence from the Etruscans themselves that at some stage they were ruled by kings. Since the Tarquinia sarcophagus with the scroll is on the evidence of artistic techniques dated late (second centuryB.C., a date at which the Roman Republic fully controlled Etruria), we must suppose that by that date thelucumohad been reduced to a mere priestly function, much as in Rome itself the priest who in Republican times discharged the sacred duties once performed by Rome’s kings (reges) was still called therex sacrorum.

A final example. On Etruscan inscriptions occurs a rootpurth-, with by-formspurthne,purtsvana,eprthne,eprthni,eprthnevc. This looks like the root which occurs in the name of the king of Clusium, transliterated by the Romans Lars Porsenna, he who in theLays of Ancient Romeswore by the Nine Gods. The same root probably occurs in the Greekprytanis, which means something like “senator.” Clearly another official of importance is referred to here.

In sum, archaeologists looking for evidence of Etruscan political organization have found such outward signs of pomp as fasces, plus evidence for magistrates resembling the later Roman dictator, praetor, priest-king, senator, and for cities probably combined into a league.

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If inscriptions can be made to yield this kind of evidence, what can we say about the state of our knowledge about the Etruscan language in general? The same kind of combinatory method applied to other inscriptions yields withpatience results justifying the statement that progress, though agonizingly slow, is being made. Many short inscriptions can be read entire: they are usually funerary, and give the names, filiation, and age of the deceased. Here is an example, from yet another sarcophagus in the Tarquinia museum:

partunus vel velthurussatlnal-cramthas clan“Partuni Vel of Velthur and of Satlnei Ramtha the son,avilsXXIIX lupuof years 28,dead.”

Here for translation one assumes that Etruscan, while not Indo-European in its roots, is an inflected language, where an-sor-lending shows possession, and the enclitic-c, like the Latin-que, means “and.” Another example shows similar case-endings, uses vocabulary we have seen before, and adds a place-name:

Alethnas ArnthLarisalzilath Tarchnalthi amce“Alethna Arnth (son) of Laris praetor at Tarquinia was.”

Altogether some 10,000 Etruscan inscriptions are known. Of these only three are of any length: the Zagreb mummy-wrapping, a tile from Capua, and the previously mentioned scroll from Tarquinia. The next seven taken together total less than 100 words. Given this material, there is some bitter truth in the statement that if we could unlock the secret of Etruscan, we would have the key to an empty room. But whole cities in Etruria remain to be dug; there is no knowing what new inscriptions excavations now in progress at Vulci, Roselle, or Santa Severa may turn up, including perhaps a bilingual, where identical texts in Etruscan and a known language like Latin may solve the puzzle, as the Greek of the Rosetta Stone made possible the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Etruscan loan-words in Latin tell us something:antemna, “yard-arm”;histrio, “actor”;atrium, “patio”;groma, “plane-table” suggest Etruscanpredominance on the sea and the stage, in domestic architecture and surveying. But we know more than loan-words: the known vocabulary in Etruscan amounts now to 122 words, in seven categories, including time-words (e.g., the names of several months), the limited political vocabulary already discussed, names for family relationships, some three dozen verbs and nouns, and the same number of words from the field of religion.

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Fig. 2.10Piacenza, Civic Museum. Bronze model of sheep’s liver, used in foretelling the future. (ENIT,Italy’s Life, p. 37)

Fig. 2.11Piacenza liver, schematic representation. (M. Pallottino,The Etruscans, p. 165)

It is about Etruscan religion, and especially funerary rites, that we are best informed. The Etruscans had the reputation of being the most addicted to religious ceremonial of any people of antiquity, and we learn much about Etruscans living from Etruscans dead. We know what sort of documentation to expect on religious matters from an Etruscan tomb, by extrapolating back from rites which the Romans believed they had inherited from Etruria, especially in the area of foretelling the future by examining the livers of animals (hepatoscopy) or observing the flights of birds (augury). One of the most curious surviving documents of Etruscan superstition is the bronze model of a sheep’s liver (Fig. 2.10) found in 1877 near Piacenza, on the upper Po, and now in the Civic Museum there. The liver is split in two lengthwise. From the plane surface thus provided three lobes project. The plane surface itself is subdivided into sixteen compartments (Fig. 2.11); over each compartment a god presides. The same sixteen subdivisions were used in the imaginary partition of the sky for augury, and the same principle governed the layout and orientation of cities like Marzabotto and probably Spina. The same superstition found in Babylonia directs our attention once more to the probable Near Eastern origin of the Etruscan ruling class. The priest would take his position at the cross-point of the intendedcardoanddecumanusof the city, facing south (we recall that the three-celled temple on thearxat Marzabotto faces south).

The half of the city behind him was called in Latin thepars postica(posterior part), the part in front of him thepars antica(anterior part); on his left was thepars familiaris(the lucky side; hence thunder on the left was a good omen) on his right thepars hostilis(unlucky). To the subdivision of the earth below corresponded a similar subdivision of the sky above; either was called in Latin (using a concept clearly derived from Etruscan practice) atemplum, “part cut off,” a sacred precinct, terrestrial or celestial. From the Piacenza liver and the orientation of Marzabotto we can deduce both the orderliness of the Etruscan mind and the ease with which it degenerated into rigidity and superstition. For this deadly heritage the Etruscans apparently found in the Romans willing recipients; often, butnot always, for old Cato said, “I cannot see how one liver-diviner can meet another without laughing in his face.”

