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Achilles' sacrifice of the 12 Trojan prisoners at the funeral of Patroclus. Part of a wall painting in the Francois Tomb, Vulci, 350-330 BC. Museo Torlonia, Rome.
As the Etruscan Underworld demons Vance and Charun stand by to conduct the spirits of the dead into Hades, Achilles cuts the throats of his 12 Trojan prisoners as a blood sacrifice to the spirit of his friend Patroclus, who was killed in battle by the Trojan prince Hector. The shadowy ghost of Patroclus looks on approvingly at far left. The Greeks, and maybe the Etruscans, too, believed that though the souls of the dead in Hades were no longer made of real flesh and blood, they could feel, breathe and speak if they were revived by drinking blood; they were, in effect, ghostly vampires, who could revive only when they were fed real blood from the living. (See my article and picture on Odysseus' fear of his dead family members' ghosts when he visits them in Hades, HERE)
What these two Etruscan demons are watching is a scene from Homer's Iliad, chapter 27. There Achilles mourns beside the corpse of his beloved friend, and promises to sacrifice his twelve Trojan prisoners in Patroclus' honor. Achilles throws Hector's mangled, bleeding body face down in the dirt before the body of Patroclus. Still covered with Patroclus' blood, he joins a victory feast to celebrate his defeat of Hector. Then he lies down by the sea, to sleep and dream. As soon as he falls asleep, the ghost of Patroclus appears to him and begs Achilles to burn his body quickly, because his spirit can't be accepted into the underworld until his body has been disposed of. Knowing that Achilles will soon die too, Patroclus asks that their bones and ashes be mingled together in a single urn so they can be together in death as they were in life. Achilles tries to embrace the ghost, but his hands pass through it. With a shriek, it vanishes, and Achilles wakes up. It is morning.
That day, the Achaians make a funeral pyre for Patroclus. Standing beside it, Achilles cuts off a lock of hair he had planned to give to the River Spercheios, in his homeland, on his return. Now, knowing he'e not going home, he places the lock in the hand of his dead friend. Achilles then slaughters a great many animals on the pyre. And to them he adds his twelve Trojan prisoners. Here is how Homer tells it:
"King Agamemnon hearing this, promptly dismissed the men to their well-crafted ships, though the chief mourners remained, and piling up the wood to make the pyre a hundred feet square, sad at heart they placed the corpse on top. They flayed and dressed numerous fine sheep and sleek shambling cattle before the pyre, and noble Achilles took fat from them all and wrapped the corpse in it, head to foot, and piled the flayed carcasses around. Then he leant two-handled jars of oil and honey against the bier, and groaning aloud swiftly threw the bodies of four proud horses on the pyre. Of the nine dogs Patroclus fed beneath his table, Achilles cut the throats of two and threw their bodies on the pyre. Then he completed the grim task he had in mind, killing twelve noble sons of the brave Trojans with his bronze blade, and setting the pyre alight so the pitiless flames would spread. Then he gave a groan, and called his dear friend by name: ‘All hail to you, Patroclus, though in the House of Hades. See how I keep the promises I made. Twelve noble sons of brave Trojans, the fire will devour with you. But the dogs, not the flames, shall feed on Hector, son of Priam.’ " (Homer's Iliad, Book 23, lines translated by A.S.Kline)
I'm not too happy with this old translation, though. For "the grim task he had in mind" somewhat obscures Homer's disapproval, even condemnation, of Achilles' sacrifice of those 12 Trojan prisoners in line 176: "kaka de phrase medeto erga," he says: "He schemed evil deeds in his mind." And Plato so hated Achilles' sacrifice of his prisoners he claimed it was a forgery: that somebody else must have written it.
Yet the Etruscans loved this part of the story, for they themselves had elaborate funerals, especially after battles. Even when the deceased had not died in battle, but of natural causes or old age, they loved to give him a military funeral, with funeral games in honor of the dead, just as Achilles did for the funeral of Patroclus. At one point, before the funeral pyre of the deceased, those games included hand-to-hand combat between two fighters, possibly armed, and possibly in a fight to the death. Some believe these funeral games were adopted by the Romans, too, and eventually morphed into the spectacles of the gladiatorial combats in arenas like the Colosseum.
Achilles' sacrifices, including his 12 Trojan prisoners, should please Patroclus, whose spirit, ghost or "shade" is seen watching it all here beneath the protective wing of Vanth, the more or less kindly female demon so often present in Etruscan tomb paintings to help smooth one's transition from this world into the next. Here she seems to hold her hand up to calm or reassure the Trojan warrior about to get his throat cut by Achilles that she will safely guide him into Hades. Facing Vanth is Charun, the blue-skinned demon who helps guide the dead into Hades - but more fiercely, it seems, whether one views the tool he wields as a massive gate key like those used by ancient town watchmen and gate-keepers, or as the stone hammer an executioner might use to deliver the coup de grace to a condemned man. Some say that in the gladiatorial combats of the Romans, a fellow called "Dispater" but costumed as Charun would run out into the arena to deliver just such a hammer blow to ensure the loser was truly dead before they carted off his body and dumped it in the Tiber. A gentler, kinder version of this tradition is still observed in Rome at the death of a pope, when his chamberlain comes in to tap his forehead with a small silver hammer to make sure he's truly dead. So even Charun's hammer blow could be seen as a mercy stroke, to ensure that the deceased are truly dead?
THE RESCUE OF THE ETRUSCAN PRISONERS, Francois Tomb, Vulci, 350-330 BC
On the walls of this same tomb, not far from the scene of Achilles cutting the throats of the 12 Trojan prisoners, is this painting of warring Etruscans killing each other as one tribe of Etruscans rescues their friends from other tribes holding them prisoner.
