The Tarquins and Servius Tullius at Banquet - article ; n°1 ; vol.103, pg 247-264

Jocelyn Pennysmall

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Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité - Année 1991 - Volume 103 - Numéro 1 - Pages 247-264
Jocelyn Penny Small, The Tarquins and Servius Tullius at Banquet, p. 247-264. A set of late Etruscan funerary urns generally identified as Melanippa the Wise is reinterpreted as representing the Tarquinis and Servius Tullius at banquet. In particular, the presence of a figure carrying the fasces removes this group of urns from the Greek realm and firmly places it in an Etrusco-Roman context, as a discussion of the concept of period costume shows.
18 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: MELANGES_DE_L-ECOLE_FRANCAISE_DE_ROME
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1991
• Nombre de lectures: 36
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Jocelyn Penny Small
The Tarquins and Servius Tullius at Banquet
In: Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité T. 103, N°1. 1991. pp. 247-264.
Abstract
Jocelyn Penny Small, The Tarquins and Servius Tullius at Banquet, p. 247-264.
A set of late Etruscan funerary urns generally identified as " Melanippa the Wise " is reinterpreted as representing the Tarquinis
and Servius Tullius at banquet. In particular, the presence of a figure carrying the fasces removes this group of urns from the
Greek realm and firmly places it in an Etrusco-Roman context, as a discussion of the concept of period costume shows.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Penny Small Jocelyn. The Tarquins and Servius Tullius at Banquet. In: Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité T.
103, N°1. 1991. pp. 247-264.
doi : 10.3406/mefr.1991.1714
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/mefr_0223-5102_1991_num_103_1_1714PENNY SMALL JOCELYN
THE TARQUINS AND SERVIUS TULLIUS
AT BANQUET
No concept of period costume existed in antiquity.1 While today
Hollywood tries to replicate ancient dress in, for example, Ben Hur, an
Etruscan or a Roman of the late Republic, staging a scene from the Regal
period, would clothe his figures in contemporary garments. The use of
the contemporary would not stop there. Virtually everything would be
modern : the furniture, the action, the style, even to a certain extent, the
story. It is not that the average Etruscan or Roman did not know that
there were different peoples, but those people were foreigners, barbari
ans, certainly not their ancestors. It never occurred to them that the
past was physically different from the present. It might be morally bet
ter or worse, but its accoutrements were contemporary.
Consider what evidence of the past might have been available to the
first century B.C. Etruscan or Roman. Certain old and revered objects,
like the shields of the Salii, could have been depicted accurately, because
they were preserved.2 Most else would have been visually lost forever.
Without a means of comparison, almost everything inevitably was mode
rn. It is hard to realize today with our superabundance of visual
resources that not until the late eighteenth century were illustrations of
previous eras readily available.3 If one could not literally see the past
1 This paper was presented in memory of Kyle M. Phillips, Jr., who read it in a
preliminary form, in a colloquium, "Legends and Facts of Early Rome", at Prince
ton University on October 1, 1988. I would like to thank Richard De Puma and
Annette Rathje for their helpful comments.
2 In fact, a fragmentary Augustan relief from a tomb of a Salius shows the
shields. Rome, Musei Vaticani, Museo Gregoriano Profano, Inv. 9534; Kaiser
Augustus und die verlorene Republik. Eine Austeilung im Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berl
in 7. Juni - 14. August 1988, Berlin, 1988, p. 438-439, n° 236. Compare also,
K. Latte, Römische Religionsgeschichte, HbAW V 4, Munich, 1960, p. 114 η. 5.
3 " The very notion of ' ' the past gained currency from the late eightseeing
eenth-century proliferation of book illustrations that began to accustom people to
the past as a visual experience. " D. Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country,
Cambridge, 1985, p. 257.
MEFRA - 103 - 1991 - 1, p. 247-264. JOCELYN PENNY SMALL 248
and how it was different, what grounds would one have for knowing that
it was different? The notion of the past as a foreign country, to para
phrase G. P. Hartley, is thoroughly modern. 4 That the past and the pre
sent were thought to be alike in classical times may seem a simple, if not
downright obvious, idea, but its application in interpreting representat
ions often is neither simple nor obvious.
