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Ancient Italic people

Ancient Italic people, any of the peoples diverse in origin, language, traditions, stage of development, and territorial extension who inhabited pre-Roman Italy, a region heavily influenced by neighbouring Greece, with its well-defined national characteristics, expansive vigour, and aesthetic and intellectual maturity. Italy attained a unified ethnolinguistic, political, and cultural physiognomy only after the Roman conquest, yet its most ancient peoples remain anchored in the names of the regions of Roman Italy—Latium, Campania, Apulia, Bruttium, Lucania, Samnium, Picenum, Umbria, Etruria, Venetia, and Liguria.

The Etruscans

The Etruscans formed the most powerful nation in pre-Roman Italy. They created the first great civilization on the peninsula, whose influence on the Romans as well as on present-day culture is increasingly recognized. Evidence suggests that it was the Etruscans who taught the Romans the alphabet and numerals, along with many elements of architecture, art, religion, and dress. The toga was an Etruscan invention, and the Etruscan-style Doric column (rather than the Greek version) became a mainstay of architecture of both the Renaissance and the later Classical revival. Etruscan influence on the ancient theatre survives in their word for “masked man,” phersu, which became persona in Latin and person in English.

  • Etruscan roof tile (antefix) with the head of a satyr, terra-cotta, 4th century bce; in the …
    Photograph by AlkaliSoaps. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, purchase by subscription, 1896 (96.18.159)

General considerations


The Greeks called the Etruscans Tyrsenoi or Tyrrhenoi, while the Latins referred to them as Tusci or Etrusci, whence the English name for them. In Latin their country was Tuscia or Etruria. According to the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (flourished c. 20 bce), the Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, and this statement finds confirmation in the form rasna in Etruscan inscriptions.

  • Distribution of peoples of ancient Italy c. 500 bce.
    Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Geography and natural resources

Ancient Etruria lay in central Italy, bounded on the west by the Tyrrhenian Sea (recognized early by the Greeks as belonging to the Tyrrhenoi), on the north by the Arno River, and on the east and south by the Tiber River. This area corresponds to a large part of modern Tuscany as well as to sections of Latium and Umbria. The chief natural resources of the region, undoubtedly playing a crucial role in Etruscan commerce and urban development, were the rich deposits of metal ores found in both northern and southern Etruria. In the south, in the maritime territory stretching between the first great Etruscan cities, Tarquinii and Caere (modern Cerveteri), the low-lying Tolfa Mountains provided copper, iron, and tin. These minerals also were found inland at Mount Amiata, the highest mountain in Etruria, in the vicinity of the city of Clusium (modern Chiusi). But the most productive area turned out to be in northern Etruria, in the range known as the Catena Metallifera (“Metal-Bearing Chain”), from which copper and especially iron were mined in enormous amounts. The city of Populonia, located on the coast, played a leading role in this industry, as did the adjacent island of Elba, evidently renowned from an early date for the wealth of its deposits.

The forests of Etruria constituted another major natural resource, providing abundant firewood for metallurgical operations as well as timber for the building of ships. The Etruscans were famous, or perhaps infamous, for their maritime activity; they dominated the seas on the western coast of Italy, and their reputation as pirates instilled fear around the Mediterranean. Their prosperity through the centuries, however, seems also to have been founded on a stout agricultural tradition; as late as 205 bce, when Scipio Africanus was outfitting an expedition against Hannibal, the Etruscan cities were able to supply impressive amounts of grain as well as weapons and materials for shipbuilding.

Historical periods

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The presence of the Etruscan people in Etruria is attested by their own inscriptions, dated about 700 bce; it is widely believed, however, that the Etruscans were present in Italy before this time and that the prehistoric Iron Age culture called “Villanovan” (9th–8th century bce) is actually an early phase of Etruscan civilization.

