Santorini, Etruria and Archaic Rome: A Comparison of Mentality and Expression

In spite of the distance in time and space, there are interesting connections between the two civilisations, especially in the techniques of representation of rites of passage and of other scenes which, though frequently interpreted as histarical, are rather to be read as having a wholly ceremonial character.

Comparisons between cultures which are not themselves in contact are of uncertain significance and debatable value. This is particularly true when, as in the case examined here, we are concerned with the figurative expression of civilisations as distant from one another in time and space as the Aegean civilisation of the second millennium and the Etrusco-Italic civilisation of the first millennium. In dealing with examples of this type, we all too often superimpose our own particular notion of the culture under examination onto the images produced by that culture. Often the thought processes behind the figural representations are the result of simple expressive necessity or of equally simple messages which have, as it were, a universal and timeless - if not obvious and banal - value. Nonetheless, comparisons of a structural character regarding the significance of images in different cultures may have a certain usefulness, especially if these take the form of comparisons between organic systems of representation and analogous systems in other cultures which have only partially been transmitted to us. In this way, the exercise becomes an operation which can provide valuable confirmation of hypotheses or a new element for discussion. It was with these thoughts in mind that I received with pleasure the invitation of the Symposium's organising committee which has provided me with the opportunity to put forward some thoughts arising from a comparison of themes and strategies of representation in the Etrusco-ltalic civilisation and those of prehistoric Thera and the prehistoric Aegean world in general.

In order to carry out this comparison, we need to start as far back as possible in Etrusco-Italic proto-history, when an autonomous representational system evolved in Etruria and Latium long before the arrival of complex anthropomorphisation and the acceptance of mythical imagery from the Greek world (a subject studied recently by M. Menichetti (1994) and by myself (Torelli 1997a)). This system favours ceremonial representation, through symbolic forms of expression based on ritual, rank and in particular the prerogatives and rites connected with primitive kingship, an aspect which all the peoples of the Italian peninsula shared. We may cite several significant examples as models of this ceremonial world. One of the oldest, long before the appearance of myth in the Etrusco-Italic figurative tradition, is undoubtedly the cart from Bisenzio (Torelli 1996). This cart (Fig. 1) acts as a wheeled support for a ritual basin which I have tentatively identified with the praefericulum of Roman antiquarian tradition (Torelli 1997b). The cart was cast entirely in bronze in the second half of the eighth century BC, and around 730-720 BC was deposited in a princely burial at Bisenzio, a small Etruscan city on the western shore of the Volsinian lake. It is difficult to summarise briefly the interpretation that I have recently offered of the rich decoration of the cart which was executed in the round. The struts of the support are populated with leaning birds and monkeys (Fig. 2), and on each of the four external horizontal bars and on the central portion of the support there is a group of schematic figures. These figures may be interpreted according to anthropological schemes built on the basis of what has survived into the historical period of this primitive world, and may be recognized as forming part of a unified but extremely detailed and complex figurative programme.

On one side we have the representation of a hunter with a dog on a leash (Fig. 3), flanked by an archer (Fig. 4) who is turned towards the centre of the support. On the oblique stanchion there is a series of wild animals: a wild goat (Fig. 5), a deer, a deer being attacked by a dog, a wolf (Torelli 1996, figs. 41-43), and on the inner side a dog carrying a hare in his mouth (Fig. 6). It is evident that a unified hunting scene is shown on this side and on the entire central portion of the cart. Behind this hunting scene, on the external horizontal stanchion and also parallel to the viewer, we find a ploughman with two yoked oxen and a goad (Fig. 7). On the external stanchion diametrically opposite that of the ploughman, but this time facing the viewer, we find a couple consisting of a woman, apparently taller than her companion, who carries a vase on her head and a large bowl in her right hand, and an armed man with a pointed helmet, a large shield with boss and a spear (Fig. 8). Also turned towards the viewer, on the fourth external horizontal stanchion adjacent to the one just described, is a group of three people (Fig. 9) consisting of a man with crested helmet and spear, at whose side to the right is a young boy with a large belt and ovoid shield and to the left a woman, in this case shorter than the man. The woman carries a vase on her head and one notes that, while the man moves his left hand arrogantly to touch the woman's breast, she in turn has her right hand on the man's genitals. The decoration is completed by a group (Fig. 10) on top of a spinning wheel with four rays joined to its internal lip, close by the hunting scene described above. This group includes two figures who are taller than the others and who wear short tunics like all the males depicted on the cart. These two figures are shown as warriors with long swords and small shields with large bosses, of a type not documented in the physical archaeological evidence, but similar to shields held by well known Sardinian bronze statuettes (Lilliu 1981, 197-200, figs. 196, 206-207, 225).

It would take too long to present the entire argument arising from my investigation (see Torelli 1996). However, it is clear that the interpretation of each individual side and of the inside of the cart was conceived as an entirety, in order to express the most deeply held values of the newly formed Etrusco-Italic aristocracy. These values were focused on the important events of an exemplary life cycle and on kingship. The whole interior of the cart is conceived as a ύλη or silva (a forest): at the top is the sky in which birds are flying, the struts are trees from which monkeys hang, and the entire structure of the base is a hunting ground across which wild animals prowl and hunting dogs move. Here, then, we have a 'wild wilderness' drawn up precisely in order to present the well known ancient conception by which the world of humans, or that of civilisation, is opposed to the world of animals or of nature.

