The next stage in the development is represented by the Tomba dei Tori at Corneto, discovered in 1892 and admirably published by G. KÖrte in Antike DenkmÄler.7 The back wall of the main chamber in this tomb has two doors, and it is between these that the one large figure painting is placed, again in such a way as to suggest a tapestry stretched on the wall (fig. 2). But now the picture has a narrative content, inasmuch as a scene from the Greek cycle of myths is depicted: Achilles watches for the Trojan prince Troilus at a well. Achilles, to the left, wears a crested Corinthian helmet, sword, greaves, and red loin-cloth. Troilus is naked and only decorated with armlets and elegant shoes. He wears his hair long, according to Ionic fashion, and in his hand he carries a goad (kentron). This is, as a rule, only used when two horses are ridden, and the drawing shows traces of double contours near the head and the right leg of the horse; it is probable, therefore, that two horses were originally planned. In this picture also, the proportions of man and horse are impossible, but progress is perceptible in the monochromatic treatment of the body and legs of the horse. On the other hand, the old manner of painting in stripes or compartments is still retained in the running chimera in the pediment above; it also lingers for a very long time in the pedimental figures of the following period. The style is Ionic of the first half of the sixth century B.C. A truly Ionian monster, created under Oriental influence, is the human-faced bull in the pediment above the door, one of the two bulls from which the tomb derives its name, and which are omitted here because of the obscene groups on either side of them. Other decorative details point to Cyrene and Egypt, especially the characteristic frieze of lotuses and pomegranates, which corresponds with the Cyrenaic vases of the sixth century B.C., and the stylized flower-bed under the belly of the horse, which has its origin in Egyptian and its parallels in Phoenician and in orientalizing Greek art.8 In this tomb the painting is not executed al fresco but in a yellowish-white pigment which unfortunately scales off in large flakes.

Thus in the Tomba dei Tori, besides a decorative treatment of the wall surface with friezes, we have a main picture with a mythological subject, painted in the Greek spirit and perhaps actually executed by a Greek mural painter. We do not find even the slightest allusion to death or entombment, or the least trace of any Etruscan characteristics. The inscription in the large frieze is of interest because it shows the Etruscan language in its archaic form, with a rich vocalization which must have made it much more euphonious than the language spoken later, in the fourth or following centuries. The inscription runs: ‘arnth spuriana s[uth]il hece ce fariceka,’ and means, ‘Aruns Spurinna monumentum sepulcrale ... condidit, adornavit,’ or the like.9