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.

XV

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 Samnites90 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. Propertius97 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

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).

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 bowls100 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.

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.

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.

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 captives104; 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

XVII

The demons of the Underworld who figure in the Etruscan paintings are almost all sinister. The devils brandishing torches and snakes, familiar both from the paintings and from the reliefs on the cinerary urns, remind one of Livy’s108 description of the fight of the Tarquinians and the Faliscans against the Romans in 354 B.C., when a troop of Etruscan priests, armed with flaming torches and live snakes, threw themselves in ecstatic fury on the Roman armies, who received them undauntedly and won the day. Charun, also, is a common figure on the Etruscan sarcophagi and cinerary urns of the fourth and following centuries, suggesting by his colour the demon of putrefaction, Eurynomus, whom Polygnotus had painted, in his great picture of the Underworld in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi, seated snarling on the skin of a carrion-vulture, his flesh the colour of a blue-bottle fly.109 Charun, therefore, is not identical with the old ferryman, Charon, of the Greeks; he is the messenger of death, the terrible fetcher of souls, like Charos in the popular Greek belief of our own day. Only the ‘Charon door’ of the Greek theatre indicates the existence of similar popular ideas among the ancient Greeks.

The winged Vanth in the François tomb seems to be one of the benevolent demons of the underworld, the Lasas. Such a one also appears in a door panel in the Tomba Golini, already frequently cited: here she has wings, snakes in her girdle, and a scroll in her hand (fig. 40). She is evidently either receiving or escorting the dead, a young man in a mantle, who stands in a biga with running horses; in the inscription above him the word Larth can easily be read, proving that he is not a professional charioteer, but a young man of high standing. His arrival in the underworld is greeted by a trumpeter, painted over the door. We may notice here that the ‘Tyrrhenian trumpet’ was famous far and wide and was even introduced into Greece; it is mentioned several times in Greek tragedies.110 The curved trumpet here seen is also depicted on a wall in the Tomba degli Scudi at Corneto and, like the curved staff of the augurs, was adopted by the Romans, who designated both of them by the name of lituus; Cicero maintains that the lituus-trumpet was the earlier of the two and gave its form and name to the lituus-staff, the badge of the augurs. The introduction of the lituus-staff was attributed to Romulus, and his sacred staff was said to have been rediscovered by a miracle in the time of Camillus.111

The scroll in the hand of the female demon, referred to above, presumably contained an account of the good actions of the dead, to be used when he presented himself before the throne of Hades. The good genius herself is seen at work in a small panel of the Tomba degli Scudi, where she is scratching an inscription on a tablet (cp. fig. 27), while another holds a torch upside down. Both these figures are repeated in the reliefs of the Etruscan cinerary urns and pass directly into the plastic art of Roman sarcophagi as two allegorical figures: Fama, who writes the merits of the dead on a tablet, and the genius of Death with torch inverted.

A couple of flying genii appear already in the Tomba della Pulcella, which belongs to the first half of the fifth century, in the pointed pediment above the recess in which the ashes of the dead were deposited. They carry between them a cloth which they seem to be laying down, probably the cerecloth for the dead (fig. 41).112 Perhaps this also explains the mysterious scene, figured on two tomb altars from Chiusi, one of which is in the Barracco Collection (fig. 42), the other in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Catalogue No. H. 76). The motives of the reliefs on these limestone altars from Chiusi and on the cinerary urns from the same town, all dating from the sixth century, are taken from the funeral, like the subjects in the contemporary tomb-paintings, and represent the lament of men and women over the dead on the bier, the burial feast and the preparations for it, and the wild dancing-scenes at the funeral. It may thus be that the scene on the relief illustrated, which seems to give a picture of the women’s quarters, represents the women of the house in the act of scrutinizing and choosing the cerecloth for the deceased; meanwhile, the house was probably draped with cloth, and the dwellers of the house put on mourning. Presumably the mourning colour of the Etruscans was white, like that of the Romans at a later date; when in mourning, the women of Rome, to the wonder of Plutarch, assumed white dresses and white headgear, at the same time loosening their hair.113 The hair flowing down upon the shoulders is also frequently seen in reliefs on cinerary urns. But there is still something mysterious in this motive, and an examination of the mutilated ash urn in the Museum of Chiusi (fig. 43) does not make it any clearer. This urn has hitherto been explained as representing a marriage scene. But as the opposite side of the urn represents scenes at the door of the tomb, it is more natural to interpret this relief also as a death scene; the flute-player and the two men with laurel branches we know from the funeral ceremonies (cp. p. 19), and the curious scene to the right, where two men draw a fringed cloth like a baldachin over a veiled centre figure, each of whose arms is held by two side figures (probably a man and a woman), might then be conjectured to represent a sort of symbolic interment where the dead is placed in a sitting posture, supported by the family, instead of the normal posture, full length on the bier.

