90 Dorothea Wender
to being dragged out "into the light," and he was right. Many women do object to it, even now. THE WOMEN OF ETRUR!A He did not like or admire us. But he felt it would be just and LARISSA BONFANTE WARREN expedient to give us a chance. Xenophon liked us, and felt that it was Important to keep us just the way he liked us. It is a difficult choice for many women. It is hard to give up being liked. OvER A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, J. J. Bachofen publisheQ his book on "Mother-right," and The Myth of Tanaquil,' with which, like his friend Wheaton College Nietzsche, he revolutionized the world of classical scholarship. The case was overstated - the "tyranny of women" never happened. Bachofen's "matriarchy" must be carefully distinguished from equality. Yet he understood and described a historical fact: that the status of NOTES Etruscan women, in the archaic period at least - seventh to fifth
1 century B.C. - was surprisingly high in comparison to that of' Greek In his introduction to an episode of the National Educational Television production of the "Six Wives of Henry tho VI lith." and Roman women. 2 Since then archaeology, by studying direct material evidence, 'I'he fullest treatments. I have found are in Ronald B. L"v'"' 1·nson , In D e f ense PI (c o r ato, . ambndgc, Harvard • 1953) , pp . 125 ~ 138 ( an d e.sewwre1 1 1 and such as tomb paintings and inscriptions, has told us more of the Jo-:vett s five-volume Plato, which has a delightful discussion of Plato's Etruscans' luxurious style of life, and the considerable role played by attitude. toward women, in the introduction on the (volume 111). Republi~ the women. 2 Accounts of Greek and Roman writers give further evidence Intcrestmg relevant. material can be found also in A E T 1 PI h . · · um, mo: t e Man. and hts Work (N. Y., Meridiun, 1956), pp. 277-278 (and elsewhere), for these facts - more importantly, they show how the Etruscan way of A. D. Wwspear, The Genesis of Plato's Thought (New York, Dryden, 1940), life differed from their own, and how this difference frightened them. PP· 241 ff., Rupert Lodge, The Philosophy of Plato (London RouU d They experienced it as a conflict in civilization, and expressed it in and . Kegan p au I • 1956 ), pp. 270-271, and Paul Shorey, What ' Plato e Saidge terms of relations between men and women, and different attitudes to (Chicago, U. of Chicago Press, 1933) passim But it is · · h . · surpnsmg ow sex. many ma)or books on Plato hardly consider the topic at all· fore 1 Paul F ne· dl''an d er, PI ato ( Pr.mceton, Bollingen, 1969). • xamp' e Bachofen saw the great difference between the early Roman 3 See, for example, Alfred Zimmern, T/te Greek C ommonwealth (Oxford, system of the pater familias with legal powers of life and death, and Clarendon, 1924) Part II chapters 2 and 12. 4 the type of' society implied by tales of the Etruscan queens. I would After I wrote ·this I discovered that Warner File (The Platon: Legend, like to suggest that Rome's contact with the civilization which con Now York, S~ribners, 1934, p. 178) had used precisely the SUI~: example fronted her across the Tiber, from whom she took so much external t~ make prec~scly Lhe same point. Generally, I find Fite's tone unfair and .h1s scholo.rship deplorable . culture - letters, the arts, symbols of royalty, so that eventually For e.xample at the end ~f Xenophon 's Symposium, a pair of dancers (boy Rome looked like an Etruscan city too - represented Rome's first and girl) portray the passwnate love of Dionysus and Ariadne so eff t' 1 that ''th · d ec Ive y "cultural shock." Making her conscious of her own "moral" identity e u_nmarne spectators vowed that they would marry, and the Rome never gave up her language, religion or customs - it perhaps a lready married mounted their horses and galloped home to their wives "
ARETHUSA VoL. 6 (1973) 1. Larissa Bon(ante Warren The Women of Etruria 93
Rome. Literary evidence, as we shall see, speaks of the freedom temporary Greek vase paintings of symposia which served as models and power of Etruscan women. How much of this is true? And how are for pictures of Etruscan banquets, wives are conspicuous by their the wealth and women's freedom connected? absence.' Men recline with men, or with pretty flute girls whose Roman sources, chief among them Livy, mostly belong to the nakedness shows them to be slave girls, not respectable women. Augustan period, which had its own concerns and ideals,' and for A sensational recent discovery, the painted tomb from Paestum whom Etruscan contacts with early Rome lay in a distant past, re with scenes from a symposium, imitating Etruscan tomb paintings