When the hole thus made was examined it was found to be in truth a steep staircase cut in the tufa and covered over by a travertine vaulting. It led steeply down to a huge door of travertine, and when this was opened, the wonderful tomb, belonging to the private family of the Volumnii, was disclosed. Unfortunately the ox was not the first person to open up this extraordinary place. The earth and dust of centuries had, it is true, fallen in upon it, but in the Roman times it had been already ransacked for its possible treasures. Beautiful and extraordinary as the place is, haunted by the silent grandeur and mystery of the dead, it is not quite complete, and many of the urns are missing in its first compartments. Still, as Dennis says, “it is one of the most remarkable in Etruria.... To enter the tomb,” he continues was to him “like enchantment, not reality, or rather it was the realization of the pictures of subterranean palaces and spell-bound men, which youthful fancy had drawn from the Arabian Nights, but which had long been cast aside into the lumber room of the memory, now to be suddenly restored.... The impressions received in this tomb first directed my attention to the antiquities of Etruria,” Dennis adds, and many people will echo his words.
Leaving the dust and the sunlight, the green trees and the sunny banks of the outside Umbrian world, we plunge down a narrow staircase and through the tall doorway of travertine into the darkness of the Etruscan sepulchre, and find ourselves in a dim, low vestibule with stone seats round it, small chambers branching off to right and left, and one large chamber at the end. Strange and fascinating heads look down upon us from the ceiling, marvellous little deities, suspended by many leaden chains, hang silent, as though they dreamed, above our heads. Weird serpents’ heads pierce through the walls and seem to hiss at us; and in the dim light of the candles we realize a whole new world of wonderful and deep set imagery, combining with that solid sense of comfortable respectability peculiar to the race of men who lie here.
The tomb of the Volumnii has a strong and a convincing individuality. In this fact consists its charm. The necropolis was built for one family. The clear cut inscription on the door post at the entrance points to this, the name repeated again and again upon the tomb proves it yet more forcibly.[109]
To get a first and full impression of the place it is well to sit down on one of the low stone seats which run round the walls of the vestibule. These benches were probably used by members of the family in the peculiar fashion of the Etruscans. We hear that in order to bring themselves nearer to the dead and to communicate with the Spirit of Death, they would come to the sepulchres at night-fall and sleep beside the urns of their dead friends—their brothers, wives, their children or their lovers—and there receive visions from the souls which always hovered near the place where the body was buried. Members of the Volumnii family who were courageous enough, or peaceful enough in their own souls to do this thing, must have received strong and convincing visions from surroundings so unearthly and mysterious.
A great round disk, the sun probably, guards the entrance door of the vestibule. It seems to rise up out of the sea; two dolphins plunge head foremost into the waves beneath it; and under these, above the left lintel of the door, a great wing stretches, one knows not whence or whither, into the darkness all around it.
On the opposite wall, and guarding the tomb, is another great disk covered with scales, or as some say laurel leaves, and a splendid head in its centre. The face is grandly moulded and belongs to the best period of Etruscan art, when the souls of the artists were probably steeped in the art of Greece. The expression is calm, pure, and full of strength. It is probably meant to represent the God Numa, though some imagine it to be Apollo himself. Below it are two busts which are supposed to be portraits of Apollo in his two qualities of shepherd and of poet; and guarding the disk, two great scimitars with birds perched over them. (It is imagined that the Etruscans shared the Greek belief about birds sympathising in the death of mortals. The flight and ways of birds, certainly formed a large part of their religion, but in this case nothing can be actually proved). Vermiglioli having studied various other points in the necropolis, suggests that the Volumnii were a race of warriors and that the scimitars were a symbol of their warlike ways.
Passing through this second doorway one stands in the actual presence of some members of the family of the Volumnii. There they sit together on their beautiful stuccoed urns: “each on a snow-white couch” says Dennis, “with garlanded brow, torque-decorated neck, and goblet in hand—a petrifaction of conviviality—in solemn mockery of the pleasures to which for ages on ages they have bidden adieu.”[110]
They are surprisingly real, this family, and they sit there now, just exactly as they were sitting two thousand years or more ago.[111] The figures and the sarcophagi are made of terra-cotta covered by a dead white stucco which gives them a singularly modern look. Each sarcophagus has the head of a Medusa on it, but of a marvellously fair Medusa, a creature to adore, a woman to attract, a creature incapable of inspiring aught save admiration.[112]
The sarcophagus in the centre of the group appears to have belonged to Aruns Volumnius the head of the family. It is the most heavily decorated of the set. Aruns lies on a well-draped couch. Two mysterious figures—Furies, but attractive Furies—guard his urn. They are a splendid piece of work, and have naturally enough been compared with the work of Michelangelo; there is something muscular about them, and their pose