CHAPTER 22
The Obesus Etruscus
Can the Trope be True?

Jean MacIntosh Turfa

1. Introduction

The Etruscans have been history’s underdogs for centuries, their reputation having suffered from the material success and affluence they had enjoyed at least since the Iron Age (see Chapter 20). Roman poets, respectable (Virgil) and otherwise (Catullus), seem to have casually labeled them as self-indulgent and overweight, and subsequent scholars and others have perpetrated this view at the expense of more reasoned analyses. Understanding the phenomenon of the obesus etruscus now requires a multidisciplinary approach. The literary comments must be analyzed objectively, with scholars applying a critical eye to the sources, while artistic representations, especially funerary portraiture, must be studied for visual clues. At the same time, we must look to archaeology, which occasionally provides us with potential means of discerning human conditions through physical studies of skeletal materials, and through circumstantial evidence for health and nutrition in early Etruria. In this chapter, I consider the extant categories of potential evidence for Etruscan obesity and related health conditions by focusing on anthropological data from burials, funerary and votive portraiture, and epigraphic statements on the identity of affluent Etruscans. While certain Etruscan noblemen and women probably were corpulent, the phenomenon more likely represents an artifact of the materials and techniques of Etruscan sculptors and coroplasts.

2. The Literary Trope

Did the Romans actually believe that, more than other groups, their Etruscan neighbors and in-laws were predisposed to obesity? In linking adjectives for “overweight” with “Etruscan,” the poets certainly expected that their audiences would understand what they meant. Yet, in using the term etruscus, they had already taken a step back from a realistic, personal encounter, for this is a Latin ethnic term, and probably pejorative or dismissive, since it is not the term that Etruscans used for themselves, namely “Rasenna.”

The Augustan-era literary references to the obesus or pinguis etruscus are two: Catullus’s 39th Ode and Virgil’s Second Georgic. In Carmen 39.11, Catullus (c.84–54 BCE) refers to the “Umbrian” and “fat Etruscan” when satirizing a Roman man’s social behavior:

Si urbanus esses aut Sabinus aut Tiburs
aut pinguis Vmber aut obesus Etruscus
aut Lanuvinus ater atque dentatus
aut Transpadanus, ut meos quoque attingam,
aut quilubet, qui puriter lavit dentes,
tamen renidere usque quaque te nollem:
nam risu inepto res ineptior nulla est.

Even if you were a refined person or a Sabine, or a man from Tivoli, or a portly Umbrian or a fat Etruscan, or a swarthy or toothy Lanuvian or a man from beyond the Po, to touch upon my own people, or whoever you like, who cleans his teeth with pure water, I still don’t want you to be grinning all the time: because nothing is dopier than a silly smile (translation J. M. Turfa).

Catullus had to know when he wrote this that his audience would readily understand the ethnic stereotypes; the other term he uses is pinguis, for the fat or portly Umbrian. The term could mean sleek, well-fed, or prosperous for a man, and was also used in reference to foodstuffs to indicate “greasy” or “rich in fat” (in a good sense). Applied to wine, it meant “full-bodied,” a desirable condition.

While the most influential modern commentaries (e.g., Thomson 1997: 306–307) are silent on the issue, several older authorities did weigh in on the obesus etruscus. Mommsen (1900: 150 (vol. I chap. 9)), for example, noted that “Instead of the slender and symmetrical proportions of the Greeks and Italians the sculptures of the Etruscans exhibit only short sturdy figures with large heads and thick arms,” while R. Ellis (1889: 141) observed, “Their fatness was connected with their luxurious living” (Aeneid 11.737–40, Diodorus Siculus 5.40). Fordyce (1961: 186–187) believed that the “Obesus etruscus accords with Virgil’s pinguis Tyrrhenus (Georgics 2.193) and with representations of Etruscans in art,” while E. T. Merrill (1976: 70) suggested the following: “Obesus: the monuments of the Etruscans show them to have been a short and thick-set people.” It is also important to note that while the manuscripts all use parcus, “thrifty,” for the Umbrian, most commentators substitute pinguis, “sleek, greasy.”

