- Stefano Bruni –
To the phenomenon of Etruscan piracy of the Archaic period should also be referred
the myth of the abduction of Dionysus by the Tyrrhenian pirates and their subsequent
punishment by transformation into dolphins, a story most probably developed in Corinth
at the close of the seventh century bc, in the more general context of the thriving
Corinthian Dionysiac cult, in relation to the dangers that the Etruscan λῃσταί presented
to the Corinthian naukleroi and emporoi (shipmasters and merchants) in their navigation
to the West. The myth has had a wide circulation and, even if we must expunge the
testimony offered by a famous Samian cup of the mid-sixth century bc, because it most
likely portrays a fi le of Dionysian chorus members costumed as dolphins, the animal
lovers of dance and song, still the theme is well known in Etruria from the end of the
sixth century bc at least up to the early Hellenistic period, as attested on the one hand
by a black-fi gure hydria by the Painter of Vatican 238 (see Fig. 24.19), that came from
a tomb in southern coastal Etruria and ended, through the meshes of the antiquities
market, at the Museum of Arts of Toledo, and on the other hand, a plate of the Genucilia
series found during the excavations of the Curia in the Forum Romanum.
It is, however, within the framework of the anti-Etruscan Athenian propaganda of
the late Classical period that the myth played a role of some importance. Apart from
recalling that mentioned in the prologue of the Cyclops of Euripides (verses 11–17), an
important testimony to this saga is the seventh of the hymns attributed to the name of
Homer, which, although uncertain and diffi cult to date, seems to date, at least in the
version handed down, not before the end of the fi fth century bc, if not in the fourth
century bc, given the many reminiscences of formulae and forms rarely attested and
taken from Euripides, and in particular, from his Bacchae. There is, for example, the same
term used to indicate “pirates,” the rare Ionic-Attic form λῃϊστής, -οῦ in place of ληιστήρ,
- ήρος attested in the epic (Hom., Od. 3.73; 9.254; 13.427; etc.) and in the Homeric
Hymns (Hym.Cer. 125; Hym. Apol. 454; Hym. Herm. 14), but it is present, in addition to
Herodotus’ (4.17) reference to Dionysius of Phocaea, signifi cantly, in Euripides (fr. 112,1
and fr. 151b,13). To confi rm what is probably the fourth century bc date is the use in
the hymn at verse 13 of the rare technical verb κατατανύω used to indicate the action
of tightening the ropes, which is found only in the treatise De fracturis attributed to the
Hippocratic corpus of Aristotelian date, if not later (cf. 13.53; 19.22; 44.4). In the face of
this evidence is the monument erected in Athens in 334 bc by Lysicrates near the Theater
of Dionysus, which a long tradition of studies has linked with the venture against the
pirates successfully accomplished by Diotimos in 335 bc (cf. IG 2, 2, 1263; and also
ps.Plut., Mor. 844a).
Piracy is a diffuse activity: it was the people of Lipari who in 392 bc captured the
tithe of the spoils of Veii that the Roman ambassadors were taking to Delphi (Livy
5.28; Val.Max 1.4; Diod. 14.93); Aeginetans were the ones who on behalf of Sparta
made raids against Athenian shipping in 347 bc; Greeks – perhaps Syracusans – were
the pirates who in 345 bc infested the sea from Antium to the Tiber (Livy 7.25–26). In
the literature of the late Classical period, however, the phenomenon has an especially
Etruscan tinge, and it is especially in the full Classical age and the fourth century bc
when Etruscan piracy assumed dimensions that had to worry the Greek world, whether
Athens, which already in the third quarter of the fi fth century bc had contracted philia (a
compact of friendship) with a Messapian dynast, perhaps the same Artas of the symmachia
(state military alliance) made on the occasion of the Sicilian expedition of 414–412 bc,
to ensure smooth sailing in the area of the Ionios kolpos (IG 12 , 53) and who in 325 bc