in created rather than remembered. For the facts of the archaic period technique, but with Greek subject matter, points out this contrast. The and contemporary reactions we must start with the Greeks. South Italian scene shows men courting a handsome young boy wrth Differences between Etruscan and Greek women were striking. bright red lips and cheeks. No women appear, not even as dancers Theopompus, the Greek historian of the fourth century B.C., was or attendants. In striking contrast, Etruscan art seems to show a world startled by them, and drew the worst possible conclusion from of married couples: see for example the justly famous and aptly named what he saw and heard about Etruscan women.' According to his report, sarcophagus of the Bride and Groom - "Sposi" is a better word - in they took great care of their bodies, often exercising in the nude with the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome.' men and with each other; it was not considered shameful for women to To Theopompus, seeing husbands and wives so unexpectedly show themselves naked. They were very beautiful. At dinner, he tells together must have seemed a serious breach of culture and good taste, us, they reclined publicly with men other than their husbands. They leading him to draw further conclusions of lasciviousness. He 1magmes even took part in the toasting - traditionally reserved for men and that women joined men in another traditionally male place, the gym regulated by strict formalities at Greek symposia. Etruscan women nasium, where Greek men, by definition, exercised naked. That women liked to drink (so, by the way, did Greek women, according to Aris exercised together with men in the nude, in either Athens or in any tophanes and others; this is the most familiar accusation of immorality). Etruscan city, is patently untrue. Etruscan women did join men pub 9 Most shocking of all, they raised all their children, according to licly in watching sports, a custom most un-Greek - they are so repre Theopompus, whether or not they knew who the fathers were. sented on funerary paintings and reliefs.'' They apparently were not, Theopompus' mistmderstanding of the real situation is compara ... however, particularly fond of such strenuous exercise as Spartan ble to the misconceptions regarding Swedish girls current among men women practiced; nor do they ever appear naked. As for exercising in in Italy today. His account of Etruscan society, with what seems to the nude, even Etruscan men normally wore shorts, heroic nudity being us today to be sexual freedom for women - incomprehensible, accord a peculiarly Greek invention in the ancient Mediterranean world. It was ing to Greek standards, as anything other than immorality -resembles practiced by Greeks alone - and even then only after Homeric times - Herodotus' description of the Lydians (!, 93-94), among whom, we are constituting, a~ much as language did, the chief distinction between told, women give themselves up to prostitution before marriage, Even Greeks and barbarians, including Etruscans.'' more striking is the resemblance to the account Herodotus gives of the Other observations of Theopompus, after due allowance has Lycians, whose family structure was different from that of the Greeks. been made for his difficulty in understanding something foreigu to him There, descent was reckoned through the female line, the matronymic and threatening, are supported by evidence. Etruscan funerary inscrip took the place of the patronymic, and free women married to slaves tions identifying the deceased by means of the matronymic as well as could pass their status on to their children.' the patronymic show the greater legal and social importance of women, Yet, although Theopompus' account distorts the truth, much of though they deny, at the same time, Bachofen's theory of the survival 12 what he says is in fact confirmed by archaeological evidence. He is ·., 't of a real matriarchy in the sense of rule by women. Then, too, If right in saying that women reclined at dinner together with men. We Etruscan women, unlike Greek women - but like Herodotus' Lycian see them so on tomb paintings at Tarquinia.6 We are not sensitive, women _ had the right to raise their children without their husbands' however, to the shock and distaste this information produced in a formal recognition - this would probably be connected with their right Greek of Theopompus' time. While it is normal in Etruscan art to see to own property - Theopompus would translate this situation, in terms women reclining together with men on banquet couches, on the con .. of Greek law, as ignorance of the father's identity, or illegitimacy. 94 Larissa Bonfante Warren The Women of Etruria 95