Inasmuch as no Etruscan literary works have survived, the chronology of Etruscan history and civilization has been constructed on the basis of evidence, both archaeological and literary, from the better-known civilizations of Greece and Rome as well as from those of Egypt and the Middle East. Contact with Greece began around the time that the first Greek colony in Italy was founded (c. 775–750 bce), when Greeks from the island of Euboea settled at Pithekoussai in the Bay of Naples. Thereafter, numerous Greek and Middle Eastern objects were imported into Etruria, and these items, together with Etruscan artifacts and works of art displaying Greek or Oriental influence, have been used to generate relatively precise dates along with more general ones. In fact, the basic nomenclature for the historical periods in Etruria is borrowed from corresponding periods in Greece; the assigned dates are usually (though perhaps erroneously) conceived of as being slightly later than their Greek counterparts to allow for cultural “time lag.” Thus the Etruscan Orientalizing period belongs to the 7th century bce, the Archaic period to the 6th and first half of the 5th century bce, the Classical period to the second half of the 5th and the 4th century bce, and the Hellenistic period to the 3rd to 1st centuries bce. Etruscan culture became absorbed into Roman civilization during the 1st century bce and thereafter disappeared as a recognizable entity.

  • Etruscan frieze; in the National Archaeological Museum, Siena, Italy.
    © Timur Kulgarin/Shutterstock.com

Language and writing

Etruscan, the third great language of culture in Italy after Greek and Latin, does not, as noted above, survive in any literary works. An Etruscan religious literature did exist, and evidence suggests that there may have been a body of historical literature and drama as well. (Known, for example, is the name of a playwright, Volnius, of obscure date, who wrote “Tuscan tragedies.”) Etruscan had ceased to be spoken in the time of imperial Rome, though it continued to be studied by priests and scholars. The emperor Claudius (died 54 ce) wrote a history of the Etruscans in 20 books, now lost, which was based on sources still preserved in his day. The language continued to be used in a religious context until late antiquity; the final record of such use relates to the invasion of Rome by Alaric, chief of the Visigoths, in 410 ce, when Etruscan priests were summoned to conjure lightning against the barbarians.

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There are more than 10,000 known Etruscan inscriptions, with new ones being discovered each year. These are mainly short funerary or dedicatory inscriptions, found on ash urns and in tombs or on objects dedicated in sanctuaries. Others are found on engraved bronze Etruscan mirrors, where they label mythological figures or give the name of the owner, and on coins, dice, and pottery. Finally, there are graffiti scratched on pottery; though their function is little understood, they seem to include owners’ names as well as numbers, abbreviations, and nonalphabetic signs.

Of the longer inscriptions, the most important is the “Zagreb mummy wrapping,” found in Egypt in the 19th century and carried back to Yugoslavia by a traveler (National Museum, Zagreb). It had originally been a book of linen cloth, which at some date was cut up into strips to be wrapped around a mummy. With about 1,300 words, written in black ink on the linen, it is the longest existing Etruscan text; it contains a calendar and instructions for sacrifice, sufficient to give some idea of Etruscan religious literature. From Italy come an important religious text, inscribed on a tile at the site of ancient Capua, and an inscription on a boundary stone at Perugia, noteworthy for its juridical content. The few Etruscan-Latin bilingual inscriptions, all funerary, have little importance with respect to improving knowledge of Etruscan. But inscribed gold plaques found at the site of the ancient sanctuary of Pyrgi, the port city of Caere, provide two texts, one in Etruscan and the other in Phoenician, of significant length (about 40 words) and of analogous content. They are the equivalent of a bilingual inscription and thus offer substantial data for the elucidation of Etruscan by way of a known language—Phoenician. The find is also an important historical document, which records the dedication to the Phoenician goddess Astarte of a “sacred place” in the Etruscan sanctuary of Pyrgi by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, early in the 5th century bce.

The 20th-century notion that there is a “mystery” regarding the Etruscan language was fundamentally erroneous; there exists no problem of decipherment, as was often wrongly asserted. The Etruscan texts are largely legible. The alphabet derives from a Greek alphabet originally learned from the Phoenicians. It was disseminated in Italy by the colonists from the island of Euboea during the 8th century bce and adapted to Etruscan phonetics; the Latin alphabet was ultimately derived from it. (In its turn the Etruscan alphabet was diffused at the end of the Archaic period [c. 500 bce] into northern Italy, becoming the model for the alphabets of the Veneti and of various Alpine populations; this happened concurrently with the formation of the Umbrian and the Oscan alphabets in the peninsula.)

