We follow the Romans in naming the Etruscans: “Etrusci,” not the Greek “Tyrrhenoi,” or their own names, “Rasenna” or “Rasna.” Like the Greeks and the Latins (Romans), they were an urban culture with important international connections. Much was absorbed from the western Greeks with whom they traded, such as the alphabet, the Archaic style in sculpture and painting, and the monumentality of temples, yet close inspection reveals that the Etruscans had their own customs, divinities, and beliefs, which often seem, when judged by a Greco-Roman yardstick, full of quirks.
With their homeland close to Rome, the Etruscans were the first great rival of the Romans, and indeed ruled that city during the sixth century BC. They had a lasting influence on Roman culture. The extent of their contribution is debated, but seems to include the Tuscan temple type, the atrium house, realism in sculpture, the toga, the alphabet, so-called “Roman” numerals, rituals for laying out a city and divining the will of the gods, and a taste for bloodthirsty games.
Their language, written in a form of the Euboean Greek alphabet (which they transmitted to the Romans), first attested ca. 700 BC, nevertheless differs from Greek, Latin, or the other languages of ancient Italy. Indeed, it is not a member of the Indo-European language group, and has no known relatives. Because surviving texts are short, the language is imperfectly understood. Promise of a breakthrough was held out by the discovery in 1964 at Pyrgi, the harbor of Caere (Cerveteri), of three gold plaques, dated to ca. 500 BC, with the longest known dedicatory inscriptions, all from Thefarie Velianas, a king of Caere, to the goddess Uni (Roman Juno) (= the Phoenician goddess Astarte). Two were written in Etruscan, and a third in Punic (Phoeni-cian/Carthaginian). Unfortunately, the Punic and Etruscan texts are not exact translations of each other, so the value for decipherment was limited.
For Etruscan history, we rely particularly on Roman literature. The other main source of knowledge about the Etruscans are their tombs, the impressive rock-cut chambers with painted or carved walls, in their most elegant manifestations, and, when untouched by tomb robbers, wonderful repositories of objects both local and foreign. Their cities, in contrast, have been poorly preserved, often beneath later towns, and have traditionally been of little interest for archaeologists accustomed to the handsome rewards of the tombs. Recent excavations of cities are aiming to rectify this gap.
The heartland of the Etruscans was Etruria, a triangular area marked by the Arno River on the north, the Tiber River and the Apennine Mountains on the east, and, as a north-west to south-east hypotenuse, the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west. This well-watered land of hills and plains is favorable for agriculture and the raising of animals. In addition, the region has mineral resources, iron (notably on the island of Elba), copper, and silver, in particular. International commerce developed in these resources, to judge especially from the Greek pottery found in Etruria, although major cities were never located directly on the seacoast, a response to the menace of piracy, an activity in which the Etruscans themselves earned notoriety.
The origins of the Etruscans have been a subject of controversy ever since Classical antiquity. In the eighth and seventh centuries BC, Etruscan culture attained a degree of sophistication unmatched by the other cultures of the peninsula. This unusual and rapid rise has piqued the curiosity of generations of scholars. What is the explanation? Were the Etruscans one of the many peoples already in place on the Italian peninsula in the early first millennium BC, or did they immigrate to Italy from elsewhere?
According to one theory circulating in ancient times, Etruscan culture was brought to Italy by invaders. Herodotus tells us they came from western Asia Minor, Lydian refugees from a famine. Other Greek writers identified them with Pelasgians, a shadowy Aegean people of the pre-literate period. Indeed, there are some surprising parallels in Anatolia: the tumulus burials (shared with the Lydians and Phrygians of Anatolia), and the inscription, in a language that resembles Etruscan, on a late sixth-century BC funerary stele from the north-east Aegean island of Lemnos.
In an opposing opinion, Dionysios of Halikarnassos (first century BC) concluded that the Etruscans were not immigrants into Etruria, but had always lived there. Indeed, archaeological evidence indicates a continuous evolution from the early Iron Age Villanovan Culture of northern and central Italy to the Etruscan. But the striking parallels with features from the Aegean, Anatolia, and even Europe to the north suggest that foreign influences penetrated Etruria in the formative stage of Etruscan culture. Thus, both sides in the ancient argument were to some extent correct.
The Etruscans did not have a unified government, but instead, like the Greeks, were organized in city-states, grouped in a league traditionally consisting of twelve members. Kings and aristocrats ruled the cities. During the eighth and seventh centuries, the Etruscans extended their influence northwards to the Po River valley, and to the south, to Latium and Campania. Etruscan kings ruled in Rome itself from ca. 600—509 BC. The Etruscans then suffered an extended series of blows. Defeated in a naval battle by Syracuse in 474 BC, Etruscan sea power declined. Gauls raided into Italy from the north in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, and Umbro-Sabellian tribes took the Etruscan cities of Campania in the course of their migrations westward across the peninsula. A long struggle with Rome ensued, ending finally in the early first century BC in complete Roman victory. Etruscans received Roman citizenship in 90 BC, and indeed Etruscan civilization was by this point completely absorbed into the Roman world.
World History
