- Larissa Bonfante –
women in the classical Greek and Roman worlds, all this is more than balanced by the
abundance of Etruscan archaeological, epigraphic, artistic and iconographical evidence.
Etruscan women were more visible alongside the men, as wives and mothers, priestesses
and seers. The families and clients of aristocratic women celebrated their weddings
and their funerals, and furnished their graves with expensive and luxurious objects,
unhindered by the sumptuary laws of the Greeks and Romans, often specifi cally aimed
at controlling the wealth, power and prestige of women. But there was no matriarchy
like that envisioned by Bachofen, who exaggerated the different roles of women in these
classical societies as meaning that the roles of men and women were reversed.
NOTES1 Heurgon 1964.
2 Theopompus, Histories, in Athenaeus 517d–518a. English translation, Gulick 1927, 41, 12.
517–518. Lefkowitz and Fant 2005, 88–89, No. 100, with a different translation.
3 Tomb of the Painted Vases, Steingräber 1986, 353–355, No. 123: “the rear wall has
an intimate air, with a married couple and the children seated alongside them.” The small
fi gure on the right is a cupbearer. For the garlands, see also the pediment of the Tomb of
Hunting and Fishing, Steingräber 1986, No. 50, Fig. 46. Steingräber 2006, many examples.
4 Pomeroy 1995, 143.
5 Dover 1974.
6 Pomeroy 2002, 25–27. Plato, Republic 457 a–b.
7 Tacitus, Germania 19: Numerum liberorum fi nire aut quemquam ex adgnatis necare fl agitium habetur.
“To restrict the number of children, or to kill any of those born after the heir, is considered
wicked.” Translation, Mattingly-Handford 1970, 117–118. Judaism prohibits infanticide.
Josephus, Against Apion II 5: God “forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to
destroy it afterward.”
8 Torelli 1997a, 52–86, especially 77. See Pomeroy 2002, 48, 90–91 for possible Spartan
examples.
9 Bonfante 1994, 249, with refs. Women had less of a public presence than men, and were
expected to keep their names, like their persons, private. According to Anglo-Saxon etiquette
in the not-so-distant past, a married woman should use her husband’s full name in public; a
name taboo required her to hide her given name and reserve the intimacy of knowing it to
close relatives and family friends.
10 Bonfante 1981, 157–187.
11 For grave goods according to gender, see Cougle 2009, 58.
12 Bonfante 2003, Figs. 3–9, 14–16.
13 For fi bulas, see Torelli 2000, 547–548. For stylized images of men and women, see De Puma
1996, with Turfa review, 1998. For the fi nal embrace, see Säfl und 37–38, Figs. 23–25.
14 For enthroned canopi, see Torelli 2000, 549. Tomb of the Five Chairs, Haynes 2000, 92–95.
15 Torelli Von Eles 2002, 2006, 2007.
16 In the seventh and sixth centuries bc, women were buried with rich grave goods and two
chariots – a biga or currus and a ladies’ calesse – in Etruria, Latium, and the neighboring Picene
area, as well as across the Alps, in Gaul. Emiliozzi 1997. Bartoloni, Grottanelli 1989, 59–61.
Landolfi 1997, 236.
17 Telikles: TLE 761, Rix OA 2.2. Bonfante and Fowlkes 2006, 111, 113, No. 33: seventh
century. The lekythos is now on loan at the Metropoltan Museum of Art. For women, textiles
and writing, see below, note 83.
18 See chapter on language, in this volume.
19 Wedding on Chiusi relief: Bonfante 1994, 252, Fig. 8.6. Haynes 2000, 248, and cf. 240–
- Couples: Säfl und 1993, 36–123. Haynes 2000, 361.