Let us begin with an easy example. Penelope, that paragon of wives,
waited twenty years for the return of her husband, Odysseus. Nor did
she spend the time idly. What she wove during the day she would unrave
l each night. On an Attic red-figured skyphos from ca. 440 B.C. Penel
ope sits by the loom, as her son, Telemachos, on the right looks on. 5 She
is in a position of mourning with her head bent sadly forward to rest on
her right hand. More important for us, however, is her dress. She
wears a chiton with a mantle pulled up over her head. This outfit was
one of the two most popular for fifth century women, be they divine,
heroic like Penelope, or mere mortal. For example, on the East frieze of
the Parthenon Hera in the ubiquitous chiton pulls her mantle to the side,
as she looks at Zeus.6 For a real person, consider the funerary stele
where Hegeso examines her baubles.7
4 " The past is a foreign country " is the elegant opening sentence of L. P. Hartl
ey's The Go-Between, London, 1953, which was used by D. Lowenthal (op. cit. n. 3,
p. XVI) as the title for his book. T. P. Wiseman (Clio's Cosmetics. Three Studies in
Greco-Roman Literature, Leicester, 1979, p. 42-43) says that Cicero "could probably
not have reconstructed in his imagination a historical scene further back or more
distant from his experience than that of the second-century Romans whom men he
knew had known. " Compare also T. J. Cornell, The formation of the historical
tradition of early Rome, in Past Perspectives. Studies in Greek and Roman Historical
Writing, ed. by I. S. Moxon, J. D. Smart, A. J. Woodman, Cambridge, 1986, p. 83 :
"The Romans' approach to their early history was uncritical because it was not
founded on the basic principle of historical criticism, which is that the past is dif
ferent from the present. " Behind this difference in ancient and modern views lies
a complicated interaction between literacy and print, on the one hand, and a con
ception of absolute time with its concomitant understanding of chronology, on the
other - an extremely broad topic which I am currently studying.
5 Chiusi 1831, Penelope Painter, ca. 440 B.C. ARV2, p. 1300 n° 2. W. B. Stand-
ford and J. V. Luce, The Quest for Ulysses, New York and Washington, 1974, p. 148,
fig. 118. On the statue type of the mourning Penelope and its replicas, see B. S.
Ridgway, The Severe Style in Greek Sculpture, Princeton, 1970, p. 101-105.
6 London, British Museum, slab V/28-30. ca. 442-438 B.C. J. Boardman, J. Dö-
rig, W. Fuchs, M. Hirmer, The Art and Architecture of Ancient Greece, 1967, pi. 208
bottom.
7 Athens, National Museum n° 3264. Late fifth century B.C. L. Lullies and
M. Hirmer, Greek Sculpture, New York, 1960, pi. 187. THE TARQUINS AND SERVIUS TULLIUS AT BANQUET 249
With the establishment of the fact that all three wear the same
clothes, the question arises as to the nature of the dress worn by the real
Penelope. I pass over what Hera might have worn, as being either
beyond our comprehension or moot, since clearly, as a goddess, she
would have continued to exist during the fifth century and would have
therefore donned the contemporary costume. Penelope, however, should
have lived during the Mycenaean period, and at that time women dressed
altogether differently. Instead of the fine vertical folds of the chiton or
even the peplos, the other common fifth century drapery worn most not
ably by the Athena Parthenos,8 Mycenaean women wore gaily colored
and patterned flounced skirts pulled in tight at the waist with short-
sleeved bodices, often open at the front to expose their breasts - somet
hing no self-respecting fifth century Greek woman would have ever con
templated.9 Finally, a more dramatic example of ancient men, or rather
women, in contemporary dress is a painting of the same scene of Penel
ope at the loom by Pinturicchio from the late fifteenth century A.D.10
From the ship, seen through the window, to the loom with Penelope look
ing toward the courtiers on the right there is not a single item that looks
Greek much less Mycenaean.11
A more subtle example of the phenomenon occurs in representations
of the ransom of Hector, which first appear in the second quarter of the
sixth century B.C. A Greek bronze relief portrays four figures, from left
to right : Achilles, Priam, Hermes, and, stretched out on the ground, Hect
or himself. 12 Achilles is like a chieftain : heroically nude, bearded, and
8 Athens, National Museum, n° 129 - the "Varvakeion" Athena Parthenos.
BOARDMAN, DÖRIG, FUCHS, HlRMER, Op. Cit. n. 6, pi. 201.
9 For example, on a gold signet ring from Mycenae, the Acropolis treasure.
Athens, National Museum 992. J. Boardman, Greek Gems and Finger Rings, New
York, 1972, pi. 149 with entry on p. 104.
10 London, National Gallery. M. Grant and J. Hazel, Gods and Mortals in Clas
sical Mythology, Springfield, MA, 1973, p. 322-323 (in color).
11 For a similar discussion about medieval representations, see "The Influence
of Fashion on the Process of Copying ", in K. Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and
Codex. A Study of the Origin and Method of Text Illustration, Princeton, 1970,
p. 157-160. Compare also J. Boardman, Symbol and Story in Geometric Art, in W. G.
Moon, Ed., Ancient Greek Art and Iconography, Madison, 1983, p. 31 : '"Modern
dress ' for figurative art was surely the rule : exceptions have to be