- chapter 47: Health and medicine in Etruria –
Etruscans. There is as yet no indication in skeletal collections of cases of morbid obesity
manifested in such conditions as DISH (diffuse idiopathic skeletal hypertrophy, in which
the vertebrae show a strange pattern of overgrowth of bone). This condition has, however,
been identifi ed in some Flavian-era victims of Vesuvius at Pompeii and Herculaneum
(Turfa forthcoming a; Bradley 2011: 25–26).
LongevityOver 4,400 Etruscan epitaphs are known, mainly from the fourth century bc and
Hellenistic period; of these, over 250 inscriptions, most from Tarquinia and Volterra,
recorded age at death. Children age two and older are represented (infrequently), and some
men reached high ages, such as Lars Felsnas, who died aged 106, and had campaigned
with Hannibal. Although none record people in their nineties, one woman died at 90,
one man at 100 years of age (see Turfa forthcoming a). Men in their twenties saw the
highest recorded death rate – this might not be an index to the general population, but
might mean they were commemorated as casualties of war or because their lives were cut
short. The death rate for women who received Etruscan epitaphs is nearly steady between
the ages of 20 and 60, with some decrease in the forties – again, the quantities may be
the result of family and social issues rather than actual death rates.^2
Rare representational evidenceThere are a few representations of events such as childbirth or of unusual conditions.
The tomb of the Satie family, the fourth-century bc François Tomb of Vulci, preserves a
carefully rendered portrait of a rachitic dwarf, Arnza (“Little Arnie”) assisting the tomb’s
founder, Vel Saties, releasing a bird in a ritual of divination; clearly he is a valued member
of the family, his shape, posture, reddish hair and wrinkled face are carefully depicted
(Andreae 2004: 56 Fig. 42). The alabaster lid of a Hellenistic Volterran urn bears an
effi gy of an emaciated youth with wan but plucky face that must portray a wasting
illness, of which he presumably died, for the epitaph (in Latin) of A. Caecina Selcia gives
his age as 12 years (Cristofani et al. 1975: 28–29, no. 9).
Another representation is an Orientalizing stamped relief from a fragmentary bucchero
vase found at Poggio Colla near Florence (Lorenzi 2011). It depicts a scene of childbirth
with a crouching woman with long back braid and a baby just emerging beneath her
(Fig. 47.2). The pose of seated or crouching childbirth must be true to life, and is even
repeated in scenes of the birth of Dionysos or Menrva in engraved mirrors (see Fig. 25.1;
van der Meer 1995: 119–124, Figs 52–56), where Zeus is seated and held by midwife
goddesses like Thalna and Thanr, although, of course, Menrva will emerge from his head
(which they then bandage)! Terracotta anatomical votives from dozens of shrines across
central Italy show that infants were swaddled at least part of the time (and boys wore
amuletic bullae) (Pautasso 1994: 33–44, pls 12–25).
Images painted in color in the Tomba dei Caronti at Tarquinia (third century bc)
attest that some Etruscans were well aware of the consequences of snakebite: the
Underworld demons Tuchulcha and Charu(n) are depicted with black-mottled blue
or green skin which approximates the condition of fl esh bitten by an adder or viper
(Hostetler 2007).