“They live in a region that produces everything and, by engaging in work, have fruits with which they can not only eat enough, but also enjoy a life of pleasure and luxury.” Diodorus Siculus (I c. B. C.).

About Etruscan wines:

We have no direct Etruscan written references to their wine; our knowledge comes only through Roman sources. For example, Martial and Horace praised the Massico (from the Etrurian Campania) but they scorned the rosé from Veio. One should not take these negative judgments too seriously, however, since they appear at the historical juncture when the Etruscans were in serious decline, already under the heel of the Roman Empire.  Later, Columella wrote, in his 1st-century De re rustica, that numerous types of vines were common in Etruria, such as Pompeiano or Murgentino.  Pliny the Elder described different varieties from Arezzo, such as Talpona nera (made into white wine), Etesiaca, Conseminea (excellent for everyday consumption), Sopina or Tudemis or Florentia, Perusinia (a red grape), Parana (in the Pisa area), and Apiana (a muscat grape that made a good sweet wine). The wines from Gravisca (the ancient port of Tarquinia) and from Statonia are described as excellent.

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The Montescudaio cremation urn dates to the first half of the 7th century (Cecina Archeological Museum). This composition marks the introduction, from this period on, of Greek models for marking aristocratic status. It displays on its cover a male figure, the Lord, seated in front of a three-legged table which holds flattish loaves of bread. In front of the table are two vessels. One, still extant, is a kind of krater, a vessel much used by the Greeks for consumption of wine. The other has gone lost, but it was probably a container for water, since the Greeks habitually mixed water with their wine. A female figure is positioned next to the table, probably to serve the wine.

We better know how they consumed them. Rituals connected with wine seem to have already been present in Etruria at the end of the Bronze Age. However, contact with the Greek culture marked a profound evolution. The wine was more deeply linked to the religious dimension, used in a collective way in the celebrations of the Gods and in funeral ceremonies. The greater production made it even more available and became the protagonist of social rites, banquets and symposia (moments after dinner, where wine was drunk, attending music and dance shows, conversations and games). The commonalty probably also consumed a light wine, derived from the marc passed with water, frequent practice also in Roman times and until the nineteenth century.

The banquet had both religious and social meanings, being celebrated during funereal rites, as well as being staged as a symbol of wealth and belonging to an elite class.

In the first Greek models for marking aristocratic status, the reception of food and drink takes place while seated composedly at a table. This model appears in Etruria at least since the beginning of the seventh century. B.C. Beginning in the 6th century, we begin to see, still drawn from Greek cultural models, the figure of the banqueter, or diner, always half reclining on the kline, or dining couch, elbow resting on one or more cushions.  In front of each diner were set some rather low tables, for food and wine cups.

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After 500 BC, women are represented at the banquets, sometimes reclining next to the men, sometimes seated nearby.  This custom was exclusively Etruscan, since in the Greek world the symposium was solely a male affair, or at most open to the hetaerae, or courtesans.  The Greeks, in fact, and the first Romans, regarded the female presence at Etruscan banquets as a sign of moral corruption.  As a matter of fact, in the Etruscan world, women enjoyed a social and civic role far different from their subordinate status in Greco-Roman society.  Female participation in Etruscan banquets had nothing whatever to do with the erotic or immoral.  Rather, married couples took part in these meals, and were represented on sarcophagi and in frescoes as a symbol of family harmony.

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The diners ate with their hands, often cleaning themselves with bowls of scented water and napkins. In the room there was pets (dogs, cats, chickens, ducks …), who ate the remains of food that fell (or were thrown) on the ground. The banquet was always accompanied by music, especially from the flutes. There were also dance and juggling performances. There were also games: dice or the “tabula lusoria” (a kind of chess). The kottabos, arrived from the Greek Sicily, consisted in centering a target with the last drops of wine left in the cup.

