Clothing culture. Today we will get acquainted with the clothes that were worn on the territory of the Apennine Peninsula in the pre-Roman era, with the clothes of the mysterious Etruscan people. Mysterious, because the people possessed a written language, but it has not been possible to decipher it completely, although about 12 thousand Etruscan inscriptions have come down to us. There have been attempts to translate them using the Cyrillic alphabet. But … the authors of these translations, as even the alternativeists themselves write, "may have found the key." But the distance from the word "possibly" to a real translation is enormous. But the most important thing is that the monuments left by the Etruscans do not in any way coincide with the Slavic antiquities. But there are a lot of these monuments: these are the frescoes that adorn their tombs, black clay dishes and stunning in their beauty and subtlety items made of gold and silver. In addition to the Vatican museums in Rome, where the bulk of Etruscan antiquities are located, as well as the Louvre, a simply stunning part of them in terms of volume, and practically unknown to either Russian tourists or our historians, is located in local museums of modern Tuscany, in its small towns.
Painted tombs
Tourists simply do not get there, usually limiting themselves to Florence and Verona, and after visiting Cortona, you can visit the Museum of the Etruscan Academy in the Casali Palace, in Sovane - the abandoned tombs of the Etruscans, in Tarquinia - their museum, as well as world famous tombs that even received their own names: "Hunting and Fishing", "Flower and Lotus", "Lionesses", "Magician", "Triclinium", there are tombs in Norkia too, and Etruscan antiquities can be seen in the museums of Vulci, Saturnia, Chiusi and Papulonia. But today in this article we will not consider the culture of the Etruscans as a whole, as well as three theories of their appearance in Central Italy. It will be enough to know that during the heyday of their civilization they had a confederation of 12 cities, that their culture flourished at the end of the 4th-5th centuries. BC BC, that the Romans conquered Etruria by 351 BC. e., they borrowed a lot from the conquered. Well, now you can already talk about clothes, which we know about first of all from the ceramic sarcophagi that have come down to us and the paintings of ancient Etruscan tombs.
Clothes for warm climates
So what was the Etruscan men's clothing like? Very simple - only this can be said: an overhead chiton, akin to the ancient Greek one, and they could throw veils on their shoulders. A loose-fitting semicircular raincoat called "tebenna" was also in vogue, falling down in beautiful folds. The fabric of such cloaks was usually bright: green, blue, blue, white with a blue border. A short woolen tunic was worn under the cloak. By the end of the VI century. BC NS. short men's shirts made of dense fabric like canvas, which tightly hugged the figure, came into vogue.
The tunes of wealthy people were very elegant: rather long, but with short sleeves, sewn from thin transparent fabrics. Colors - saffron, blue, terracotta … Also, the chiton could be richly embroidered, and its hem was decorated with stripes of colored fabric. The same stripes could be sewn onto bedspreads. Chitons were one-cut and widened downward or had a rather wide frill at the bottom. Like the Greeks, the Etruscan chiton could leave one shoulder open.
The peasant's tunic was straight with sleeves and looked like a modern shirt, which was necessarily belted.
The costume of the Etruscan priest was very beautiful, consisting of a white woolen tunic below the knees and a blue cape, which was decorated with a wide colored stripe. The shoes of the priests had high heels and long pointed socks bent upwards.
That is, in general, it was a costume … of the Greeks of Asia Minor - a costume of people who lived and live in a warm seaside climate, not knowing cold and frost.
Women had more variety …
The women of Etruria dressed much more variedly. However, that is why they were women. It is noted that the women's costume was very similar to the clothing of women of the Ancient East. So, as an underwear, they wore a very long, one-cut shirt with sleeves, which was worn over the head and at the same time was not belted! A cape was again put on over it, the ends of which were to be fastened on the chest with the help of a beautiful clasp. The end of the cape could be draped over the head.
He also knew a costume that consisted of a bodice with sleeves and a wide skirt (a clear influence of the Cretan-Mycenaean fashion), and sometimes only one skirt, but with a wide belt, and a cape. Wide skirts only made of patterned fabrics, at the bottom were decorated with a colored, most often purple, stripe, but the bodice could also be one-color. Complementing such a complex attire was a small sleeveless jacket.
The girls wore long pleated skirts, and over them they wore straight chitons to the knees and, again, a small veil, covering their heads. There is a fresco of the 5th century. BC NS. in one of the tombs, which depicts women performing a ritual dance. They wear long, slouchy, multi-colored tunics with a characteristic wide colored border. At the same time, they have colored bedspreads on their heads, also trimmed with a colored stripe along the edge.
Long toe shoes
In Etruscan footwear, Eastern influence is also noticeable. In men, the frescoes show sandals made of narrow intertwined straps, low shoes made of soft leather with long pointed toes curved upwards, very similar to those that later became popular in medieval Europe, and boots - in appearance the same as those of the ancient Persians … And the Etruscans just as richly, in an oriental way, trimmed and decorated it, so that the Romans even called the richly decorated shoes Etruscan. There were also known "Tyrrhenian soles": wooden sandals with a covering of red leather, and even with gilding. They were tied up to the knee with purple straps. Such sandals were very popular among the Greeks of Asia Minor.
The headdresses of Etruscan men are similar to those of Assyrian and Persian, while those of women are similar to Egyptian, Phrygian-Median and Indo-Persian. Many Etruscans wore headbands on their heads, similar to those that were common among the Ionian Greeks.
There was also a variety in hairstyles: the Etruscans could shave their heads baldly, like the Egyptians, could cut their hair short, and also curl into small curls or, like the Spartans, wear them loose over the shoulders. But the Etruscans' beards were shaved.
Women usually braided their hair in braids or curled it in lush curls. They pulled long curls down the back, and threw some over the chest. Complex female hairstyles were also known to them. For example, the hair was divided into strands, fluffed and laid with rollers on both sides of the parting. Moreover, these rollers were also intertwined with each other in different ways, that is, the hairstyle was very complex. Well - women of fashion have been at all times and among all peoples!
Jewelers recognized by all
But in what the Etruscans outdid all the other peoples of the Apennines, and beyond them, it was in the art of jewelry, which was extremely highly developed among them. They knew embossing, engraving and enamel art. They covered items made of cheap metals with thin plates of gold and silver. They made wonderful jewelry from amber, ivory, knew how to cut precious stones and colored glass.
Moreover, it was customary for both men and women to wear jewelry in Etruscan society. Men adorned themselves with massive gold necklaces, wreaths of gold leaves, and ring-shaped bracelets with notches, which were usually worn on the left hand. Women wore necklaces as well as graceful chains with pendants made of stones. Men, too, did not hesitate to wear chains around their necks, but they hung round medallions to them. Rings and signet rings were very popular and were decorated with carvings. Tiaras adorned with precious stones and pearls, as well as pins with a pommel, with which they pinned their long hair, were a specific female headdress. Earrings looked like rings or circles with pendants of various shapes.