With very different intentions, the poet Virgil (70–19 BCE), in his pastoral Second Georgic (2.193), used the term pinguis to portray a lush setting for an Etruscan religious ceremony: “The sleek Etruscan at the altars blows on his ivory flute and on the curved platters we place the steaming entrails [of a sacrificial victim]” (Inflavit cum pinguis ebur Tyrrhenus ad aras lancibus et pandis fumantia reddimus exta). The Augustan poet sought to depict the abundance of the land of Italy and its ancient exploitation by exotic native peoples, the Etruscans; the healthful and supportive character of the soil is emphasized in the good omens produced by the victim’s entrails. Of course Roman authors, even the skeptical Cicero, credited the expertise of Etruscan priests in matters of ritual and divination, so the overall connotation of these lines is surely positive (Livy History of Rome 5.1.6: gens itaque ante omnes alias eo magis dedita religionibus quod excelleret arte colendi eas; see also Chapters 12 and 18). Later in the same poem, Virgil applies pinguis to the nigra terra, the fertile “black earth,” again using it in an approving mode. As an issue of general knowledge, the identification of Etruria’s volcanic soil as rich and fertile would have been a commonplace, known to Greeks as well as Italians (see Strabo Book 5; Diodorus Siculus 5.40; cf. Barker and Rasmussen 1998: 25–42). Of course, the soils of Campania and other regions were also volcanic and extremely fertile.

These terms were also known in medical circles, at least by the time of Celsus (fl. 14–37 CE) who wrote books on both medicine and agriculture (although the latter do not survive). He juxtaposed the condition of obesus with that of gracilis, “slim, thin” to mean “fat, stout or plump;” obesus could also modify soil that was “enriched” or, in other words, fertilized (see Glare 1996: 1212; on issues of how to define obesity/being overweight for antiquity, see Bradley 2011: 6–11). With hindsight honed by Judeo-Christian heritage, we may read a value judgment in the charge of obesity: since much of the ancient world was constantly on the brink of want if not starvation, over-indulgence could be interpreted as disdain or outright flaunting of one’s good fortune. Garnsey (1999: 34–61), in fact, maintains that many or most people in Classical antiquity were malnourished, even if they did not go hungry (for a modern comparison, see Dirks 1993 and Bradley 2011: 6). But these comments on obesity do not come up in contexts like that of Juvenal’s Roman example (Satires 1.92) of simplex furor, who loses hundreds gambling and yet will not give a cast-off cloak to a shivering slave. So there is no particular moral or ethical overtone inherent in the poets’ remarks. (Much more scurrilous is the description of Etruscan women as “big drinkers” who recline with men other than their husbands: Theopompus cited by Athenaeus Deipnosophistai 12.517–18; see also Chapter 21).

While Etruria’s wealth, both of the land and from seaborne commerce, was well established as early as the Iron Age (eighth century and earlier), the surviving literary references to Etruscan prosperity or to obesity only seem to begin much later, as does the presumed artistic evidence. The Greek geographers/historians, Strabo and Diodorus, like Catullus and Virgil, only span the later first century BCE into the Augustan period. In contrast, the portraits that are today linked with the obesus etruscus were made – and surely buried – from the end of the fourth to the mid-second century BCE and thus were out of sight when the poets had their say. What, then, would have generated the stereotype of the “fat Etruscan” in the minds of Late Republican/Principate-era Romans? Could they have referred to actual persons of their acquaintance, or to artistic representations, which may have been open to misunderstanding in interpretation? Did enough Romans see or hear of cramped Etruscan Hellenistic family tombs and the effigy-sarcophagi that had been deposited there since the later fourth century? Or was there a lost category of Etruscan public or civic sculpture that portrayed Etruscan statesmen and heroes fat-and-all, as Republican portraits depicted Romans warts-and-all?

3. Perpetrating the Slur: The Link to Artistic Representations

Scholarship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seized upon a trope that was familiar from school readings in the Classics and applied it to the few monuments of Etruscan art, mainly sarcophagi and urns, that were known until fairly recently (for discussion of values and attitudes of Classical art with regard to physical condition, see Bradley 2011: especially 25–26 with notes 72–73 for scholarship on Etruscan art). In his Victorian work, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, George Dennis made the association between the “obese Etruscan” and the effigies he saw on Hellenistic sarcophagi while traveling in the region of Tuscania:

One of these nenfro sarcophagi is among the finest I have seen executed in this coarse material. On the lid lies a man of middle age, a true obesus Etruscus – turgidus epulis – with ‘fair round belly with good capon lined,’ reclining, half-draped, on the festive couch. His face, as usual with these sepulchral effigies, has so much individuality of character, that none can doubt its being a portrait. A striking face it is, too – with commanding brow, large aquiline nose, mouth speaking intelligence and decision, though somewhat sensual withal, and an air of dignity about the whole countenance, marking him as an aristocrat – one of the Patres Conscripti of Tuscania. No inscription sets forth his name, pedigree or age.¹