Furthermore, if Theopompus was correct in stating that Etruscans lady reclining on her banquet couch. The contest takes place when - men and women, one would suppose - raised all their children this the young Etruscan princes, excited by wine during a pause between might mem1 that they did not need or depend on infanticide, child ex battles, in wartime leisure in their camp come to talk of women and posure, as a population control. Perhaps, then, their greater wealth boast about their wives. To prove their women's worth they ride into allowed them more freedom in this respect, unlike the Greeks, who the night "to find Lucretia - quite unlike the king's daughters-in-law were faced with the constm1t threat of overpopulation and poverty." they had seen at a luxurious dinner party, passing the time with others . . Proof of the high status of Etruscan women is also their literacy, of their set - seated hard at work at her spinning, though it was very Jmplwd by the many decorated bronze mirrors, regularly inscribed with late. She was surrounded by her servants, all of them working well names of divinities and mythological figures, buried with them in into the night."" It is a Roman contest, and Lucretia wins it. The cislae or toilet boxes after death." Women's graves were marked, like contrast is obvious. Lucretia is the mater familias seated at her work, those of men, with symbols of boxes or houses - instead of the phallos caring for home and household, surrounded by the Roman familia, her of the men - at Etruscan Cerveteri; and in the rock-cut tombs their slaves. The Etruscan princesses recline, "passing the time away," death beds are more luxurious than the men's.15 in drinking and sophisticated frivolity in. the company of other rich In dress, too, there was less distinction between men and women. aristocrats, as young and charming as those eternalized in the tomb An outsider could easily think that Etruscan women dressed like men. paintings of Tarquinia and slandered by Theopompus. A serious Roman In the late sixth century, for example, they wore mantles and high matron, the moral superior of an Etruscan princess, precipitated the shoes elsewhere reserved for men and later used by Romans as special fall of the dynasty of-the Tarquins. symbols of citizenship and rank." All these marks of equality shocked The indulgence of Etruscan fathers towards their sons is simi the Greeks, who took them as signs of immorality. larly contrasted, in Livy's pages, with the strict, heroic rule of the Roman sources of a much later period, Livy and other writers of Roman pater {ami lias. The permissive Tarquins, for example, are thus the period of Augustus, show a similar picture of Etruscan women _ felt to be diminished as men. There is a nice exchange in which and condemn it. In their characterization of Lucretia as the model Tarquin justifies his lateness with the excuse that he had been judging Roman.wife, they contrast her to the wives of the Etruscan Tarquins." a case between father and son - evidently appealing to the Roman But the Roman woman of the sixth century played a far more important sentiment of pietas. The retort, prompt and contemptuous, is that there part than her Greek contemporaries." A Greek wife of the classical peri was nothing to judge - the son must obey the father, or pay for it." od could never properly have been allowed to appear in such a story. Ac According to Roman tradition, too, each of the last three (Etrus cordmg to Greek sources it was the tyrant's lust, not for a woman, but can) kings of Rome owed his throne to an Etruscan woman. Tanaquil for a beautiful Athenian boy, Harmodius, that precipitated the Tyran ' and Tullia, the wives and daughters of Etruscan kings in the first nicides' action in the Athens of' 514 B.C." It would be interesting to \ book of Livy's history of Rome, rank among the great queens of antiqui study further the contrasting treatment of this particular motif of ty; it is not the least part of their influence that they inspired Bacho Athenian and Roman history. What is the relation between sex and fen's work. Their characterization owes something to Cleopatra, the revolution, rape and violence and moral indignation? The victim's honor Oriental queen whom Livy in his own time had seen hated, feared and is attacked, Athenian lover, or Roman father and husband defend it admired in Rome, and something also to Roman Republican desire to a private feud becomes public and political; and the city gains it~ downgrade the kings by exalting their queens." Even so, they are freedom. Etruscan, and many details fit into a tradition we can recognize.
