Especially splendid is the female flute-player who turns round as she dances, her light chiton and red cloak fluttering about her; she can almost compare with ‘la bella ballerina’. The dancing-women all wear the high Etruscan wreathed cap, the so-called _tutulus_, which in the Tomba delle Iscrizioni is also worn by a male dancer. We meet with it again in Etruscan terracotta sculpture. The fashion is of Oriental origin, and goes back, ultimately, to the pointed ’sugar-loaf hat’ of the Hittites. It probably reached Etruria by way of Cyprus, where it is frequently seen in reliefs of the seventh century B. C. In Etruria the pointed woollen cap became part of the national dress.[31] Rome of course adopted the headgear and preserved the Etruscan tradition in the priesthoods; a purple tutulus adorned the Roman Flaminicae, and certain secondary priests wore a tutulus down to the time of Tertullian.[32] In early Rome all women wore the tutulus, and under it a head-cloth such as is shown in Etruscan terracottas (fig. 16); this is clear from a description of a Roman mourning scene in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (xi. 39), where the women tear their many and various fillets and hair-ornaments off their heads.[33] [Illustration: FIG. 15. RIGHT MAIN WALL IN THE TOMBA DELLE BIGHE] [Illustration: FIG. 16. ETRUSCAN TERRA-COTTA HEAD IN THE NY CARLSBERG GLYPTOTEK] [Illustration: FIG. 17. PART OF THE SMALL FRIEZE IN THE TOMBA DELLE BIGHE] The dancing scene, in the painted frieze referred to above (fig. 15), ends at the sideboard on the left, which bears a number of metal bowls: a cup-bearer, partially obliterated in the original, is just putting down a vessel. The wine to inspire the dancers is ready. In the narrow frieze—the most beautiful and most carefully executed of those in the tomb, but very badly copied in the facsimile of the Glyptotek—we see the preparations for a chariot race. The horses are being led out and harnessed to the chariot. We reproduce, after Stackelberg’s drawing, the most interesting part of the frieze (fig. 17), in which three young men are busy harnessing two horses to the light, two-wheeled chariot, the Biga. The chariot is represented in foreshortening, and the shaft is lifted up by a naked boy. The young men have each one foot strongly foreshortened. [Sidenote: TOMBA DELLE BIGHE] We find here the same experimentation with this new and difficult problem, as in the Greek vase-paintings of about 500 B. C., in the vases of Euthymides and Euphronius. The horse to the right is blue, that to the left grey, both have red hoofs and red harness, and two youths, with a sort of shawl round their loins, are busily engaged with them, striking them on the flanks to get them into place. These two excellent figures are quite misdrawn and misconstrued in the Ny Carlsberg facsimile, the draughtsman not having realized that they are seen from behind.