Generally speaking, what has made doubt or error possible in the matter is the fact that the pictures, as we have already said, in form suggest Greek pictures of hetaerae; symposia of any other kind between men and women were unknown in Hellas. And to what extent the influence of Greek art has prevailed is shown by the picture of a momentary phase of emotion in the Tomba Querciola, where a couple reclining on the couch are kissing each other, a motive as suitable to a Greek hetaera picture as it is incongruous in a picture representing family life after death.[60] Another source of error is the pronounced sensualism of these pictures; in a sepulchral painting as early as the sixth century, the main picture of the Tomba del Vecchio, we see on a banqueting-couch, under the wreaths and chaplets with bells hanging on the wall, a hoary old _roué_ in vivacious conversation with his beautiful young wife who holds a garland, a hypothymis, under his nose (fig. 30).[61] This picture is typically Etruscan in its combination of wine and love. ‘As soon as we had eaten,’ sings the Greek poet Dromon,[62] ‘the slave girl removed the tables; one brought us water for washing, and we washed ourselves; then we seized again the wreaths of violets and bound our brows with garlands.’ The Etruscans seem to have followed the Greek rules minutely, but like the Egyptians they let the free-born women partake of the festivity of the symposium itself. FOOTNOTES: [49] Athenaeus i. 23 d. On the Etruscan custom of reclining at table, like the Greeks, and unlike the men of the Homeric age and later the Macedonians, who sat, see Athenaeus i. 17 f, 18 a. [50] Athenaeus xii. 517d. Cp. Dionys. Halic. ix. 16. [51] Isaeus iii. 14. [52] Athenaeus iv. 153 d. (= Timaeus, _fragm._ 18 in Müller, _Fragmenta histor. Graecorum_). [53] Friedländer, _Sittengeschichte Roms_ i. 472, 478, 493 f. [54] _Corpus inscriptionum Etruscarum_, 3858, 3860. [55] The Etruscan character for immorality is chiefly due to Theopompus (_fragm._ 222 in Müller, _Fragm. hist. Graec._ i. p. 315), but he gives similar descriptions of the Thessalians, and seems to have specialized in _chroniques scandaleuses_. Of equal value is his information that the Sybarites loved the Etruscans because of their luxuriousness (Athenaeus xii. 519 b). It is regrettable that Theophrastus’ work on the Etruscans is lost; it would have provided information of quite a different character. (Cp. the Scholia to Pindar, _Pythia_ ii. 3.) [56] _De oratore_ iii. 197. [57] Livy v. 22. 5. [58] The most famous of all the Etruscan women versed in divination is the wise but guileful Tanaquil, who played a political part in Rome: Livy i. 34. [59] Τὴν κιθαράν στρέψας, like Apollo in the contest with Marsyas (Apollodorus, _Bibliotheca_ i. 4. 2).