It is to be hoped that future investigation may throw some light on this point, and may also deal with the question whether the oft-recurring motive on the Roman sarcophagi of two genii holding a cloth (parapetasma) between them, as a background either for a scene or for the portrait of the deceased (fig. 44), can be traced to Etruscan prototypes or not. Hitherto, we have probably been too one-sided in attributing the types and symbols of the plastic art of Roman sarcophagi to Greek pictures, and the investigation of the share of Etruria therein would be a fine subject for a monograph.

XVIII

But the benevolent genii and Lasas are absolutely in the minority in the paintings and plastic art of Etruria, and become rarer as time goes on. The mood rises from sinister gloom to wild terror. Two pictures will illustrate this climax. In the Tomba del Tifone at Corneto, which was discovered in 1832 and which is one of the grandest of the family vaults of Etruria, there is preserved, besides the serpent-legged demons from which the tomb has derived its name, a large wall-painting representing the journey of a young man to the realm of the dead (fig. 45). To the left is seen an altar towards which the procession of mantle-clad youths moves; they are led by a young demon with snakes in his hair, and a torch and a snake in his hands. The procession advances to the sound of a lituus-trumpet, and the young men carry staves and seem to be the clients of the central figure. The central figure is made conspicuous by walking without any attributes in the centre of the procession right in the front, but over his right shoulder we see Charun’s clawlike hand, and Charun advances behind him like a black shadow, characterized by pointed asses’ ears, snakes in his hair, and his terrible hammer. The high rank of the young man is made apparent by the inscription over his head: ‘Laris Pumpus Arnthal clan cechase,’ i. e. Laris Pumpus, son of Arnth, priest (sacerdos). Here, then, we have another of the priestly aristocrats of Etruria. After him come two more companions with staffs, and a trumpeter,114 as well as two young men without any attributes, and the scene is terminated by some dim figures, one of which seems to be a woman with a snake in her hair and another to be of negroid type; possibly these are the rulers of the underworld according to a later local Etruscan conception. One thing, at any rate, is plain, that the dead youth, in spite of his splendid following, goes to meet a sorrowful fate. What can the sound of the instruments avail when Charun’s claw is laid on his shoulder!

This tomb dates, as far as can be judged by the style of the painting, from the first half of the fourth century B.C.115 From the beginning of the next century dates the Tomba del Cardinale at Corneto, which was discovered shortly after 1760,116 then forgotten and filled in again, and finally reopened in 1786117 by Cardinal Garambi, bishop of Corneto. It has suffered much by exposure to wind and weather and to tourists for more than a hundred and fifty years. It has a narrow frieze with battle scenes, doubtless mythological, but the interest is centred in the long narrow frieze of pictures under the ceiling. The subject of this is the march of the shades towards the other side (fig. 46). A woman is drawn on a two-wheeled cart by two winged demons, one light and the other blue-black, both wearing the traditional garb of the genii of death, familiar from the contemporary sarcophagi and cinerary urns: a shirt with braces, and high top boots. This is perhaps the young woman who is mentioned in the inscription of the tomb: ‘Ramtha, daughter of Vel and Vestrcni, who was wife (puia) of Larth Lartha, and who lived (valce instead of svalce) nineteen years.’ A young man follows in a long cloak: he turns round to a black, winged demon carrying a hammer (fig. 47). Beyond the gateway of the underworld behind him a devil of the same type is seated, and then comes a crowd of young people driven along by two devils, one of whom threatens them with his hammer.118 A woman, who looks back moaning, is being brutally dragged along by two male demons, and at the end of the procession two winged devils are seen hastening forward, slender of limb and agile of movement, like poisonous insects. In a fragment of a frieze, which is now badly damaged, the Charun devil was once more seen in the act of crushing a skull with his hammer.119

This picture has a quality which reminds one of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa, but which is much more terrible because no hope of paradise atones for the horror. The reliefs on contemporary cinerary urns tell the same tale. To be sure, the dead reclines fat and finely bedecked on the lid of these cinerary urns, holding a drinking-bowl, or, if female, a fan. This is only tradition and has nothing to do with actual feeling. It is clear enough that the old confident conception of the hereafter as an eternal symposium has been exploded. To this the reliefs on the urns bear witness. These reliefs, if they do not directly evade the problem by choosing neutral scenes from Greek mythology, reveal a demoniac possession of appalling intensity. We need no literature in order to realize that the Etruscans under the pressure of disaster became another people, pessimistic, in terror of death, and devoid of any resiliency which would allow them to indulge in the pleasures of life. If this spiritual incubus descended upon the masses of the Roman people we can better understand how it is that the poet Lucretius can feel enthusiasm, and can arouse it in others, when he preaches the gospel of godlessness and the annihilation of the soul in death.120 For of the Etruscan people, at any rate, the words of Lucretius121 hold good: