- chapter 28: Etruscan religious rituals –
to the divine personages of Dionysos-Bacchus and Demeter-Ceres-Vei, depicted on the side
of a kalyx-krater (inv. 4112) in the Florence Museo Archeologico (Fig. 28.9),^129 directs
the vector of research toward the particularly cathartic sphere of the mystery cult. The
origin of the krater in the territory of Vulci, a venue in the Late Classical era for Dionysiac
mysteries, is corroborated further by iconographic subjects found in other vases of this
pictorial group. The Maenads with thyrsus and Charun with his hammer lead us to the
Dionysian hopes for an afterlife and the Bacchic procession; Charun is the ultimate
protagonist of the anodos of the deceased, who will be “awakened” in the Underworld
and initiated into a “new” life.” The entire fi gured decoration of a bell-krater from the
necropolis of Aleria^130 would also fi t within a horizon fi lled with the same mysterious
“spirit”; it juxtaposes to the winged female personage making a sacrifi ce, and provided
with deerskin, candelabrum and instruments for libation, the reverse scene, interpreted
mythologically as the liberation of Peirithöos from Hades and from tortures infl icted by
infernal monsters. The evidence of the appeal to the Dionysiac eschatological message,
comes in the feminine fi gure of a Vanth, wearing the nebris (fawn-skin) of the Maenads,
who reconciled the fear of death with the belief in the “eternal” life of the soul.
To the cult, likewise imbued with mystical elements, of an infernal-chthonic goddess
with traits of Demeter, or to that, equally catachthonic, addressed to the Manes (in Rome,
chthonic gods, equated with departed souls) of the deceased, one could easily relate the
sacrifi cial representation displayed on the front of Volterran urn no. 212 of the Museo
Guarnacci (Fig. 28.10).^131 “Naiskos” with blazing fi re, piglet, bloodless offerings of
grains, liquids and incense, alluded to by the jug and cistae introduced into the scene
by participants in the ritual, appear to be correlated equally with funerary or Demeter-
ritual, where the blood of the victim, besides placating the spirit of the dead, would
purify the members of the family, washing away every impurity derived from contact
with the pestilential miasma of death. On the other hand, to a Demeter both chthonic
and funerary, probably recipient of the sacrifi ce depicted on the Etruscan urn, the Romans
used to sacrifi ce, a “porca praesentanea,” “familiae purgandae causa” (a “sow for the purpose
of purifying the family”) near the tomb of the deceased.
Figure 28.9 Black-fi gure krater. Berlin Funnel Group Painter. Florence, Museo Archeologico
Nazionale, inv. no 4112. Second half of the fourth century bc. (After Del Chiaro 1974, no 4, tav. 5).