Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/665

Rh E T K U K I A 641 Bcarabs published in the &quot; Impronte Gemmarie &quot; (Bullet d. lust. Arch. Ram., 1831, p. 105; 1834, p. 11G; 1839^ p. 99). Of the Greek divinities in the Museum collection, two are represented by heads of Athene obviously copied from an early coin of Corinth, while the two heads of the gorgon in the list stand in the same relation to a series of silver coins till re- FIG. 1. Philoetett.-, vuun.k-d cently ascribed to Athens, but in the foot : on a scarab in now by some high authorities ascribed to Attica. Nor are sardonyx. From 1857, pi. H, fig. 5. these the only instances in which Greek coins have been used as models to imitate. Still, notwithstanding this, coupled also with the fact that the processes of die- sinking and gem-engraving were almost identical, it is clear in many cases that the Etruscans had not confined themselves to models from this class of objects, but had skill enough to adapt designs from other sources, and especially from statues or figures sculptured in the round as more suitable than reliefs, at least where the gem was translucent, and could be held up to the light to be looked at as was frequently the case. A certain number of the designs are clearly treated as reliefs, but the majority exhibit a minuteness of anatomical detail and attitudes more appropriate to sculpture in the round, not necessarily, however, always to statues strictly so- called, since in many cases the attitude is such that the figure could not have stood unless in one or other of the various positions assigned to figures in the pediments of temples, as for instance among the sculptures from ^Egina in Munich, where the same minuteness and exactness of anatomy will be seen in the perfection to which it had attained in Greece at the close of the 6th century B.C. That the Tuscan temples were also decorated with sculp tures in the pediments is known, not, however, the extent to which the designs may have been derived from the Greeks, though from the analogy of the rest of Etruscan art the probability is that they were pretty closely copied; and when Pliny (xxxv. 154), on the authority of Yarrq, speaks of the sculptures in all the temples of Rome previous to 493 B.C. being &quot;Tuscan,&quot; it is fair to suppose that his Tuscainca slyna would correspond both in style and in subject to early Greek art of the period previous to this date. That view of the case would explain why so many of the scarabs come to have subjects best suited to the decoration of temple pediments, and to indicate further at what period this particular process of studying from Greek models took place ; it may be added that the oldest statue of a deity in Rome, that of Diana in the temple on the Aventine, dedicated, according to tradition, between 577 and 534 B.C. represented the type of the Ephesian Artemis familiar in early Greek and Etruscan art. On the scarabs, draped figures are in a great minority, the preference being, as in early Greek sculpture, for the nude, with a great display of physical structure. In a considerable number of cases the names of the personages represented are inscribed on the gems in Etruscan characters, a habit which prevailed also in early Greek art. Some few scarabs have a figure en graved in relief on the back. With comparatively rare exceptions, the intaglio is surrounded with a cable border, and when gems are found with this border but without being scarabs, it is usual to describe them as scarabs which have been cut down in more recent times for the sake of the stone, not always correctly so, since this border appears to have been occasionally adopted by Roman gem-engravers of later times. It is not impossible also that a number of the scarabs now existing, as to which generally there is little or no information concerning their provenance, may have been made in Rome about the time of Augustus, when a taste prevailed for the revival of archaic art. Otherwise the production of scarabs, to judge from their style, must have ceased before the beginning of the 5th century B.C. When it began is a question which depends on when Greek sculpture attained mastery in rendering the human form (probably from the 8th to the 6th centuries B.C.), since it is at this stage of the art that the scarabs, so to speak, strike into it. They have none of those grotesquely conceived animals executed on steatite or other soft stones which abound on the earliest Greek gems. From the general considerations already stated, and from the likeli hood that the Etruscan period of imitation would not be before the last stage of archaic art in Greece, the 6th century B.C. will be a reasonable terminus a quo for its start. Coins. Considered as works of art, the coins may be Coins, classed next to the scarabs, from the similarity of the pro cesses by which they are made, and the limited field which they present for design. It has been already said that the silver coinage of Etruria was struck on the Attic standard as introduced by Solon in the beginning of the 6th century B.C. The gold coinage is according to the Miletus standard, which appears to have been the oldest gold standard in European Greece, including Athens, whence doubtless it was obtained by Etruria along with the silver standard (Mommsen, Rom. Miinzu&amp;gt;esen, p. 28). The majority of the silver and gold, as well as the light copper coins belonging to the same system, are stamped only on one side, in accordance with the early custom, the types being essen tially Greek, among them the head of the gorgon (fig. 2) similar to that referred to on the scarabs, and the cuttle-fish such as appears on Greek coins, and very frequently on the early pottery from lalysus in Rhodes, and the ornaments from Mycenje and Spata in Attica. Whatever may be the date ultimately assigned to the antiquities just mentioned, it may be taken as certain FIG. 2. Coin of that the Etruscan coins in question do not Fopulonia. Brit, go back to an earlier time than that of Mus- Solon (about 590 B.C.), and may be half a century later, or even much more in some instances. Others with different types are distinctly late. Black Ware. Connected in a measure with tho en- Blark graved gems is a series of black terra-cotta vases, many of ware, which are ornamented with bands of figures in low relief pressed out in the clay when it is soft by means of an engraved cylinder rolled round the vase in such a way that the same design is constantly being repeated each time the cylinder completes a revolution. Frequently the designs are purely Oriental, either Egyptian or Assyrian, as if made directly from imported cylinders. In other cases they consist of rows of animals, the lion, deer, sphinx, and panther, followed by a winged human figure moving at speed, and perhaps representing such a being as the gorgon, altogether presenting precisely the same appearance as those early painted vases found in Greek localities, and attributed to a period of prevailing Oriental influence very justly supposed to have been communicated to the Greeks by the Phoenicians, since on Phoenician silver vases, as that of Curium (Cesnola, Cyprus, p. 329), very similar bands of animals occur. The nearer we approach to the main centres of Phoenician industry, as for instance at Camirus in Rhodes, the more frequent are these designs of animals. Among the cases where the design is essentially of Hellenic origin may be mentioned a large circular dish in the British Museum, having the representation of a banquet scene with two couches, and attendants dancing and i playing on the flute, constantly repeated in two rows VIII. _ 8 1