The Rescue of the Prisoners, a fresco in the Francois Tomb at Vulci.
From L to R: Caile Vibenna rescued by Mastarna, Larth Ultes stabbing Laris Papathnas Velznach, Rasce killing Pesna Arcmanas Svetimach, Venthikau and Aule Vibenna (Vipinas) killing Venthi Cauplsachs. At right: Marce Camitlnas being killed by Cnaeve Tarchunies Rumach
A modern painter's copy and reconstruction of the ancient fresco.
The attacking rescue party are all shown bearded and naked, except for the swordsman in the short tunic, while the prison guards are still in their bed sheets or blankets, except for the young red-headed lad at right (Marce Camitinas?), in T-shirt and shorts, who was supposedly on guard-duty that night and falls on his shield as his throat is cut.. The prisoner Caile Vibenna at left is getting his handcuffs cut off by Mastarna, who led the rescue raid, while the two guards in the center (on the right, in this modern illustration), are getting their throats cut.
As we can see from the two scabbards around his chest, Mastarna (or Macstrna, his Etruscan name) brought two swords, one for himself, and one to give to Caile Vibenna. Mastama is actually a Roman spelling of his name. He was even identified by the emperor Claudius, a student of Etruscan culture, as Servius Tulius, the sixth king of Rome! So what we are seeing here in this Etruscan tomb painting is probably a scene of Etruscans fighting Etruscans, just as the Homeric war between the Achaeans and the Trojans was likely a war of Greeks vs. Greeks? There was another fresco in this tomb of just such a war: the fight to the death between the brothers Polyneices ("Much Strife") and Eteocles - leaders of the opposing sides in the war that Aeschylus wrote about in his tragedies "Antigone" and "The Seven Against Thebes." Some scholars believe that these tomb paintings commemorate a victory by the Etruscan city-state of Vulci over the combined allies of such Etruscan states as Sovana and Volsinii.*
As for fighting between the Etruscans and the Romans in this period, much of it was also for control of land, and its resources, such as a Roman salt mine (a precious commodity in ancient times), which the Etruscans grabbed by the sackful, and the Romans punished by sacking their city. As in modern wars, atrocities were committed on both sides. In 354 BC the Romans forced an Etruscan army from Tarquinia to surrender after killing a large number of them in battle. The prisoners they took were all put to the sword -- all but 358 nobles. who were dragged to Rome, where they were scourged [lashed with barbed whips; cf. the Romans' scourging of Jesus on the way to his crucifixion] and then beheaded in the Forum. So wrote the Roman historian Livy, citing earlier writers, though a later historian, Diodorus Siculus, claimed that 260, not 358, Etruscans were executed in the Forum. Whatever the number. this was retribution for the Etruscans' immolating Romans four years earlier, in 358 BC - probably not by burning them alive, but by killing them first - cutting their throats, perhaps, as Achilles is shown doing to the Trojan prisoners in the Francois tomb fresco?
LEFT A bronze Etruscan mirror back engraved with a scene of the legendary Etruscan brothers Avle and Caile Vipinas (Roman writers called them Aulus and Caelius Vibenna) being ambushed and captured by armed soldiers while engaged in the peaceful pursuits of literature and music. Aule is shown playing the lyre, while Caile is reading or writing a poem on a tablet. A scene sure to please the lady whose husband or lover gave her this mirror.RIGHT Besides bronze hand mirrors, Etruscan ladies had round bronze canisters, called "cistas," to keep cosmetics and jewelry in. This photo of one such cista next to the back of a lady's bronze hand mirror in the British Museum is not much to look at, and the handle on the lid, formed from bronze figurines joined in a wrestling pose, was a stock item for such cistas, and has no relation to the scene below, which is yet another version of Achilles sacrificing his Trojan prisoners.
Unlike the fresco painter and mirror engraver, this cista engraver may not have labelled his figures. Yet we can see which of the men are supposed to be seen as "Greeks" and which as "Trojans." You can surely identify the armed goddess on the right, whom the Etruscans called "Menvra." The frightful head carved on her breastplate appears again on the shield on the wall behind the soldiers on the left. But who is the woman on the left? Once again, the underworld Etruscan demoness Vanth, waiting to lead the dead soldiers' souls into Hades? In between the two goddesses Achilles slits the throat of one prisoner while Ajax leads a tied-up queue of others, with their legs cut and bleeding so they cannot run away
An odd scene, you might think, to decorate a woman's bedroom chest. Yet you can bet she admired all those naked men. Roman matrons, though, would have blushed at such a scene. Proper Romans, who were shocked by Etruscan wives reclining and feasting in public with their husbands, would have frowned on all this nudity.
... Dionysia Xanthippos is a leader of ETRURIA group at AncientWorlds
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* Postscript: Though the Etruscan artist or his masters had used Etruscan spellings for the names of the guards, I had originally assumed, perhaps wrongly, they were nevertheless Romans. But a few days after writing this article I found this sentence on the Francois fresco: "The {Etruscan] names of the enemies suggest that they may be a force of allies from different Etruscan cities, including Volsinii (= Orvieto) and nearby Sovana." (Nancy Thomson de Grummond, "Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend, p. 176. See also Jane DeRose Evans, "The Art of Persuasion: Political Propaganda from Aeneas to Brutus," p. 14,) The Francois tomb had a fresco of a Greek myth about that fratricide, too, with the brothers Polyneices ("Much Strife") and Eteocles killing each other - a story that was dramatized by Aeschylus in his tragedies about "Antigone" and "The Seven Against Thebes." The Etruscan city-states were continually fighting each other as well as the Romans, and their shifting alliances were a major reason why the Romans were finally able to defeat them.
http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/1311275
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