However, hunting and ploughing are themselves symbolic activities which carry us back to the adjacent epiphany scene, the one (the hunt) referring to the couple, and the other (the ploughing) to the triad. It is evident that the representation of the triad is intended to celebrate the rank and function of the various components of the patriarchal family and especially the triumphant military and reproductive capacities of the family head. At the centre is shown the dominant image of the father, larger than the small boy and the woman who are archetypes of the 'offspring' and the 'wife' respectively. In addition, the boy is shown significantly as an armed iuvenis, with an ovoid shield like those of the Salii (Colonna 1991; Borgna 1993), while the woman is represented as patron of the home in so far as she carries both food and drink (the vase on her head). The father's potestas as vir is underlined by his complete panoply and especially by the arrogant sexual gesture which is matched by the analogous gesture of the woman. This explicit reference to the sexual relationship of the married couple, apogee of the reproductive capacity of the pater, is repeated symbolically in the 'ploughing' scene, a metaphor known in all agrarian cultures and here emphasised by the fact that the two scenes are contiguous.

The representation of the couple, on the other hand, is adjacent to the hunting scene. In this case, in order to signal divine or superhuman status, it is the woman who is taller than the man. The attributes of the goddess -the vase for liquids on her head and the bowl or olla for solids in her hand appear to allude to her role as provider of solid foods and of liquids, and therefore of wealth, in other words to a role analogous to that of the Latin Ops. The man, practically a human image of the Latin Mars or Etruscan Maris, is shown by contrast in the fullness of his military prowess and, secondly, as a sexually active individual given that he, along with all the other male figures on the cart, is shown in ithyphallic pose. In all likelihood, the couple is intended to represent a kind of allegory of male initiation rites, which, as we know to have been the case at Rome, were presided over by a female divinity Minerva (Torelli 1984, 19-22). However, the iconography of the female figure is hard to reconcile with Minerva, despite the fact that the representation was made before the thorough Hellenisation of Etruscan and Latin images of divinities which took place between the seventh and sixth centuries BC (Torelli 1986). Even though we know very little about the religion and actual practices of the Salian priests (Torelli 1990), it is nevertheless possible that the couple should be thought of as referring directly to the Salian initiation rites, that is to the sacraria (or shrines) of the regia (the royal building), the seat of the cults of Mars and Ops. The figures would thus be intended to refer to those gods, directly in the case of the female figure, or indirectly in the case of the male figure. Following the same rationale which governs the placing of statuettes in Early Iron Age/Latin tombs, the couple represented here seems to be a clear reflection of the couple found in the regia of Rome, consisting of Ops (who here, like the well-known statuette from the Campofattore tomb, holds a vase for solid foods in her arms and a water jar on her head (cf. Torelli 1996)) and of Mars (present in the sacrarium of the regia in the aniconic form of a lance and a shield - the weapons brandished by the man in our group), who together form the hypostasis of the perfect man-woman couple found on the spot where the procession of the Salii (the priests who interpret the ceremonial representation of male initiations) begins. This explanation accords perfectly with the hunting scene on the adjacent horizontal stanchion which, as the famous essay by P. Vidal-Naquet (1981, 151-174) teaches us, formed the great initiation test for youths, performed outside the community in the savage world incarnate in the beasts seen at the centre of the cart.

Such a reading allows us, on the basis of analogy and opposition, to reconstruct a programme for the scenes found on the exterior of the cart. For example, the condition of the perfect family (the triad) is reflected at a symbolic level in the immediately adjacent ploughing scene; while an even more transparent allusion is embodied in the assimilation between the perfect initiation (the couple) and the hunt. The opposition embodied in these is just as polar as that between the savage borderland of the hunt and the centrality of the 'natural' condition of human society represented in the triad on the one hand, and the wild fringes of the initiation and the centrality of the 'natural' agricultural activity on the other hand. In addition to this reading in terms of pairs of linked scenes (triad-ploughing versus couple-hunt) or pairs of opposing scenes (triad versus hunt, couple versus ploughing), it is possible to propose another circular reading of the scenes, which interprets them as an allusion to the entire life cycle, clearly understood from a strictly male point of view. The effective completion of the hunt, performed in the world of nature and of wilderness, is the prerequisite for the successful completion of the initiation; the successful initiation, in which man is allowed to take up weapons of war, in turn leads to matrimonial union, alluded to by the figure of the goddess as provider of abundance, and thus leads to the status of the perfect paterfamilias. The role of the model paterfamilias, and the capacity to reproduce for which he stands (hence the eloquent presence of the male adult), finds its presupposition and correspondence just as much in the successful warrior role represented in the armour worn in the triad scene as in the prosperous agrarian activity which is celebrated as both fertile sowing and bountiful harvest. Fertile sowing, in particular, is celebrated twice: realistically in the very action of the ploughing scene, and symbolically in the triad scene with its exaltation of conjugal sexuality.

Over and above this concrete and symbolic representation of the social cosmology of an archaic agrarian and patriarchal world, we have the dominance of the battle scene which seems, at first glance, to spring from a totally Greek world of έσθλοί: the ideal incarnation of άριστεία, the warrior virtues of the aristocracy, and of the άθλον, the prize which a display of άριστεία procures. The placing of the two combatants - on a moving wheel located at the centre of the entire ensemble, surrounded by the ύλη (the central forest), but still above it - is extremely significant. Their central position and heroic attitude, emphasised by the usual attribute of the polos or high-crowned cap, could allude in a substantial way to the fact that άριστεία, the aristocratic virtue, seems to embody the model of ideal behaviour following from all the human activities symbolised by the other human and animal groups shown below. This ideal behaviour is the source of the άθλα (the prizes), in other words the status of perfection of the two age groups, the iuniores and seniores, represented respectively by the couple and the triad. In order to express the ideological centrality of such virtues, the designer of the cart has not only depicted the group of two combatants at the centre of all the scenes, but at the same time, by placing the duel above the wilderness populated by animals on the internal circle and diagonal stanchions, has been careful not to mix this critical allegory of aristocratic virtue with the ύλη, that is with the confusion and άνομία (lawlessness) of the forest. Finally, the placing of the warrior group on a moving wheel does not constitute, as might appear at first glance, a primitive toy designed for the childish mind of a savage, but rather is intended to convey a very precise and significant ideological message, which can be enunciated in the following way. In each critical life event, as embodied in the figures of the couple and the triad with all the conceptual and material trappings pertaining to the hunt and agriculture respectively, aristocratic άριστεία is necessary, as the source of desired rewards and thus of the very status of the couple and the triad. Almost as in a prediction (and the actual mechanism of the wheel was, in my opinion, inspired by the magical practices of the oracles), the operation of rotating the combatants and stopping the wheel opposite one or other of the exemplary life cycle scenes eternalised in bronze by the representations on the exterior of the cart, constitutes an omen and warning for the future programmatic events of a man's life.