In the Roman story a moral contest takes place between Lucretia I The individual names of Etruscan women indicate also their and the 8ti'Uscan princesses. It is pictured visually in Livy's vivid different legal and social status. Etruscan inscriptions confirm Livy's prose, as the_ writer contrasts two artistic motifs, one from Greek and simple use of the name Tanaquil without reference to father or husband. Roman funerary stelai and the other known to us from paintings of In contrast, a Roman woman bore no name of her own. 24 She was known Etmscan tombs. The first shmvs the classical matron seated .on a first as her father's daughter and later as her husband's wife, when chair, working at her wool; 20 the second, as we saw, the Etruscan she came into his manus, or legal power; hence the legal formula of 96 Larissa Bon{ante Warren The Women of Etruria 97
marriage, ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia. Augustus, Julius Caesar by adoption, But Etruscan art, with its few scenes of men making love together, had a daughter named Julia, roughly "Julius' daughter." Lucretia I or with prostitutes or naked women - there are the two strange little meant the daughter of Lucretius. This system is not unlike the English erotic scenes in the Tomba dei Tori, one homosexual, the other hetero and American custom of covering up a married woman's maiden name sexual - does not confirm Theopompus' emphasis on orgies or homo with the full name of her husband in formal address, a custom original sexuality, a frequent literary motif." (Compare the prominent place ly designed to protect the privacy of the woman's first name, a sign Herodotus gives to prostitutes in his description of the Lydians.) of intimacy to be kept from any but close friends and relations." In Actually the Etruscan paintings, with their representation of wives, the instance of Servius Tullius the Etruscan king, a naturalized suggest nothing illicit, rather simple domestic scenes. After dinner, Roman in the tradition, Livy calls his daughters in Roman fashion Theopompus says, prostitutes and young boys and "even wives" enter, Tullia (Maior and Minor)." In other ways quite Etruscan, actual!; and the lights are left on. Again his wonder points to different customs each daughter would have borne her own name, unhappily unrecorded. and a stricter moral code sharply distinguishing wives from prostitutes, The story of all these Etruscan queens seems to preserve genu as in Victorian days, when the lights were not left burning (Horace, ine Etruscan elements. Married to Lucumo Tarquinius, son of a Greek Odes, 3, 6, 28). Another passage of Theopompus which has the ring of emigre, Tanaquil urged her husband to move from Tarquinia to Rome. truth also seems to reflect this surprise - almost nostalgia - for a An expanding city - as she saw - would afford his talents larger wonderful simplicity of manners. "And so far are they from regarding scope. At his side in the carriage approaching Rome, she foresees, in it as a disgrace that they actually say, when the master of the house the tradition of the Etrusca disciplina of augury, his royal destiny. is making love, and.someone asks for him, that he is involved in such Together they work toward his election as king. In time she chooses and such, shamelessly announcing what he is doing. " 31 the heir to the throne, Servius Tullius, her son-in-law." Etruscan luxury, proverbial in Greek and Roman eyes, accom The story of Tullia, the younger daughter of Servius Tullius, panies all such scenes, in Theopompus, in Livy, and in art. Rich indicates the energetic Tanaquil was the rule rather than the exception. gold treasures from Cerveteri are proof of the actual wealth as well Married, and notoriously mismatched, to the less ambitious of two as the love of ostentation of the South Etruscan cities." Wealth was young Tarquins, Tullia arranges to marry instead Lucius Tarquinius, used for private luxury. Recent excavations show private houses of the her brother-in-law. She characteristically despises her less forceful archaic period as richly decorated as temples, a thing unheard of in sister for her lack of muliebris audacia (a term so un-Roman it was Greece in the fifth century or in Rome in early times." The Etruscans rejected by several editors of Livy's text!"), finally realizes the loved Greek luxury. There are more Greek vases from the sixth century wished-for union through the double murder of the weaker pair, and in