Corresponding to the lassoing of the horse in the Tomba del Morente, as a preparation for the chariot race, we find in the Tomba Golini pictures of the preparations for the banquet which is celebrated in the pictures mentioned above. In one of the pictures we see cattle, venison, and poultry hanging in the larder, in another the cooking in the kitchen itself (fig. 33); like everything else in Etruria, it is accompanied by the flute. To the left of the flute-player a woman is struggling with a sideboard piled with food; to the right a naked slave with a loin-cloth is working at a small table, using two small implements rather like plummets. Various interpretations have been advanced: that he is kneading dough, or grinding colours; the latter explanation, however, is improbable in a kitchen scene. Besides these Dennis proposes a third possibility—that he is chopping vegetables, but he dares not commit himself to a decision. The table itself, at which the slave is standing, seems to have a raised edge, and thereby recalls the elder Cato’s recipe for the preparation of cheese cakes and puffs69: ‘Take a clean table, a foot broad, surround it with an edge (balteus), and then mix honey and cheese on it.’ For puffs, directions are given to belabour the dough with two sticks or staves (rudes). After all the procedure here is somewhat similar, only that the dough is kneaded with pieces of metal and not with staves.

In these scenes from kitchen and wine-cellar, where the wood is being chopped,70 where the cooks are swinging the saucepans or working at the range,71 where young slaves are struggling with sideboards covered with drinking-vessels, the inscriptions contain the names of the slaves. Men desired to be served in the after-life by the same skilful slaves as in the present, and it was therefore the custom in later times to add the names. This reminds one of the Egyptian tomb-reliefs, where sometimes the serfs and the slave girls are designated only by the name and mark of the estate, so that in a way each of them represents one of the estates of the deceased lord, whereas in other cases they have their proper names attached and survive as personalities in the after-life.