Nonetheless, in view of the high rank of the owner of the cart, we may propose yet another interpretation, which is not at all incompatible with that so far put forward. This second interpretation is closer to the fundamental values of the Etruscan and Romano-Italic world, a world of which the woman buried in Tomb 2 in the necropolis of Οlmo Bello at Bisenzio can be seen, by means of the complex messages expressed by the cart, as in some sense a herald both in life and death. The battle between two men, with heroic armour represented by an anachronistic long sword (Bianco Peroni 1970) and possibly an equally anachronistic small shield (particularly if the comparison with the shields of Sardinian statuettes which I have proposed is correct), is in itself of an heroic nature. It seems, however, to have a more precise signficance than the simple celebration of an heroic contest. The dominant position in which the battle scene is placed, at the centre and above both the forest and the ordered, civilised world, offers too many points of similarity with both the scenario of the crowning of the rex nemorensis and the procedure regulating it (Blagg 1988) for the scene to be seen simply as a generic evocation of aristocratic virtus. The elaborate nature of the cart itself and the rank of its owner, which we may certainly define as regal in comparison with other female burials from Bisenzio, both speak in favour of this hypothesis, which is based on more than a formal analogy between the Arician rite and the form of the duel shown on the cart. In the Nemorensian duel by which kingship is decided, the concept of wilderness - symbolised at the ritual level either by the servile role of the rex (a close link between 'wilderness', marginality and servile status has been emphasised by Vidal Naquet (1981, 161-164, 267-288)) or by the taboo against breaking a branch of the tree sacred to the nemus or sacred grove - and the duel with swords are both fundamental. In a famous passage, Strabo (v 239) describes the role and the armour of the rex: καθίσταται ίερεύς ό γενηθείς αύτόχειρ τού ίερωμένου πρότερον δραπέτης άνήρ. ξιφήρης ούν έστιν άεί περισκοπών τάς έπιθέσεις, έτοιμος άνύνεσθαι.⁽¹⁾  Together with other sources which mention the Arician sanctuary (Ovid, Ars Amatoria i.259; idem, Fasti iii.271; Valerius Flaccus ii.305; Statius, Silvae iii.1.55; Pausanias ii.27.4), Servius (ad Aen. vi.136), for his part, emphasises the magical breaking of the branch by noting that: "in huius templo (sc. Dianae Aricinae) fuit arbor quaedam de qua infringi ramum non licebat. dabatur autem fugitivis potestas, ut siquis exinde ramum potuisset auferre, monomachia cum fugitivo templi sacerdote dimicaret".⁽²⁾ The title is thus gained through a single combat which takes place in a wood. The contest, which is provoked by the breaking of a branch - or rather by breaking the magic of the wilderness, is perfectly reflected in the contest shown on the cart, placed as it is at the centre of a 'wood' and at the same time above everything and everyone, and concentrated in a single battle of 'archaic' nature (as the anachronistic weaponry would seem to indicate). The contest is loaded with the values of virtus, but also with the obvious implications of chance and divine favour implicit in the striking positioning of the group on a mobile wheel. If we further consider the thoroughly Arician role, rooted directly in the nemus, taken on by Egeria, a goddess whom tradition (Vergil, Aeneid vii.763ff.; Ovid, Fasti iii.261ff.; Strabo v 240; Scholia Juvenal iii.17) identified with the emissary of the lake, and the function that this obscure divinity has in the hierogamy of Numa (Plutarch, Numa 4; Ovid, Fasti iii.273ff.; Dionysius Halicarnassensis ii.60) alongside her role as protectress of childbirth (Festus (apud Paulum) 67L) and her character as water goddess, then indeed one by one all the characteristics of the paradigm of primitive Italic kingship present themselves around the most archaic Nemorensian ritual. Admittedly, this primitive ordeal has been handed down to us by the ancient literary tradition in isolated fragments, often misunderstood or simply disregarded by modern scholars. However, the cart preserves the organic structure and material, as well as the ideal presuppositions, of this most archaic kingship ritual in the form of a full narrative construct of exquisite symbolic value. Whoever commissioned, possessed or exhibited this extraordinary object, even if not actually a king certainly thought of himself as one, and entrusted the object to his consort for future ritual usage, just as, according to Roman tradition, the flamen did with the flaminica in numerous instances.