The Tuscania sarcophagi seen by Dennis in museum courtyards or dealers’ lots have many counterparts in the region of Tarquinia–Tuscania and its rock-cut tombs. For instance, a younger man’s effigy from one of the Alethna family tombs at Musarna, now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum (Figure 22.1), is carved in nenfro and depicts the deceased reclining as if at a dinner party. His formal attire, fashionable in Hellenistic Etruria, is the Greek himation, a hip-mantle wrapped over his lower body and one shoulder that exposes his chest and abdomen.² Voids in the volcanic stone that today emphasize the area of his navel are actually the result of erosion, not the work of the ancient sculptor. Nevertheless, style and technique of carving have been constrained by the medium: fine details cannot be worked in such coarse stone, so the deceased’s facial features are fairly simplified and smooth, his wreath is a convex torus (perhaps intended to be completed by plaster and/or paint since traces of red or red-over-white adhere to some sarcophagi), and the folds of his drapery are not crisp or pleated. His body is also made softer and thicker through the exigencies of the material, with hands and feet slightly larger than normal, and his chest and abdomen looking soft and sagging. At first glance, this man might appear overweight, but when examined from all angles, his belly does not really bulge outward and the rest of his body is not swollen with rolls of extra fat. An artisan concerned with not wanting to ruin his block of stone would likely have exercised caution in carving such a figure, and thus might make it, as this example suggests, less gracile than its subject was in real-life. Interestingly, this sarcophagus is not one of the earliest examples of its type, but probably belonged to the second or third generation of the family to have commissioned such a monument. The first patrons of the realistic effigies often had sarcophagi of finer stones such as alabaster and limestone; they were also depicted with more precisely defined bodies, even if those bodies were overweight. Women in the family were rendered more simply but their bodies are not thickened like those of the men, although the stone is left in a pillar behind their heads and necks, thinly disguised as a veil, as seen, for instance, in women’s nenfro sarcophagi in Tarquinia and London (Herbig 1952: nos. 106 and 68, pls. 106a, e). Such pillar-effects are known in the sculpture of many cultures (e.g., Old Kingdom Egypt) as a means of strengthening freestanding statues.

Image described by caption and surrounding text. — **Figure 22.1** Sarcophagus and lid with a reclining effigy of a clean-shaven man, third century BCE. Nenfro. From the Alethna family tomb, Civita Musarna. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Museum, inv. MS 3488A.
Photo: Courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Museum, image # 151655.

Another issue that affects our interpretation is the question of ancient attitudes on the depiction of undesirable or suboptimal physical conditions: such things as deformities, blemishes, or visible evidence of disease rarely appear in art – and this must have contrasted to real life, even among the affluent, the only portions of society distinguished by funerary portraits (for background on Etruscan portraiture, see Carpino 2013). There seems to have been a reluctance to imitate pathological conditions or imperfections in Classical representational art in general, even in medically-occasioned sculpture, such as the anatomical votive models offered at many central Italian sanctuaries (Etruscan and Italic) from the third to first centuries BCE. Children and babies, presumably created as thank-offerings for the health or birth of a child, may be shown with chubby cheeks or plump bodies, but these are indications of good health and well-being, not obesity (see Turfa 2005: 244–246, nos. 270, 273 for a little boy’s head-bust collected in Italy in the nineteenth century, University of Pennsylvania Museum inv. no. MS 1844, fig. 2).

Anatomical Votive Models

In anatomical votive models, offered in the thousands at Etruscan and Italic sanctuaries (see further, Chapter 18), only a handful of possible pathological conditions are depicted, and most of these are not especially dramatic (if indeed they are pathology and not just poor or exposed modeling technique): a head with some hair loss, a bandaged leg, a knee with bumpy lesions (Turfa 2004: 361–363; Recke 2013). Feet with bunions are better represented (Turfa 2005: 246–247 no. 274), and probably reflect the frequent wearing of bad shoes, but cannot be seen as evidence of obesity. Fashionable yet dangerous footwear, like the platform-soled, hinged “tyrrhenika,” were attributed to Etruscans (Turfa 2005: 32; Touloupa 1973), but the model feet with simple bunions are so common that they may have been considered normal. Statues, clothed or otherwise, were offered at several central Italian healing cults such as Etruscan Pyrgi, Tarquinia (Graviscae and Ara della Regina), and Veii (Campetti and Pendici Piazza d’Armi); and Latin / Italic Lavinium, Fregellae, Gabii, Nemi, Calvi and Rome (Tiber deposit) (for lists and references, see Turfa 2004). They may not be models with aesthetically correct proportions, especially as the terracotta had to be self-supporting; nevertheless, none depict obesity.

One pair of nude figures, a woman and a beardless youth from third-century Capua (now lost), depict slightly dumpy bodies, but in terracotta sculpture, this was probably a technique for achieving balance so that the statues could stand alone.³ Their musculature is poorly defined, and their abdomens protrude very slightly, but their legs are slim and their toes face forward in a healthy stance. The woman’s head was drawn from a mold for a veiled male head, but was retouched with a wreath or braid added to hide the rough edges. Some of the dumpy effect of their lower torsos may surely be attributed to the need for stability, so that the artisan fixed their centers of gravity lower down. There is no evidence of obesity or the assumption that obesity was pathological.

