- Vincent Jolivet –
it is rather the architecture of the tombs, like that of the Velimna in Perugia (Fig. 8.10);
their paintings, as in Tarquinia or the decoration of the sarcophagi or urns deposited there
that most effectively depict the eminent status of the deceased, sometimes combining
Etruscan iconography and Latin epigraphy.
The phase of Romanization is also refl ected in the same class, by a signifi cant evolution
of the role of Etruscan women who appear to have enjoyed, at the beginning of the history of
this people, a dignity comparable to that of their male counterparts, such that their liberty
and license were considered scandalous by the Greeks and Romans. From the late fourth
century, perhaps because the confl ict with Rome had brought an exaltation of the typically
male values of war, Etruscan women are most often represented in a subordinate position:
reclining like men on their sarcophagi or urns, they very rarely hold the symbols of the
banquet and sacrifi ce (patera, kantharos); in the paintings, they are no longer represented
reclining, but sit at the foot of their husbands’ couches; and fi nally, in funerary inscriptions,
the custom of indicating the matronymic of the deceased, deeply rooted in Etruria from the
Orientalizing period, almost disappears during the second century. The process in action,
certainly a long-standing commitment, tends to install the Etruscan woman in a place
conforming to the gender hierarchy that has long been in force in the Roman world.
Ultimately, it is religion, closely controlled by the Etruscan male ruling classes who
provided the priests (Fig. 8.11), which appears to have curbed – most effectively to the
benefi t of Rome – the social and gender tensions that conquest could harshly release.
Every gesture of public life, each new construction was regulated by a set of complex
religious laws that comprised what is known as the Etruscan disciplina. The books which
composed the disciplina contained detailed religious instructions that are still refl ected,
for instance, in the rituals inscribed on the linen bandages used later to wrap a mummy
preserved today in Zagreb; and they undoubtedly also expressed respect for property and
social hierarchies, as evidenced by a text of the early fi rst century known as the “Prophecy
Figure 8.11 Along with various statuettes in bronze, this fi gure of a haruspex depicted on a terra
sigillata vase produced in the Rasinius’ workshop shows that this was a profession familiar to the
clientele that purchased these vases in the Augustan period (Tübingen, Institut fur klassische
Archäologie; 158; Torelli 2000, p. 276).