Leseprobe

34 Bronze vessel Early 5th cent. BCE Bronze; height 36 cm, Ø 39 cm Found at Santa Maria di Capua Vetere; purchased from Simmaco Doria in 1871 Inv. no. H4 49/109 Suetonius, the famous author of the Lives of the Twelve Caesars , refers in his biography of Julius Caesar to colonists in the city of Capua plundering a number of prehistoric graves in order to pilfer vessels crafted in the ancient style. This disreputable practice not only continued in the centuries that followed but well into the modern age – as is clear from the ‘excavations’ of Simmaco Doria in the 1870s, which were undertaken without any discernible scholarly purpose. It was during these digs that the bronze vessel came to light, before it was then purchased in 1871 for the collection in Dresden. Four sphynxes crouch on the lid of the squat bronze vessel. Where a handle would normally be, stands a nude man carrying a ram (a figure known as a kri- ophoros ). Wrought from a thin sheet of bronze, the vessel was used to hold cre- mated remains. It would have been placed with other funerary offerings inside a hollowed-out tuff box for protection. This style of burial was reserved for mem- bers of the elite in Etruscan-ruled Campania in the 6th century BCE.  |  sw