The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia

  These comments might be easily dismissed as another example of ancient historians’ fantasies about mysterious pre-Greek peoples. Yet the myths can be linked to reality. A gravestone discovered at Kaminia on Lemnos, and thought to date from around 515 BC, has a crude portrayal of a warrior carrying a spear and shield, accompanied by an extensive inscription in the Greek alphabet, but in a non-Greek language. Since a few other fragmentary inscriptions have also been found in the same language, the gravestone is evidently a record of the language spoken on Lemnos when the island was still inhabited by Thucydides’ ‘Tyrsenians’. This language was similar to, but not identical with, that of Etruscan inscriptions from far away in central Italy.18 The Kaminia stone was erected in memory of Holaies the Phokaian (Phokiasale), who occupied high office and who died at the age of forty (some argue sixty). Holaies apparently served as a mercenary in Phokaia, on the Ionian coast, and in other lands around the Aegean.19 But the Tyrsenians of the Aegean were in all respects, apart from language and love of piracy, unlike the Etruscans. Lemnos did not imitate Etruria in its art and crafts; but for the comments by classical historians and but for the inscriptions, there would be no suggestion that the inhabitants were linked to the Etruscans. There are no shards of Etruscan pottery, no signs of a direct link between these lands speaking similar tongues.20 A seventh-century temple site outside Myrina (now somewhat oddly incorporated in a holiday hotel) consists of a maze of passages and rooms, and recalls nothing obvious in either Greece or Italy. Thus the Tyrsenians of the Aegean consisted of people who spoke a similar language to Etruscan, and probably shared their love of piracy, but retained a very conservative culture while, as will be seen, the Tyrsenians of Italy transformed Etruria into the seat of a pioneering civilization.

  The Greeks might try to pigeon-hole each ethnic group they encountered, drawing sharp lines between them, but the reality was that places like Lemnos and Athos were the points where old and new cultures met. Sometimes ancient customs and even languages lingered in such places. The coasts and islands of the Mediterranean did not foster uniformity. Pockets of different peoples lived scattered around the islands and shores of the Mediterranean then and for millennia afterwards. The rigid compartmentalization of the peoples of the Mediterranean by Greek writers distorted the reality of what was there.

  III

  To move from conservative Lemnos to Tarquinia, in southern Etruria, is to enter a different world, one that was undergoing startling changes, the result of powerful impulses that had arrived from across the Mediterranean. This great transformation began as early as the tenth century; a sophisticated culture spread inland from the coast of western Italy, because the areas closest to the Mediterranean were the first to come into close contact with the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean. First of all, a series of village communities staked out land for huts on the top of the hill that would later be occupied by the great city known to the Romans as Tarquinii.21 The plural form of this name, and that of other Etruscan city names (Veii, Volsinii, Vulci, Volaterrae), perhaps suggests a memory of these multiple origins. The pre-urban culture that came into existence in these villages is known as ‘Villanovan’, as entirely modern a name as it sounds: Villanova is a suburb of Bologna where the distinctive features of this culture were first recognized by archaeologists who excavated its rich cremation burials. Villanovan culture emerged simultaneously by the sea in southern Etruria, gradually spreading north into what is now Tuscany, and across the Apennines in Bologna. However, it was in the maritime cities of Etruria that the great leap towards urban civilization first occurred: these were rich cities, well organized, with literate elites, handsome temples and skilled craftsmen. Etruscan civilization spread inland from the coastal cities, and later centres such as Perugia emerged only as the inhabitants of the interior were gradually Etruscanized.22 In that sense the Etruscan ‘nation’ did indeed emerge out of a migration, but it was a migration within Italy, from the Mediterranean coasts towards and over the Apennines, and a migration of styles more than of people.