This complex decorative programme can be compared with that which adorns a cinerary urn from another princely tomb (Tomb no. 22) also from Bisenzio (Fig. 11). The urn is dated to roughly the same decade as the tomb to which the cart discussed above belongs. On the cover is a monstrous figure, enthroned and in chains - a figure which, in the light of what we have just seen, should be identified with a non-anthropomorphic underworld deity, the very image of Orcus. The original form of this name, as given by Verrius Flaccus (Festus 222L), "orcum quem dicimus, ait Verrius ab antiquis dictum Uragum",⁽³⁾ may possibly conceal a link with the Etruscan toponym *Urcla, *Urgula (modern Norchia?), although a good Indo-European root, connected with Gothic *aurahi ('tomb'), has authoritatively been proposed by Walde-Hoffmann (1954, 2, 221). As regards this, we should remember the insistence with which Etrusco-Latin tradition emphasises the wolf-like aspect assumed by the emanations from the earth's depths (Roncalli 1985, 66-67), as for instance is generally acknowledged in the case of the priesthood of the Luperci (contra Radke 1989). Around the monsterseven ithyphallic figures can be seen dancing in a circle, six armed with the usual lance and one with his arms tied together at the wrists. Two types of head covering, the usual polos or a pointed type of headgear, present in some cases and absent in others, distinguish two different ranks or age groups. On the shoulder of the vase is a war dance in which nine figures armed with shields and lances take part. This is interrupted by an unusual scene in which a man tries to hold an ox by the tail (or perhaps a schematic representation of a rope) and is approached by a person armed with a lance and mace. The decoration of the vase, designed and used as a cinerary urn, can only allude to the funerary sphere. The dance on the lid ought therefore to be interpreted as a triumphal dance of a funerary character, especially if the individual with his arms tied is to be interpreted as a prisoner of war, whose fate it was, on returning from the war, to be sacrificed in honour of the Dii Manes of the heroised ancestor, as we know to have been the custom in prehistoric Italy (Torelli 1981). By contrast, the war dance on the shoulder of the cinerary urn has the character of a dance of the Salii, and we may interpret it as their ceremonial dance, performed in October to celebrate the return from war. The warrior group with the lance and mace, in front of the bull held back or held by another person might be identified as a sacrifice scene. On the other hand, we cannot exclude the possibility that the scene may refer instead to a very early form of gladiatorial game which would accord, like the preceding dance, with a funerary rite of placatio Manium or placation of the spirits of the dead. From an iconographical point of view, one is also tempted to compare this depiction with an unusual representation found on a Cypro-Phoenician cup which is interpreted as a castration scene. However, the mace confers a regal aura on the character in whose presence the strange ceremony involving the bull and the individual holding his tail (or a rope) takes place. In relation to our discussion, it is interesting to note that both rites, the triumphal dance of the lid and the war dance on the shoulder, occur in the presence of figures invested with the highest authority, one divine and the other royal. The two epiphanies, that of the deity and that of the king are essentially homologous, in the same way as the decoration on the cart from Bisenzio is homologous, as indicated by the adoption of hierarchical proportions, the presence of the female divinity in the ritual initiation scene and of the paterfamilias-rex in the presentation of the triad. A similar form of relationship can be demonstrated on the cinerary urn, where the teratomorphic epiphany of the underworld god on the cover corresponds to the epiphany of the king with his mace in the act of receiving a sacrificial victim on the shoulder of the vase. All this thus demonstrates that the theophany-epiphany are concrete expressions of rank, for the god just as for the king, and that, in consequence, the ritual is represented as a functional reaffirmation of rank. The theophany is regarded as necessary in certain circumstances, largely because such circumstances are believed to belong to the sphere of that particular divinity. In analogous fashion, rank needs to be reconfirmed at times when the group recognizes the existence of a danger either to itself or to the person of rank who represents it, or at times of transition within the life cycle of either the group or its representative.

The adoption of Greek cultural and political-religious forms of representation changes this only superficially. Myth is accepted only in so far as it serves to confirm those parameters which the society previously believed to be valuable, useful or necessary in terms of representation. To illustrate this point, we can compare two series of fictile revetment plaques used on sacred buildings or on regiae of the second half of the sixth century BC (Torelli 1992a), both series intended to represent the rituals of profectio and adventus (departure and arrival), though according to archaic models. The 'Cisterna' type of revetment series depicts the departure and arrival of the king in terms of a wholly Greek iconography, as two processions of chariots accompanied by hoplites. One of these two processions winds from left to right in the following sequence (Torelli 1992a, fig. 9): a soldier armed with a lance, a three horse chariot pulled by winged horses with a charioteer and έπιβάτης (warrior), a chariot with hoplites accompanied by an armed man carrying an augur's lituus or staff. This can clearly be understood as a triumphal procession as a result of some of the attributes shown in the frieze: particularly important is the presence of the three horse chariot used for races held during the Equus October festival (a rite closely linked to the grape harvest as well as to the celebration of the archaic triumphus) and of the lituus, the priestly instrument signifying the investiture of power following an auspicium or augury. Furthermore, the fact that the protagonist is shown in the act of mounting a chariot pulled by winged horses is an explicit allusion to the assimilation of the triumphal figure, iconographically as well as conceptually, to Jupiter, the final recipient of the rite. The procession on the left (Torelli 1992a, fig. 10) presents, from right to left, two hoplites (one in the foreground at the head of the group and another in the background behind the horses), a three horse chariot with έπιβάτης but without a charioteer, a two horse chariot driven by a charioteer, and behind the horses a soldier. From the fact that the three horse chariot is without a charioteer and especially because it is not pulled by winged horses, this procession can be identified as a profectio, a ceremony in which the rex, inasmuch as his depiction has not been assimilated to that of Jupiter, proceeds alone (the charioteer follows him in the second chariot) in a chariot drawn by a team of normal horses.

