The Etruscan culture: habits and customs
At the beginning of the seventh century, under the class or the nobles - whose wealth was due agriculture, commerce, piracy - a sort of middle class was formed, also made up of farmers, artisans, merchants (many of these were foreigners, who took up permanent residence in the cities where their trades took them and perhaps married local women). Unfortunately, it is not too easy to reconstruct the existence of these people and of those who were at the lowest level of the social scale, the servants. It is evident that these servants did not constitute a homogeneous class, and that there were considerable differences between them in relation to the functions they performed.
Certainly they were very numerous.
The sources of supply for the servile personnel were first pirate raids, then wars (the prisoners of war ended up, as is known, in slavery): and it goes without saying that slaves were those born to parents of servile condition. There were also slave markets everywhere (some internationally known), and there were specialized persons who made a lot of money dealing in this commodity. Prices naturally varied according to quality (ethnic characteristics, nationality, age, sex, strength, beauty, health, knowledge of arts and crafts, culture, etc.).
It seems that the houses of the rich Etruscans were teeming with slaves, used for the most varied functions.
Among the slaves who served during the banquets, there were those who mixed the wine and water in the amphorae, those who poured the drinks into the goblets, those who cut the meat, those who distributed the food, and so on. The servants were, as in all ancient societies, at the mercy of the masters.
In Etruria they were, it seems, treated a little more familiarly and mildly than in Rome, but capricious and cruel masters were certainly not lacking. Punishments - mostly whipping, but it reached torture and death -were the order of the day. There were no legal deterrents against bad or even sadistic bosses: one can assume, however, that social disapproval acted as a brake. And then the slaves represented a heritage and work tools that one had an interest in protecting and exploiting. The specter of the servants was life imprisonment (that is, work in the mines, in the marble quarries when they began to be exploited systematically, in the swamps for drainage works), which took place in inhumane conditions.
With the build-up of large landed wealth and the extension of large estates, the countryside was depopulated. The peasants, who were already struggling for life, exploited and harassed by the owners, sought refuge in the urban centres. To replace them were slaves, which cost less even if their performance was not exciting.
As everywhere, slaves in Etruria could emancipate themselves, thanks to the peculiarity they managed to accumulate or simply thanks to the merits they acquired. However, the release depended on the will of the master, towards whom the freedman (lautni as it was called in the Etruscan language) maintained important obligations. The freedman added his master's noble name to his name, he was still part of the family, but he had a life of his own, he worked for himself, he could marry a free woman or a free man, get rich, make a career.
Based on the figurative and literary testimonies we can get an idea of what the Etruscans were like physically. With great caution, without forgetting the work of idealization of the artists and their cultural models: it is from Asia Minor and Greece, for example, that the sculptors had taken the receding forehead, the straight nose, the almond-shaped eye and that smile very particular which was later assumed as a symbol of Etruscan art.
We will therefore not speak simplistically of an "Etruscan type" on the basis of a very famous terracotta sarcophagus (mid-sixth century) from Cere (Cerveteri), on which a married couple is represented lying side by side on the bed of the funeral banquet, with a face she from the Attic kore, he tending towards the triangular, with oblique eyes made familiar from Aegean art.
Catullus and Virgil respectively spoke of obesus etruscus and pinguis tirrhenus, launching an image of the pleasure-loving and gluttonous Etruscans, which moreover finds some confirmation in sculpture, above all in three sarcophagi. One, coming from San Giuliano near Viterbo, presents us on the lid with a figure lying on its back with a disproportionate belly;
another, from Tarquinia, shows an old man with full flesh that contrasts with flaccid and wrinkled cheeks and neck; the third, preserved in the Museum of Florence, presents us with a very pot-bellied individual crowned with flowers (a knight, one would think from the ring on the ring finger of his left hand), with a semi-bald head and wide-open eyes, holding a cup in his right hand. But we can consider these characters representative of the average Etruscan or rather of the rich class ?