  The most striking examples of Villanovan technology are the impressive crested helmets made of bronze, whose method of production recalls that of bronzework in central Europe at the same period; the helmets are clear testimony to the role of warriors in the stratified village society of the Villanovans.23 The shift among those of high birth from cremation to burial in long, narrow shaft graves was not the result of a great population shift but of a change in customs, influenced by contact with overseas. Eventually these shaft graves would turn into something much grander, the tumuli and painted tombs of Tarquinia and Cerveteri. One of the early warrior princes can be identified, though not by name, for there are no inscriptions in his praise, and there is no evidence the Villanovans used writing. In 1869 news circulated of the discovery of a vast sarcophagus in the necropolis outside Tarquinia; this late eighth-century burial became known as the ‘Warrior’s Tomb’.24 Its contents demonstrate the arrival of goods from the eastern Mediterranean, which became the prized possession of a Tarquinian prince. Fourteen vases in the Greek style were found in the tomb; several were made in Italy by émigré Greek potters, though their design is reminiscent of goods produced in Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus.25 This evidence of wider links with the eastern Mediterranean is confirmed by the discovery in the tomb of a scarab ring made of silver and bronze; engraved on the underside of the scarab is a lion in the Phoenician style.26

  These connections to the outside world were made by sea. A number of pottery models of boats survive from the Villanovan period; their prow takes the form of a bird’s head, and it has been surmised that they were placed in the graves of Villanovan pirates and merchants because it was impossible to bury an entire boat with the body or ashes of the deceased.27 In the early seventh century the potter Aristonothos, who lived and worked in Caere, decorated a krater with a lively scene of a sea battle, possibly between Greeks and Etruscans, one group aboard a low-lying oared vessel and the others aboard a heavier merchant ship.28 What the Villanovans brought back with them can be deduced from home-made objects as well as from imports, for there are echoes of the Aegean world in the design of bronze weapons, and nowhere more than in the style of pottery: traditional Villanovan forms were wedded with Greek styles to produce decorated jars that recall the Geometric style of ninth-century Greece. Jewellery began to be decorated with the fine granulation that was later to become the hallmark of Etruscan goldsmiths; this was a method that was learned from (and eventually surpassed) the Levant.29 Some bronzework even has parallels with the fine bronze casting of Urartu, in modern Armenia.30 The trade in base metals was the real foundation of Etruscan prosperity. It was mainly thanks to plentiful local supplies of copper, iron and other metals that the Etruscans could pay for the goods that they imported in increasingly massive quantities from Greece and the Levant, for they had little to offer in the way of finished goods (though they did find a market for their polished black bucchero wares, which turned up in Greece, Sicily and Spain). Elba, and the facing coast around Populonia, which was the only major Etruscan city actually situated on the sea, provided plentiful quantities of iron; a little inland, around Volterra and Vetulonia, copper mines were abundant.31 By the seventh century a flourishing new settlement near the mouth of the river Arno came into existence at Pisa, through which much of this traffic flowed.32 Via Pisa, the Etruscans exchanged metals with the inhabitants of Sardinia; Sard potters even settled in Vetulonia.33 They may have arrived as slaves, for slave-raiding and slave-trading were further means to gain profit in the Tyrrhenian Sea as it opened up to commerce. Salt was another asset; the citizens of the Etruscan city of Veii and its very close neighbour Rome competed for control of the salt supplies at the mouth of the Tiber. Wine was a particular favourite of Etruscan traders; it was sent out of the Tyrrhenian Sea towards southern France.34

  The exploitation of this material wealth became more intense once the Greeks had installed themselves close by in Ischia. And yet the arrival of the Greek
s there follows by several decades the first evidence of close contact between central Italy and the Greek world, in the eighth century BC. Villanovan brooches and safety-pins appear on Greek sites, and there are also a good many fragments of shields and helmets made by Villanovan bronze-masters.35 Perhaps they were carried on the ‘Tyrsenian’ ships mentioned by Greek authors. As links were forged to Ionia and to Corinth, the early Etruscans manufactured their own versions of Proto-Corinthian pottery. The most powerful inhabitants of Tarquinia and its neighbours sought the fine goods of the eastern Mediterranean, which loudly proclaimed their power and status: ostrich eggs brought by Phoenician traders, ivory and gold plaques showing sphinxes, panthers, lotuses and other ‘oriental’ motifs, objects made of faience and glass with Egyptian themes (though these were most often imitations made in Phoenicia).36

  There was one import from the East that would transform the face of Italy. The alphabet reached the Etruscans from the Greeks, though it is uncertain whether the source was Greece itself or the first Greek settlements at Pithekoussai and Kyma. The form the Etruscan letters took indicates that they were derived from the Euboian version of the Greek alphabet. The alphabet came along the trade routes; and it came early. One of the most remarkable finds in Etruria is a seventh-century tablet unearthed in 1915 at Marsiliana d’Albegna. Around its edge is scratched an entire alphabet, in the traditional order of letters, the forms of which appear very archaic.37 It was found with a stylus, and there were traces of wax on the tablet, so it was evidently obtained with the express purpose of learning the art of writing.38 Out of the model alphabet a standard Etruscan alphabet developed, written generally from right to left (like Phoenician and some early Greek alphabets); and from this were derived the alphabets of many of the neighbouring peoples, notably the Romans.

