Just found my favorite Etruscan quote in our text page 200. In case you missed it, it was a quote from Aelian's On Animals: "[The Etruscans] lay out nets and other snares destined to trap the beasts. then a practised flute player arrives, who tries to give his melody the most flowing possible sound, taking the greatest pains with the harmony; he plays that music for the flute which is softest. In the calm and the silence, the sound easily ranges over hilltops, valleys and woodlands...into the animals dens. When the music first reaches their ears, it stuns them and fills them with fear; then the true and invincible pleasure that the music brings seizes them, and, filled with it, they forget their young and their liars. Although beasts seldom like to be separated from the places of their birth, in Etruria they are torn away as if by a magic enchantment, and the fascination exerted on them by the melody draws them into the nets, victims of the music."
Talk about fiction! Although from what we learned over our three weeks, the Etruscans were certainly able to bring in game. But I'm guessing it wasn't by using flute music!
Traci Hodgson
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