A History of the Roman World (6 page)

The people that we call Etruscans were named Tyrsenoi or Tyrrhenoi by the Greeks, Etrusci or Tusci by the Romans, and Rasenna by themselves. They were known to the early Greek poet Hesiod
c.
700
BC
, and archaeology shows that by then a splendid culture was beginning to flower in Etruria. How did this come about? Were the creators of this civilization native Italians or were they immigrants, like the Greeks further south in Italy? In the mid-fifth century
BC
Herodotus told how during a famine a Lydian king sent his son Tyrsenus with half the population to seek a new home among the Ombriki. All other ancient writers, beguiled perhaps by the charm and authority of the Father of History, accepted the Lydian origin of the Etruscans, except for Dionysius of Halicarnassus who, living in the time of the emperor Augustus, referred to the shadowy Pelasgians who changed their name to Tyrrhenes and were autochthonous in Italy. The controversy has been carried on ever since, with various degrees of passion and interest, but little general agreement. Mommsen dismissed the question as on a par with that of the name of Hecuba’s mother: ‘neither capable of being known, nor worth the knowing’. Others feel strongly that Herodotus can not be dismissed out of hand, and that the value of Etruscan culture and the importance of its role in Italian history, including its great influence on Rome, demand full investigation. Latterly, less emphasis has been laid on origin, and more placed on the formation of the Etruscans on Italian soil and analysis of the contrasting elements in Italy and from overseas which combined to create the culture.
²⁷

The supporters of the theory of autochthonous origin rely on archaeological evidence, which indicates that most Etruscan towns developed on precisely the same sites as former Villanovan settlements. At Veii, for instance, some twelve miles north of Rome, the early Villanovan settlements appear to represent small independent villages, each with its own cemetery, but all grouped on or around the rocky tufa plateau on which the later Etruscan city was built. The types of tombs in Etruscan cemeteries seem to develop in an uninterrupted series, as does the style of their contents. At Tarquinii, for instance, Villanovan cremation burials in urns (
a pozzo
) were first supplemented and then superseded by inhumation in trenches (
a fossa
); as the richness of the contents increased and inhumation became the usual practice, chamber-tombs were cut in the rock; tomb-painting, sculpture and ceramics flourished, and imported Greek and oriental objects became more common. Thus, it is argued, Etruscan civilization had arrived without the intervention of any obvious major break: Villanovans had become Etruscans. The Etruscans spoke a non-Indo-European language, and the Villanovans must therefore presumably have done likewise. If so, since there was no obvious influx of a new population, this language presumably derived from a much earlier Bronze (or even Neolithic) Age stratum going back to before the spread of Indo-European tongues from
c.
2000
BC
.

Scholars who follow the Asiatic flag of Herodotus rather than the Italian flag of Dionysius point out that to transmute small villages into strong cities presupposes technical skills and administrative abilities of a much higher order than that shown by the Villanovans. True, the cemeteries do not indicate any startling break, but the method of disposing of the dead does change, and this is an area of custom in which the feelings of primitive peoples run strong and tend to be conservative. Certainly few scholars today would argue for a mass immigration into Etruria from overseas in one great influx, but if groups of newcomers who practised a different form of burial only gradually asserted themselves in the land they occupied, then any change in burial habits would naturally be somewhat slow. Further, similarities between certain tombs in Etruria and Asia Minor have been found, and Etruscan culture has many aspects which seem more oriental than Italic: the luxury of the Etruscans, their love of feasting, music and dancing, and many of their religious practices such as hepatoscopy have eastern parallels. Then there is the startling fact that an inscription on a warrior’s tombstone is in a language which has connections both with Etruscan and with the tongues of Asia Minor. This was found on the island of Lemnos in the Aegean, where, according to the historian Thucydides, the pre-Greek population was Tyrrhenian. It
could
be argued that native Italian Etruscans sent out a colony to Lemnos during the early days of Greek colonization, or alternatively that a very old Mediterranean language managed to survive just in these two points amid a sea of Indo-European
speakers, but it is much more tempting to see in Lemnos a staging-post in an Etruscan migration from Asia Minor where some of the travellers stayed behind.