In theory, the stance, if not the proportions, of statues could offer circumstantial evidence of obesity-related conditions: individuals who are 50 pounds or more overweight are likely to develop Type 2 diabetes and its attendant orthopedic problems such as a stance with flat feet splayed to the sides. Yet, apart from cases in terracotta where the statue needs to support itself, we do not see such postures in extant sculptures (see also Chapter 25).⁴ Various types of stiffness of the hands and other problems with joints might have been depicted, if they were present in a fair proportion of the population, but we do not see these either (for medical details, etc., see Turfa forthcoming).

The top of the line for votive statues must have been specially commissioned and sensitive terracotta portraits, either busts or full statues, of men and women, like the well-known “Testa Malavolta” from Veii’s Portonaccio deposit (Torelli 2000: 622 no. 280; Brendel 1995: 320, fig. 241). Females are rarely portrayed as aged or wrinkled; a few men are distinguished with the marks of maturity, experience, or responsibility. A fine portrait from the Caeretan Manganello deposit shows a man with short, thinning hair and lean, lined face drawn slightly to one side. This has caused some scholars to diagnose the asymmetrical paralysis that follows a stroke, although this is by no means proven (Torelli 2000: 631 no. 306). At Tarquinia, a mature male head was mold-made but hand-finished with a receding hairline, crow’s feet and deep lines framing his mouth: he cannot be considered obese, only aging (Comella 1982: pl. 8B no. B₁IV).

Civic or public portraits of statesmen or heroes could have relied on realism/naturalism, but little evidence of these remains, for public monuments would have been cast in bronze and thus were targets for plundering and re-use of the metal. Statues such as the so-called “Brutus,” a mature male head probably from an equestrian statue of c.300 BCE, or the “Arringatore,” the orator Avle Metelis (c.100 BCE), likely represent this genre and do so realistically (Brendel 1995: 399–401 figs. 308A, B; 430–431 figs. 328–329). Both men show signs of aging and experience in drawn, lined faces and thinning hair, but neither is at all overweight.

In funerary portraits there is a certain sexual dimorphism: women are seldom depicted as aging or heavy, apart from Venus lines on their throats; fewer than ten, probably all from one workshop (in Tuscania), are shown with plump happy faces and laugh-lines denoting aging (see below). In funerary imagery, children usually are depicted as small-scale adults, dressed and posed like bejeweled matrons or mature men reclining in hip-mantles as in adult sarcophagi. One small Volterran urn of the extended Caecina family is inscribed (in Latin) with the name and age of the deceased, A. Caecina Selcia, who died when he was 12 (Volterra, Museo Guarnacci, inv. no. 227; Cristofani et al. 1975: 28–29 no. 9). His face is wan and emaciated, exposing the contours of his skull, as if he had died of a wasting disease and was naturalistically depicted, yet the skull seems like that of an adult, so we cannot be sure if the rendition of illness was intentional. We are far from being able to evaluate the naturalism of such portraits in clay and stone, as the sample combining image and skeleton, or even image and epitaph, is statistically very low.

Evidence on Health, Human Remains and Related Sources

We ought to be able to evaluate general health and nutrition, and thus perhaps cases of obesity in Etruria, from examination of buried bodies/skeletons, for various conditions may be manifested in the bones of the obese (on skeletal evidence, see further, Chapter 13). Most remains are not well enough preserved to retain such evidence, but some recent studies have shown how much may be learnt from the analysis of a good sample – for instance, the bones retained in the terracotta sarcophagus of Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa of Chiusi in the British Museum (see Swaddling and Prag 2002). The studies generated by this find have supported an evaluation of the realism of funerary portraits, with most of the researchers concluding that the clay effigy on the lid of Seianti’s sarcophagus was indeed modeled from life – although it did not depict her at her final age-at-death. Nor did the portrait head show in any way the serious asymmetry and postural changes that must have been evident to those around her, as recognized in old injuries visible on her bones: severe trauma to her hip and leg and resultant temporomandibular joint deformation and poor dental health (Lilley 2002; Neave and Prag 2002; Prag 2002; Stoddart 2002). But her collarbone was typed as gracile, indicating a characteristic that cannot be associated with the skeleton of an obese woman.

