Etruscan Torches

In private correspondence Dan Diffendale drew my attention to this mirror:

Inscribed: Admite (Admetus) and Alcestei (Alcestis).

The left hand figure holds a most unusual torch and a pair of shoes. The right hand figure anoints Alcestis with perfume.

It’s the torch holder that I wanted to see in action.

It looks like one warps a cloth dipped in flammable liquid around the spike? Or could one possibly wrap STRAW around the hooks and use that as the fuel?

Yes this is a Papius post. The brilliant Alice Sharpless saw a connection between reverse twenty and these debated claw-like objects. I couldn’t quite understand how it works as a pairing and I still can’t, but at least I am now convinced the claws are torch holders and I cannot deny the visual similarity. Diffendale also notices the similarity in the handle as depicted on the mirror and on the control-mark.

I’d been playing around with the idea that these were holders for the original standards of the maniple and there was a pun at play with the wheat sheaves on obverse twenty (if that is indeed the right ID, and I lean towards Crawford with this). I don’t think this is correct, but Diffendale also sent me to Ovid’s Fasti 3.113-1118.

Their ensigns were of hay, but as deep reverence was paid to hay as now you see paid to the eagles. A long pole carried the hanging bundles (maniplos); from them the private (maniplaris) soldier takes his name.

illa quidem e feno; sed erat reverentia feno, quantam nunc aquilas cernis habere tuas. pertica suspensos portabat longa maniplos, unde maniplaris nomina miles habet.

Another less common, perhaps related?, torch shape