  Early inscriptions reveal a great deal about contacts across the sea. Greek and Etruscan merchants recorded their transactions, as can be seen on a lead plaque found at Pech Maho in south-western France, dating from the mid-fifth century BC. One side is written in Etruscan, and refers to Mataliai or Marseilles; later, the plaque was re-used, to record in Greek the purchase of some boats from men of Emporion, a Greek base on the coast of Catalonia.39 Three golden plaques found at Pyrgoi, the port of Caere, on the coast north of Rome, reveal the Phoenician (most probably Carthaginian) presence in the maritime cities of Etruria. Two of the tablets are in Etruscan and one is in Phoenician; they record a dedication by Thefarie Velianas, ‘king over Cisra’ (or Caere), around 500 BC; the king dedicated a temple to the Etruscan goddess Uni, generally identified with the Greek Hera and the Roman Juno, but here identified with Astarte, the goddess of the Phoenicians.40 There were Greek visitors too: an inscription, of around 570 BC, appears on a stone made in the shape of half a crescent, representing an anchor, found near Tarquinia: ‘I belong to the Aiginetan Apollo. Sostratos had me made.’ The language is the Greek dialect of the island of Aigina near Athens; this is surely the Sostratos said by Herodotos to be the leading Greek merchant trading towards Tartessos.41 The Etruscans did not try to erect barriers against foreign merchants and settlers, or against their gods; in fact, they welcomed them and sought to learn from them.42

  IV

  In the middle of the seventh century the culture, politics and even landscape of the Etruscans was transformed, as the intense influence of ‘orientalizing’ styles of art overwhelmed the ancient culture of the Villanovans. Greece had seen a similar process of transformation as its ties to the Levant were strengthened by way of Ionian and Phoenician merchants. Indeed, these Ionians formed part of the wave of influences from the East that crossed the sea to Etruria, so that the Greek and other eastern influences are hard to disentangle: sculpted winged creatures protect the tombs of the deceased, which were built in increasingly lavish styles, no longer as simple graves but as substantial chamber-tombs, often imitating the houses of the living. The earliest monumental tombs in Tarquinia stood above the ground, broad, circular constructions with a peaked roof; tufa slabs above the entrance portrayed the gods and spirits of the next world, but they also proclaimed the wealth of the new princely elite that could afford to build such impressive palaces for the dead. The source of inspiration was very probably similar tombs in the eastern Mediterranean, in regions such as Lydia, Lycia and Cyprus. Painted tombs for elite families became a Tarquinian speciality from the middle of the sixth century onwards, though earlier examples are known from neighbouring cities, and the discovery of a partly painted antechamber to what may be a royal tomb, dating to the middle of the seventh century BC, caused much excitement when it was announced in August 2010 – the closest comparison is with contemporary Greek tombs at Salamis in eastern Cyprus.43 The earliest tombs betray such powerful influence from the art of Greek Ionia that it is legitimate to ask whether the artists themselves were Ionian Greeks; evidently there was no sharp line between foreign and native craftsmen. Sixth-century paintings from tombs in Caere, now preserved in the Louvre and the British Museum, with their strong delineation, formal arrangement and careful organization of space, are not merely Ionian in style but almost certainly portray scenes from Greek mythology: the judgment of Paris, the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. The painted tombs of Tarquinia were often decorated with scenes of family feasting, but there were also tales to be told from Greek mythology: Achilles appears in the Tomb of the Bulls, and the mysterious processions of the Tomb of the Baron are painted in a style that is thoroughly Greek. A painted frieze shows youths leading horses and a meeting between a bearded man with a young companion and a mistress or goddess. Simply coloured, in red, green or black on a grey undercoat, each figure displays profound Ionian influence – in the costume, which includes the Ionian tutulus, a peaked hat, and in the fleshy, rounded limbs. D. H. Lawrence, touring the tombs in the 1920s, was (like most visitors) enchanted by the unusual and very lively scenes in the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing, showing birds in flight, a naked man diving into the sea and a fisherman trailing a line; this, at least, seemed to be the expressive voice of Etruscan rather than Greek art. But the discovery of a painted tomb in the Greek colony at Poseidonia (Paestum) in southern Italy, showing a diving scene, suggests that these images were part of the general repertoire of Greek painters.