A small number of obesity-related conditions are manifested in the skeleton, for instance, DISH: Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hypertrophy (Forestier’s disease). In certain regions of the skeleton (especially the axial skeleton), tendons and ligaments ossify excessively, and thus may be preserved in archaeological contexts. Thoracic vertebrae often show an asymmetrical growth that resembles dripped candle-wax, particularly along the right side of the spine. Studies of medieval and modern populations seem to show a higher incidence among males and among the diabetic and/or obese, for instance, well-fed medieval monks (Jankauskas and Urbanavičius 2008). Estelle Lazer (2009: 201–203) identified two presumed cases of DISH among the dead of Pompeii in 79 CE – but these were female skeletons, and Roman, not Etruscan. The correlation with obesity is not universally acknowledged, but some modern studies recognized obesity in both men and women, some as young as 25 years of age (Mata et al. 1997; Kiss et al. 2002). The ossification of tissue other than bone enabled some scholars to detect the condition in perhaps five victims at Herculaneum.⁵ Again, though, while the finds may establish the presence of this condition in Italy in antiquity, none of the individuals was Etruscan, by locale or date.

Hyperostosis frontalis interna is another weight-related condition, usually affecting post-menopausal women and involving deformation of the inner surface of the skull. It has been detected in numerous women among the victims of Vesuvius, and Lazer (2007: 610) noted that Pliny the Younger (Letters 4.16, 4.20) described both the Elder Pliny and his sister, the author’s mother, as overweight. But again, these cases are Roman, not Etruscan.

A survey (Turfa Forthcoming, section 10) of extant Etruscan epitaphs, most of which belong to the fourth century and Hellenistic period (e.g., the time of the funerary portraits in stone and clay) offers a potential index for longevity in this period of Etruscan history. Over 4400 funerary inscriptions have been published, and of these, at least 254, almost entirely from the regions of Tarquinia and Volterra, provide the age of the deceased. Of the inscriptions with a complete age preserved, the mortality rate seems comparable to most other populations, with a number of individuals reaching their 70s and 80s, one woman of 90, and two men of 100 and 106 (ET Ta 1.107).⁶ This mortality profile does not appear to reflect the shortened lifespan that ill health such as morbid obesity would cause in a substantial number of adults.

Another potential element of circumstantial evidence is found in the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar, now extant in a Byzantine Greek translation, itself derived from the Latin translation of Nigidius Figulus, a friend of Cicero. The Etruscan original is lost but may have developed from an Iron Age or Archaic divination text (see Turfa 2012: 182). An omen of thunder heard on the 29th of December predicts “If it thunders, it signifies the most healthful leanness for bodies.” While the text is full of predictions of diseases, famine, or abundance of provisions for Etruria, this omen evinces a different viewpoint. Surely if an Etruscan document presents leanness as healthful then obesity cannot have been viewed as desirable or even commonplace. The Brontoscopic Calendar was circulated in the intellectual milieu of first-century/Late Republican Rome. Even earlier (fourth to third centuries), a class of bronze votive figurines was being dedicated in sanctuaries across central Italy. The figures, which have inspired artists like Giacometti and Modigliani (see also Chapter 24 and Figure 24.5), have extremely elongated bodies, sometimes with quite natural heads, hands and feet: they are not meant to look emaciated, but may have been intended to depict “healthful leanness.” The tradition began with bronzes of the sixth–fifth centuries offered at the Fonte Veneziana shrine at Arezzo, and continued with some now-famous pieces in the sanctuary of Diana at Nemi: they depict haruspices, men, women and youths, as well as gods and goddesses (see Terrosi Zanco 1961; Cristofani 1985: 172–173, 178–180, 273–276, and other references at Turfa 2012: 182). Most people in the ancient Mediterranean (and especially warriors, farmers, travelers, and sailors) would have been leaner and more buff than most modern counterparts simply because of the exigencies of ancient work and transport.

Funerary Portraiture and Realism/Naturalism

Painted funerary portraiture of the late fourth century BCE does include some special examples of realistic details of figure or physiognomy (see also Chapter 17). In the François Tomb at Vulci, the somewhat mediocre artist renders Vel Saties with individual physiognomy and drawn face, wearing the robe of a triumphator; he is accompanied by Arnza (“Little Arnth”), a rachitic dwarf who kneels to release a bird for augury. Arnza’s body is obscured by a purple-banded tunic, but his head has heavy cheeks and double chin (Andreae 2004: 56 fig. 42; Steingräber 1985: pl. 185). In the Tarquinian necropolis, the Tomb of the Shields has a fresco depicting the grandfather of the family, Velthur Velcha, with gray hair and grizzled beard, enthroned in the Underworld; the hip-mantle he wears emphasizes his corpulence (Steingräber 1985: pl. 45). His son, Larth, founder of the tomb, and a second image of Velthur himself reclining opposite Larth at a banquet both show distinctive aquiline noses and well-defined torsos. Both Velthur’s wife, Ravnthu Aprthnai, and his daughter-in-law, Veilia Seitithi, look young and pretty – while ancestor Velthur has aged before proceeding to a throne, in neither of her portraits has Ravnthu lost her looks! (From this one might deduce that the portraits were painted during the lifetime of the sitters…) In some ways the graphic arts permit greater rendering of details, and similar physiognomies may be found in contemporary vase-painting and engraved mirrors: different conditions applied to sculpture, however.

