Fig. 27. PICTURE FROM THE TOMBA DEGLI SCUDI
After a coloured drawing in the Helbig Museum
TOMBA DEGLI SCUDI
But proof is furnished by the tomb-paintings themselves. In the Tomba degli Scudi at Corneto, discovered in 1870, and, to judge by the style, dating from the end of the fifth century B. C., the wife (as might be expected) is pictured sitting with her husband, who is reclining on the couch with a drinking-bowl in his left hand, his right resting on the woman’s shoulder ([fig. 26]). According to the inscription the man’s name is Velthur Velcha, that of the woman Ravnthu Aprthnai (the family name is in the nominative and is a woman’s name, the Latin Abortennia; so the family of the mother was the more distinguished). The figure and the diadem of the woman recall those of the Hera Borghese and determine the date of the tomb. On the table in front of the couch are a bowl, a cake (pyramis), and a heap of fruits: or they may be the ‘ball-cakes’ (spirae or spaeritae) referred to by Cato (De agricultura 82). At the foot of the couch a lyre-player and a flute-player accompany the meal with music, recalling a statement of Cicero’s[56] that at banquets in early Rome the sound of stringed instruments and flutes was deemed indispensable. On the whole, it might perhaps be as well to abandon all theories of the austere morals of early Rome. The patrician families of the first centuries of the republic undoubtedly lived a life which in pomp and luxury vied with the life of the nobility of the Etruscan towns. Again, in the painting on the back wall of this tomb, where the recumbent man is a priest (cechaneri), the wife is seated with her husband ([fig. 27]). As to the priesthood, it must be borne in mind that the priestly office was hereditary in the Etruscan noble families. The statue of Juno at Veii, for instance, might only be touched by a priest of a certain family.[57] It was especially the art of divination, however, which was reserved for the noblemen and their wives.[58] Even when the Romans had conquered Etruria they continued to support the efforts of the Etruscans to confine initiation into the art of divination to the nobility. Even Cicero, in his book on the ideal State, maintains that omens and presages must be submitted to haruspices, and the nobles of Etruria must teach the ‘disciplina’.
TOMBA DELL’ORCO
In the pictures of the Scudi tomb the wife, as we have seen, is sitting. But in the Tomba dei Vasi Dipinti, besides a man and a woman, two children are present at the symposium, which would be inconceivable in a hetaera picture; and in a picture in the front chamber of the Tomba dell’Orco at Corneto, discovered in 1868 and dating from the same period as the Scudi tomb, there are traces of a man and a woman reclining together, and the inscription informs us that the woman is a free-born woman named Velia—the family name has unfortunately been destroyed—and that she is married to Arnth Velchas, a descendant of one of the noblest families in Etruria ([fig. 28]). With this, then, the last and final proof of the untenability of the hetaera theory has been adduced: this woman, whose head is one of the most beautiful in the sepulchral chambers of Etruria ([fig. 29]), reclines with her husband on the couch in the picture in the tomb, even as she was buried with him in the tomb itself. A failure to appreciate this fact would imply a complete denial of Etruscan family feeling and pride of race.
The dancing women, on the other hand, for instance, the woman in the Tomba delle Leonesse already cited above, and another, still more wanton, who in the Tomba degli Bacchanti foots it with a fat dancer, must be interpreted as hetaerae. They illustrate the phrase of Plautus: ‘prostibile est tandem? stantem stanti savium dare amicum amicae?’ To the same category of hired dancers belongs the man to the left of the one who is dancing with inverted cithara.[59]
Fig. 28. ARNTH VELCHAS AND WIFE ON COUCH PICTURE IN THE TOMBA DELL’ ORCO
After a coloured drawing in the Helbig Museum