An identical ceremony is shown on a pair of revetment plaques from the regia at Acquarossa and from another similar type of building found at Tuscania, albeit in less allusive and more direct form. Here, Greek myth is inserted as a form of explication of the ideological values contained in the two ceremonies of the profectio and the reditus (return). In the procession which moves towards the left (Fig. 12.b), the chariot with charioteer and έπιβάτης is preceded by the figure of Herakles fighting the Nemean Lion, intruding somewhat discordantly into the procession of hoplites and horsemen which is otherwise similar to that on the revetment from Cisterna. In the procession on the right (Fig. 12a), a group consisting of Herakles and the Cretan Bull is placed equally anomalously between the chariot and the hoplite group, but in this case behind the chariot group which includes, in addition to the charioteer, the central figure of the representation. This figure is shown without armour, but in a long robe, and is greeted by a person with a staff whom, on the basis of other contemporary representations, we can identify as a herald-Hermes. It is clear that the procession on the left represents the profectio, and that on the right the adventus. The two mythical vignettes allude to άρετή-virtus, which in the profectio the commander-rex is in process of demonstrating (hence the mythical scene precedes the chariot). In the adventus, which is presented as an heroic triumph, the commander-rex has already proven his άρετή-virtus (hence the mythical scene follows the chariot). In other words, the representation of myth of Greek origin is a type of allegory added to the representation of traditional indigenous type, which not only is not replaced by it but persists as the single most important demonstration of the reality of archaic images.

This tradition of representation of a ceremonial nature is suddenly and deliberately broken at the end of the sixth century BC, precisely at the time when, in Etruria and Latium, the traditional protohistoric monarchies are replaced by oligarchic republics. The oligarchic republics rightly felt that these forms of autorepresentation conflicted with the isonomic order and should thus be banished from their world as blatant examples of adfectatio regni (the claiming of royal power). From that time on, for a century and a half, the only rare representations known (and permitted) in the Etrusco-Roman world are mythological ones, always fully understood as having a very precise allegorical and symbolic content, capable of evoking in the spectators the values of the patrician oligarchies (Massa Pairault 1992). By the mid-fourth century BC, with the reopening of civic bodies and the installation of moderate republics, an institutional change had occurred, which coincided at Rome with the birth of the patrician-plebeian republic after the Licinian-Sextian laws of 367/366 BC, and which, in terms of representational forms, appears to have resurrected the canons in force in the sixth century BC. Some years ago, I attempted to demonstrate (Torelli 1992b, 119-135) that rank and ritual return once more to condition the construct of images, even if by this time the terminology takes the form of the well known, formulaic language pertaining to law. Also by this time, rank no longer pertains to the sphere of kingship but rather to the sphere established by mos and republican ius, that is to the symbols, attributes and specific epiphanies tied to the maiestas which the law attributes to the various magistrates: in a word, quisque ex forma sua.

Naturally, just as the contexts of the epiphanies of power changed, so the new constitution of the patrician-plebeian state introduced patterns of political behaviour which first of all made possible and subsequently necessitated certain specific representations. Noteworthy among these is so-called historical representation. This type of representation arises as a kind of figurative summary presented by the magistrate to the senate at the end of a military campaign. In this context all the elaborate new artifices of Hellenistic culture in terms of spatial representation come into play, while the representational structure, as I have demonstrated elsewhere (Torelli 1992b, 120-121), is nothing other than a geographical map of the theatre of war in which the salient battles are shown. The description which Livy (xli.22.8-10; cf. Pliny, Naturalis Historia xxxv 22) gives us of the tabula, the picture dedicated in 174 BC by Ti. Sempronius Gracchus in the temple of Fortuna and Mater Matuta in Rome after the victorious campaigns led by him against the Sardinians, is explicit with regard to this point. The tabula (in the words of the historian, "forma Sardiniae erat atque in ea simulacra pugnarum picta") is thus "a geographical map of Sardinia and on this the representations of the battles were painted". It is from this tradition that the representational syntax of the great spiral columns of both Rome and Constantinople derives. Basically, the form is nothing other than a colossal sculpted itinerary, originating in those paintings exhibited in triumphs, during which plastic scale models were even carried on floats with representations of the most important exploits of war (Fl. Iosephus, Bellum Iudaicum vii.143-148).

This picture of the structure of Etrusco-Italic representation continues in outline, as we have seen, into the Roman period, when we see the 'rebirth' of profectio and adventus with Augustus. Both ceremonies had been banished half a millennium earlier by the republican patricians and were subsequently resuscitated for the exclusive benefit of the covert monarchy represented by the principate. However, the question is, can we compare the representational forms of Aegean culture of the mid-second millennium BC with the structures of the Etrusco-Italic figurative tradition which developed centuries later and in forms completely independent of those of the Aegean? Notwithstanding the suggestive hypothesis formulated by H. Müller-Karpe (1959) concerning the possible Aegean origins (deriving from the end of the Creto-Mycenaean era) of the forms of expression of the earliest stages of the civilisation of Latium in the first two centuries of the first millennium BC, I believe that I have already answered that question at the beginning of this paper. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the abundant evidence from Santorini, with its exceptional state of preservation and its surprising 'novelty', offers several grounds for an overall reconsideration of the structure of Aegean representation and of its relationship to the complex social articulation of the Minoan-Mycenaean world.

Above all, it is important to emphasise that the evidence from Santorini (Doumas 1992) has, among other things, succeeded in eliminating any doubts about the social context of the cult scenes shown on the frescoes. Painted decoration with a communal religious theme is not the exclusive prerogative of palace society (Cameron 1987; Blakolmer 1995). Moreover, the Santorini frescoes clearly establish a picture of a society whose articulation requires the attribution of an important body of sacra to leading family groups. These include the control of ritual initiations of young men and women, the subject of almost all the frescoes in the houses of Akrotiri, as N. Marinatos (1988; 1993a; 1993b) has demonstrated. Such rites, so important in community life, lie at least in part outside the control of the palace and instead are assumed by the social groups to which the owners of the individual houses belong; and, indeed, in these houses certain figures identifiable as priests are found. The owners for their part doubtless constitute the highest level of a complex social stratification, with the palace at the top - a point confirmed by the topographical similarity between the settlement at Akrotiri and of all other Aegean settlements in relation to the visible centrality of the palace. In other words, even if the most important functions (primarily that of redistribution of goods) are centred in the palace, and even if the palace economy is dedicated to providing rations through the medium of multiple cults, mediation between the community and the divine sphere is only partly in the hands of the king. In a comparison of the structural nature of figured representations in the two civilisations, it is essential to keep this point in mind. As it is, the analysis of the scene on the Bisenzio cart not only demonstrates the importance of the initiation ceremony for youths in the protohistoric Etrusco-Italic mind, but also provides the rite with a thoroughly family-oriented perspective and thus encourages us to pursue this idea further.