Although skulls and bones have been examined by anthropologists, and blood-groups studied by medical biologists, no clear answer has emerged, and the leading Etruscologist, M. Pallottino, has concentrated rather on the historical reality of the Etruscan nation in Italy, considering it more valuable to discuss the origin of the ethnic, linguistic, political and cultural elements that contributed to the process of ethnic formation that took place on the soil of Etruria itself, than to continue to speculate about provenance. One thing however is clear: whether with or without the introduction of incomers from the Eastern Mediterranean, the varied elements were fused together during the orientalizing phase in the early seventh century. The basic population of Etruria remained of Villanovan origin; it adopted new ideas of burial and social organization and imported more and more Greek and oriental wares (including some artists and craftsmen) which were gradually imitated by local artists. But some enquirers will still remember Herodotus and continue to speculate whether these changes were only the upsurge of native talent under eastern cultural influences, or were so fundamental as to justify belief in the impact of foreign occupation. The opening up of the countryside and the transformation of villages into cultured cities may well have required the influx of a relatively small number of men with administrative skills and the power to organize large labour forces.

If on balance we may accept an oriental element in the Etruscan nation, a view to which the Etruscans themselves officially subscribed at the beginning of the Roman Empire (Tacitus,
Annals
, iv, 55), we can imagine how they came in small bands and settled in strong positions near the coast whence they dominated the surrounding districts, much as the Norsemen descended upon the coasts of Scotland. This movement may even represent the final spasm of disturbances in the eastern Mediterranean that went back to the results of the collapse of the Mycenaean and Hittite empires and sent various groups of Peoples of the Sea roving around from the beginning of the twelfth century in search of plunder and new homes. The Etruscans cannot have arrived in Italy before about 800
BC
(Herodotus put their migration before the fall of Troy, late thirteenth century), though some might have arrived in Lemnos earlier. The magnet that drew them to Etruria will have been its mineral wealth. They were presumably groups of warriors, with few womenfolk, who brought their experience in war, administration and the arts of city life, together with their language. Their numbers may not have been large and their arrival may have continued over many years. In Etruria they found a Villanovan population which lived in villages, spoke an Indo-European tongue and cremated its dead. Superior powers of organization enabled the
invaders to impose themselves as a conquering aristocracy; they intermarried with the Villanovans, their language and burial habits gradually gained the ascendancy, and they organized the subjugated Villanovans to clear the forests, drain the land, and build cities. By exploiting the copper and iron of the country they were enabled to build up an overseas trade which brought them many of the luxurious artistic products of the East. Thus by the beginning of the seventh century an Etruscan nation was born on Italian soil; the bulk of its people were Iron Age Villanovans whose latent abilities and tastes had been gradually sharpened by pressure from men who shared some of the qualities which later enabled the Normans to subdue the Saxons in England. However, the warning should be sounded once again that many scholars still prefer a theory of ‘continuous creation’ within Etruria itself.
²⁸

Etruria was enclosed by the rivers Arno and Tiber and by the lower slopes of the Apennines, but differed considerably in the north and south. In the north were fertile alluvial valleys, plains and rolling hills of limestone and sandstone, where such cities as Clusium, Cortona, Perusia and Faesulae grew up and lived on through to modern times thanks to the attractiveness of their sites. Southern Etruria, on the other hand, where the earliest Etruscan cities developed, was a volcanic zone, whose tufa rock had weathered into peaks and plateaux, separated by deep valleys and gullies, while much of the wild landscape was covered by forest and macchia; here cities such as Tarquinii, Vulci, Caere and Veii are found on hills which rise where rivers or streams meet to offer protective arms. Though the Villanovans had begun to penetrate into this formidable barrier, emergent Etruscan engineering skills and the organization of labour promoted further land-reclamation, drainage, forestry and road-building. But even so, groups of settlers found themselves cut off from each other by physical barriers which hindered communications. So, like the early Greek city-states, they found intercommunication and therefore political co-operation difficult. Ancient writers might speak of an Etruscan nation, but in fact it was an aggregation of largely independent city-states. The basis of life was naturally agriculture, supplemented by hunting and fishing, but the copper and iron of the country were quickly exploited. Mineral wealth also provided building stone for cities as well as raw materials for export in exchange for foreign goods; at the same time the land was sufficiently fertile to support a large population. Only technical and administrative skills were needed to produce a rich civilization.

