Images

Abstract

Abstract The first Roman historian Fabius Pictor (“the painter”) famously descended from an ancestor known for painting figural and probably historical scenes on Roman temples in the early third century BCE. Much has been made about this relationship as a sign of a wider pre-historiographical phase of historical writing at Rome. As this chapter points out, the impulse to document historical events in pictorial imagery was very widespread in Italian culture around the same time. Tomb painting in Etruria, Campania, and even as far as Daunia shows a marked turn in this period away from more generic aristocratic imagery and toward images of historical narrative. Probably the best-known example of this trend is the remarkable François tomb paintings from Vulci, but in fact a similar impulse appears very widely and not only in tomb painting but in other media, such as painted or figural vases. We also find similar epistemological interests in a rising desire to depict signs of political officeholding in tomb paintings and otherwise. As this might suggest, the turn toward historical images across Italy was a feature of the evolving organization of urban society in Italy in this period.