To this long, sad period of national decline the later group of Etruscan tomb-paintings and reliefs on cinerary urns form a remarkable and melancholy accompaniment.

The continuity is unbroken; the new creeps in, at first, without superseding the old subjects. This is especially clear in the front room of the Tomba dell’ Orco, which dates from the latter part of the fifth century, and from which we reproduced the beautiful married couple at the symposium (figs. 28, 29); in the same sepulchral chamber we see in a corner, beneath a finely stylized vine, a terrible death demon, with large wings and a shock of wildly fluttering reddish hair, which is sharply outlined on a blue background as if it were surrounded by a halo. His beard is pointed, his nose terminates in an eagle’s beak; over his shoulder a snake rears itself, and the latchets of his shoes are snakes. His dress consists of a sleeved chiton with belt and shoulder-straps, and in his hand he carries a torch or a hammer. The eyes roll horribly in the bluish face; the colour of the skin recalls the blue-bottle fly (fig. 35).

This death demon is painted isolated, unconnected with the subjects of the rest of the paintings, and could indeed be explained away as a decorative figure, created, to be sure, by an imagination inflamed with terror. But in the third room of the same tomb, the pictures of which belong to the transition from the fifth to the fourth century, a similar demon of the nether world is already represented in action (fig. 36). The inscription gives his name, Tuchulcha; he has asses’ ears, two snakes rear themselves like horns above his brow, and with a huge snake he threatens a long-haired youth who sits sorrowful on the rock, with a himation round his loins; his name, according to the inscription, is ‘These’. He is the Greek Theseus, and the young man opposite to him is Pirithous; the motive is their sufferings in the Underworld, where they had ventured down in order to abduct Persephone. But there broods over the scene a sinister spirit which is not Greek. Thus we see behind the rock on which Theseus is seated a loathsome snake with winged head, and the remains of a blue demon with staff and chiton, a kinsman of Tuchulcha. The appearance, to the left of this weird phantasmagoria, of the peaceful sideboard with its fine metal bowls100 and with a handsome naked slave as cup-bearer in front of it, has undeniably a somewhat odd effect. This is a reminiscence of the old joyous symposium scenes, and a remarkable witness to the lack of clearness in the Etruscan mind and to the fragmentary character of Etruscan pictorial art. A similar mixture of everyday life and myth would be inconceivable in Egyptian or in Greek art.

Similarly, in the Tomba Golini, we see the side-table and the slave in immediate continuation of the picture representing the two enthroned rulers of the Underworld—Hades and Persephone (inscriptions: Eita and Phersipnai). Hades has a wolf-helmet and a snake-sceptre and is caressing Persephone, who has a bird-crowned sceptre in her left hand, and rests her right hand on the knee of Hades (see above fig. 32). Her dress, her face, and her yellow hair under the golden diadem are all splendidly painted.

In later Etruscan paintings we come upon two new groups of motives—fantastic pictures of the Underworld, and scenes from Greek mythology. Sometimes they mingle as in the Theseus and Pirithous scene and in the pictures of Hades and Persephone. Hades and Persephone recur in a painting in the third chamber of the Tomba dell’ Orco (inscription: Aita and Phersipnei), where weird mists roll about them, and a figure with three heads, Gerun, is standing before their throne (fig. 37). It is the Geryon of the Greeks, but he is not the cowherd on the far-distant island Erythra, but a warrior in complete armour who seems to be receiving the commands of Hades. Evidently the Etruscans have made him the servant and champion of Hades. Persephone has snakes in her hair and a curious collar which we meet again on the chitons of women in white Attic lekythoi of the fifth century B.C.101 Hades wears the traditional wolf-helmet. It is remarkable that a head exactly similar to that of Hades is found among Michelangelo’s sketches (fig. 38), which seems to indicate that Michelangelo somewhere in Tuscany saw and sketched an old Etruscan tomb. To be sure, the snout of the animal reminds one of a pig’s, but the long ears and the fur are those of the wolf.

In the other paintings of the Tomba dell’ Orco we meet furthermore with Agamemnon in the underworld, and in front of him Tiresias (Hinthial Teriasals it reads, i. e. the shade of Tiresias). But in the second chamber of this tomb, dating from the fourth century B.C., there is also a scene from Greek mythology which has nothing to do with death and the underworld; Odysseus blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus (inscriptions: Uthuste and Cuclu). We can here speak of a renaissance, in so far as a scene from a Greek myth formed the subject of the big picture of the beginning of the sixth century in the Tomba dei Tori (cp. fig. 2). But the aim of the later school of Etruscan painters is not so much to adorn the tomb with a beautiful decorative panel after some Greek prototype; on the contrary, they turn to the Greek myths for the sake of their subjects and pick out motives which also give expression to the curious strain of cruelty inherent in the Etruscan mind.

This is seen most clearly in the famous picture from the FranÇois tomb at Vulci, discovered in 1857 by the Italian painter Alessandro FranÇois. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek possesses a facsimile, executed by the painter Mariani after the original in the Palazzo Torlonia, whither the Prince Torlonia had it removed together with other wall-paintings from the same tomb: but the copy is too smooth to be trustworthy. Unfortunately, permission to obtain another copy from the inaccessible Palazzo is certainly not to be had. The picture (fig. 39) represents the sacrifice of Trojan captives on the grave of Patroclus. Achilles (Etruscan Achle) slaughters with his own hands the captured Trojans (Etruscan Truials); Ajax, son of Oileus (Aivas Vilatas), and Ajax, son of Telamon (Aivas Tlamunus) stand by, Agamemnon (Achmemrun) is also present, and the shade of Patroclus, thirsting for the blood (Hinthial Patrucles), as well as two truly Etruscan figures, a female winged genius of death, Vanth, and the Etruscan death-god, Charun, coloured like the blue-bottle fly, with hammer uplifted.

This subject was chosen for the sake of the slaughter.102 Sex and cruelty are, to use a chemical expression, the ‘basic group’ of the Etruscan mind. Thus the same subject is found repeatedly on Etruscan sarcophagi and vases, and in the relief on a cinerary urn, and may be compared with the most common and popular representation in Etruscan reliefs: Eteocles and Polynices killing each other. Even a motive like Ajax falling on his own sword constantly recurs in Etruscan art, as well as the barbarous subject, maschalismos (maiming of slain enemies), which is especially common on Etruscan gems.103 A characteristic feature of the picture in the FranÇois tomb is the deep wounds in the legs of the Trojan captives; they are meant to prevent attempts to escape and were evidently in keeping with Etruscan custom. For stress is laid on the cruelty of the Etruscans towards prisoners of war by Greek as well as by Latin authors; thus, as early as the fifth century, the inhabitants of Caere, after a sea victory, stoned to death their Phocaean captives104; and yet Strabo writes of the Caeretans that they were highly respected for their bravery and love of justice, and because, powerful as they were, they refrained from piracy. The Romans knew better when they personified Etruscan cruelty in Mezentius, King of Caere, who had living and dead tied together to rot side by side; nor did the Romans ever forget that the inhabitants of Tarquinii once slaughtered three hundred and seven Roman captives,105 and they took bloody revenge on them. The Greeks also knew of the massacring of prisoners of war, but they always cherished scruples about it and felt qualms, as when Themistocles was compelled to pay a tribute of slain captives to ‘Dionysius, the eater of raw flesh’.106

Before we leave the FranÇois tomb we must remind the reader of the existence of a remarkable series of pictures with subjects taken from the conflicts between Etruria and Rome in the time of the Roman kings.107