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Moralising criticisms were made by Greek and Latin authors about the luxury that marked Etruscan banquets, which featured precious vessels and embroidered textiles, a great number of servants.  Someone tells that they banquet twice in a day! (The Greek and Roman lunch was very light and fast). The Romans went so far as to refer to the Etruscans as “slaves of their bellies” (gastriduloi), and the image of the obese Etruscan coined by Catullus became quite popular.  This image, however, was by no means always negative, since in the ancient culture the “fat” person was he who could afford to be so, that is, it was a symbol of wealth and power.

How did they drink wine?

The wine drunk in antiquity was very different from what we enjoy today.  It was concentrated, strongly aromatic, and high in alcohol.  It was not drunk pure, but mixed with water, because it was considered barbarians to lose control in society. The wine was also sweetened and flavored. These practices were common in the ancient and medieval past, to cover defects due to limited production and conservation techniques.

The various utensils used for wine and table were in ceramic or bronze. For them, archaeologists use Greek names because the Etruscan name is often unknown or uncertain.

In the centre of the room, there was a service table with the wine container (krateres), recognizable by the wide mouth. Near,  there was a large amphora (hydria) for water, that was served at table with small buckets (situla). The wine was mixed with water in the krater. They used cold or hot water, according to the seasons.  Then, they mixed also honey, herbs, flowers, spices, resins, etc.

 

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Etruscan krater, 550-500 B.C.

view_13_fig-40-grattugiaThe grater also belonged to the symposium supply, which was used to grate spices, roots or probably (as happened in the Greek world) cheese. From the crater the wine was then drawn with some ladles or cups like the kyathos, of typically Etruscan style, halfway between a cup for drinking and one for drawing.

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Kyathos, a halfway between a cup for drinking and one for drawing, is a typically Etruscan shape. This is an Attic pottery of 510-485 BC. The rich Etruscan cities became a very important market for Greek ceramics, so that the Greek craftsmen introduced Etruscan forms into their production, to meet the taste of their best buyers.

The wine was poured into service jugs (oinochoe, another original Etruscan shape) or directly in the cups of the guests. It was also filtered with a strainer to eliminate turbidity.

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Colander in bronze, Piombino Museum

 

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Etruscan bucchero jug to serve wine (oinochoe), half of VI c. B.C.

To drink, the Etruscans used different ceramic cups, as the simple calyx (called thavna). An imported shape was the kylix (in Etruscan: culichna). The kantharos had two high handles (in Etruscan: zavena).

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Etruscan wine cup

 

 

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The kylix was a  wine cup with two little handles. It was the cup par excellence of the Greek symposiums, also introduced in Etruria.

 

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The kantharos was a typically Etruscan cup shape, with two high handles. This cup spread widely in the Mediterranean and also entered the Greek culture, to the point of supplanting the kylix.

 

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The kantharos also became the symbol of Dionysus in Greek art.

 

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The dead were instead represented often holding a very low cup, almost a plate, the “patera”, cup typical of sacrificial and religious rites. (Etruscan sarcophagus from the Hellenistic period, Siena).

 