The real problem with the Etruscan texts lies in the difficulty of understanding the meaning of the words and grammatical forms. A fundamental obstacle stems from the fact that no other known language has close enough kinship to Etruscan to allow a reliable, comprehensive, and conclusive comparison. The apparent isolation of the Etruscan language had already been noted by the ancients; it is confirmed by repeated and vain attempts of modern science to assign it to one of the various linguistic groups or types of the Mediterranean and Eurasian world. However, there are in fact connections with Indo-European languages, particularly with the Italic languages, and also with more or less known non-Indo-European languages of western Asia and the Caucasus, the Aegean, Italy, and the Alpine zone as well as with the relics of the Mediterranean linguistic substrata revealed by place-names. This means that Etruscan is not truly isolated; its roots are intertwined with those of other recognizable linguistic formations within a geographic area extending from western Asia to east-central Europe and the central Mediterranean, and its latest formative developments may have taken place in more direct contact with the pre-Indo-European and Indo-European linguistic environment of Italy. But this also means that Etruscan, as scholars know it, cannot simply be classified as belonging to the Caucasian, the Anatolian, or Indo-European languages such as Greek and Latin, from which it seems to differ in structure.

The traditional methods hitherto employed in interpreting Etruscan are (1) the etymological, which is based upon the comparison of word roots and grammatical elements with those of other languages and which assumes the existence of a linguistic relationship that permits an explication of Etruscan from the outside (this method has produced negative results, given the error in the assumption), (2) the combinatory, a procedure of analysis and interpretation of the Etruscan texts rigorously limited to internal comparative study of the texts themselves and of the grammatical forms of the Etruscan words (this has led to much progress in the knowledge of Etruscan, but its defects lie in the hypothetical character of many of the conclusions due to the absence of external proofs or confirmations), and (3) the bilingual, based on the comparison of Etruscan ritual, votive, and funerary formulas with presumably analogous formulas from epigraphic or literary texts in languages belonging to a closely connected geographic and historical environment, such as Greek, Latin, or Umbrian. Nonetheless, with the increase of reliable data, in part from more recent epigraphic discoveries (such as the gold plaques at Pyrgi mentioned above), the need to find the one right method appears to be of decreasing importance; all available procedures tend to be utilized.

Archaeological evidence

The lack of Etruscan literature and the widely acknowledged bias and contradictory accounts of Greek and Roman writers create a situation in which the careful study of the visible remains of the Etruscans is fundamental for understanding them. The archaeological contexts and the remains themselves (including pottery, metalwork, sculpture, painting, architecture, animal and human bones, and the humblest objects of daily life) fall into three basic categories: funerary, urban, and sacred. (There is sometimes an overlapping of these categories.)

By far the largest percentage of material is funerary; thus there is a great deal of information about Etruscan ideas on the afterlife and on their attitudes toward the deceased members of their families. But there can be no doubt that the relatively scarce information about Etruscan settlements is also of great importance. The evidence of the well-preserved Etruscan city at Marzabotto (c. 500 bce) near Bologna (probably an Etruscan colony) reveals that the Etruscans were among the first in the Mediterranean to lay out a city with a grid plan; it was oriented according to the compass, emphasizing a principal north-south street and including one or more major east-west streets. The ritual involved in thus laying out a town, complete with walls, temples, and other sacred areas, was known to the Romans as the ritus etruscus. The system was commonly used by the Romans in laying out military camps and new cities and has survived in the centre of many European cities today. Such rigidly organized town plans seem to have been rare in Etruria; more often one finds an irregular pattern resulting from the coalescence of villages in Villanovan times and the adaptation to the hills normally chosen as town sites.

In a sacred context, the Etruscan temple also often revealed a careful organization, once again with a system that was passed on to the Romans. In contrast to Greek temples, those of the Etruscans frequently showed a clear differentiation of front and back, with a columniated deep front porch and a cella that was flush with the podium on which it stood. The materials were frequently perishable (timber and mud brick, on a stone foundation) except for the abundant terra-cotta sculptures that adorned the roof. Especially well-preserved are the acroteria, or roof sculptures, from the Portonaccio temple at Veii (late 6th century bce) representing Apulu (the Etruscan Apollo) and other mythological figures.