Some years ago, I discussed these initiations in the historical period of the Etrusco-Latin region (Torelli 1984). In the course of this work I identified both public and private aspects of rituals of this sort. The public aspect is found in ceremonies tied to the menarche and to the military instruction of the Salii, celebrated in the Roman calendar festivals of March devoted to Anna Perenna, and in the Liberalia and the Quinquatrus. The private aspect, on the other hand, is found in a series of ceremonies celebrated in the home and focused essentially, as far as we know, on purification, the taking of auspices, the shaving of the hair and a change in clothing style, in particular the casting off of the garments of adolescence and the assumption of adult or bridal hairstyles. Elements analogous to these are evident in the Akrotiri frescoes, at least in cases where there is a series of figures visibly engaged in acts of a ritual nature. As N. Marinatos (1988, 44-47) has shown, a full series of youthful figures with their heads shaved, except for a single long lock of hair (Doumas 1992, fig. 119) (pl. 20), can be recognised as a depiction of young boys and girls as initiates, a theme widely discussed in studies of Minoan art (Davis 1986; Koehl 1986). This group of representations includes those of the so-called priestess in the hallway between Rooms 4 and 5, the so-called fishermen in Room 5 of the West House, the boy boxers in Room 1 in Building Beta and some young girls in the frescoes on both the ground and upper floors of Room 3 in Xeste 3. Ritual head shaving, which is characteristic of various ceremonies with a liminal nature, such as the mourning for the death of Adonis in the sanctuaries of the Syrian God (Lucian, De dea Syria 7; Torelli 1997c), is also well known in the traditional ceremony of bridal hair cutting for the Spartan marriage. The ritual is also known in the archaic Latin and Etruscan world, as demonstrated by several votive heads (Fig. 13) found in the extra-urban sanctuary of Minerva in the Latin 'sacred city' of Lavinium (Torelli 1984, 34-50). Apart from these few ex-voto heads, which date to between the fifth and fourth centuries BC and which seem to show the ritual in process of being abandoned in Latium, it is also preserved in the ritual cutting of the hair of the 'perpetuae nubendae' (that is the Vestal virgins),and in a dim memory, transmitted by antiquarians, of the unique Roman prenuptial ceremony of caelibaris hasta (Torelli 1984, 39-40).

On the other hand, totally unknown to both Italic iconography and to the later Greek tradition is another rite found in the Thera frescoes, the prematrimonial connotations of which are confirmed by ethnographic parallels. I refer to the unique fresco found on the lower floor of Room 3 of Xeste 3. Here, in the centre of the wall (and thus crucial in terms of the meaning of the scene), apparently shown inside a cave and between a woman and an initiate who carry a necklace and a transparent cloak respectively, is depicted a seated girl who contemplates a wound on her foot with evident pain (Marinatos 1988, fig. 52). The scene is completed on the adjoining wall by the representation of a sacrifice (Fig. 14), alluded to by blood stains on horns of consecration inside a precinct(?), which the little girl on the righthand side of the former scene is visibly looking at. The ceremony, unknown in the Classical world and hitherto not satisfactorily explained, appears to find parallels in modern folk culture, in particular in the Arab countries of the Maghreb. In Tunisia, according to an oral account given to me in 1982 by a Tunisian teacher, Dr Fatma ben-Saïdane, during the nuptial rites small incisions are made in the bride's legs and seeds planted inside these, evidently intended symbolically to promote fertility in the imminent marriage. This is a rite which seems extremely similar to the one performed in the Theran fresco.

If this interpretation, which builds on the brilliant analysis of N. Marinatos (1987b), is correct, the female initiation shown at Akrotiri ought to consist of two stages. In the first stage, which coincides with puberty, the girls, with their heads shaved just like their male counterparts, would participate in the dressing of the bride, as in the scene under discussion, and would carry offerings, just as the 'priestess' in the West House does (Doumas 1992, fig. 24). This same stage would also be represented in the scene in the upper floor of Room 3, Xeste 3 (Fig. 15), where, on the northern and eastern walls, flanking the theophany of a goddess enthroned between a monkey and a griffin, crocuses are being gathered, as in a literal άνθολογία. Such scenes are known in Greek iconography of the historical period to represent symbolic prenuptial status, as illustrated by the well known 'mythic-ritual' sequence on the pinakes from Locri Epizephyrii. In this very elaborate series of vignettes which focuses on the marriage ritual, the prenuptial phase is symbolically represented not only by the προτέλεια or preparatory sacrifices (Fig. 16), but also by allusions to both a καρπολογία (the gathering of fruit) (Fig. 17) and an άνθολογία. Performed by young women, these scenes conceptually precede the scenes of the rape of Persephone both by Hades and by the so-called 'young abductor' (Fig. 18), which in turn allude to the actual nuptial ceremony (Torelli 1977). In the second stage of female initiation, the young girls, with their hair now grown back and adorned with a veil and jewellery, proceed to be married, following a ritual organised in two distinct parts. The first part involves the dressing of the bride, a ceremony alluded to in proleptic manner by the gestures of the two other women in the same scene, who are shown carrying the jewellery and the veil which they will evidently shortly put on the bride. That this ritual preparation of the bride also had some comprehensible significance in Aegean domestic religious ceremonies is clearly documented in the scene in Room 1 in the 'House of the Ladies'. Indeed, it is likely that what is portrayed in this room is in fact the preparation of a bride (Fig. 19). A young girl depicted in the centre of the wall is approached by two women, the one on the left carrying a dress and the one on the right possibly carrying jewels. The scene is portrayed as if below a curtain quilted with stars and with a wide border, very like the cloth carried by the initiate in the fresco on the ground floor of Room 3 in Xeste 3. The cloth makes us think of the veil used to cover the bride after the dressing ceremony shown on the walls and, in the ritual sphere of Etruria, of the veil which covers the bridal couple on a famous cippus from Chiusi, now in Chiusi, Museo Nazionale(inv.no. 2260: Jannot 1984, 59-60), At the same time, the architecture of the sacred area in the Akrotiri houses, like that of the shrines of the large palaces with the inevitable 'lustral basin', reflects a primary function which ought to refer principally (though not exclusively) to the ritual purification bath of the bride, a crucial component of the marriage rites of many Mediterranean cultures and one well documented in Etrusco-Italic imagery.