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THE ETRUSCAN POTTERY. On the Etruscan table (and in the tombs) there were pottery both of their own production as well as imported, specially from the Greeks. The Etruscan ceramic market was of such importance that Greek workshops produced objects custom-made for the Etruscans, sometimes introducing into their products typically Etruscan elements, such as special bucchero shapes (oinochoe, kyathos, and kantharos). Greek craftsmen themselves immigrated to Etruria seeking commissions and giving rise to new influences in local production. But it is also true that Etruscan pottery derived from Greek models was not a simple imitation. New and eclectic styles developed, that interpreted in new ways motifs taken over from other cultures. The most ancient Etruscan pottery was with the impasto method, using non-purified clay, with added limestone shards or sand. These vases were decorated with incisions, or with inserted objects of bronze, amber, or bone; or they were slipped with thin layers of lead after firing. Only impasto was used until the 9th century BC. Contacts with the Greeks led to more advanced techniques, and to the decline of impasto, until it was used mainly for objects of everyday domestic use. Greek models introduced a completely new type of pottery to the Etruscans, the use of purified clay, with the object turned on a wheel and painted with decorative motifs. Imitation of geometric period Greek pottery led, in the late 8th century, to local production models, known as Etrusco-geometrica class pottery. The importation of Corinthian and Greco-oriental (or Orientalizing) pottery led to the production of Etrusco-Corinthian pottery. It was produced in Etruria from the end of the 7th century to 540-530 BC, with Greek-Oriental influences superimposed on Corinthian forms and motifs. Bucchero, on the other hand, is a typically Etruscan style of pottery: its black colour was obtained by reduction, during the firing process, of iron oxides in the clay (which from an initial red turn black). Production started around the 7th century in southern Etruria along the coast; it peaked between the end of the 7th and beginning of the 8th centuries, with the pottery exported throughout the Mediterranean basin, particularly in the west. Quality declined in the 5th century, and the style became restricted to just a few forms for domestic use. It was then replaced by other pottery methods. The Attic style influenced the emergence of black-figure Etruscan pottery in the mid-6th century. The decoration was often scenes from Greek mythology. The artists fused together several styles, borrowing Orientalizing styles and motifs as well, together with typically Etruscan shapes, leading to works of marked eclectic character. The red-figure Etruscan style too grew out of Attic influences, about the 5th century. This ware spread everywhere, to Sardinia, Gaul, Corsica, Spain, and Africa. This technique died out towards the end of the 4th century. From the 4th through the 1st centuries BC, a black-paint pottery, traditionally known as Etrusco-Campanian, spread throughout the Mediterranean.

 

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FOOD. The main dish of the rich people’s banquets was roasted or spit-roasted meat, especially of pork, sheep, game (wild boar, deer, bear, badger, hare, …), small wild animals (birds, dormice, …) . The latter were also available to the less well-off. The cattle were bred more for milk and for work in the fields than for meat, as it will then be for the Romans. Near the sea they also ate fish, tuna was much appreciated. On the tables there were also cheeses, salami, and eggs. Honey was used both for desserts and for “savory” recipes. The diet was however based on cereals (especially wheat, spelled and barley), legumes and vegetables. With these they prepared bread (without salt, like today in Tuscany and other areas of central Italy), focaccia, gruels, and soups. The dressing, like today, was olive oil. From the countryside and woods there were olives, walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, figs, plums, pomegranates, grapes, pears and apples. (fresco of the Tomb of the Shields, Tarquinia).

 

Wine was linked to the religious dimension not only in consumption at funeral banquets or in sacrificial rites.The Etruscans considered control over the cultivation of the vine so crucial that the augurs, the priestly class, were the custodians of knowledge concerning the working of the vineyards, the determination of the orientation of the vine-rows, and the magic rituals to ward off bad weather. Pruning too possessed a high symbolic charge. As a form of control and regulation of the vine’s crop, the Etruscans connected it with personal worth and kingship. The pruning knife found in Iron Age tombs between Novara and Verbania represented not the tool itself but ownership of vineyards. Virgil, in describing the Latin ancestors of Augustus’ lineage, names Sabinus and identifies him as a cultivator of vines.

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According to the Etruscans, the Divine will on the Human Fate manifested itself with signs in the world. The set of knowledge, rituals and practices that allowed to read this will of the gods was the “Etruscan Discipline”. It was considered a revealed knowledge. Cicero and Ovid report the legend that a farmer from Tarquinia, while plowing a field, saw jump out of a rut a child, Tages, wise as an old man. The inhabitants of Etruria crowed at the cry of the farmer and they learned the fundamentals of discipline from Tages. The science of divination was the preserve of a class of aristocrats-priests, with different names according to their specialization (the haruspexes interpreted animals viscera, the augurs the flight of the birds, the “fulgitur” the lightnings, etc.). The Discipline enjoyed ample prestige in Rome too, until to enter in the official religion. (This is a bronze of a Etruscan augur, 490-470 BC, with his “lituo”, tool to trace the perimetre of the sacred space, the “templum”, within which he would take the auspices).

