Les temps de la prophétie : Lycophron et le décor de la tombe François

Abstract

Lycophron’s Alexandra is often quoted as a literary source in the modern scholarship on the mythical origins of Etruria. The poem indeed refers to several mythological traditions that testify the curiosity that Lycophron had for Etruscan history. Moreover, certain visual images found in Etruscan sites provide unexpected parallels for the poem. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible causes and meaning of these similitudes between poem and images. One of the possible answers may be sought in a close examination of the ideological use of images by the Etruscan elites of the Early Hellenistic period. A case study will be provided by the confrontation between the poem and a complex monument: the François Tomb in Vulci, which is one of the foremost examples of an elite and learned use of iconographical traditions.

Keywords

• Lycophron
• Alexandra
• Etruria
• François Tomb
• Vulci
• seers