Aitia (Jun 2022)
Connaissance et métamorphoses de l’Iliade en Étrurie
Abstract
The author offers an itinerary through the images of the Trojan Cycle and the Iliad that arrived or were reinterpreted in Etruria between the ancient orientalizing period and the 4th century B.C.From the 7th century on, knowledge of the Greek epic (which was not limited to the reception of the Trojan cycle, but also included the Theban one or that of the Argonauts) resulted in a reappropriation and acculturation in the figurative language of iconographies, schemes and scenes applicable and transposable to local social and political realities, such as ancestor worship and the rules of devolution of royal power.The “demaratean” moment of Etruria involves a deepening of this knowledge because the litterae then introduced suggest an effective recitation of certain epic passages in princely residences. We give here an example relating to a tumulus of Tarquinia whose architectural structure includes, according to a new interpretation proposal, a metope alluding to the depas of Nestor (Iliad, XI).Knowledge of the Homeric epic world is growing in parallel with the institutional, religious and social dynamics which are gradually leading the orientalizing aristocracy to get involved in the development of cities. Contacts with the Greco-Eastern world of Asia Minor, but also with the Athens of Pisistratus then punctuate new stages whose meaning is summed up in the François crater, special commission for a king of Clusium or in the cup of Euphronios consecrated in the sanctuary of Heracles at S. Antonio (Cerveteri).The role of the Greco-Oriental world as the intermediary agent of the Trojan epic is analyzed in particular on the basis of caeretan examples, such as the painted terracotta plaques or the hydrias. We propose here a new analysis of the fragment of hydria from the Louvre which we link to the song IX of the Iliad.The transition from tyrannical-type regimes to oligarchic-type ones led to new interpretations and metamorphoses of the Iliad in the local mentality. We are witnessing a relative “privatization” of the epic image as a marker of aristocratic identity (such as the scarabs whose images circulate in a narrow circle of hetairoi); the dissemination of certain exclusive messages (such as those implied by the dedication of the cup of Nestor in the sanctuary of Diana Tifatina in Capua, by the frescoes in the tomb of Brygos I or by a rare image of the Painter of Jahn where we propose to recognize the theme of the Antiloque funeral).With the end of the 5th century, new modes of appropriation of scenes from the Trojan cycle and the Iliad appear, originated in the cultural conquests of classical Athens and determined by the struggle or the polemic against Rome. The heroes of the epic are more closely associated with the mantic speculations on saecula, on the Nekyia, and Acherontic categories. We re-examine here the implications of the representation of Homeric heroes at the Belvedere temple in Orvieto (Iliad, VII), of those of the Nekyia on the back wall of the Golini II tomb. Similarly, the toga picta of Vel Saties in the François tomb, the sarcophagus of the “Sacerdote” (Partunu Tomb in Tarquinia) and the bronzes (cista and crater) of the Curunas I tomb in Tuscania are reexamined.Knowledge of the Trojan cycle and the Iliad in Etruria is constantly calibrated on the search for a homothety of values transposable in the local society and a source of political prestige. It also becomes, from the end of the 5th century, the manifesto of a struggle which opposes “the descendants of Achilles” to “the descendants of Aeneas”.
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