Style and Technique of Funerary Sculpture

It seems that the only deliberate representations of obese Etruscans are the funerary statues of mature men on the lids of sarcophagi and urns of the later fourth century and Hellenistic period. The three main sources of funerary portraiture are the stone sarcophagi, mainly from the region of Tarquinia, terracotta sarcophagi known from Tarquinia, Tuscania and its environs, and (in small numbers) Chiusi, Volterran urns in alabaster and tufa (with a few stone urns from the Chiusine region), and to a lesser extent, the Chiusine mold-made terracotta urns. The last, being smaller in scale and mass-produced, offer less distinct detail and usually have simplified effigies that are sometimes even difficult to type as to gender. Of approximately 800 effigies on the lids of sarcophagi and urns (nearly all of them of the fourth to first centuries BCE), roughly 470 are male and well enough preserved to allow a judgment on their appearance.⁷ Determining obesity is imprecise because of the characteristics of their different media, especially when coarse stones like nenfro were used; many also reflect the degree of technical expertise or haste of their sculptors. I found only about 80 examples, all male, that might be said to appear overweight or obese, with a round/convex belly, rolls of fat, or distinctly thick or soft body: all wear the hip-mantle, which tends to draw attention to the abdomen. Many of the figures came from a small number of workshops or hands, for instance, five men in the Curunas family tomb (Moretti and Moretti Sgubini 1983: pls. 11–16, 19–20, 97–99) bear a distinct resemblance, not in personal features, but in the style and technique of their carving, which argues against the deliberate portrayal of individual features like corpulence. The Curunas sarcophagi came from the same workshop, and were carved for three generations spanning the years 310–270 BCE.

As implied in the representation of Seianti in the British Museum, it would seem that Etruscan artists, or the aristocratic families commissioning funerary portraits, did not have a strong commitment to realism or naturalism in rendering all details true to life. Thus the centenarian Larth Cales, buried in the Vipinana family tomb at Tuscania (Herbig 1952: no. 86 pls. 83a, 84a; ET AT 1.64), was laid to rest beneath an effigy of a decades-younger man, while a number of children were buried in sarcophagi depicting adult figures. (For instance, two little girls, ages 7 and 8, both named Thana, in Tomb II of the Alethna family of Musarna, had small-scale sarcophagi that were carved with matronly, draped effigies like mature women (Herbig 1952: 204; Viterbo, Museo Nazionale Etrusco inv. nos. 259 and 213a; ET AT 1.110 and 1.113).

The terracotta sarcophagi (slightly fewer than 200 have been catalogued by Gentili 1994) of Chiusi, Tarquinia and its hinterland, allow for a certain degree of individuality, with deliberate modeling of wrinkles, as in the sympathetically portrayed heads of two older women with laugh-lines, one found in the Tomb of the Treptie at Tuscania (Gentili 1994: 45 no. A 26, pl. 8, dated to the end of the third century BCE) and the other, surely from the same workshop, a head obtained in Rome in the nineteenth century and now in the University Museum in Philadelphia (inv. MS 5690) (Figure 22.2). A third naturalistic rendering is a frowning older woman with wrinkles on a lid from Tuscania preserved in the Basel Antikenmuseum (Gentili 1994: 75–76 no. B 72, pl. 33, last quarter of the third century BCE). These are the only female images in this medium that depart from an idealized, youthful female appearance. A rare Volterran urn depicting a married couple also shows an older woman whose lines and wrinkles mirror those of her spouse. This was clearly a special commission, as implied even by its medium – terracotta rather than the usual alabaster (Haynes 2000: 368 fig. 290; Prag 2002: 66 fig. 3, second century BCE; neither spouse is obese, however).

Of male effigies among the terracotta lids, fewer than ten, really only three or four, may be said to show deliberate modeling of heavy bodies with protruding bellies or flabby chests, but the heads, made in standard molds, are generic, slim youthful males, as can be seen in two examples from Tuscania, and one in the Musée du Louvre, dated to the middle of the third century BCE (Gentili 1994: 76–78 nos. B 73, B 76 and B 77, pls. 34–35). Just three other men show wrinkled or lined faces that differentiate them from stock types of molded head (Gentili 1994: 48–52 nos. A 33, A 39, A 42, pls. 14, 18, 21), but their bodies are unremarkable; they are all from the Tomb of the Treptie at Tuscania, and, like the wrinkled ladies, clearly the work of a single artist or atelier.