Of a different order are the spectacular finds from the site of Poggio Civitate (Murlo) near Siena, where excavations (begun in 1966) have revealed a huge building of the Archaic period with rammed earth walls, measuring about 197 feet on each side and featuring a large court in the middle. It was adorned with life-size terra-cotta figures, male and female, human and animal; some of the figures wear a huge “cowboy” hat in the regional style. Authorities still disagree over the nature of the site and are uncertain whether the building was a palace, a sanctuary, or perhaps a place of civic assembly. Ordinary Etruscan houses, known from a number of sites, include oval-shaped huts from San Giovenale and elsewhere and structures with a rectilinear plan from Veii and Acquarossa (Archaic) and Vetulonia (Hellenistic).

As for the necropolises of Etruria, these, too, occasionally show signs of a grid plan, as at the Crocefisso del Tufo at Orvieto (second half of the 6th century bce) and at Caere. More often they have an irregular, agglutinative quality that reflects the site’s long history of use. Because the Etruscans took great pains to make their relatives comfortable in a “house of the dead,” the tombs suggest many details of actual Etruscan houses. Thus the tombs of Caere (especially those of the 6th century and later), carved underground out of the soft volcanic tufa so widespread in Etruria, have not only windows, doors, columns, and ceiling beams but also pieces of furniture (beds, chairs, and footstools) sculptured from the living rock. At Tarquinii, another tradition for tomb decoration led to painting the walls of the chamber with frescoes of Etruscan funerary celebrations, including banqueting, games, dancing, music, and various performances in a fresh outdoor landscape. The scenes probably served to commemorate actual funerals, but they also may have alluded to the kind of afterlife that was expected for the deceased. The Elysium-like concept of the afterlife prevailed in the Archaic period, but in the ensuing centuries one finds a growing emphasis on the darker realm of the underworld. Frescoes show its ruler, Hades (Etruscan Aita), wearing a wolf-skin cap and sitting enthroned beside his wife; demons and monsters populate this sphere. They may be seen in the remarkable Tomb of the Blue Demons (c. 400 bce), discovered at Tarquinii in 1987, or in the Francois Tomb from Vulci, where the blue-skinned devil Charu (only remotely resembling the Greek ferryman Charon) waits with his hammer to strike the deceased and take him away to the underworld. He sometimes has a gentler partner, the angelic winged figure of Vanth, who helps to ease the transition from life to death.

A perennial theme in the discussion of Etruscan material culture is its relationship to Greek models. The comparison is natural, indeed essential, in light of the massive amount of Greek artifacts, especially vases, that have been excavated in Etruria and the abundant examples of Etruscan imitations, of the pottery especially. It is also certain that Greek craftsmen sometimes settled in Etruria, as in the report by Pliny the Elder (1st century ce) about a Corinthian noble named Demaratus, who moved to Tarquinii, bringing along three of his own artists. But it is no longer appropriate to dwell naively on the “inferiority” of Etruscan art nor to insist that the Etruscans were mere imitators of the Greek art they undoubtedly prized. Instead, increasing emphasis is being placed on defining the highly original elements in Etruscan culture that exist side by side with the qualities that show their great admiration of things Greek.

In addition to their distinctive modes of designing a town or of building a temple or tomb, one may note their unique native pottery, bucchero (beginning c. 680 bce), with its decorative incision in a shiny black fabric; it is radically different from standard Greek vase decoration, which regularly featured paint and a contrast of red or cream and black. In metallurgy, their bronze mirrors, sometimes described as an Etruscan “national industry,” featured a convex reflecting side and a concave side adorned with engravings of themes from Greek and Etruscan mythology and daily life. Etruscan fashion also had many unique elements such as a hem-length braid down the back (7th century bce), pointed-toe shoes (c. 575–475 bce), and the mantle with the curved hem known to the Romans as the toga (6th century bce and later). Finally, the Etruscans seem to have taken an early interest in reproducing the features of their honoured relatives or officials (as in the funerary canopic urns from Clusium) and thus gave a major impetus to the development of truly realistic portraiture in Italy (especially in the Hellenistic period).

