Fig. 34. PAINTING IN THE TOMBA DEL LETTO FUNEBRE
After a coloured drawing in the Helbig Museum
KITCHEN SCENES
In these scenes from kitchen and wine-cellar, where the wood is being chopped,[70] where the cooks are swinging the saucepans or working at the range,[71] where young slaves are struggling with sideboards covered with drinking-vessels, the inscriptions contain the names of the slaves. Men desired to be served in the after-life by the same skilful slaves as in the present, and it was therefore the custom in later times to add the names. This reminds one of the Egyptian tomb-reliefs, where sometimes the serfs and the slave girls are designated only by the name and mark of the estate, so that in a way each of them represents one of the estates of the deceased lord, whereas in other cases they have their proper names attached and survive as personalities in the after-life.
XIII
TOMBA DEL LETTO FUNEBRE
Thus we see a slow transformation taking place in the ideas which 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