- chapter 60: Animals in the Etruscan household –
MYTHICAL ANIMALSThe richest source of information about Etruscan mythological subjects is their art. The
Etruscans decorated their pottery, their bronze furnishings and their chamber tombs with
the fi gures and stories of Greek myth (see Chapters 24–25; Bonfante and Swaddling,
2006). They used the apotropaic power of images to protect their temples and tombs and
to drive away evil demons. Some of the mythical images used by the Etruscans include
the Sphinx, Hippocamp, Centaur, Griffi n, Satyr, Harpy, Chimera, Typhon, Ketos and
Skylla.
In Etruscan Places published two years after the author’s death, D. H. Lawrence wrote
of the sarcophagi he had seen in the Etruscan tombs;
...urns representing “Etruscan” subjects; those of sea-monsters, the sea-man with fi sh-
tail, and with wings, the sea-woman the same: or the man with serpent-legs, and
wings, or the woman the same. It was Etruscan to give these creatures wings, not
Greek....other common symbolic animals in Volterra are the beaked griffi ns, the creatures of
the powers that tear asunder and, at the same time, are guardians of the treasure. They
are lion and eagle combined, of the sky and of the earth with caverns.
Etruscan Places, Chapter 6 (Lawrence, 1972)Griffi ns were seen as being protective, and perhaps for this reason they are often depicted
in Etruscan tombs. They were also associated with gold, both in terms of its discovery,
but also in terms of hoarding gold underground. Indeed, Flavius Philostratus writes of
griffi ns in The Life of Apollonius of Tyana:
...as to the gold which the griffi ns dig up, there are rocks which are spotted with
drops of gold as with sparks, which this creature can quarry because of the strength of
its beak. For these animals do exist in India, and are held in veneration as being sacred
to the Sun; ... in size and strength they resemble lions, but having this advantage over
them that they have wings, they will attack them, and they get the better of elephants
and of dragons.
Flavius Philostratus 3.40.48. (Philostratus, 1921, vol. I, p. 333)There are numerous examples of the griffi n in Etruscan art (see Fig. 60.2p = GR 1887.7–
25.30, British Museum), but to mention a few, one should perhaps list the bronze
cauldron from the Regolini-Galassi Tomb (circa 650 bc), which is decorated with six
repoussé griffi n heads (Vatican Museo Gregoriano Etrusco). This particular piece is a
Phoenician import and serves to highlight the entry of overseas infl uence on aristocratic
Etruria. Then there is the sarcophagus from Vulci (circa 350–300 bc) depicting on the
right side panel a griffi n (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen; Moltesen and Nielsen
1996: 44 no. 7; cf. Tarquinia sarcophagus with griffi n: 50 no. 8). Yet another example is
that of the Faliscan krater from Civita Castellana (circa 400 bc) that depicts two griffi ns
attacking a bull and a stag (Villa Giulia, Rome: Martelli et al. 1987: 199 no. 147).
The skylla was another mythical beast (see Fig. 60.2f = GR 1873.8–20.422, British
Museum). The skylla, or Scylla, was a horrible sea monster with four eyes, six long necks