The Akrotiri frescoes clearly illustrate that tests of dexterity were a central part of male initiation rites. It is from this point of view that we may read the scene of a boxing match between two initiates found in Room 1, Building Beta (Doumas 1992, fig. 79); nor should it be necessary to remind ourselves that a boxing contest formed an integral part of the detailed sequence of Spartan initiations (for example, the fierce struggle between ephebes in the Platanistas described by Pausanias (3. 14. 8-11; cf. Torelli 1991)). The Bisenzio cart demonstrates that in the Etrusco-Italic world, just as in the older Greek world, the hunt and eroticism are not just casually juxtaposed, but rather that the hunt is the arena in which the dexterity and ability of youths is put to the test (Schnapp 1997). We may perhaps see a hint of this in the depiction of the hunting scene on the eastern wall of Room 5 in the West House (Doumas 1992, fig. 33; Pl. 2 (3-3.40 m.)), even if the inclusion of the griffin among the wild animals in the central part of the fresco means that this particular hunt should probably be identified as imaginary or supernatural. Were we not faced with the extensive use throughout Aegean art of themes drawn from the natural world, we might be tempted to think of the consistent way in which, in both houses and palaces, contiguous rooms are decorated with ceremonial and landscape scenes respectively. The landscape scenes have normally been considered as of 'decorative' character, a view which has only recently been challenged (Marinatos 1985; 1988, 31-32). These landscapes are often of an exotic or evidently wild nature, reflecting the necessity to recreate the segregation of initiates in a wilderness beyond the city (Brelich 1969, 29-31), a familiar theme in Greek initiation rites. The hunt itself is part of the common iconography of the Aegean world, as shown by such famous examples as the inlaid daggers from Grave Circle A at Mycenae and the gold Vapheio cups, despite the fact that these also owe much to the iconographical and ideological traditions of Mesopotamian and Egyptian royal hunts.

The consistence with which ceremonial and ritual themes occur in the Akrotiri frescoes (and in the Minoan-Mycenaean world in general) encourages us to read the famous 'miniature fresco' from Room 5 of the West House along similar lines. Such a reading has already been proposed by M. Benzi (1977) and developed more recently by L. Morgan (1988), G. Säflund (1981) and N. Marinatos (1983). I have no intention of going into the minute and complex problems posed by the readings of this fresco, for which the recent bibliography is extensive (e.g. Televantou 1994; Negbi 1994; Manning et al. 1994; Sherratt 1994), but from a morphological point of view it can be placed alongside famous Minoan frescoes such as the Temple Fresco and the Sacred Grove and Dance Fresco from Knossos (Säflund 1981; Davis 1987), or the miniature fresco from Tylissos (Shaw 1972). Along with many authors who have developed a religious interpretation for the painting, I am content to stress the archaeological and architectonic context (Niemeier 1992) and the presence of an initiate with shaved head in the act of offering fish (Doumas 1992, fig. 19; Pl. 5). The latter is a theme which occurs frequently in Aegean iconography (e.g. Pini 1975, no. 181; van Effenterre and van Effenterre 1972, no. 71; Sakellarakis 1974) and thus seems to have a particularly significant meaning. Also worth stressing is the festive, ceremonial character of the seaside procession, which is linked by means of the canopy on the so-called admiral's ship with similar ikria painted on the walls of Room 4 (e.g. Doumas 1992, fig. 54). Together, these act as symbols both of rank and of the sacred nature of the procession itself (as well as, possibly, of the priesthood of the owner of the house), and may be seen as encapsulating the entire 'miniature fresco' and its overall religious significance. The character of this fresco can thus be described as one of 'ceremonial narrative' related to the rites celebrated inside the house, which in turn may be identified as youthful initiation rites through the figures of male and female initiates (the priestess and the fishermen) which frame the lower parts of the walls of the room containing the 'miniature fresco' itself. Here, in the light of the structural comparison which forms the main subject of this paper, my main concern is to emphasise the close conceptual and narrative similarities between this fresco and Roman 'triumphal' painting, a genre created out of a combination of Etrusco-Italic narrative tradition and the 'discovery' of Hellenistic cartography, as discussed above. The Akrotiri fresco, perhaps more than any other Minoan miniature fresco, is strongly reminiscent of the tabula dedicated by Ti. Sempronius Gracchus after his Sardinian triumph, which presented a geographical map of the conquered island with the replicas of battles painted on its battlefields. We may describe the Akrotiri 'miniature fresco' in analogous terms by paraphrasing Livy as follows: "...forma [Therae]... atque in ea simulacra caerimoniarum picta". This geographical approach to narrative in the Minoan world is probably derived from figurative representations of pharaonic or Mesopotamian military campaigns on monumental reliefs or paintings in the east (Winter 1983; Matthiae 1988). Now that we have good evidence of close contacts between the two artistic traditions (Niemeier 1991; Bietak 1992; Bietak et al. 1994; Lurz 1994) it seems clear that such oriental forms of representation were 'miniaturised' in Aegean culture, according to the Aegean's own complex representational formulae. The adoption of this form of approach provides a convincing explanation for the multiplicity of events visible in the two largest fragments of the 'miniature fresco'. In the first fragment (Doumas 1992, fig. 26; Pl. 1 (0.70-2 m.)), reading from left to right, we see the unfolding of a ceremony on a hill, a scene of figures swimming or possibly shipwreck victims, another ceremony near a building and finally a procession of soldiers perhaps accompanying a flock of sheep and goats. In the second fragment (Doumas 1992, fig. 36; Pl. 3 (0-1.80 m.)), there is an impressive procession of boats adorned for a festival and ceremonially transporting groups of dignitaries. The boats are very richly decorated and decked out with ikria like those represented on their own in Room 4 of the same house as symbols of this festival or, perhaps more accurately, of the priestly status of the house's owner. The procession moves from a city at the foot of a high hill towards another bustling city, populated by many figures amongst whom we can distinguish a procession of naked youths identifiable as the protagonists in another initiation ceremony (Doumas 1992, figs. 35, 38, 46-48; Pl. 3). These landscapes filled with people and small-scale scenes, found in Minoan representations from the time of the so-called Town Mosaics at Knossos (Evans 1921, 301-314, figs. 223-226, 228-230), are very close indeed to the 'animated geographical map' tradition of Romano-Italic triumphal painting. The populated landscapes are used for both ceremonial and religious scenes as well as for the scenes of a military character which appear on objects with a celebratory function, such as the silver rhyton from Tomb IV, Grave Circle A, at Mycenae (Vermeule 1964, 100-102), and in palace paintings, like the large frieze from the megaron at Mycenae (Rodenwaldt 1921, 21-23) or the fresco showing a battle near a river from the palace at Pylos (Lang 1969, 71, pl. 16; Yalouris 1989). Far from being expressions, as E.T. Vermeule (1964, 102) believes, of "a generalized tradition of battle imagery which may be attached to different historical events through succeeding generations", these latter examples ought to be seen as actual historical representations, which make their comparison with the Etrusco-Roman mentality and its resulting traditions of expression even more interesting.