The Etruscans laid out their cities in accordance with religious practices prescribed in ritual books; each city must be enclosed within a sacred boundary (
pomerium
) in order to ward off unseen dangers from outside.
Temples had to be correctly planned and orientated, and this may have led to some symmetry in the layout of other public buildings, but the rough and hilly nature of many sites must have precluded the exact use of a careful grid system such as the Etruscans used later when founding cities on more level ground, as at Marzabotto near Bologna
c.
500
BC
(p. 32). This desire for symmetry may have influenced the later grid system, based on the axial crossing of two main streets (the
cardo
and
decumanus
) which the Romans used in their camps and colonies, although the Etruscan practice was rather closer to the system of alternating wider and narrower divisions which many Greek cities in the west used from
c.
500
BC
. For long years most of the Etruscan cities relied on the strength of their natural position, but when from
c.
400
BC
the power of Rome on their southern horizon began to seem threatening, they built walls of dressed stones. An Etruscan temple, squarer than Greek ones, had a wide frontage; the front half had a colonnaded portico, while the back comprised either three shrines (
cellae
) for three deities or one
cella
with two flanking wings. The main framework, which rested on stone foundations, was made of wood covered with gay multi-coloured terracotta ornamentation. Small private houses were usually rectangular, of mud-brick, laced with timber, and built on stone or pebble foundations; larger houses had upper storeys, with flat or gabled roofs. The mansions (
domus
) of the rich aristocracy were in internal appearance like some of the elegantly decorated stone chamber-tombs and were the predecessors of the
atrium
(central courtyard) type of house which the Romans later used.
²⁹
These large tombs were laid out in rows, with streets running between them, forming ‘cities of the dead’ (
necropoleis
); there are examples at Caere and Orvieto. A few cities, however, in northern and inland Etruria retained the practice of cremation. The contents of the larger tombs, themselves often shaped like houses, reveal the luxury and artistic tastes of the Etruscan nobles. Some of the pottery in these tombs was native
bucchero
ware (a black polished clay, sometimes brilliant and elegant), but they also contained vast quantities of imported Greek vases, of every type from ‘geometric’ to Attic, together with local copies: one tomb alone in Caere contained 150 excellent early Greek vases, and large numbers found at Vulci from the early nineteenth century onwards have enriched the museums of Europe. The metal work of bronze and gold was mostly of native workmanship, but of high quality. Bronze toilet-cases and mirrors with incised decorations show strong Greek influence, but the exquisite gold filigree work was less dependent on foreign models. This jewellery and metal-work was widely exported, even to Celtic lands. Two larger bronze masterpieces survive in the Capitoline wolf in Rome and the Chimera of Arezzo. Sculpture in stone was limited by the quality of the local stone (the marble quarries of Luni were not exploited until Roman times), but the Etruscans excelled in sculptured terracotta, which was brightly
painted and widely used to decorate the wooden superstructure of temples and even for life-size statues, of which the Apollo of Veii survives as the work of a master. The gaily coloured wall-paintings in the tombs, especially those at Tarquinii, show great
joie de vivre
, but also some grim figures of demons in the underworld. Scenes of banqueting, dancing and music, horse-racing, athletics, wrestling, hunting and fishing, all throw a vivid light on Etruscan life, as well as reflecting Greek painting of the archaic school, of which nothing survives in Greece itself. However, here, as in the rest of Etruscan art, the main inspiration is Greek and oriental, but infused with an individual character all its own.
³⁰

Of the Etruscans Livy wrote: ‘no people was ever more devoted to religious observances’. They believed that their religion had been revealed to them in early days by seers. This teaching, the
Etrusca disciplina
, was enshrined in a number of books of ritual, and it prescribed in minute detail how the will of the gods was to be ascertained and followed: life was dominated by fate, and the Etruscans had only ten
saecula
of existence granted to them.
Libri fulgurales
interpreted the significance of thunder and lightning, while
libri haruspicini
instructed professional
haruspices
in the art of divination based on the inspection of the livers of sacrificed animals (hepatoscopy): a model bronze liver survives which is divided into forty-four areas, marked with the names of gods and orientated to the Etruscan heaven, showing the place occupied by each deity. The Romans later often appealed to Etruscan
haruspices
to interpret omens which they themselves failed to understand. Other books dealt with the founding of cities, consecrating temples, matters concerning war and peace, and most aspects of public and private life. The names, though not always the precise functions, of many Etruscan deities are known, and they were soon assimilated to Greek deities: thus Tin (Zeus/Jupiter), Uni (Hera/Juno), Menvra (Athene/Minerva), Fufluns (Dionysus/Bacchus), Sethlans (Hephaestus). Etruscan religion, at least in its later phases, became gloomy and cruel, unlike most Greek and Italic cults: tomb-paintings depict the torments of the departed inflicted by demons in the underworld. To appease these demons the Etruscans appear to have offered human sacrifices. The Romans were much influenced by many aspects of Etruscan religion; their gladiatorial contests probably derived from the Etruscan practice of dispatching their victims by making them kill each other in duels.
³¹

