Walters, Henry Beauchamp: Catalogue of the bronzes, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum (London, 1899)

INTRODUCTION.

xlvii

century B.C. Commercial relations with the Phoenicians were probably by way
of Carthage, which by this time was a state of some irnportance. Many Phoenician
objects of considerable merit have been found at Palestrina (Praeneste), including
silver and bronze bowls of a kind also found in Cyprus ; this city, as the cistae
and mirrors found there seem to show, was apparently dependent on the
neighbouring Etruscans for its art.

But the recent investigations of many scholars * * * § and a more extended
acquaintance with archaic Greek art tend to show that early Etruscan art owes
more to Hellenic, and more particularly to Ionic, influences than to those
of Phoenicia and Egypt.f As early as the eighth century B.C. a connection can
be traced between Greece and Italy in the founding of the colonies of Magna
Graecia. Of especial importance among these is Cumae, which was an
off-shoot of Chalcis, and therefore directly subject to Ionian influences. Now
we knovv that Etruscan influence in Campania must have been of considerable
extent, and that Capua was founded by the Etruscans about 600 B.C. It is easy
then to see how they can have come in contact with the productions of Ionian
art, and the reputation of Chalcis for bronze work justifies the supposition that
many fine specimens of it found their way through Cumae into Italy4 A
similar tendency is to be noticed among the vases found in Italy, which belong
to the sixth century B.C. The so-called Caeretan hydriae (e.g. Brit. Mus. Cat.
of Vases, ii. B 59), which have been mostly found at Cervctri, are now generally
held to be of Ionian fabric, or at least direct imitations of the same, and
numerous Etruscan vases exist which are directly imitated from this group (Cat.
of Vases, ii. B 60-73). has been pointed out § that they have certain features
which suggest a familiarity with Asiatic and African countries, and which they
can only have acquired through the medium of Ionians in Asia Minor or
Naucratis.

Etruria also appears to havc been subject to another influence, that of
Corinth. In this connection we may note the tradition recorded by Pliny
(xxxv. 152), who tells us that when Demaratus was expelled from Corinth,
he took with him to Etruria three modellers in clay, Eucheir, Eugrammos, and
Diopos, who established their art in Italy. The date of this event was B.C. 665.
The influence of Corinthian art was probably centred in Caere, but not confined
thereto, and is to be observed during the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. At
Vulci two Corinthian vases (now lost) were found in the Polledrara tomb.
The well-known hydria from this tornb (fourn. Hell. Stud. xiv. pls. 6, 7) seems

* Journ. He'.l. Stud. xvi. p. 140, note; M011. Ant. dei Lincei, vii. p. 289, note I ; Korte in Arch.
Studien H. Jdrunn dargebr. p. I ff.; Rom. Mittheil. ix. (1894), p. 253 ff-

t A small point which see.ns to imply a still earlier link with Greek art is the motive of a lion with a
liuman leg in its mouth on the bronze fragments, No. 600. This occurs on two fibulae of the Geometrical
period (Zeitschr. fiir Ethnol. 1889, p. 222, fig. 32, and No. 3205), and there is a similar motive on a
Geometrical vase in Copenhagen (Arch. Zeit. 1885, pl. 8, fig. 2).

t A number of Ionian Greek bronzes were recently found at Sala Consilina, near Paestum (Bull. de
Corr. Ilell. xx. (1896), p. 421).

§ Duemmler in Rom. Mittheil. iii, (1888), p. 171.