One final subject of the Akrotiri frescoes particularly worthy of discussion is that of theophanies (Matz 1958), a well known theme of Aegean representations and central to the cult scenes found in both glyptic and fresco art. In this regard, the example documented on the northern and eastern walls of the upper floor of Room 3 in Xeste 3 (Doumas 1992, figs. 116-130; Pl. 12) is particularly significant. The scene, painted as if seen from above, depicts the ritual gathering of crocuses by young girls belonging to two different age groups (Pl. 8). This activity takes place in front of a goddess enthroned above a structure identifiable as corresponding to the tripartite shrine commonly found in Minoan-Mycenaean religious iconography and known from actual sanctuaries (Shaw 1978; 1981). The goddess is flanked by two animals: a griffin indicating the realm of the supernatural, and a monkey, probably here depicted as a sacred animal (Marinatos 1987b). In the Classical period, the monkey is regarded as an animal characterised by particular affection for its children (McDermott 1938), a characteristic described by Pliny the Elder in the following words: "Simiarum generi praecipua erga fetum adfectio. Gestant catulos quae mansuefactae intra domos peperere, omnibus demonstrant tractarique gaudent, gratulationem intellegentibus similes." (Naturalis Historia viii 216).⁽⁴⁾ While Artemidorus (ii.12) states that the baboon was held to be sacred to the moon, Pliny tells us that monkeys are credited with a particular inclination to lust and are also worshippers of the moon: "luna cava tristes esse (sc. the monkeys) quibus in eo genere cauda sit, novam exultatione adorari" (Naturalis Historia viii 215).⁽⁵⁾ All these are qualities which render the monkey an excellent servant for a goddess of reproduction like the one shown in the fresco. As in other scenes with a religious basis, the theophany is at the centre of a ritual representation, the gathering of saffron (Marinatos 1987c; Amigues 1988), whose implications we have already seen in the characterisation of the ceremony defining the actual prenuptial status of the young girls. In conclusion, it seems to me appropriate to remember that in the earliest Etrusco-Italic iconography, as seen on the cart and cinerary urn from Bisenzio, the theophany is also conceived in close relation to the actual performance of the ritual act, just as it is in the Theran fresco. In contrast to the norm in Archaic and Classical Greek iconography, Etrusco-Italic and Aegean iconography never depicts theophanies as apparitions on their own, a detail which in itself provides yet another notable point of contact between these two cultures.

(1). "...the people set up as priest merely a runaway slave who has slain with his own hand the man previously consecrated to that office; accordingly the priest is always armed with a sword, looking around for the attacks, and ready to defend himself." (transl. H.L. Jones, Loeb edn.).

(2). "In the sanctuary of Diana Aricina was a certain tree from which it was forbidden to break off any branch. However, the power was given to any runaway slave who succeeded in removing a branch from it to challenge the sanctuary priest in single combat."

(3). "What we call orcus [the underworld] is said by Verrius to have been called Uragus by the ancients".

(4). "The genus ape has a remarkable affection for its young. Tame monkeys kept in the house who bear young ones carry them about and show them to everybody, and delight in having them stroked, looking as if they understood that they are congratulated." (transl. H. Rackham, Loeb edn.).

(5). "[The Monkeys] are depressed by the moon waning and worship the new moon with delight."

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