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students of comparative religion in the early nineteenth century and for at least a
century afterwards. Myth at Rome is consequently often seen as derivative and
parasitic, a borrowing from a more creative foreign culture in order to make up
for something naturally missing: 'The Greeks were far more advanced and
original than the Romans, supplying them from very early times with many of the
myths and ideas about their own gods.'” 87
For countless years, this has been the typical viewpoint of many scholars. It is only within the
last three decades, that the Romans, and also the Etruscans, have been credited with a
mythological prerogative. 88
It is not difficult to see how such an attitude could develop. The study of Etruscan and
Roman culture has long labored under the shadow of Greek influence. In the field of art history,
scholars such as Johann Winckelmann in 1764 in his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums
referred to Roman art as a pale copy of Greek art. This attitude has plagued the study of Roman
art up to the present day and is in no small part due to the fact that the Romans were indeed
enamored with Greek culture. One is reminded of Horace’s verse, “Captive Greece captured her
fierce captor and brought the arts into uncultured Latium.” 89
In a similar manner to the preference given to Greek myth over Etruscan and Roman
myth, there is preference given to literary sources over archaeological ones. A perfect example
of this problem is, as I noted earlier, that Smelik and Hemelrijk’s study was completely devoid of
archaeological evidence. There is not a simple relationship between art and text, i.e. one does
not necessarily represent or copy the other. We must view these two different types of evidence
on their own merits and recognize that variations will exist, for a myth or cycle of myths did not
simply take one form. One scholar who has made great strides in analyzing the relationship
between myth and text is J.P. Small. Her text, The Parallel Worlds of Classical Art and Text,
hints at this dichotomy by implying in its title that art and text need not “intersect.” She even
treats changes in the iconography of human and animal hybrids and its relation to the myth-
making process when she states
That the Sirens are not always the same in form is less bothersome than the
number, since not only does each generation need up-to-date translations of
87 Feeney 1998, 47. Here Feeney quotes Ogilvie 1981, 4.
88 Oleson (1975, 189-91) presents a cogent appraisal of the relationship between Greek and Etruscan mythology.
89 Hor. Epist. II.1.156-7. Latin Text taken from Horace Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, Loeb Classical Library,
edited by G.P. Goold , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 408. (Translation by Author.)
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes / intulit agresti Latio.
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