Etruscan gold bulla depicting the apotheosis of Achilles at the Gregorian Etruscan Museum in Vatican City
Etruscan gold bulla depicting the apotheosis of Achilles at the Gregorian Etruscan Museum in Vatican City. The Romans, who traditionally traced their lineage to Troy, took a highly negative view of Achilles. Virgil refers to Achilles as a savage and a merciless butcher of men, while Horace portrays Achilles ruthlessly slaying women and children. But the Etruscans, influenced in their art and mythology by the Greeks, honored Ac hilles and often portrayed him in their art like they did here on this gold bulla depicting the apotheosis of Achilles. Here, the hero drives a chariot pulled by a team of winged horses. Early dedicatory inscriptions from the Greek colonies around the Black Sea, including Olbia, attest to the existence of a heroic cult of Achilles from the sixth century BCE onwards. The cult was still thriving in the third century CE, when a dedicatory stelae from Olbia refers to an Achilles Pontárchēs (roughly "lord of the Pontus Euxinus"), who was invoked as a pro...