  Much the same can be said for other branches of the arts and, more importantly, for the thought-world that they reveal. Etruscan potters began to imitate the black-figure pottery of Corinth and Athens with varying success. Later, painting in black on the red surface of the pot gave way to a still more delicate red-figure technique, by which the pot was painted black but figures were left largely unpainted on the red ground of the ceramic; and the Etruscans bought prodigious quantities of the new wares from Athens, also making their own imitations.44 But the Etruscans had a strongly conservative outlook too. Their preference was for archaic or ‘archaizing’ styles even when, in Athens, the full classical style invested sculpture and painting with a greater sense of life and ‘harmony’.45 The pottery they bought from the Greeks was not always of the highest quality. At Spina, an Etruscan settlement on the mouth of the Po, virtually all the pottery so far discovered has been Greek, especially Attic Greek; but sometimes it is very poor Greek, as the name given to one Attic artist – ‘the Worst Painter’ – illustrates.46 Most importantly, the subject-matter of the illustrations on these pots was consistently the stories of Greek mythology. The peoples of Italy were beginning to appropriate the myths and religious ideas of the Greek world; old cults of groves and water-sources remained very much alive, but the amorphous gods of the Italian peoples acquired the shape, form and indeed moodiness of the Olympians. The roof beam of a great temple at Veii was decorated around 500 BC with life-size painted figures of Apollo, Hermes and other gods, made of terracotta, the work of a celebrated Etruscan sculptor named Vulca. The fluid style of the sculptures was not simply borrowed wholesale from the Greeks; the practice of decorating the roof beam so dramatically was an Etruscan and not a Greek one. But what Vulca portrayed was
Greek legend, not Etruscan. These works were the product of an Italo-Graeco-oriental syncretism, which in a sense is what we call Etruscan art. This syncretism was also expressed in the art of divination: here again Near Eastern practices merged with native Italian ones. No one was better at reading the spots on the liver of a sacrificial beast than an Etruscan soothsayer, or haruspex, and Etruscan soothsayers were still being consulted when the Goths attacked Rome in AD 410.

  V

  The relationship between the Greeks and the Etruscans also took a political form, and there relations were much less easy than in the spheres of culture, religion and trade. From at least the eighth century BC there had been sea battles between the peoples of central Italy and the Greeks. Evidence of this has been found on Greek soil at Olympia and at Delphi, where eighth-century Villanovan helmets, seized from defeated enemies, were dedicated to the gods.47 Etruscan navigators often competed and sometimes cooperated with Phokaians from Greek Ionia in the waters off southern France, where the Phokaians founded a colony (the future Marseilles).48 Herodotos reports a great battle between Phokaians and Etruscans, off the Corsican town of Alalia in around 540. Sixty Phokaian ships were ranged against sixty Carthaginian ships and sixty more from Caere. Despite this imbalance, the Phokaian ships won the battle, but their fleet was so crippled that the Phokaians had to evacuate Corsica. Herodotos tells how the Caeretans massacred their Phokaian prisoners by stoning them to death. Soon after, the Caeretans noticed that those who passed the site of the massacre suddenly became lame; this happened not just to human beings, but to their flocks. Perplexed, the Caeretans sent a mission to the priestess of Apollo at Delphi, and they were ordered to hold regular games in memory of the Phokaians, a practice that continued to Herodotos’ time; similar funeral games are often shown on the walls of Etruscan painted tombs.49 The Caeretans maintained their links with the shrine at Delphi, where the foundations of the treasury of the Caeretans have been identified; indeed, they were the first ‘barbarians’ to be admitted to what was primarily a Hellenic cult site.50 Meanwhile the Etruscans were free to exploit Corsica for its iron, wax and honey. More important than its resources, though, was the fact that Etruscan shipping now faced no rivals in the northern Tyrrhenian Sea.51