Etruscan Tarquinia: the Painted Tombs and the Myth of Tages

A few kilometres from the sea, in northern Lazio, Tarquinia holds one of the most extraordinary heritages of the ancient world. Beneath the fields of the Monterozzi hill lie thousands of Etruscan tombs, and about two hundred of them preserve wall paintings showing banquets, dances, games, hunts and demons of the underworld. According to myth, it was in the lands of Tarquinia that the religious science of the Etruscans was born, revealed by a mysterious being who emerged from a furrow.

The child who rose from the earth

Cicero, in his treatise On Divination, reports the legend of Tages. A farmer was ploughing a field in the territory of Tarquinia when, from a deeper furrow, a being emerged with the appearance of a child and the wisdom of an old man. The Etruscans gathered, and Tages dictated to them the principles of the discipline that made it possible to interpret the will of the gods. Cicero himself, however, treats the tale with scepticism.

The teachings of Tages were collected, according to tradition, in the books of the Etruscan discipline, which dealt with examining the entrails of animals, interpreting lightning and the rules of rites. Etruscan haruspices were consulted by the Romans too until late antiquity. A famous bronze model of a liver, found in 1877 near Piacenza, shows the divisions of the sky assigned to the various deities.

The paintings of the necropolis

The Monterozzi necropolis contains about six thousand burials. Among the oldest painted tombs is the Tomb of the Augurs, from the second half of the sixth century BC, with figures of wrestlers and a masked character identified by an inscription as Phersu. The Tomb of Hunting and Fishing shows a sea full of fish and birds, with a young man diving from a rock, while the Tomb of the Leopards, from the fifth century, depicts a banquet with musicians and dancers.

Over time the tone of the paintings changes. In the Tomb of Orcus, from the fourth century BC, appear the profile of a noblewoman, Velia, and the gods of the underworld, Aita and Phersipnai, corresponding to Hades and Persephone, alongside threatening-looking demons. The afterlife becomes a gloomier place, peopled by guardians and escorts of souls.

The winged horses and the city of kings

Palazzo Vitelleschi, home of the National Archaeological Museum, holds the famous terracotta winged horses that decorated the temple of the Ara della Regina, on the plateau where the ancient city stood. They are among the most elegant works of Etruscan art and have become the symbol of Tarquinia. The museum also displays sarcophagi with the dead shown reclining on the lid, and some paintings detached from the tombs to protect them.

Roman tradition also linked Tarquinia to the Tarquin dynasty that ruled Rome. Livy relates that Tarquinius Priscus, son of a Corinthian exile, was born and raised there before moving to Rome; as he reached the Janiculum, an eagle is said to have lifted off his cap and put it back, an omen of kingship read by his wife Tanaquil. Since 2004 the necropolises of Tarquinia and Cerveteri have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Descending into a painted tomb at Tarquinia means meeting the Etruscans as they liked to portray themselves: at banquet, celebrating, accompanied by music and dance. Their images, together with the myth of Tages, tell of a people who sought to read the signs of sky and earth, and who saw death as a passage to be celebrated.