The technique of terracotta manufacture seems to have produced, instead, a high proportion of thin effigies, with rather flat bodies, even when their separately-molded heads look robust and healthy: it must have been much quicker and safer to make and fire such shallow figures, as, for instance, a young man’s effigy from Tuscania now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Figure 22.3) (inv. no. HIN 78, Nielsen 1996: 74 no. 24; Gentili 1994: 95 no. B119, pl. 56). In fact, most of the effigies, both male and female, in the terracotta sarcophagi found in the Tomb of the Treptie show this flattened, linear effect, with a few drapery folds rising sharply above the barely convex surface of the body (see Gentili 1994: 43–52 nos. A27–A42, pls. 9–21). Figures like these should be balanced against the stone obesus-types where thicker limbs would be less prone to damage during carving: their bodies, in both cases, are constrained by artistic style and technique, and not likely to be a conscious replication of the portrait-subject’s actual physical condition.

Image described by caption. — **Figure 22.3** Sarcophagus lid with the reclining effigy of a young man, third century BCE. Terracotta. From Tuscania. Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Inv. HIN 78.
Photo: by Ole Haupt/Courtesy of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.

Tuscania and its environs is also the locale for many of the stone sarcophagi of the artistic orbit of Tarquinia. Among the stone-carved effigies, a few dozen are either outright obese or so summarily carved that their torsos lack definition and appear flabby. Among the definitely obese is a man in the Tarquinia Museo Nazionale (Herbig 1952: no. 110, pl. 84) with a flabby chest, rounded rolls of fat over his abdomen, and a thick, heavy neck. The famous Lars Pulenas was carefully carved, so we must accept the realism of his flaccid ribcage and heavy face (Torelli 2000: 481; Ta 1.17); the same goes for another man in the Tarquinia Museum who has a simpler, rounded belly (Herbig 1952: no. 112, pl. 70b). A special commission from the Monterozzi necropolis is a man with cultic associations: a fawn drinks from the phiale in the effigy’s hand (Herbig 1952: no. 119, pl. 27). His head is older and balding, and his imperfectly articulated body has a round belly, emphasized by his hip-mantle. The appearance of a balding man with protruding belly on an alabaster lid from Chiusi now in the Museo Archeologico in Florence prompted Herbig to associate him with the pinguis / obesus poems (Herbig 1952: nos. 21–22 no. 21, pl. 60).

A few special commissions of the “first generation” of the Hellenistic stone sarcophagi and urns certainly illustrate corpulent, mature men who, presumably, would have been typed as an obesus etruscus by their Latin-speaking in-laws (although this would have occurred as much as two centuries before Catullus and Virgil). The best known is the so-called “Magnate,” Velthur Partunu, carved at the end of the fourth century BCE (see M. Cataldi’s entry in Boitani 1988: 9 no. 2; Brendel 1995: 390 fig. 391, there dated mid-third century BCE). His bored pose with head on hand, finely carved drapery (the breccia medium allows crisper folds), shaggy hair, lined face and jowls, serve to emphasize the smooth, convex expanse of his sagging chest and rotund abdomen. His aquiline nose and the set of his jaw (as of one who has lost teeth) further contribute to a unique portrait. There is one catch, however: while the portrait depicts a mature, even aging man, this is no 82-year-old – and yet that is the age recorded in his epitaph on the sarcophagus (ET Ta 1.9).

The later fourth and early third centuries BCE saw the creation by skilled artists of masterpieces in stone for funerary use, obviously the result of specially-described commissions from noble families: examples include the two Boston sarcophagi of the Tetnie family of Vulci, depicting married couples in bed, and the Tarquinia sarcophagus depicting Laris Partunu as a Punic priest (Haynes 2000: 288–290 figs. 232a–b, 233; 291 fig. 234a). The large-scale urn of Arnth Velimna / Volumnius of Perugia supported by Vanth figures (his effigy on the lid slim but with a lined, jowled face) shows that the occasional later artist could work to this standard (Haynes 2000: 381 fig. 297). The first generation of the genre seems to show greater attention to detail and to the aesthetics of composition – enhanced by the use, in many cases, of finer-textured stones. This makes us assume these are true-to-life (if not veristic) portraits, like that of the 33 year-old Sethre Vipinans of Tuscania (Herbig 1952: 38–39 no. 69, pls. 78, 77c; ET AT 1.20, peperino). Sethre’s body looks soft but natural, his flesh in the process of relaxing as he settles back among the cushions of his eternal banquet couch. This could have been accurate for a non-military aristocrat even though his head is a generic youthful type.