Religion and mythology

The essential ingredient in Etruscan religion was a belief that human life was but one small meaningful element in a universe controlled by gods who manifested their nature and their will in every facet of the natural world as well as in objects created by humans. This belief permeates the Etruscan representational arts, where one finds rich depictions of land, sea, and air, with man integrated into the ambient. Roman writers give repeated evidence that the Etruscans regarded every bird and every berry as a potential source of knowledge of the gods and that they had developed an elaborate lore and attendant rituals for using this knowledge. Their own myths explained the lore as having been communicated by the gods through a prophet, Tages, a miraculous child with the features of a wise old man who sprang from a plowed furrow in the fields of Tarquinii and sang out the elements of what the Romans called the Etrusca disciplina.

The literary, epigraphic, and monumental sources provide a glimpse of a cosmology whose image of the sky with its subdivisions is reflected in consecrated areas and even in the viscera of animals. The concept of a sacred space or area reserved for a particular deity or purpose was fundamental, as was the corollary theory that such designated areas could correspond to each other. Heaven reflected Earth, and macrocosm echoed microcosm. The celestial dome was divided into 16 compartments inhabited by the various divinities: major gods to the east, astral and terrestrial divine beings to the south, infernal and inauspicious beings to the west, and the most powerful and mysterious gods of destiny to the north. The deities manifested themselves by means of natural phenomena, principally by lightning. They also revealed themselves in the microcosm of the liver of animals (typical is a bronze model of a sheep’s liver found near Piacenza, bearing the incised names of divinities in its 16 outside divisions and in its internal divisions).

These conceptions are linked closely to the art of divination for which the Etruscans were especially famous in the ancient world. Public and private actions of any importance were undertaken only after having interrogated the gods; negative or threatening responses necessitated complex preventive or protective ceremonies. The most important form of divination was haruspicy, or hepatoscopy—the study of the details of the viscera, especially the livers, of sacrificial animals. Second in importance was the observation of lightning and of such other celestial phenomena as the flight of birds (also important in the religion of the Umbri and of the Romans). Finally, there was the interpretation of prodigies—extraordinary and marvelous events observed in the sky or on the earth. These practices, extensively adopted by the Romans, are explicitly attributed by the ancient authors to the religion of the Etruscans.

The Etruscans recognized numerous deities (the Piacenza liver lists more than 40), and many are unknown today. Their nature was often vague, and references to them are fraught with ambiguity about number, attributes, and even gender. Some of the leading gods were eventually equated with major deities of the Greeks and Romans, as may be seen especially from the labeled representations on Etruscan mirrors. Tin or Tinia was equivalent to Zeus/Jupiter, Uni to Hera/Juno, Sethlans to Hephaestus/Vulcan, Turms to Hermes/Mercury, Turan to Aphrodite/Venus, and Menrva to Athena/ Minerva. But their character and mythology often differed sharply from that of their Greek counterparts. Menrva, for example, an immensely popular deity, was regarded as a sponsor of marriage and childbirth, in contrast to the virgin Athena, who was much more concerned with the affairs of males. Many of the gods had healing powers, and many of them had the authority to hurl a thunderbolt. There were also deities of a fairly orthodox Greco-Roman character, such as Hercle (Heracles) and Apulu (Apollo), who were evidently introduced directly from Greece yet came to have their designated spaces and cults.


Because the Etruscans spoke a non-Indo-European language while being surrounded in historical times by Indo-European peoples such as the Latins and Umbro-Sabelli, scholars of the 19th century examined and debated, often bitterly, the origins of this anomalous population. Their dispute continued into the 21st century but has now lost much of its intensity. A leading scholar in Etruscan studies, Massimo Pallottino, wisely observed that such discussions have become sterile as the result of an incorrect formulation of the problem. Too much emphasis has been placed on the provenance of the Etruscans, with the expectation that there could be one simple answer. The problem is in reality exceedingly complex, and attention should be directed instead to the formation of the population, as it might be, for example, in a study of the origins of “the Italians” or “the French.” Pallottino’s position may be understood more clearly through a brief review of the debate.

