- chapter 40: Seafaring –
with a ram. The graffi ti on an impasto olla from the nineteenth-century excavations of
Monterozzi at Tarquinia, and the scene painted on a plate from tomb 65 of the necropolis
of Acqua Acetosa Laurentina (Cerveteri), however, show that during the seventh century
bc there were in use ships of “light” construction with mixed propulsion, characterized
by an angular, sharply cut akrostolion on the prow and by an aphlaston that curved back
and over the stern.
Although only documented at the turn of the sixth century bc, the image on a hydria
from Vulci by the Micali Painter, now in the British Museum (Fig. 40.7), perhaps as
early as the seventh century bc, the Etruscans, like the Greeks, must have adopted
for their seafaring the ship of dual propulsion, whose invention, although not grasped
historically, is generally attributed to the Phoenician world. Greek tradition attributed
the construction of the fi rst bireme to Eretria, as evidence by a passage of Damon referring
back to the era of the Euboean navy and emporia. To the same type, for which the Greek
navy used the name of pentecontera diera (“double-oar pentekonters”) also belongs the ship
carved on the Bologna stele of Vel Kaikna, attesting to how the akrostolion of the bow,
Figure 40.6 Crater of Aristonothos, from Cerveteri. Rome, Musei Capitolini,
formerly Coll. Castellani, inv. 172.Figure 40.7 Hydria by the Micali Painter, from Vulci. London, British Museum, inv. B 60.