- Erika Simon –
mother Semele (Semla). A satyr boy plays a double pipe at Apollo’s side. This god and
Dionysos had near relations in Delphi and Delos, where they owned the same temple.^50
At the Delphic festival Herois Semele’s resurrection from Hades was celebrated. It is
represented on the mirror in a frame of Dionysian ivy. A similar mirror, showing the same
types of fi gures, was excavated near Orvieto.^51 However, apart from Apollo, the names are
different. Aphrodite (Turan) and Adonis (Atunis) embrace, and instead of the satyr the
boy Eros (Turnu) sits at the left side. He plays with an iynx, a little wheel with magical
power. Love is the subject of many mirrors. One of the grandest, in early Hellenistic
style, currently housed in Berlin, was found in Perugia (Fig. 24.19).^52 The names of the
fi ve fi gures are taken from Greek myth, but the main person, Athrpa (Atropos, one of
the three Moirai, Fates) behaves in a purely Etruscan fashion. She is about to fasten a nail
with her hammer, an action of irreversible fate. Both loving couples on the sides of the
goddess – Aphrodite and Adonis, Meleager and Atalante – were separated by an early
death. Adonis was killed by a boar. Atalante and Meleager met at the Calydonian boar
hunt. For this sake Athrpa fastens the head of a boar with her nail.
We now move from these private works of art to architectural scuplture. In Etruria
this consists mainly of terracotta. One of the earliest preserved pieces (last quarter of the
sixth century bce) is a central acroterium in Berlin (Fig. 24.20).^53 It was found at a temple
in Cerveteri. The winged goddess, also with wings at her shoes, originally appeared above
a pediment. This is Eos (Thesan), the goddess of the dawn, and she has a boy in her arms.
Some scholars state he is Kephalos, but he is surely the Trojan prince Tithonos, the future
father of Memnon, the hero who would come to Troy with the Aethiopians and would be
killed by Achilles (see Fig. 24.8). On Etruscan mirrors Thesan instead carries Memnon,
her fallen son.^54
We turn from an early sculpture to a late one, which is Thesan as well (Fig. 24.21).^55
The lifesize clay fi gure was excavated in 1986 in the Astrone valley, south-west of
Chianciano Terme. The winged goddess originally appeared fl ying above the right side
of a Hellenistic pediment. With the gesture of aposkopein she looks back to the central
Figure 24.19 Bronze mirror from Perugia. The fate goddess Atropos (Athrpa) fastens a nail between
two loving couples (Aphrodite and Adonis, Meleager and Atalante). They were separated by early death.
Berlin, Staatl. Mus. (n. 52).