The argument began, in fact, in antiquity with the statement by Herodotus that the Etruscans migrated from Lydia in Anatolia shortly after the time of the Trojan War; their leader was Tyrsenos, who later gave his name to the whole race. Supporters of this “Eastern” theory pointed above all to the archaeological evidence of profound Oriental influence on Etruscan culture, such as in monumental funerary architecture and exotic luxury goods of gold, ivory, and other materials. But chronologically the Oriental inundation occurred nearly 500 years too late for the Herodotean migration. Further, it developed gradually rather than making the sudden appearance that would have characterized the arrival of a people en masse; moreover, it is quite easily explained by reference to the trade conduits established by the Euboean Greeks in the 8th century bce. A key document in the Eastern theory is the inscription on a stone grave stela found on the island of Lemnos near the coast of Anatolia that shows remarkable lexical and structural similarities with the Etruscan language. But this curious isolated document dates only to the 6th century bce and thus cannot be interpreted as evidence of an Etruscan way station in the Herodotean migration from Anatolia to Italy. On the contrary, it has now been proposed that Lemnos may in fact have been colonized or used as a trading point by the Etruscans looking toward Anatolia in the 6th century bce rather than as a place they visited moving away from the area.

A second theory on Etruscan origins was proposed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who rejected the tradition of Herodotus, pointing out that the Lydian language and customs and those of the Etruscans were greatly dissimilar; he argued that the Etruscans were autochthonous (of local origin). Acceptance of this “autochthonous” theory requires that Villanovan culture be regarded as an early phase of Etruscan civilization (a hypothesis now widely endorsed) and, in addition, that there be links with an ethnic substratum of the Bronze Age in Italy (2nd millennium bce). There are indeed stray affinities with the Bronze Age culture of the “Terramara,” with its cremating, sedentary habits, but also with the “Apenninic” culture, which was seminomadic and practiced inhumation. There is, however, mounting evidence of a critical transition period at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, in which there are so many important developments that the connections between these two cultures and the Villanovan seem minor. Although the terminology is vexed for this transition period, varying from “sub-Apennine” to “Recent Bronze,” “Final Bronze,” and, most frequently, “Proto-Villanovan,” the social and economic changes are clear. There was an increase in population and in overall wealth, a tendency to have larger, permanent settlements, an expansion of metallurgical knowledge, and a strengthening of agricultural technology. Diagnostic archaeological criteria include the use of cremation (with a biconical ash urn) and the presence of characteristic artifacts such as the fibula (“safety pin”), razor, objects of amber, the ax, and various other bronze weapons. The fact that the Proto-Villanovan archaeological horizon developed gradually rather than suddenly as the result of invasion or large migration might seem to support the theory of autochthony for the Etruscans. But once again the picture is clouded, because the Proto-Villanovan occurs in scattered areas all around Italy, including zones that definitely did not emerge as Etruscan in historical times.

To these two theories from antiquity was added a third in the 19th century to the effect that the Etruscans migrated overland into Italy from the north. This theory, without any ancient literary support, was based on similarities in customs and artifacts between the Villanovan and the Iron Age cremating cultures north of the Alps and on a dubious comparison of the name of the Rasenna with that of the Raeti, a people inhabiting the east-central Alps in the 5th century bce. The theory is basically without supporters today, though the influence or presence of certain central European weapon and helmet types and vessel forms in Etruria is not denied. These elements, however, are now put into perspective as representing simply one significant strand in the complex fabric of Etruscan culture as it developed from Villanovan to Orientalizing.

These northern connections in a sense form a parallel to the Greek influences in subsequent periods, whether Euboean (8th century bce), Corinthian (7th century), Ionian (6th century), or Attic (5th century). Likewise, Oriental influences may be readily acknowledged, coming from such diverse areas as Lydia, Urartu, Syria, Assyria, Phoenicia, and Egypt. But none of these connections per se give any firm proof about Etruscan “origins,” and current scholarship is much more concerned with understanding the interrelationship of these influences and the context in which the civilization in Etruria developed.

