No. 4. A lovely line of graceful vases, good illustrations of the imitative power of the Etruscans. Not only the forms, but even the shining texture of the Grecian bronze, is here copied in _bucchero_.
No. 8. These vases are the work of those people who preceded the Etruscans in Umbria. The forms are simple, the patterns purely geometrical.
Nos. 2, 3. Some quite common earthenware urns for the ashes of the poor who could neither afford tombs nor inscriptions. On one or two of these a name is scratched in rough black paint, probably with the finger, and as a last token to the dead from someone who had loved him.
No. 7. Some earthenware bottles corresponding to the beautiful glass ones in Case A: those in earthenware were used for the tombs of the poor.
This room has a selection of the most interesting Sarcophagi in the museum. The corridors outside, and the staircase also, are filled with other specimens of more or less interest.
There is always a certain monotony in a collection of Etruscan tombs or sarcophagi, and the ordinary person wearies easily of the recumbent figures which lie so stolidly in effigy upon the lids of their own burial urns, with an expression of comfortable contentment on their somewhat unexciting and uneventful countenances. They seem, one and all of them, like persons who have fallen asleep on peaceful days with easy consciences,--persons whose hope of heaven is as slight as their fear of hell. They are, most of them, middle-aged, the pathos of old age, the hope and the passion of youth, is lacking in their faces. Their charm is to be sought in their extreme repose.
There are several forms of tombs in the Perugian collection, that with the recumbent figures on the lid being probably the one used by the richer and more prosperous families. With few exceptions the work on the sarcophagi is rather coarse--a singular and persistent monotony of subject is displayed. The simpler forms have either a rose or a Medusa on their front panels, the more elaborate are ornamented with subjects from the Greek mythology, which seem to clash at times with the conventional figures on their lids. The story of Iphigenia is a favourite theme for the sarcophagi of women.