- Fredrik Tobin –
Figure 46.13 Terracotta plaque with banqueting scene, Poggio Civitate (Murlo).
Courtesy of the Poggio Civitate excavations.There is a strong correlation in Etruscan imagery between banqueting and music.
Musicians often appear in pairs to play the aulos and the lyre for the reclining participants^56
(Fig. 46.1) and in several cases the banqueters themselves play instruments (Fig. 46.13),
often they play lyres but in a few cases auloi are also played.^57 The chelys lyra is never
used by the attending musicians, only by the banqueters, indicating perhaps that the
instrument had aristocratic connotations.^58
The second–third century ce writer Aelian recalls a story about how Etruscan hunters
used sweet and soft music to lure animals into their traps.^59 A much earlier, seventh
century bce, metal vessel from Chiusi commonly known as the Plikaśna situla (see
Chapter 6) has a frieze with an aulos player followed by a dog and a row of wild boars,
seemingly portraying a similar story.^60 The Etruscans probably did use instruments to
drive game during hunts^61 and to gather their herds.^62
Etruscan music-making had a strong impact on Roman culture, perhaps seen most
clearly in the Roman adoption of the cornu and lituus.^63 Strabo writes in the early fi rst
century ce that trumpets [salpinges] and all music used publicly by the Romans, as well
as many other things including fasces, sacrifi cial rites and divination, had come from
Tarquinia.^64 Livy similarly claims that scenic performances outside of the circus were
introduced by instrumentalists and dancers imported from Etruria.^65 The authors may
be exaggerating, but there is no reason to doubt that the infl uence on Roman music
coming from their South Etruscan neighbors was vast. In Latin, only three instruments
have names that do not derive from Greek and they are all wind-instruments: tibia,
lituus and tuba.^66 Even if this fact doesn’t speak to the question of who “invented” these
instruments it does support the idea that there was a strong local wind instrument
tradition in Central Italy.
NOTES
1 The most important recent work is Carrese, Li Castro and Martinelli 2010. The last synthesis
in English is brief and outdated (Fleischhauer 1980), although there have been more recent
ones in other languages (Jannot 1988, Fleischhauer 1995, Jannot 2004, Morandini 2011,
Paolucci and Sarti 2012).
2 For a recent discussion of this issue (albeit in a Roman context) see Lawson 2008.
3 For an overview see Grandolini 2010; for a thorough investigation of Etruscan brass
instruments in the textual sources see Berlinzani 2007 and Berlinzani 2010.