Expansion and dominion

Archaeological evidence helps to develop a picture of the beginnings of Etruscan cities during the Villanovan period. Nearly every major Etruscan city of historical times has yielded Villanovan remains, but it is in the south, particularly near the coast, that the earliest signs of city formation appear. It is hypothesized that clusters of huts forming a network of villages on a single hill or on several adjacent hills coalesced into pre-urban settlements at this time. (The plural form of the names of some of these—Vulci, Tarquinii, and Veii—is consistent with this hypothesis.) Ash urns in the shape of oval huts with thatched roofs excavated in the area suggest what the houses of the living may have looked like, while the parity of grave goods for men and women implies a basically egalitarian society, at least in earlier stages. Cremation with ashes in a biconical vessel is commonly found as a holdover from the Proto-Villanovan; inhumation also appeared and during the Orientalizing period eventually became the prevailing rite, except in northern Etruria, where cremation persisted to the 1st century bce.

After contact was made with Greeks and Phoenicians, new ideas, materials, and technology began to appear in Etruria. In the Orientalizing period the use of writing, the potter’s wheel, and monumental funerary architecture accompanied the accumulation of luxury goods of gold and ivory and exotic trade items such as ostrich eggs, tridacna shells, and faience. The Regolini-Galassi Tomb at Caere (c. 650–625 bce), discovered in 1836 in an unplundered state, dramatically revealed the full splendour of the Orientalizing period. The tomb’s main chamber belonged to a fabulously wealthy lady who, inhumed with her banquet service and a wide array of jewelry made by granulation and repoussé, might well be called a queen; the word Larthia on her belongings may record her name. Even if Caere did not have kings and queens at this time (as did Rome, or as Caere certainly did in the 5th century), it is clear that society had become sharply differentiated, not only in regard to wealth but also in division of labour. Many scholars hypothesize the existence of a powerful aristocratic class, and craftsmen, merchants, and seamen would have formed a middle class; it was probably at this time that the Etruscans began to maintain the elegant slaves for which they were famous. (Various Greek and Roman authors report on how Etruscan slaves dressed well and how they often owned their own homes. They easily became liberated and rapidly rose in status once they were freed.)

The dramatic growth of Etruscan civilization and influence in the 7th century is reflected in the so-called “princely” tombs, closely akin to the Regolini-Galassi Tomb, found in Etruria itself at Tarquinii, Vetulonia, and Populonia and along the Arno River (e.g., at Quinto Fiorentino) and in the south at Praeneste in Latium and at Capua and Pontecagnano in Campania. Literary sources report that Rome itself came under the rule of Etruscan kings in the late 7th century. Livy describes the arrival from Tarquinii of Tarquinius Priscus, the later king, and his ambitious, learned wife Tanaquil, a worthy counterpart to Queen Larthia of Caere. There is also archaeological evidence of Etruscan expansion northward into the Po valley in the 6th century.

True urbanization followed these developments. Mighty city-states featuring fortified walls and other public works flourished both in Etruria and in its spheres of influence. The Rome of the Etruscan kings, described in detail by Livy and known through excavation, had fortifications, a paved forum, a master drainage system (the Cloaca Maxima), a public stadium (the Circus Maximus), and a monumental Etruscan-style temple dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

It is at the end of the 6th century that one finds the earliest evidence for the grid system in towns and cemeteries mentioned earlier. The ample but surprisingly uniform houses and tombs imply growing regulation and cooperation and possibly signal a change in government. Etruscan cities, like Rome itself, may have begun to remove their kings at this time and to operate under an oligarchic system with elected officials from powerful noble families.

The Roman orator Cato’s statement that “almost all of Italy was once under Etruscan control” best applies to this period. Undoubtedly, Etruscan maritime power and commerce played a central role in this domination. Exported Etruscan objects of the period have been found in North Africa, Greece and the Aegean, Anatolia, Yugoslavia, France, and Spain; later they even reached the Black Sea. But land routes were well under control also, especially in the corridor leading through Rome and Latium down to Capua and the other Etruscanized cities of Campania. In northern Italy, Bologna (Felsina) was the principal city, and colonies such as the ones at nearby Marzabotto and at Adria and Spina on the Adriatic Sea represented significant posts along the northern trade network.

