- Vincent Jolivet –
Figure 8.7 The bath building constructed at Musarna around the end of the second century, public
but reserved for the local aristocracy, introduces to this site various typically Roman innovations: opus
incertum, the hypocaust fl oor, bath-technology, and above all, mosaics, the only example known of this
type, which bear in Etruscan letters the name of the two magistrates responsible for its construction.Figure 8.8 The bilingual inscriptions are refl ections of an era when the Etruscan language, already
marginalized, still tried to resist the progress of Latin; this one, found at Pesaro and dated to the second
half of the fi rst century, is from a certain L. Cafatius who practiced the profession of haruspex and of
fulguriator (Pesaro, Museo Archeologico; Torelli 2000, p. 186).of houses and temples or the military organization: in the late fourth century the Fabii,
a family of the fi rst rank, used to send their children to complete their education at
Caere, just as the elite of Rome would later send their offspring to Athens. Although the
Etruscan aristocracy certainly played a role, long after the conquest, as either supporters
or opponents of Rome, Rome itself, far from imposing the principles of the Republic,
extended its dominion over the power of this oligarchy: it was directly responsible
for ensuring the social order and providing the city with tribute, goods or men, as
circumstances required. The epigraphic corpus related to this class, consisting essentially
of funerary inscriptions, is particularly rich, especially in the territories of Caere (on the
walls of tombs) and Tarquinia (on sarcophagi); these inscriptions sometimes mention,
particularly in Tarquinia, the cursus honorum of the deceased. The funerary furnishings,
however, betray the diffi culties of the aristocracy: the red-fi gure vases, once a status
symbol par excellence, become a consumer product from the late fourth century, soon
replaced by a very large production-series of vases decorated in superposed color and in
black-gloss; throughout that century, the sets of large bronze vessels are replaced, notably
at Falerii and Volsinii, by ceramic imitations (Fig. 8.9). Therefore, in the funerary realm,