History of Ancient Art

by Franz von Reber

AT the time when Hellenic influence had developed to its fullest extent in Magna Græcia, the Etruscans had long passed their highest point of perfection. Roman tradition gives no little significance to their civilization, in its artistic as well as in its political aspects, though it was far less grand and brilliant than that of their neighbors in the south of the Italian peninsula. But as Rome rose, Etruria fell; and in the time of the Peloponnesian war it had but a shadow of its former dominant position in Italy.

Whether this people were related to the ancient Greeks, or merely mixed with the Pelasgic and Hellenic element through emigration from the western coasts of Greece, it is certain that the older culture of the nation shows a great resemblance to that of the countries beyond the Adriatic. This may have been owing partly to common Oriental prototypes, and to native imitation of these, and partly to the fact that certain primitive results of civilization, under like material premises, naturally assume a more or less similar form without any real historical connection.

The method of building the Etruscan walls is particularly a case in point. The resemblance of these to the most ancient fortifications of Greece makes possible, though it does not establish, an intimate communication between the two races, to which also the use of Greek letters for the strange Etruscan language certainly points. The so-called Cyclopean jointing, however, presents itself in every civilized land where rock is found which naturally breaks in polygonal forms. So also square-stone masonry early appears wherever the material, quarried without difficulty in rectangular forms, favors this more satisfactory method. Besides both these varieties, the Etruscans made use of bricks, as shown by the foundations of the walls of Veii, which above-ground are mainly built of cut stone. These are at least as ancient as the time of the later kings.

Some of the remaining ruins of Etruria, and of Central Italy—for the peculiar civilization of that region is not strictly confined to the limits of the Etruscan language—show in the building of gates a new technical element. It has been seen how the Greeks in vain sought a substitute for the arch, to them an inadmissible, if not an unattainable, feature; and exhausted every conceivable method of horizontal stone-laying in order to cover their gateways. Similar evasive attempts are not wanting in Etruria; the Cyclopean walls, especially, present portal constructions similar to those of Mykenæ. But through the perfection of stone-cutting, and building with rectangular blocks, the ceiling of the passage by means of the arch was early attained. That this step was taken before the invasion of the Gauls is shown by the still remaining Gate of Falerii (Fig. 247), which city, as is well known, lost its importance under Camillus. It is not certain whence the people of Central Italy attained their knowledge of the arch. Though it had been familiar to the Assyrians as early as the ninth century B.C., it is possible that they made this important discovery independently, perhaps somewhat later than the Mesopotamians. The vault of the Cloaca Maxima in Rome dates from the sixth century B.C., but it shows, even at this early period, a perfection which gives evidence of long previous use. Canal-building was one of the first conditions of existence on the western coast of Central Italy, where the drainage of the swamps—the neglect of which, since the Middle Ages, has reduced the once populous Maremma to a pestilential desert—the discharge of the mountain lakes, which otherwise overflow from time to time, desolating the lower country, and the regulation of the river-courses, alone made possible the settlement of a people and the founding of flourishing cities west of the Apennines. It is therefore not improbable that the great canal discovered by Dennis, which once drained the swampy Valley of the Marta, preceded the Cloaca Maxima, and, indeed, antedated the Roman period altogether. (Fig. 248.) The enormous stones employed in its construction, and its great extent, display, even in this primitive age, that marked inclination for works of general usefulness which distinguished the people of Italy above all others of antiquity.

Of the long-forgotten cities, discovered in the present century by their walls, little else remains than extensive cemeteries, which, as repeatedly happens among the ruined places of the earth, have outlasted by more than two thousand years the dwellings of the living. The streets and buildings of these settlements, already in ruins under the Romans, have disappeared almost without a trace; while the monuments of the dead are so well preserved as frequently to give information concerning even the domestic architecture of their builders. By far the greater number of the tombs were tumuli, conical hills of earth, which generally, as in Lydia, were elevated upon a low cylinder and reveted by an outer course of stone. These have now almost all been reduced to the appearance of natural mounds. Their dimensions in some instances are almost as great as those of the smaller Egyptian pyramids. The base of the monument at Poggio Gajella, near Chiusi, formerly falsely held to be the tomb of Porsena, measures 256 m. in its circumference, while that at Monteroni, between Rome and Civita Vecchia, is 195 m. These gigantic foundations at times bore several cones. This appears to have been the case with the so-called tomb of Cucumella at Vulci, where two tall tower-like elevations still remain, which doubtless served as substructures for the terminating piers. The cippus may be imagined to have been analogous to the upper members of the tombs in Lydia, or, perhaps, to have resembled a pear-shaped capital, like the fragment found near the ruins of the so-called tomb of Pythagoras, or the imitations upon terra-cotta reliefs—similar to the cone which so generally terminated Roman tholos roofs. When several cones were placed upon one base, the angle of elevation was made steeper, as may probably have been the case with the tomb of Porsena at Clusium, the description of which is given by Pliny (xxxvi. 3) after Varro. If the tombs called those of the Horatii and Curiatii at Albano, which display many Etruscan reminiscences, be compared with this account, it is possible to present a restoration of the structure, correct in at least its principal aspects. Upon the corners of the triply stepped, diminishing substructure stood twelve cones, the thirteenth being in the centre of the upper terrace. (Fig. 249.)

The fundamental idea of the Etruscan tombs was not alone the creation of a monument which, covering the remains and protecting them from desecration, should plainly mark the place of interment, but the survivors sought, at the same time, to provide a room in which the dead might dwell in a manner corresponding to their circumstances during life. This conception was foreign to the Greeks, who seldom employed burial chambers of great size; but it was prevalent among the Egyptians, Persians, Lycians, and other nations of antiquity, though not by them carried out so logically as by the Etruscans, who usually placed the bodies upon stone benches, shaped like a bed, as if sleeping. Sarcophagi, when existing at all, appear to have been added upon further use of the sepulchre. It is thus, for instance, with the tomb of Veii—of which Fig. 246, at the head of this section, gives an inner view—with the tomb called that of Regulini-Galassi at Cære, and with numerous other sepulchres discovered in various cemeteries, notably of Southern Etruria. There, however, the chambers have mostly proved to have been plundered in former centuries.