The Etruscan language, which was non-Indo-European, bequeathed a few words to Latin, but in the main had remarkably little influence on it. However, both Etruscans and Romans took their alphabets from the Phoenicians via the Greeks, and if the Romans did not derive their version direct from Cumae, then the Etruscans must have acted as intermediaries. Etruscan survives in a large number of inscriptions, over 10,000 altogether, but nearly all are very short and usually late (third century
BC
or after). Most are epitaphs, giving the
names of the deceased and of his father and mother, together with his age and any magistracy he held. Three longer inscriptions dealing with religious or legal matters survive, and two religious dedications, with a third in Punic, have recently been found at Pyrgi, the port of Caere. The language still defies complete and detailed decipherment, but the general meaning of most inscriptions can be ascertained, not least by the so-called bilingual method, which for instance, finds parallels in the religious and legal formulae of the Etruscans and those of the Latins and Umbrians which can be read with accuracy.
³²

The Etruscans had a considerable body of religious literature, but the extent of their secular literature is uncertain since whatever existed has all perished. However, even as late as the early Roman Empire much material about the Etruscans still survived, some at least almost certainly in Etruscan, sufficient in fact to enable the emperor Claudius to write twenty books of Etruscan history,
Tyrrhenika
; some of this material presumably came direct from Etruscan historical sources. Varro actually refers to
Tuscae Historiae.
Further, painted scenes in a tomb at Vulci depict historical episodes showing Etruscan warriors from different cities in combat with Roman warriors, among them Mastarna, who according to Etruscan sources was a king at Rome (p. 48); these scenes presuppose a historical tradition, since the painting was done
c.
340–310
BC
, some two hundred years after the episodes depicted. A lively interest in local history is also shown by a number of
elogia
, written in Latin and set up in Tarquinii: one celebrates Velthur Spurinna, who was
praetor
twice; during one magistracy he kept his army at home, in the other he led it across the sea to Sicily. These inscriptions were put up in the first century of the Roman Empire, which indicates the long survival of family traditions either in written histories, national or local, or less probably in oral or epigraphic sources. Thus quite a considerable body of Etruscan history seems to have existed, but unfortunately we can only speculate about its detailed nature and the ways in which the Etruscans wrote history. One other aspect, however, is important: a common literature provides a powerful element in the formation of any nation (the possession of the Homeric poems created a strong sentimental link between the scattered communities of early Greeks). Since it is generally agreed that Etruscan culture was not the product of a single racially pure ethnic unit, the possession of a religious and historical literature must have been a potent factor in creating an Etruscan ‘nation’.
³³

In early days each Etruscan city was ruled by a king (
lucumo
), who was surrounded with great pomp. He wore a robe of purple and a golden crown, sat on an ivory seat, and was escorted by servants who carried an axe in a bundle of rods (
fasces
), symbols of his power to execute or scourge. Many of these trappings of office were later adopted by Roman Republican magistrates after Etruscan kings had occupied the throne at Rome. During the sixth and
fifth centuries nobles began to challenge the power of the kings, some of whom tried to bolster up their waning authority by reorganizing the city’s political institutions in order to give the middle class more military and political influence to counterbalance the nobility, as occurred in Rome (see p. 50). However, gradually the kings were overthrown, and although thereafter some military adventurers may have gone on the warpath in an attempt to gain personal ascendancy, they were soon reduced to the level of their fellow nobles, and from then on the cities were administered by local aristocracies, who held such magistracies as those of
zilath
,
maru
or
purthne
, offices which appear normally to have been annual but whose detailed functions escape us.
³⁴

The chief of these autonomous city-states formed a League of Twelve Cities and annually sent representatives to celebrate common cult and games at a federal sanctuary, Fanum Voltumnae near Volsinii, Voltumna being the chief god. The strength of these federal ties varied: the cities clearly developed some feelings for national unity and did on occasion act as a League, but local loyalties often proved stronger. Thus the Etruscans failed to establish an integrated political structure, inspired by unity of purpose, and this failure was later to prove fatal to them when they came into conflict with Rome, which in contrast had built up a strong confederacy.
³⁵

The Greek and Roman sources, which are seldom favourable to the Etruscans and are often hostile and slanderous, give a general impression that Etruscan society was sharply divided between a powerful and rich aristocracy and an immense body of clients, serfs and slaves, but such a gap may have been lessened in the sixth century when the Etruscans adopted the Greek military formation of a closely-knit battle-line of heavily armed infantry (hoplites). The citizen body was formed by a gentilitian system into clans or families, with strong feeling for the family and the place of the mother, although older views of Etruscan society as matriarchal have been abandoned. Little unfortunately is known in detail about the status or conditions of the serfs and slaves who worked the land for their overlords.
³⁶