Etruscans Now
Architecture
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Nancy A. Winter - American Academy in Rome
Terracotta Roofing in Etruria, Corfu & Sicily: a Bacchiad family enterprise
A group of early roofs in Etruria, found in contexts datable to the third quarter of the 7th century B.C., display decorative features representing the potnia theron (antefixes decorated with female heads flanked by feline-head water spouts mounted on eaves tiles), as well as a raking sima with cavetto profile and painted tongue decoration, and revetment plaques with a painted guilloche design.
As specific and unusual as these structural and decorative features are, all appear again on roofs on Corfu, while the same raking sima and revetment plaques are found among the earliest architectural terracottas from Sicily, at Syracuse.
The iconographical source of inspiration for the decoration on these western roofs may have been the stone perirrhanterion from the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia, near Corinth.
The link between these early roofs and the Isthmia perirrhanterion is the Bacchiad family. When ousted from Corinth by the Kypselids in 657 B.C., part fled with Demaratus to Etruria, and another part to Corfu, while Syracuse was an early colony of Corinth. Bacchiads may have been responsible for the spread of terracotta roofing to the West, and could have been involved in production.