attractive to those who wished to find a way to escape the anxieties of death.”232 Figure 49 Satyr Head in Profile pendant, Etruscan, 525–480 B.C. Amber, H: 6.5 cm (21⁄2 in.), W: 6.8 cm (27⁄10 in.), D: 3.5 cm (13⁄8 in.). Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Figure 48 Head from the Statue of the Young Bacchus (Dionysos), Roman, A.D. Museum, 83.AO.202.1. Gift of Vasek Polak. See cat. no. 12. 1–50. Bronze with silver, H: 21.6 cm (81⁄2 in.), W: 18 cm (71⁄16 in.), D: 19 cm (71⁄2 in.). Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 96.AB.52. Herakles (figure 50) in Greece and Italy (in Etruscan, Hercle) was another powerful apotropaic figure, because Dionysos also knew the great sea, into which he plunged of his cultic roles as danger averter, healer, and death to avoid Lycurgus and from which he was rescued by dealer.235 His polyvalent cult functions in Etruria and Thetis, and where he showed his powers as he much of the Italian peninsula were also associated with transformed his Tyrrhenian pirate captors into dolphins. trade, triumph, transhumance, and initiation, and he was The liquid, winelike optical characteristics of amber may worshipped in his oracular and mantic roles.236 The have created a natural connection between Dionysos and representation of the hero-god in amber is derived from the ancient resin. As E. R. Dodds writes in his edition of various schemata—Greek, Etruscan, and Cypriot. Two Euripides’ Bacchae, “[Dionysos’s] domain is, in Plutarch’s amber amulets of the Cypriot type of Herakles show him words, the whole of hugra phusis [the principle of wearing a lionskin helmet: these pendants were doubly moisture], not only the liquid fire of the grape, but the sap potent, for the lionskin itself was a standard protective thrusting in a young tree, the blood pounding in the veins device. of a young animal, all the mysterious and uncontrollable tides that ebb and flow in the life of nature.”233 Satyrs (figure 49), nymphs, Bacchic revelers, heads of the god, and other Dionysian subjects are among the most numerous of the fifth-century B.C. funerary figured ambers. And Dionysian subjects would be the most common of Roman-period figured ambers.234 Archaic and Afterward 71