Etruria than in Greece. So, too, rich Americans bought up the art of pushes Lucius Tarquin into taking over the throne. She is as anxious Europe. to have this testimonial of her power as Tarquin, later, is to have his We already remarked, in connection with children, the relation name and reign remembered by the great temple of Jupiter Capitoline. between this wealth and the status of women. Wealth and luxury also But as it turns out, Tullia's crime becomes her monumentum, memori apparently affected the place of slaves. Etruscans are so rich, says alized by the Sceleratus Vicus, where she drove her chariot over her Posidonius, that in Etruria slaves dress more luxuriously than their father's body." Freedom of action has turned to crime, justifying, status warrants. 34 Conspicuous consumption for private rather than perhaps, Roman order. Were the Roman historians saying that freedom religious use fits in with the love of pleasure we see in archaic had turned to license, which had to be suppressed? Etruscan art and sense through Theopompus' anxious condemnation. Another question, previously implied but not yet asked directly, In the archaic period, then, the Etruscans' wealth and freedom is whether we can connect the earlier freedom of action for women brought home to the Romans their first experience of civilization and with the ease reflected in the art of the archaic period in Etruria, so threatened their own vastly different culture, rigorous country life and full of movement for all its occasional awkwardness. At what point Puritanical ideals. Rome herself looked like an Etruscan city. For do literary tradition and art agree? Theopompus' account of the daily centuries after the Etruscan monarchy, the art of Rome was still life of the Etruscans includes tales of orgies and homosexual lov~. nearly all Etruscan. The great temple of Jupiter Capitoline and in- Larissa Bon{ante Warren The Women of Etruria 99 numerable statues of the gods of terracotta and bronze, all in Etruscan . . . . • s ue " MEFR 73 11961) 138-160; style, served to remind the Romans of the artistic superiority of their et masculines dans la CIVIhzat~on ctrut .q L• 'tte'raire 7 (1955) 56-64; and I Tl'ns " L Informa ~on ~ "'l'ite-Livc et es arqu • . "" " G mnasium 71 (1964) rich neighbors. The Etruscans had represented the first challenge to A J Pfiffi "Zur SittengeschLChte der Etruskcr, y . . the Romans, forcing them to assert themselves to defend their be 17· 36• Provideg, full references, as we II as the most important discussiOnPf'ff' R • . · d · th present essay. I Ig liefs. In the confrontation between two such different societies, the and interpretation of the matenal treate m e_ J· d in the lndoREuroR poorer one, with its belief in its own moral superiority, won. " · " of the Etruscans, un IS an stresses tlhde o/o;:~gnsne:se:th century in the Mediterranean. Cf. Altheim, Etruscan art from the fourth century on perhaps reflects some pean wor of the psychological results of the Roman conquest of Etruria. At this op. cit., 50..64. . . reca su Roma arcaica. 3 D. Musti, Tendenze ~ell_a. std~~~~ra[w rom~:;.e;ni Urbinati di Cultura point in their history, the cruelty so often popularly attributed to the Studi su Livia e DLDmgl lcarnasso. - 37 Etruscans first appeared. At Tarquinia and Orvieto the world of the Classica 10 (1970), especially 30- · . h' 12 517 D- 518 B. Fr. dead replaces the world of the living in the Tomba dell 'Orco and the 4 'l'hcopompus, quoted in Athenaeus, D~:nosop zsta=~d ~i{th Century Athens Tomba Golini, where the Etruscan Hades and Persephone reign. The Gr. Hist. 2, fr. 204. W. R. Connor, eopompus !Washington 1968). . . . os style changes as well. A brooding quality and a melancholy never , d 1 173 H urgon 1 a vze quot1dzenne 107• 1 · 6 Hero otus • · • h' T b of the Leopards, M. Pallottino, there before appear. Yet the customs of the living still continue be E Tomb of Hunhng~ of F~IS Ing, om . yond death: clothes, jewelry, household furniture, whole kitchen .,.g. Paintin (Geneva 1951) pl. 67f., pis. on 67-71; an~ passtm. staffs. Here the woman's place has definitely changed. No longer does S.Etruscan de Martlms, . . Lag tmo. l ogta. d e l banchetto nell'arte etrusca arcazca (Rome she lie next to her husband, but sits by him primly in Roman style as 35 7 01961), B ndel "The ·Scope and Temperamen t o f E ro Ccl Art in the GreeaR he reclines. The moralists have won. Now Roman citizens, the R• re W rl~ " Studies in Erotic Art