Etruscan magical practices were saved in Roman epoc, for exemple during the Vinalia Rustica, festivals celebrated in August 19.  The August festival featured rituals and magic practices aimed at warding off any weather disturbances that might threaten the harvest. As an example of these practices, Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, mentions the placing among the vines of an artificial cluster of grapes, which was intended to attract to itself damaging influences and thus save the rest of the crop. On the same day, the priest of Jove, the flamen dialis, celebrated the auspicatio vindemiae, and Cicero cites the auguratio vineta, rites meant to ensure a good harvest. Cicero, in his De Divinatione, attributes the origin of this “scapegoat cluster” to Attus Navius, who was of Sabine origin and a famous augur in the time of Tarquinius Priscus. When Attus Navius was a young swineherd, he lost one of his pigs and promised that if he found it, he would give to the god the largest cluster of grapes from his vineyard. Upon finding the errant animal, Attus Navius stood in the centre of his vineyard, divided it into four sections in accordance with directions in the Disciplina Etrusca, and then interpreted the flight of birds he observed. Since the birds gave inauspicious indications for the first three areas, he searched in the fourth section and found there a cluster of wondrous size.

There was two Etruscan divinties connected to the vine and wine:

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Fufluns

TINA/TINIA/TIN. He was the highest Etruscan divinity; his primary attribute was the thunderbolt. Tina was not solely a god of the heavens; even in the beginning, he was linked to the plant world, and in particular to the culture of the vine. Pliny tells us, for example, that in Populonia there was an image of Tina sculpted from a large vine trunk. Later, he was assimilated to Zeus/Jove. In Rome, the festivals preceding the harvest were dedicated to Jove.

FUFLUNS was an Etruscan god, whose name is connected to the root puple, or young shoot, the same term from which the name of Populonia (Pupluna, Pufluna) derived. From the mid-6th century on, Fufluns took on the iconographical traits of the Greek Dionysos, who, under the epithet Dionysos Bakchos, gave rise to the Latin Bacchus. The artistic representation of Fufluns followed the figural canons of Dionysus: the kantharos, or drinking cup, and vine shoots, or parading with maenads and satyrs. Beginning in the 4th century, the identification became even more pronounced. The god was represented as a beardless youth, and the legends from the Greek myths were incorporated: his birth from the thigh of Zeus, his infancy at Nyssa, his encounter with Ariadne, etc.

THE DIONYSIAC RITES  The influence exercised by Greek culture brought about as well the introduction into Etruria of the Dionysiac rites. This cult reached the apogee of its popularity in Etruria in the 4th-3rd centuries, so much so that colleges of Bacchantes were organised. Livy argues that it was precisely from Etruria that the Dionysiac rites arrived in Rome, which were subsequently prohibited by the Senate in 186 BC, as injurious to public order and morals.

These rites have often been misunderstood as simple sexual excesses and wild behaviour. In fact, Greek philosophy believed that wine unleashed a liberating and stimulating power in its devotees. The ecstasy that is achieved at the apex of Dionysiac frenzy is a form of higher awareness, and a means of uniting oneself with the divine. Wine was defined as “nectar of the gods” because it was considered a true and effective symbol of the sacred.

Nevertheless, the gift of Dionysus was ambiguous. On one hand, it unleashed vitalistic energy, but on the other, it induced a frenzy that could lead to death. Dionysus himself is thus a contradictory divinity, a god of vitalistic inebriation brought on by wine, but also “terrible for his irresistible power” (The Bacchants, Euripides). Dionysus is a saviour god, in fact, having been “born twice, descending to the underworld and returning hence alive.”

“mortem moriendo destruxit, vitam resurgendo reparavit”

In this way he reaffirmed life by means of death. Wine represented this death and resurrection of the god, since the juice of the grape was killed by the fermentation but then regenerated itself as a beverage with higher powers. For this reason, the sacred fury wine unleashed did not represent chaos, but opened to the cosmos, that is, to life over death.