Review of Ilaria Domenici, Etruscae Fabulae: Mito e Rappresentazione

Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies Volume 3 | Issue 1 Article 2 2011 Review of Ilaria Domenici, Etruscae Fabulae: Mito e Rappresentazione Alexandra A. Carpino Northern Arizona University, Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/rasenna Recommended Citation Carpino, Alexandra A. (2011) "Review of Ilaria Domenici, Etruscae Fabulae: Mito e Rappresentazione," Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 2. Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/rasenna/vol3/iss1/2 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the CES Electronic Resources at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact . Etruscae Fabulae. Mito e Rappresentazione. By Ilaria Domenici. Roma: Giorgio Bretschneider, 2009. Paperback. 315 pages, 21 figures and 6 plates. ISBN: 978-88-7689253-0. $250.00. Reviewed by ALEXANDRA A. CARPINO, Northern Arizona University The study of Etruscan art is not only compounded by the absence of surviving literature and historiography and the strong, anti-Etruscan bias in the few Greek and Romans texts whose writers comment on this culture, but also by the fact that much of the surviving material comes from tombs and sanctuaries, a great deal of which was neither systematically excavated nor carefully documented. As a result, iconographical and iconological studies are especially challenging, and sometimes it is impossible to determine the ancient meaning or significance of individual works. Both regional diversity and the Etruscans’ appropriation of foreign or outside (e.g., Greek, Roman, Italic, Near Eastern, etc.) ideas, myths, stories, and styles further complicate such studies. Does the latter, for example, indicate a lack of local creativity or do the Etruscan scenes which include and/or allude to foreign literary and/or visual sources represent indigenous stories with multiple messages and themes, ones that functioned effectively and efficiently in their various native contexts (domestic, civic, funerary, political or religious)? Since the Renaissance, numerous scholars have grappled with the issue of the Etruscans’ mythical heritage, looking for examples of etruscae fabulae, that is, myths that can be characterized as puramente etruschi (as opposed to etrusco-latini, etruscoromani, etc.) among the vast repertoire of stories found on locally-manufactured vases, mirrors, gems, sarcophagi and urns. The latest study to tackle this subject appears in Ilaria Domenici’s monograph. The author is very specific in her definition of what constitutes an Etruscan myth, defining them as those which were handed down by Greek and/or Roman written sources but which do not appear in their visual repertoire: that is, myths known through both written sources and an iconographical tradition (p. 64). For this reason, she does not consider well-known representations such as Hercle nursing at the breast of Uni, or the hero’s interaction with Mlacuch, a story that appears on a well-known relief mirror from the early fifth century BCE now in the British Museum. Instead, she focuses on the following five myths/themes, all of which appear on either engraved bronze mirrors and/or cinerary urns produced between the fourth and second centuries BCE: Tages and Vegoia (Etruscan prophets) (Chapter I), the Vibenna Brothers (national heroes) (Chapter II), the Wolf/Wolf-Man in the Well (chthonic monsters and divination) (Chapter III), Epiur and Mariś (divine children) (Chapter IV), and the Hero with the Plow (internal social conflicts) (Chapter V). The monograph also includes an introduction that presents a broad and in-depth Rasenna, Volume 3, (2011) 2 history of the study of the Etruscans’ mythology, featuring discussion and analysis of the work of Annio da Viterbo, E. Gerhard, H. Brunn and G. Körte, G.Q. Giglioli, M. Pallottino, G. Camporeale, F. H. Massa Pairault, M. Torelli, J. P. Small, and N. T. de Grummond (Chapter I, 1–58). It ends with a short conclusion (Chapter VI, 261–272), which is followed by a comprehensive bibliography and an index listing the characters and divinities discussed in the text. The few illustrations included appear at the end, in two sections: there are 21 figures, all drawings of varying quality (there is a heavy reliance, for example, on images from Brunn and Körte, and Gerhard), followed by 6 plates with 13 black and white photographs. Domenici’s main objective is to test all the hypotheses proposed in the past for the five myths/themes listed above before reconsidering them from the perspective of new iconographic and semiotic analyses so that the reasons for their use and their meanings in Etruria can be better understood. In Chapter IV, for example, she provides sound reasoning for rejecting the correlation of the scenes on a group of cinerary urns from Volterra, S. Sisto, Chiusi, and Corciano that depict a wolf or a man dressed in wolf skins in a well with the monster Olta mentioned in a passage by Pliny (p. 178).1 She also points out the flaws in some of the other interpretations of the scenes, both those that look to Greek mythology for an explanation (e.g., the myths of Thanatos and Sisyphos, Odysseus and Elpenor, and the Argonauts), and others that argue for a native interpretation (e.g., relating it to the scene on the lid of a Villanovan bronze cinerary urn from Bisenzio). In order to get a better sense of what the story might be about, Domenici instead compares the actions depicted to similar representations on engraved bronze mirrors, specifically scenes showing individuals in a well. Despite the difference in subject matter, the similarity of the visual details in these narratives leads her to suggest that the urns’ imagery conveyed a similar theme: namely, the capture of a seer, a common local subject (e.g., the story of Cacu) (pp. 182–183). Moreover, because the urns show the capture of a wolf or, in some cases, a man dressed in a wolf-skin, both of whom emerge from a well, the author prefers to read these particular representations as mantic images portraying the capture of a monster-like seer, especially since, in Etruria, prophecy was only possible when a connection with the underworld was established. Thus, to her, they correspond to the wide body of narrative material in Etruria that deals with fate and destiny (p. 188), subjects she believes are at the heart of the Etruscans’ indigenous myths. By focusing on elements such as context, action, gestures, semantic units, basic narrative sequences and variety, Domenici concludes that the Etruscans not only had indigenous myths but that these were part of a “processo di organizzazione di un’identità, . . .” which “attraverso le Given her rejection of the Olta hypothesis, it was puzzling to see the author use the label “Olta” to title the u (...truncated)