Thus we see a slow transformation taking place in the ideas which inspired the Etruscan tomb-paintings. In the Tomba del Morto and the Tomba degli Auguri, the representation of the death lament showed plainly that the main theme was the festival in honour of the dead; and the memorial feast itself should probably in most cases be recognized in the banquet accompanied by the symposium or—as in the Tomba delle Iscrizioni—the preparations for it. This conception is also clearly expressed in the sepulchral paintings of the fifth century B.C., such as the Tomba del Letto funebre, where the main picture (fig. 34) represents an enormous couch with a footstool in front72; on the tall pile of bolsters and coverlets rest two pairs of cushions, each of them supporting a green chaplet encircling a pointed cap (tutulus). Green festoons and a long red cord hang on the walls: to the right of the couch are two symposiasts and two slaves; the slaves face the big central couch, and hold one an egg, the other a loaf in their raised hands. To the left of the picture are the flute-player and the sideboard with vases. Here we get an idea how a lectisternium was spread in honour of the dead, in connexion with the symposium at a memorial feast. The dead are represented by their headgear; to that the slaves to the right are offering sacrifice, to that the flute-player to the left sounds his notes. How deeply, in this direction also, tradition influenced the Romans, and how long the practice lingered, is seen from the description which the satirist Persius gives (iii. 103) of a noble Roman lying in state:

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.