Tarquinia

Religion and the art of living

The World Behind the Painted Tombs: Faith, Society, and the Etruscan Sense of the Afterlife

Tarquinia, the religious capital of Etruria

According to Roman tradition, it was in the fields around Tarquinia that Etruscan discipline was born, the complex system of beliefs and divinatory practices that would guide the religious and political life of all Etruria, and later Rome as well. Myth has it that a farmer named Tarchon, considered the legendary founder of the city, was plowing a field when he saw a clod of earth rise up and take the form of a boy with the face of a child but the wisdom of an old man: it was Tages, a revealed deity, who taught the Etruscans the art of interpreting the will of the gods. His teachings were collected in the Libri Tagetici—divided into books on the examination of the entrails of sacrificed animals, the interpretation of lightning bolts, and rituals—and were preserved, according to ancient sources, by a college of sixty haruspices active in Tarquinia.

This religious vocation explains why the Romans themselves, in historical times, continued to turn to Etruscan priests—the haruspices—to interpret omens and prodigies even after the conquest of Etruria: one of the Etruscan cultural legacies that survived longest in Roman civilization.

Tombs as a window into everyday life

The painted tombs of Tarquinia today constitute an invaluable source for reconstructing the customs and traditions of Etruscan society, precisely because the patrons wanted to depict the most significant moments of real life on the walls of their otherworldly homes: banquets enlivened by music and dance, athletic games, hunts, and funeral ceremonies. Aristocratic families entrusted these decorative cycles to professional painters, often of Greek or Eastern origin, who introduced techniques and stylistic models from the Eastern Mediterranean to Etruria.

The oldest scenes, dating back to the 6th century BC, already show a full adherence to Greco-Oriental figurative models: the famous Tomb of the Bulls, for example, even depicts an episode from Greek myth, Achilles' ambush of Troilus, alongside depictions of banquets and games. What clearly emerges from these paintings is the desire to celebrate earthly life in all its vitality: historians have observed how the archaic Etruscans chose to respond to the fear of death with a joyful aesthetic, almost as if the color and movement painted on the walls could guarantee a form of survival.

An afterlife that changes face

Over the centuries, and particularly from the 4th century BC onward, the painted images in the tombs of Tarquinia gradually changed in atmosphere. Joyous banquet scenes were increasingly accompanied by depictions of infernal demons, such as Charun, a sort of Etruscan Charon armed with a heavy hammer, or Vanth, a winged figure who accompanies and watches over the souls of the deceased on their journey to the afterlife. The Tomb of Orcus also features Tuchulcha, a demon with the face of a bird of prey surrounded by serpents: the afterlife is no longer depicted as a welcoming home, but as a distant and feared destination, reached at the end of a strenuous journey.

Scholars link this shift in religious sensibility to the changing political fortunes of Etruria: precisely in these centuries the Etruscan cities, one after the other, progressively lost their independence under the pressure of Rome, until the definitive conquest completed during the 3rd century BC. The painted tombs of Tarquinia thus also became, over time, an indirect document of the crisis of an entire world: a mirror of the anxieties of a civilization that saw the end of its autonomy approaching.

Sources used for this study

• Treccani — Italian Encyclopedia, "Funerary Painting in Tarquinia," History of European Civilization edited by Umberto Eco — treccani.it
• Treccani — "Pre-Roman Italy. Etruscan Sites: Tarquinia," The World of Archaeology — treccani.it
• Treccani — entry for "Aruspicina" — treccani.it/enciclopedia/aruspicina
• Wikipedia (IT) — entry on "Etruscan mythology" (section on the underworld deities: Charun, Vanth, Tuchulcha)
• World History Encyclopedia (Italian edition) — "The Etruscan Religion" — worldhistory.org
• Eroica Fenice — "Haruspicy, what is this Etruscan discipline of divination?" — eroicafenice.com
• StudiaStoria.it — "The Religion of the Etruscans: Cult of the Dead and Haruspices" — studiastoria.it