- chapter 45: Etruscan spectacles: theater and sport –
suffered by the Phocaeans, we see from the narrative of Livy that the ludi circenses had
already been organized in some Etruscan cities at least a century earlier.
THEATER IN ETRURIAIf we are to believe Varro (Lingua Latina, 5, 55), the Etruscans wrote plays of classical
type: a man called Volnius who has a Latinized name but who is of Etruscan origin
wrote tragedies in Etruscan (Volnius, qui tragoedias Tuscas scripsit). All indications are
that this author lived in the Hellenistic period, the time of the Gracchi, and one can
imagine that his plays would have been staged in a theater like that of Arezzo, to which
we have already referred, that dates precisely to the second half of the second century
bce (Heurgon 1961: 298–304). In earlier times, it is the iconography that furnishes
testimonies of scenic games, private or public; this certainly comes closer to Livy’s text
since one sees there a number of ludiones/histriones (acrobats/actors). Likewise, a fragment
of an Etruscan black-fi gured amphora in the Louvre dated to the years around 480 bce
shows us two characters disguised as satyrs, but wearing entirely local clothing (pointed
cap, tunic with embroidered fl owers) and dancing to music in an embryonic form of
dramatic art (Szilagyi 1981).
Other documents, funerary paintings and especially Archaic reliefs from Chiusi, even
testify that the Etruscans, from the sixth or fi fth century bce, were not satisfi ed with such
simple dances as those described by Livy: there were performers, masked or not, and armed
dancers, thus presenting a warlike theme. But the Etruscans also knew choreographed
dances such as the dances of Silens and Maenads that illustrate the abduction of a woman,
and ballets that are based on a mythological or non-mythical premise. J.-R. Jannot was
able to identify, on a Chiusine relief preserved in Copenhagen, a ballet about Phineus,
which was danced by professional actors playing the Boreads and the Harpies. On another
Chiusine base in Florence, is depicted a boxing-dance – a choreographic theme reprised
in our time – where three boxers dance rhythmically under the direction of a fl ute-player
(Jannot 1984: 21–22, 28, 329–330; Jannot 1985). Black-fi gure pottery is revealing, as
we have seen above, and we cannot forget to mention the amphora BM 64 of the British
Museum (Fig. 45.1), the work of the Micali Painter, in the late sixth century bce, on
which we see a chorus of satyrs accompanying a Pyrrhic dancer (Beazley 1947: 2–3, pl.
2–2a, Jolivet 1993: 353–364; van der Meer 1986: 439–445).
In the Hellenistic period, small terracotta masks found in tombs of Tarquinia and Vulci
of the end of the fourth century bce may have been deposited among the grave goods as
symbols of dramatic spectacles that the families of the deceased could not afford to organize
at the time of the funeral. But slightly later, it is mainly the urns of Volterra, Chiusi and
Perugia that are introduced into the debate in support of the existence of stage shows in
Etruria. The reliefs represented on the chest of these urns often illustrate mythological
themes of the Trojan or Theban cycles that are part of the Greek tragic repertoire,
Figure 45.1 Amphora by the Micali Painter, British Museum BM 64, various forms of entertainment
and competition, circa 500 bce, courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.