Even in smaller scale, deliberate rendering of weight and experience was possible, as in the alabaster urn of the Chiusine priest Arnth Remzna, who wears a tunic beneath his mantle, and has the remnant strap of the apex-type hat of a divination priest (Figure 22.4) (Turfa 2005: 263–265 no. 295, said to be from the Colle necropolis of Chiusi; ET Cl 1.166; late third century BCE). The majority of the urns of Chiusi are in terracotta, even some that are large, one-of-a-kind sculptures, but some families commissioned special urns in fine stones such as this. Although compressed, the figure of Remzna has a slightly convex belly (although no rolls of fat), and his tunic-draped abdomen contrasts with his (now-eroded) sagging jowls and weary expression.

The quintessential obesus etruscus is a man (Figure 22.5) who was buried in the first half of the second century BCE, again before the Roman poets were born. Now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, the nenfro sarcophagus was made in the region of Tarquinia / Tuscania, although it was said to have been obtained from a man in Orvieto (inv. no. HIN 429; Nielsen 1996: 60–61 no. 14). The chest is finely carved with confronted sea-monsters, and the plinth of his effigy has an animal skin coverlet in low relief. While his limbs look slim enough, he has a sagging chest, rounded abdomen and rolls of fat; his head has multiple chins below a strong jaw, large nose, jowls and thick, coarse hair. He looks directly at the viewer, like a man of authority, yet his unruly hair and heavy face form a sharp contrast to such public figures in bronze as the “Brutus” or Avle Metelis. Presumably this image would have been reassuring for his family, reminding his survivors, and the Etruscan gods, of the rich banquet that he expects to enjoy in perpetuity among the ancestors in the Underworld.

4. Conclusion

Virtually any population will include some small percentage of overweight individuals: if, as portrayed in the Etruscan effigies, these are usually mature men who have retired from an active life as statesman, priest, or soldier (as we perceive in some epitaphs like Pulenas’s), we ought not to judge the overall behavior and health of society in general by a small number of unique representations. The poetic image is rather what Romans, in their own time of crisis, chose to remember, the image of the tamed Etruscan, once an oppressing warrior, now a retired man of peace. Mark Bradley (2011: 34) has opined, “An overweight or corpulent body could be a sign of health, vigour, and prosperity, whether in the fertile and nubile female form or the stocky, fleshy frame of the assertive Hellenistic ruler, the disenfranchised wealthy Etruscan élite or the grand Roman imperator. Flesh was power.” Their own culture would have interpreted these Etruscan men’s images as the movers and shakers responsible for their society and its well-being; outsiders might read them in a different light. Undoubtedly there were living obesi etrusci (and romani et al., as the dead of Vesuvius have shown), but they must have been, as the early and unique sarcophagi and urns indicate, atypical examples within an affluent culture. Etruscan sarcophagi were masterworks that were often copied, but in later generations, the original fine details and technical polish were rarely achieved, failing to depict an accurate likeness of their heirs, and mimicking their substance with doughy bodies and stock-type heads. These charismatic images, like the colorful (but much later) literary sources to which they are often compared, are thus only partial witnesses to a complex culture that – as other chapters in this volume demonstrate – has too often been known to readers, scholars included, only through simplistic and distorted portrayals.

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GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

Bradley’s article 2011 expands the analysis of body imagery into Roman art and literature. Etruscan portraiture is surveyed by Carpino 2013 and readers can find illustrations of well-known personages (as well as many now-anonymous aristocrats) among the urns and sarcophagi of Chiusi, Volterra, Tarquinia, and Vulci (see Herbig 1952; Boitani 1988; Gentili 1994; and individual museum catalogues for the Museo Guarnacci Volterra, Museo Civico Archeologico Chiusi, Vatican Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, Musée du Louvre, British Museum, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum New York and University of Pennsylvania Museum). Rare painted and labeled portraits appear in the François Tomb of Vulci and the Tombe dell’Orco and degli Scudi of Tarquinia, while commoners are depicted in the Tomba dei Giocolieri of Tarquinia (Aranth Heracanasa – perhaps – in an unusual pose) and the Tomba Golini of Orvieto (where servants prepare the funeral feast); see Steingräber 1985. The works of art and their social significance are placed within the framework of Etruscan culture by Sybille Haynes 2000. Studies of human skeletal material with a view to reconstructing appearance or daily life include, for Etruria, Swaddling and Prag 2002, and for Roman society, Capasso 2001; Bisel and Bisel 2002; Lazer 2009 (with some more imaginative than others: see Becker 2003). Garnsey 1999 presents issues of nutrition, health and social situations, for Greece and Rome; for Etruria, see Turfa and Becker 2013b and Turfa 2012: 164–203.