- Simona Rafanelli –
Figure 28.6 Black-fi gure amphora. Gruppo Vaticano 265/Gruppo Monaco 883.
Dresden, Skulpturenslg. ZV 1653. First quarter of the fi fth century bc. (After Martelli 1992:
342–346, pls. 73, 3–4; 74).the Pyrrhic dance,^83 a kind of sacrifi ce intended to honor a deity who is positioned to assist
the “passage” of a male individual from the state of adolescent athlete/ephebe into the
essential condition of a mature man, integrated into society. Precise correspondences with
the model offered by the Greek thusia, generally characterized by the double intention of
propitiation and mantic (prophetic) rite,^84 are revealed in the sacrifi cial ritual depicted
on the shoulder of the “Ricci Hydria,”^85 where the fl oral framing of the temenos with ivy
and grapevines, the same species of victims, especially the goat, together with the altar-
bomos surmounted by burning fl ames,^86 in the presence of the priest and in the staging of
the sequence of operations required to fulfi ll the sacrifi cial ritual of bloody and bloodless
offerings, seem to betray the offi cial character of the ceremony, set in the space of a sacred
area “en plein air” and the destination of the rite, for a divine person with Dionysian traits.
The frequent use of the sheep as an expiatory victim, along with pigs and dogs, is
partly substantiated by the documentation relating to the Latin rites of expiation of
lightning, carried out by the Etruscan haruspex through the offering of a sheep with just
two infant teeth, called bidens, from which the name was given to the place struck by
lightning, called bidental.^87 The diffusion of this ritual custom, going back to Etruria and
marked, according to Livy, by the execution of “quaedam occulta solemnia sacrifi cia” (Livy
1.31), only partly takes into account the prominent position likely held in Etruria by the
expiatory sacrifi ces. This hypothesis would seem to be supported by the same analogy,
often found within the “neighboring” Italic-Iguvine and Roman ritual setting, where
every manifestation of abnormal phenomenon (portentum) and every mistake made during
the course of the ritual demanded a prompt expiation and reparation.
Not too dissimilar from the sacrifi ces of expiation of lightning were those for the placing
of a so-called border-marker and the so-called “foundation” sacrifi ces, both involved in equal
measure, with elements of offering and consecration. If the indirect Latin sources preserve,
in the legend of the sulcus primigenius (“fi rst-born furrow”) ploughed by Romulus during the
foundation of Rome, the memory of Etruscan ritual sacrifi ce, ending with the propitiatory
sacrifi ce of the bovine team yoked to the plough, then the bones of pigs/sheep found in a
jar in edifi cio “α” (Alpha) of Gravisca, along with the remains of plants and a roasting spit,^88