Taking into consideration a hundred inscriptions between 200 and 50 BC on which the ages of the deceased appear, scholars have hypothesized (with some uncertainty due to the continuing difficulty in interpreting some numerals that appear there) an average length of life for the Etruscans of about 40 years, not contemptible for the times, but which does not take into account the infant mortality, then very high.
The Etruscans must have been small, if we are to believe the skeletons (about one and a half meters for women, about ten centimeters more for men). Just look at armor and helmets in museums to realize this.
Since contacts with the Greeks intensified, the Etruscans were inspired by their fashion for clothing, which appears to us in figurative documents as a whole rather lively and elegant (we obtain little information from Roman authors, and only for the aspects of which Rome imported from Etruria). It is obviously difficult to distinguish everyday clothing from festive and ceremonial clothing.
The men, especially the young, were often half-naked, above all at home but also outside, contenting themselves with the loincloth, a cloth knotted around the hips to form breeches. Mature people more often wore the light tunic down to the feet, pleated and embroidered, and when it was cold the cloak of heavy and colored cloth.
Women indulged themselves more: tunics, skirts, bodices, jackets, tunics, colored embroidered cloaks. Above all, the skirts are striking for their grace, with their pleats, ruffles, starching, and with their flared shapes that suggest circles of support. All these items of clothing underwent an evolution whose stages it is not always possible to specify. For example, the introduction of the linen chiton dates back to about the middle of the sixth century, a decidedly unisex garment, also in a knee-length version (later, in the Hellenistic period, the tight-fitting belted chiton became popular among the elegant). The evolution of the cloak was also lively: the classic one, of Greek derivation, was rectangular, but a semi-circular one that was worn across leaving one shoulder uncovered was also very fashionable. One of the most famous and longest-lived items of clothing is the tebennos, that we can admire on terracotta plates from Caere and preserved in the Louvre (6th century): there is a representation of a king seated on a curule chair wearing a purple cloak over a short white tunic edged in red that leaves his right shoulder uncovered. Adopted in Rome by priests and the military, the tebennos evolved into the toga.
In the Bolognese tomb of the Ori a bronze tintinnabulum was found on which phases of fabric processing are depicted (carding, spinning, weaving). The most used fibers were wool and flax. The Etruscans loved intense colors and decorations, incorporated or applied.
On the feet sandals with light soles and crossed straps (there were some with wooden soles, even very high ones, metal frames and gilded laces; others, very simple, had low wooden soles, semicircle bands and a cord between the big toe and the other fingers). There were clogs, there were ankle boots of the kind we would call Polish today. The boots worn by Roman senators (calcei senatorii), with tongues and straps, which they see in many Roman statues but already in the statue of the Arringatore, derive from Etruscan footwear. However, the most typical Etruscan footwear was what the Romans called calcei repandi, curved and colored slippers, perhaps made of cloth, with the toes turned up and the back also very raised. The fact is that Etruscan shoemakers enjoyed great fame even outside the country.
Headdresses were very much in use in Etruria, more than in Greece where people went mainly with their heads uncovered. We know some of them: wide-brimmed to protect from bad weather, wide-brimmed with a conical top (something similar to a sombrero). And then caps, in wool and leather. The female conical hat called tutulus, a somewhat imprecise name, also applied to a woolen cap for greetings and to a female hairstyle (hair wrapped around a ribbon) dates back to the archaic age. For women, practically the whole range of today's hairstyles - knots, braids, chignons, curls - and the gadgets to keep them together (nets, pins and so on). Going blond hair was fine. Also from the Greeks men took the habit of shaved beard and short hair.
