And then the horns, the candles! and the dead,
Smeared with thick balms, lies stiff on lofty bed,
Heels pointing doorwards, till he’s borne away
By new-capped citizens[73] of yesterday.
But the pictures in the Tomba Golini seem to indicate that the
symposium is not only a ceremony on the funeral day or at memorial
feasts, but that the purpose is, by means of the painting as well as by
the undoubtedly splendid accessories of the tombs, which were rifled
and removed long ago, to secure to the dead or the whole of the family,
who in course of time were interred in the tomb, a happy and festive
existence hereafter; the same idea as in the Egyptian tomb-reliefs,
the object of which was to safeguard the deceased against ‘the second
death’, that is, annihilation. And just as the Egyptian tomb-reliefs
extend to all aspects of life in order that the dead may enjoy
without restriction the sight of everything which made his life rich
and festive, from the industry of the slaves and artisans occupied in
his service to his own boating and hunting expeditions in the papyrus
thickets of the Nile, so the Etruscan sepulchral paintings have a
further object and treat subjects which are only intelligible if the
end in view is to procure for the dead a full enjoyment of the delights
of life, and which cannot in any way be associated with funeral or
funeral feast. This applies especially to the hunting pictures of the
sixth and fifth centuries B.C., found respectively in the Tomba della
Caccia e della Pesca and in the Tomba Querciola.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] Footstools were also used in Rome for mounting the high couches.
Varro, _De lingua Latina_ v. 168.
[73] i. e. slaves made free by his will, and entitled to wear the cap
of liberty.
XIV
[Sidenote: ETRUSCAN IMPERIALISM]
[Sidenote: THE POWER OF ETRURIA]
[Sidenote: ETRUSCAN INFLUENCE IN ROME]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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