Fig. 2.12Potentiometer profile. The high points on the graph show where hollowed tomb-chambers exist under ground. (ENIT,Italy’s Life, p. 106)

The vast number of Etruscan tombs and the richness of their decoration and furnishings tell us much about another aspect of the Etruscans’ religion: their view of the afterlife. About this the fabulous painted tombs of Tarquinia tell us most, and bid fair to tell us more as new methods are applied to their discovery and exploration. The ubiquitous Bradford has been at work in Etruria too; his quick eye has detected on air-photographs over 800 new tomb-mounds at Tarquinia alone, and new methods of ground exploration, worked out by the dedicated Italian engineer C. M. Lerici, have enormously speeded the work of exploration. Electrical-resistivity surveying with a potentiometer, sensitive to the difference between solid earth and empty subterranean space, makes possible the rapid tracing of a profile showing where the hollows of Etruscan tombs exist underground (Fig. 2.12). A hole is then drilled large enough to admit a periscope; if the periscope shows painted walls,or pottery, a camera can be attached to make a 360-degree photograph. By this method Lerici reports exploring 450 tombs in 120 days. This work, rapid as it is, is being done none too soon; land redistribution schemes, good for the farmer, bad for the archaeologist, are changing the face of south Etruria day by day; deep plowing and the planting of vines and fruit trees are destroying or obscuring the archaeological picture.

Dennis would hardly lament the passing of the conditions he so graphically describes: “Among the half-destroyed tumuli of the Montarozzi [at Tarquinia] is a pit, six or eight feet deep, overgrown by lentiscus; and at the bottom is a hole, barely large enough for a man to squeeze himself through, and which no one would care to enter unless aware of something within to repay him for the trouble, and the filth unavoidably contracted. Having wormed myself through this aperture, I found myself in a dark, damp chamber, half-choked with thedebrisof the walls and ceiling. Yet the walls have not wholly fallen in, for when my eyes were somewhat accustomed to the gloom, I perceived them to be painted, and the taper’s light disclosed on the inner wall a banquet in the open air.” Modern gadgetry like Lerici’s has destroyed some of the romance; there is something graphic about descriptions like Mengarelli’s of opening a tomb at Cerveteri in 1910, in the presence of the local and neighboring landlords, the Prince and Princess Ruspoli and the Marchese Guglielmi. As the blocks of the entrance were removed one by one, and sunlight was reflected into the tomb by mirrors, there were to be seen against the black earth objects of gleaming gold, and priceless proto-Corinthian vases resting on shreds of decomposed wood, which were all that was left of the funeral bed, while other vases were to be seen fixed to the wall with nails.

The Tomb of Hunting and Fishing at Tarquinia, discovered in 1873, gives us our most attractive picture (Fig. 2.13)of how Etruscans in their palmiest days viewed the next world. The tomb is dated by the black-figured Attic vases it contained in the decade 520–510B.C., when the Etruscan ruling class was still prosperous. A more charming invitation to the brainless life could hardly be imagined. The most vivid scene is on the walls of the tombs inner room, which are conceived as opening out into a breezy seascape, with a lively population of bright birds in blue, red, and yellow, frisky dolphins, and boys, friskier still, at play. Up a steep rock striped in clay-red and grass-green clambers a sun-burnt boy in a blue tunic, who appears to have just pushed another boy who is diving, with beautiful form, into the hazy, wine-dark sea. On a nearby rock stands another boy firing at the birds with a slingshot. Below him is a boat with an eye painted on the prow (to ward off the evil eye; fishing boats are still so painted in Portugal). Of the boat’s four passengers, one is fishing over the side with a flimsy handline, while beside the boat a fat dolphin turns a mocking somersault. All is life, action, humor, vitality, color; such is the notion of blessed immortality entertained by a people for whom Gods in his heaven, all’s right with the world.

Fig. 2.13Tarquinia: Tomb of Hunting and Fishing, fresco.(M. Pallottino,Etruscan Painting, p. 51)

Fig. 2.13Tarquinia: Tomb of Hunting and Fishing, fresco.

