- chapter 8: A long twilight –
of Vegoia,” by the Perugia cippus or by the recently discovered Cortona Tablet (Fig.
8.12). The great Etruscan families achieved, with Roman support, the ability to exert
undivided power over their people for a long time (Fig. 8.13). After enactment of the lex
Iulia, some of these dominant social groups chose to emigrate to Rome, where a dozen
Etruscan families already had representatives in the Senate, some since the beginning
of the Hellenistic period. But it was not true of all the Etruscan cities, some of which
probably kept some of their old social structure and hierarchies even under the Empire.
Figure 8.12 The Perugia cippus (left), one of the longest known Etruscan inscriptions, bears a text relating
to the boundaries of the properties of the two great families of the city, the Velthina and the Afuna, during
the second century (Perugia, Museo Archeologico; Cristofani 1984, p. 77). The Cortona Tablet (Tabula
Cortonensis) (right), a copy of a mortgage agreement of the third or second century includes names of men
and women of the Scevas and Cusu families (see also Fig 22.4). (Florence Museo Archeologico inv. 234.918).Figure 8.13 In the course of the Hellenistic period, the images of the dance, the hunt, the banquet
or the Underworld are replaced by processions of magistrates in togas, expressing the early infl uence of
Roman decorum on the Etruscan aristocratic families: here, that of the Tomba Bruschi, dated from the
end of the fourth century or the beginning of the next century (Camporeale 2004, Fig. 145).