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Rome's Regal period » Banditaccia (Cerveteri, Lazio)
The Etruscans were an ancient Mediterranean civilization from the 9th to the 1st century BCE. For the Greek poet Homer (8th century BCE), they were monstrously fierce pirates who jealously guarded access to the sea that still bears their name.
The Greek historian and geographer Herodotus (484-425 BCE) has given us a story of Etruscan origins which has been almost universally accepted in antiquity except by Dionysius (c. 60-7 BCE): they were inhabitants of Lydia in Asia Minor; they decided to emigrate and followed one of the sons of their king to the country of the Ombrikoi. By Ombrikoi he means, like all Greek writers, the Umbrians, who according to tradition once occupied a much larger part of Italy than the modern province of that name. The Lydians settled among them and called themselves Tyrsenoi after the name of the prince who led them.
During the 6th to 5th centuries BCE the word Tyrrhenian was referred specifically to the Etruscans, for whom the Tyrrhenian Sea is named, according to the Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian Strabo (c. 64 BCE - 24 CE).
The Roman historian Livy (59 BCE - 17 CE) says: the renown of their name filled the whole length of Italy from the Alps to the Sicilian strait.
What we know for certain is that their cities appear to have developed the preceding form of the terramare and initially they lived in ancient central Italy (Tuscany, western Umbria, and northern Lazio). After conquering adjacent lands, their territory (Etruria) covered a part of the northern and southern peninsula.
They had a common language and culture who formed an early federation of 12 city-states (Dodecapolis, Greek for twelve cities), from whom the Romans derived a great deal of cultural influence. The growth of their city-states is related to the acquisition of wealth through trade.
The wealthier cities were located a safe distance about 5 km from the sea coast. An example was Caisra or Cisra (Caere or Agylla for Romans), the modern Cerveteri (approximately 50–60 kilometres north-northwest of Rome). It was one of the most important and populous cities of the Etruscan League. It was also one of the larger ones of southern Etruria, in fact it occupied an area 15 times larger than Cerveteri. Caisra had 3 seaports, which were important for overseas trade. Pyrgi was the natural one and hosted sanctuaries of foreign worship.
Today, the area of Cerveteri and Banditaccia is best known for its Etruscan necropolis (cemetery) and archaeological treasures.
Banditaccia is the site of the largest necropolis of Caisra and is also in the ancient Mediterranean world. It includes thousands of graves that looks like a city with neighborhoods and streets. It extends for about 400 hectares, but part fenced and visitable represents only 10 hectares and has about 400 burial mounds. It developed from the 9th century BCE (the Villanovan period) until the 3rd century BCE (the Hellenistic-Roman period) and is traversed by a burial road more than 2 km long.
The hundreds of circular mounds belonged to high-ranking families, which have returned rich grave goods including objects imported from the Near East and Greece.
The tombs were dug into the tuff, inside a round mound. Their interiors resembled their houses with beds, chairs and reproductions of objects that dead used daily.
Observing the tombs, it is easy to understand how the family (lautn) was at the center of the Etruscan society, while the married couple (tusurthir) was at the center of the family. Etruscans were a monogamous society that emphasized pairing:
- the lids of large numbers of sarcophagi were decorated with images of smiling couples in the prime of their life, often reclining next to each other or in an embrace;
- many tombs included funerary inscriptions naming the parents of the deceased - that of father often written in Latin, and that of mother written in Etruscan - because the mother's family origin was important in Etruscan society.
But observing the archaeological findings, we discover that the Etruscan woman was freer than the other women of her time:
- the spindle whorl and spring scale show that she practiced manual work, such as spinning and weaving, while the and loom weights that she produced her luxurious robes, the luxuries great and small for which Etruria was famous throughout the Mediterranean world;
- the inscriptions on some her mirrors used to explain the scenes represented, show she could write and read;
- some funeral objects like exquisite Corinthian vases or glass vessels show that she used scented oils;
- frescoes show she was perfectly attired and groomed: she applied her cosmetics with ivory sticks and combed her hair with ivory combs; she flaunt big earrings; she finely woven dresses crinkle; she had soft red shoes, with flashy pointed toes; her pale skin set off by flushed cheeks and deep red lips; she participated in public life or events (as spectator or participant), banquets, or riding in carriages.
The honoured position of the Etruscan woman was a source of great astonishment among the Greeks, who were as incapable of appreciating it. While, Romans viewed her as strong, influential participant in public as well as private life. But we know also several features of the libertine conduct of Etruscan woman by Theopompus, in his Histories (IVth century BCE):
Sharing wives is an established Etruscan custom. Etruscan women take particular care of their bodies and exercise sometimes along with the men, and sometimes by themselves. It is not a disgrace for them to be seen naked. They do not share their couches with their husbands but with the other men who happen to be present, and they propose toasts to anyone they choose. They are expert drinkers and very attractive.
