- chapter 44: The banquet through Etruscan history –
A POPULAR MOTIFBanqueting is a very common motif in the Etruscan image-repertoire and apart from
painted and sculptured funerary banquets and terracotta architectural decoration this
theme is shown on numerous objects like painted vases, tableware, braziers with cylinder-
stamped decoration, bronze items like tripod stands, basins and mirrors, ivory boxes,
votive fi gurines etc. Their fi nd contexts mark whether they were domestic or public,
mundane or sacred. Certainly, objects can function as a “language” as subtle as a spoken
language. Unfortunately, the practice of tomb robbing has destroyed, often completely,
the message that these objects were meant to give when fi rst placed in the tomb. The
objects found in the tombs could refer to both the living and the dead. From the Archaic
time on, Etruscan tombs were fi lled with the fi nest vases from Athens in combination
with their own splendid bronze equipment and these items were even depicted in some
of the tombs as, for instance, the Tomb of the Painted Vases.^15 Many of the vases from
Athens depict sympotic scenes and some of them include women, and therefore the
question has been raised if these motifs were made on Etruscan demand.^16
WOMEN AND LUXURYThe matron of the house and her husband were often seen banqueting together as, for
instance, on the back wall of the Tomb of the Leopards (see the cover of this book)
thus confi rming what it was that distressed the ancient authors from the fourth century
bc, like Theopompos (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistai 12. 517d–518b), because to them it
represented an immoral life. The Etruscans were indeed considered luxurious, frivolous
and depraved (Timaeus in Ath. Deip. 4.153 d; Diodorus Siculus 5.3). A few authors
mention the sumptuous tables that were prepared twice a day, the richly colorful rugs
covering the beds of the reclining banqueters and the gorgeous equipment used.
LARGE FAMILY DINNERSWhile the evidence from the period just mentioned gives witness to a larger diffusion
of banqueting, the last centuries of Etruscan civilization have left us with the large
family tombs of various cities. The paintings from Tomba Golini I at Orvieto give a full
description of a rich banquet. Although the paintings were rather damaged already by the
time they were drawn in 1865, we can still get an impression (Fig. 44.4).^17 A partition
wall divided the tomb chamber. In the left part of the tomb the actual food preparation is
documented, near the entrance an ox, various birds, a hare and a deer are hanging, so that
we get the impression of a larder by this ostentatious display. This scene is followed on the
side wall by a male servant chopping meat next to other servants, both females and males,
engaged with the setting of four (movable) tables laden with grapes, pomegranates, foccace
and eggs to the sound of a fl ute player, and another person who is bent over his work:
kneading or pounding something in a mortarium. Then we see two men working with
saucepans near a big, lighted oven and following this scene three more servants appear
around a table with prepared food in numerous smaller vessels. In the right side of the
tomb are four beds with reclining persons who are all participants to the banquet, which
also includes Aita and Phersipnai, the gods of the Netherworld, sitting on a very ornate
throne next to a splendid collection of metal vessels, framed by burning candles on two