In war, men dressed and armed like those of other countries. Weapons were spears, javelins, long and short swords, curved sabers, daggers, axes (perhaps double-edged), maces, bows, slings. To protect themselves, helmets and shields of various shapes, cuirasses (at first in canvas with round or square bronze studs, then entirely in bronze), greaves. A crucial period in the evolution of armament was the 6th century, with the transition from a heroic type of combat technique (melee) to one involving the use of masses (oplite infantry and cavalry). The Greek models then clearly prevailed over the central European ones: conical helmet of the Ionic or Chalcidian type: round shield in bronze foil; bronze greaves to protect the legs iron scimitar broadswords.
As for the character of the Etruscans, we cannot fail to record the testimonies of the ancient writers, bearing however in mind the envy that the power and well-being of the Etruscans could arouse and the bewilderment aroused by some singularly free and unscrupulous aspects of their custom. They were considered, and probably were, cruel: but cruelty was at home in the ancient world. Certainly the fact that they practiced piracy on a large scale and very fruitfully and facts such as what we have reported, the mass stoning of the Phocians captured in the battle of Alalia, did not contribute to improving the fame of the Etruscans in this respect. Virgil mentions the plague of the king of Caeres, Mesenzio, who amused himself by tying live men face to face to corpses, leaving them to die in stench and putrefaction. In short, cruelty pushed to sadism.
In addition to being cruel, the Etruscans were accused in ancient times of being pleasure seekers, lustful, gluttonous. One of the most cited sources in this sense is Theopompus (4th century BC) - reported by Athenaeus (2nd-3rd century AD) in his Dipnosofisti - also considered in ancient times a solemn bad tongue. What seems to particularly strike him is the very free conduct of women. They took great care of their bodies, they showed off semi-naked or naked, they drank as much as they could. As for the men, they were unbridled womanizers and accepted sexual promiscuity, they didn't disdain young boys, they made love in public without thinking twice.
The philosopher Posidonius of Apamea (2nd century BC) —reported by Diodorus Siculus (1st century AD) in his Historical Library — gives a slightly more balanced judgment of the Etruscans. However, he too speaks of excessive luxury and laxity of customs: they have sumptuous tables set twice a day, they are served by swarms of slaves, some beautiful and dressed with inappropriate elegance. This weakening of customs is according to Theopompus attributable to the unlimited fertility of the Etruscan territory. It is from Posidonius that we learn of the Etruscan origin of the trumpet (called "Tyrrhenian"), of the lictorian fasces, of the ivory chair, of the toga with purple hem, and the expertise of the Etruscans in the natural sciences and in theology.
The Etruscan family did not substantially differ from the Roman and the Greek ones (if anything more similar to the Roman one due to the undisputed authority of the pater familias), except for the position of the women. It was this that amazed and scandalized (we mentioned Theopompus in this regard) the other nations. The greater importance of women can be deduced from the fact that in the inscriptions their name is always preceded by the forename and for all, male and female, not only paternity but maternity is given. What is certain is that Etruscan women were not shut up in the gynaeceum, their virtue was not measured only on modesty, on their skill in looking after the house and in spinning. They participated in all aspects of private and public life (at banquets, games, ceremonies) and actively participated in their husbands's careers. For example, Tito Livio recounts the role played by Tanaquilla, woman of noble family, in the fortune of her husband Lucumone (son of a Greek immigrant). Lucumone became king of Rome, with the name of Lucio Tarquinio Prisco. But even after the death of Tarquinius, Tanaquilla played a determining role in the election of his son-in-law, Servius Tullius, as king.
Another of these energetic and influential women, Urgulanilla, wife of a certain Plautius of whom we know nothing, frequented the court of Augustus taking advantage of her great friendship with the Empress Livia. A niece of hers married a nephew of Livia, Claudius, an unhappy young man (miisellus called him worried the emperor), considered more or less the idiot of the family. This misellus, however, put to good use the relationships he established with the Etruscan aristocracy thanks to his marriage, had access to the archives of many important families, and became a talented Etruscologist. If his history of the Etruscans had survived in twenty books - unfortunately lost - the Etruscan world would present far fewer mysteries for us.