The Etruscans raise all the children that are born, without knowing who their fathers are. The children live the way their parents live, often attending drinking parties and having sexual relations with all the women. It is no disgrace for them to do anything in the open, or to be seen having it done to them, for they consider it a native custom.
Theopompus’s account, which goes on to discuss public displays of affection, spouse-swapping and boy toys, is almost certainly exaggerated. The men and women who recline together in a set of famous sarcophagi from Banditaccia seem overwhelmingly to be married couples, whether they are divine or mortal. Their conviviality comes nowhere near Roman standards of probity — a Roman general was never supposed to laugh. But look at the banquet scenes from the tombs and you will see nothing like the parties held by the Greeks.
Etruscan women enjoyed a degree of freedom unheard of in the Greek and Roman worlds: they sang, they danced, they dined with men, and they were sexually loose. A sense of joyous freedom shines through two beautiful sarcophagi of terracotta found at Banditaccia towards the end of the nineteenth century: today, one is in the Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, and the other in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Sarcophagus is a box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved in stone and displayed above ground.
The Sarcophagi of the Spouses from Banditaccia (Caere) are considered like the masterpieces of Etruscan art. They are quite similar and contemporary, thus, perhaps they are the products of the same artistic workshop. They belong practically the same generation as the marvellous Apollo of Veii.
The images of banquets begin as early as the sixth century BCE - the probable date of the Banditaccia sarcophagi- in fact, they show husband and wife recline as equals as they participate in a banquet, probably a funerary banquet for the dead.
An unimaginable attitude in contemporary Greece, where courtesans - and not wives - were the only women attending public banquets, or symposia. They were prostitutes and were called hetairai, dancing and playing their pipes, posing no threat at all to the men gathered for an evening of heady intellectual debate.
Roman women led similarly restricted lives, sober and silent in the presence of men. The affectionate gestures and tenderness between the Etruscan man and woman convey a strikingly different attitude about the status of women and their relative equality with their husbands.
We can note the freedoms enjoyed by Etruscan women in life (they dined alongside Etruscan men, partaking of their wine without reservation) and in death, too (their burials rivaling those of their , brothers and uncles, filled with great quantities of luxurious goods).
The body of the sarcophagus is styled so as to resemble a kline (it was the old convivial bed on which the guests of the banquets lay). The figures are half-sitting, half-reclining, rest on highly stylized cushions, and are finely finished (for example, they have hair plaited with the stylized braids hanging rather stiffly at the sides of the neck).
The husband is a grave and dignified personage, wearing long hair and a well-shaped beard but with the upper lip shaved clean.
The wife has long plaited tresses hanging down upon her shoulders; she wears a soft cap atop her head - as every lady of rank - and shoes with pointed toes that are characteristically Etruscan. She does not wear the jewellery and heavy ornaments which she usually wore in life, but which discovered the tombs.
What we don't know is what the figures were holding among curled fingers. Here the arm positions of both figures hint that each must have held small objects. Since wife and husband are reclining on a banqueting couch, the objects could have been vessels associated with drinking, perhaps wine cups, or representations of food. Another possibility is that they may have held small vessels containing oil used for anointing the dead. Or, perhaps, they held all of the above—food, drink and oil, each a necessity for making the journey from this life to the next.
Whatever missing elements, the conviviality of the moment and intimacy of the figures capture the life-affirming quality often seen in Etruscan art of this period, even in the face of death.
But the spouses were not always represented side by side. A pair of terracotta cinerary urns - always coming from the necropolis of Banditaccia dating to the Vth century BCE - containing the remains of two spouses, depicts them respectively on their kline (Tharnasna). The lower part of the urns is identical, a bas-relief on the transverse of the beds, where two felines are represented attacking their prey, and two naked and semi-lying male figures.
Note how the similarity of the urns (size and decorations) testifies to the equality between wife and husband, too.
Whatever missing elements, the conviviality of the moment and intimacy of the figures capture the life-affirming quality often seen in Etruscan art of this period, even in the face of death.
DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS, ROMAN ANTIQUITIES § 3.58.1
Event Date: -525 GR
The Veientes, therefore, having suffered greatly from that battle, stirred no more out of their city but suffered their country to be laid waste before their eyes. King Tarquinius made three incursions into their territory and for a period of three years deprived them of the produce of their land; but when he had laid waste the greater part of their country and was unable to do any further damage to it, he led his army against the city of the Caeretani, which earlier had been called Agylla while it was inhabited by the Pelasgians but after falling under the power of the Tyrrhenians had been renamed Caere, and was as flourishing and populous as any city in Tyrrhenia.
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This page was last edited on 8 June 2024
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