Lo sviluppo dell'immagine oplitica nell'Etruria arcaica

The military organization in archaic Etruria has been the subject of fundamental essays of archaeological history: this report proposes a revised iconographic examination, aimed at exploring the development of the hoplitic imagery in Etruscan craftsmanship in the Archaic and Classical periods. The work mainly concerns the corpus of funerary monuments from Chiusi, Volterra, Fiesole and Bologna (‘cippi’ and gravestones), seen as a privileged observatory for the process of social control of the imagery from the beginning of the 6th to the late 5th century BC. The analysis of the funerary series, compared with large-scale artisanal productions, such as bucchero ware, shows the limited and subordinate use of the hoplite iconography and underlines Etruscan society’s substantial ideological rejection of the acceptance of the military function as an autonomous social practice. The hoplitic role remains subject to the gentilician class: the struggle for a full political integration does not overcome the concrete conditions of inequality of social relations that never manage to allow a widespread citizenship.