CIRCA EARLY 5TH CENTURY B.C.

The beetle is well detailed with a hatched border to the thorax, incised winglets and vertical tongues on the plinth. The underside is engraved with Aeneas shouldering his father Anchises as they flee the fall of Troy. The hero is nude, running to the right in the Knielauf pose, holding a spear in one hand and an oval shield in the other. Anchises is bearded, wearing a chlamys across his waist and over one arm. He supports himself with his left hand resting on his son’s shoulder, and holds a walking stick in his right hand. The scene is enclosed within a hatched border.

The subject was known in Etruria from at least the late 6th century B.C., since a number of Attic black- and red-figured vases depicting Aeneas and Anchises were found there (see for example the black-figured amphora from Tarquinia, by the Antimenes Painter, no. 269.45 in J.D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters). For an Etruscan scarab of similar style see the carnelian example in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, no. 44 in P. Zazoff, Etruskische Skarabäen.