Ethnicity and Gender 489historians Timaeus and Theopompus, quoted by the later writer Athenaeus, were open
about this:
Among the Etruscans, who had become extravagantly luxurious, Timaeus records in his first
book that the slave girls wait on the men naked. And Theopompus in the forty-third book
of hisHistoriessays that it is customary with the Etruscans to share their women in common:
the women bestow great care on their bodies and often exercise even with men, sometimes
also with one another; for it is no disgrace for women to show themselves naked. Further,
they dine, not with their own husbands, but with any men who happen to be present, and
they pledge with wine any whom they wish. They are also terribly bibulous, and are very
good-looking.Athenaeus,DeipnosophistaeXII, 517d–fThis characterization of Etruscan women as promiscuous and immoral, and the tone of
prurient outrage, tells us far more about the social anxieties of the fourth-century Greek
male than about gender relations in Etruria. Depictions of women in Etruscan art—and
especially tomb-paintings and funerary sculpture—confirm that they did indeed have a
more visible role in society than contemporary Greek women. They were not segregated
from men, as Greek women were, but are shown participating in social gatherings such
as banquets alongside their male relatives. Etruscan names, especially when inscribed on
formal monuments such as tombs, include the name of a person’s mother as well as
their father—something unusual in Italy (Gasperini 1989; Briquel 1992: 32–5). This
suggests that the Etruscan society was not exclusively patrilineal, and that mothers, as
well as fathers, were important as a source of status and family identity. The legal status
of women is not known, so it is unclear whether this indicates that status or property
was passed down the female as well as the male line. However, a bronze tablet from
Cortona, dating to the late third centuryBC,may imply that women could take an active
role in property ownership. It seems to record inheritance or transactions concerning
the property of one Petru Sceve and his wife Arntlei, including land and an inventory of
portable items. Exactly what it means is still debated (some interpretations suggest it is a
ritual rather than a legal text), but the implication, on some readings, is that the wife of
Petru Sceve was a joint participant in the transaction along with her husband (Agostiniani
and Nicosia 2000).
Other evidence that women—at least among the elite—enjoyed significant status in
Etruscan society is also found in other areas of Etruscan life. A significant number of
wealthy burials in archaic Etruria commemorated women. Female burials are still a minor-
ity compared with male burials, but they form a higher proportion than in other areas of
Italy, although there are significant differences between northern and southern Etruria.
Women are also very visible in the large shared family tombs of the Hellenistic period
(Nielsen 1989), and studies of funerary inscriptions indicate that Etruscan women were
commemorated by written epitaphs more often than in many areas of Italy, although
again there were many variations within the region. Tarquinia, for instance, had a partic-
ularly high level of female commemoration (Revell 2005: 52–6). Women also seem to
have been closely connected with the adoption of writing and literacy in the region (Bag-
nasco Gianni 2000). A considerable number of the earliest inscribed objects are found
in aristocratic female burials, or are inscribed with female names, indicating that they are
dedicated to, or offered by, women. The idea that Etruscan women had a higher degree