(M. Pallottino,Etruscan Painting, p. 51)

Fig. 2.14Tarquinia: Tomb of Orcus, portrait of the lady Velcha. (MPI)

A quarter of a century or so after the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing was painted, the Etruscans suffered a major naval defeat at the hands of Greeks off Cumae. Rome, expanding, eventually took over the iron mines of Elba and the iron-works of Populonia, and Etruscan prosperity declined agonizingly to its end. Let us look at a Tarquinian tomb of the period of the decadence;e.g., the Tomb of Orcus again. There, beside one of the loveliest faces ever painted by an ancient artist (Fig. 2.14), is portrayed one of the most hair-raising demons a depressed imagination could conceive (Fig. 2.15). Its flesh is a weird bluish-green, as though it were putrefying. Its nose is the hooked beak of a bird of prey. The fiend has asses’ ears; its hair is a tangled mass of snakes. Beside its monstrous wings risesa huge crested serpent, horribly mottled. In its left hand the demon holds a hammer handle. An inscription identifies him as Charun, the ferryman of the dead; it is to pay this monster that the skeletons of Spina clutch their bronze small change in their right hands. The contrast between the gaiety of the scenes in the Tomb of Hunting and the gloomy prospect of the lovely lady—her name is Velcha—in the clutches of this grisly demon has been held to epitomize the contrast between the views of an after life entertained by a prosperous and by an economically depressed people.

Fig. 2.15Tarquinia: Tomb of Orcus, the demon Charun. (MPI)

Other finds cast further light. The Capua tile prescribes funerary offerings to the gods of the underworld. An inscribed lead plaque from near Populonia is a curse tablet, in which a woman urges Charun or another infernal deity, Tuchulcha, to bring his gruesome horrors to bear on members of her family whose death she ardently desires. Bronze statuettes give details of priestly dress (conical cap tied under the chin, fringed cloak) or show Hermes, Escorter of Souls, going arm-in-arm with the deceased to the world below. The total picture is one of a deeply religious, even superstitious people, attaching particular importance to the formalities of their ritual relations with their gods, and obsessed with the after life, of which they take a progressively gloomier view as their material prosperity declines.

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What can archaeology tell us about Etruscan cultural life? Of art for art’s sake there seems to have been very little, of literature none, except for liturgical texts. The Etruscans excelled in fine large-scale bronze work, like the famous Chimaera of Arezzo or the Capitoline Wolf, but their minor masterpieces in bronze deserve mention also, especially the engraved mirrors, the cylindrical cosmetic boxes calledciste, and the statuettes whose attenuated bodies appeal strongly to modern taste. Their painting at its best shows in its economy of line how intelligently theyborrowed from the Greeks, in its realism how sturdily they maintained their own individuality. In architecture, Etruscan temples, having been made of wood, do not survive above their foundation courses, but recent discoveries of terracotta temple-models at Vulci tell us something about their appearance, and masses of their terracotta revetment survive, brightly-painted geometric, vegetable, or mythological motifs, designs to cover beams, mask the ends of half-round roof tiles, or (in pierced patterns calledà jourcrestings) to follow the slope of a gable roof. Made from molds, the motifs could be infinitely repeated at small expense, an aspect of Etruscan practicality which was to appeal strongly to the Romans.

But the Etruscans’ artistic genius shows at the best in their architectural sculpture in painted terracotta, free-standing or in high relief. Their best-known masterpiece in this genre is the Apollo of Veii (Fig. 2.16), designed for the ridgepole of an archaic temple. Discovered in 1916, it is now in the Villa Giulia museum in Rome. The stylized treatment of the ringlets, the almond eyes, the fixed smile are all characteristic of archaic Greek art, and the fine edges of the profile, lips, and eyebrows suggest an original in bronze. But this is no mere copy. It is the work of a great original artist, probably the same Vulca of Veii who was commissioned in the late sixth centuryB.C.to do the terracottas for the Capitoline temple in Rome. The sculptor is telling the story of the struggle between Apollo and Hercules for the Hind of Ceryneia: the god is shown as he tenses himself to spring upon his opponent; the anatomical knowledge, the expression of mass in motion, and the craftsmanship required to cast a life-size terracotta (a feat which even now presents the greatest technical difficulties) are all alike remarkable.

A set of antefixes (used, as we have seen, to cover the ends of half-round roof-tiles), from the archaic temple at Satricum in Latium, in the same museum, are noteworthyfor their humor. They represent a series of nymphs pursued by satyrs. The satyrs are clearly not quite sober, and the nymphs are far from reluctant. In a particularly fine piece (Fig. 2.17) the satyr frightens the nymph with a snake which he holds in his left hand, while he slips his right hand over her shoulder to caress her breast. Her gestures are almost certainly not those of a maiden who would repel a man’s advances.

Fig. 2.16Rome, Villa Giulia Museum. Apollo of Veii, terracotta. (MPI)

Fig. 2.17Rome, Villa Giulia Museum. Terracotta antefix of satyr and nymph, from Satricum. (MPI)

A third Etruscan masterpiece in terracotta, of later date, but still showing the same striking vitality as the two pieces just described, is the pair of winged horses in high relief (Fig. 2.18), first published in 1948, which come probably from the pediment of the temple called the Ara della Regina, on the site of the Etruscan city (as opposed to the necropolis) of Tarquinia, and now in the Tarquinia museum. The proud arching of the horses’ necks, their slim legs, their rippling muscles are rendered to make them the quintessence of the thoroughbred, so that we forget that the delicate wings would scarcely lift their sturdy bodies off the ground. In these three masterpieces art is none the less vibrant for being put at the service of religion. Here is created a new Italic expressionistic style, so admirable that many would hold that Italian art did not reach this level again until the Renaissance.

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