The La Tène religion of the Celtic elite ― part 6: All roads lead to Italy

Etruscan bronze oinochoe (jug)

5th century BC.

Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Rogers fund, 1912. OASC image

During the classical periods, Italy was probably the most cosmopolitan area in the western world, but all over the western Mediterranean people were arriving from more eastern locations mainly to engage in trade, but also to escape oppression, or to seek out new patrons for their skills. Canaanites from Tyre, whom the Greeks called Phoenicians, founded Carthage on the north African coast, but they had been at Gades in Spain much earlier than that; Phokaians from Asia Minor founded Massalia in south of France and, later, Emporiai in Spain. One of the strongest lures had been the tin trade. Gold, silver and copper could be found in many places, but the sources of tin were far fewer and everyone wanted British tin. Italy, at those times was not a political entity, but a geographical location consisting of many countries and it remained so until the 19th century. Italy is actually a very young country.

One of the greatest civilization in Italy was Etruria in the north. The Etruscans had always thought to have originated in Asia Minor, but recent dna studies are suggesting that they were indigenous. We have to be careful, though, and not associate genetics with culture too strongly. There still could have been influences that now define the culture that had originated in Asia Minor. Even the Etruscan language appears to have had multiple roots.

Basse-Yutz Flagon, Lorraine, France,

Iron Age, about 450 BC

© Trustees of the British Museum

I chose to illustrate an Etruscan oinochoe, or "wine pourer" (Greek: οἶνος = wine, χέω = to pour) for a specific reason ― the Basse-Yutz flagons (one of the pair is illustrated to the left) represent an important stage of early Celtic art and are from the same century, and most of the earliest expressions of the La Tène religion are not the weaponry which defines the later periods, but vessels to do with the consumption of wine. The Etruscan connection is sound, and in fact, the flagons were found with two Etruscan vessels made to mix wine. We can easily see that it was series of three rivers that brought Etruscan goods which were prototypical to most early Celtic art to the main centres of that art: the Rhine; the Mosel; and the Saar.

To say that early Celtic art emerged because the Celts liked their wine would be rather short-sighted. Certain regions adopt an iconography (especially on the coins) which reflects their economy: a great number of coins from Thessaly in northern Greece feature horses, and that region was famous for horse-breeding. You can see their intimate connection with horses in the  very common and popular drachms of Larissa. In the photo below we see, on the the reverse, a horse caught in a moment ― it is just about to rub its back on the ground and has positioned its body to roll over like a dog that want's its belly rubbed

Drachm of Larissa, Thessaly, showing a horse about to roll

on the ground

Image courtesy of Classical Numismatic Group Inc.

Now, while Etruscan art has a quite number of examples of people holding wine vessels, it did not dominate their art and the Celts did not have wine as an important industry like Thessalian horses. If we look at the northern Adriatic, though, we do find a very iconic use of a wine vessel ― the situla. From early examples in bronze, decorated with  banquet scenes we get the modern term situla art, but I have chosen to illustrate a less elaborate version because of its shape, and because it is from an Etruscan tomb.

Etruscan bronze situla
photo: Sailko

Situlae come in different shapes and sizes in bronze and pottery and from quite a time span. The earliest examples were used as well-buckets, but we see them mostly when depicted on Greek painted pottery as the vessels which were used to transport wine to the country for the Dionysian women's festival which sometimes involved getting drunk and tearing apart and devouring live animals with their teeth (wild bunch, those Dionysian women!).

So how do we get from water to wine? There is something very familiar about that concept isn't there? Followers of the Dionysian Mysteries upon their death, could look forward, if they were women, to being wed to Dionysos, himself. The men, on the other hand, would be resurrected as Dionysos. It is easy to imagine that a married couple, within the Dionysian cult, might expect to be married again after death as Dionysos and his bride. So let us include a wedding in the water to wine transformation.

Robert M. Price in, Deconstructing Jesus, Amherst, New York, 2000, p.234, and speaking of the wedding feast at Cana says:

“Thus in the Gospel of John Jesus repeats the water-to-wine miracle of Dionysos (2: 1-11) and describes himself, like Dionysus, as the life-giving grapevine (15: 1-10). (Of course the Synoptics bear many of the same traces of Dionysus influence: Jesus’ blood is wine, his flesh bread, since he is a Dionysian corn king.)"

Paolo Veronese, The wedding feast at Cana (public domain image)

There is an echo, in the composition of this picture, of paintings of The Last Supper. This has significance and it was one of the things, about which, the accusative finger of the Inquisition questioned Veronese. They thought that the painter had included far too much extraneous material, and this amuses me because archaeology has failed to properly interpret many of the subjects I am dealing with here because of an overly monodisciplinary attitude and its specializations which pretty well occludes all uses of syncretistic tracking. Fortunately, postmodern attitudes are now starting to gain a greater foothold in the subject of archaeology, but the Inquisitors are still with us, clutching to their old ways and distributing their dogma like Pez candies, isolated, and one at a time.

Do you like cliffhangers? Tomorrow, like Scheherazade, I will continue this theme with the Celtic "Last Supper" of the third century BC which was also made in Italy.