Almost from the beginning, the Etruscans must have been rivaled in their own seas by the Greeks, who, from the founding of Pithekoussai and Cumae, settled in numerous colonies in southern Italy, and by the Phoenicians, who had established Carthage about 800 bce. The Carthaginians claimed parts of Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia as spheres of influence and dominated the seas west of these islands to Spain. The generally salutary trading relations among these three nations and the delicate balance of power were upset, however, in the Archaic period, as new waves of Greek colonists arrived. Phocaean Greeks established a colony on Corsica at Alalia (modern Aleria) which threatened both the Etruscans at Caere and the Carthaginians and led to a naval coalition between them. The ensuing battle in the seas off Corsica (c. 535 bce) had disastrous results for the Phocaeans, who emerged as victors but lost so many ships that they abandoned their colony and moved to southern Italy. The Carthaginians and Etruscans reasserted control over Corsica, and Etruscan might was to hold firm for another quarter of a century.


From the 6th century bce onward, territorial organization and political and economic initiative were concentrated in a limited number of large city-states in Etruria itself. These city-states, similar to the Greek poleis, consisted of an urban centre and a territory of fluctuating size. Numerous sources refer to a league of the “Twelve Peoples” of Etruria, formed for religious purposes but evidently having some political functions; it met annually at the chief sanctuary of the Etruscans, the Fanum Voltumnae, or shrine of Voltumna, near Volsinii. The precise location of the shrine is unknown, though it may have been in an area near modern Orvieto (believed by many to be the ancient Volsinii). As for the Twelve Peoples, no firm list of these has survived (indeed, they seem to have varied through the years), but they are likely to have come from the following major sites: Caere, Tarquinii, Vulci, Rusellae, Vetulonia, Populonia—all near the coast—and Veii, Volsinii, Clusium, Perusia (Perugia), Cortona, Arretium (Arezzo), Faesulae (Fiesole), and Volaterrae (Volterra)—all inland. There also are reports of corresponding Etruscan leagues in Campania and in northern Italy, but it is far more difficult to generate a list of Etruscan colonies or Etruscanized cities that would be likely candidates for these.

The names of some magistracies both in the league and in individual cities—such as lauchme, zilath, maru, and purth—are known, though there is little certainty as to their precise duties. Lauchme (Latin lucumo) was the Etruscan word for “king.” The title of zilath…rasnal, translated into Latin as praetor Etruriae and meaning something like the “justice of Etruria,” was evidently applied to the individual who presided over the league.

The men holding such magistracies belonged to the aristocracy, which derived its status from the continuity of the family. Onomastic formulas show that persons of free birth normally had two names. First came an individual name, or praenomen (relatively few of these are known: for men, Larth, Avle, Arnth, and Vel were frequent; for women, Larthia, Thanchvil, Ramtha, and Thana); it was followed by a family name, or nomen, derived from a personal name or perhaps the name of a god or a place. This system was in use by the second half of the 7th century, replacing the use of a single name (as in “Romulus” and “Remus”) and reflecting the new complexity of relationships developing with urbanization. The Etruscans rarely used the cognomen (family nickname) employed by the Romans, but often inscriptions include the name of both the father (patronymic) and the mother (matronymic).

Etruscan women enjoyed an elevated status and a degree of liberation unknown to their counterparts in Rome and, especially, in Greece. They were allowed to own and openly display objects and clothing of a luxurious nature; they participated freely in public life, attending parties and theatrical performances; and—shocking to Greeks and Romans—they danced, drank, and rested in close physical contact with their husbands on the banqueting couches. Etruscan ladies were often literate, as one may deduce from the inscriptions on their mirrors, and even learned, if Livy’s portrayal of Tanaquil as skilled in augury may be trusted. Their prominence in the family was a consistent feature of Etruscan aristocratic society and seems to have played a role in its stability and durability.

Crisis and decline

The end of the 6th century and the beginning of the 5th was a turning point for Etruscan civilization. Several crises occurred at this time, from which the Etruscans never fully recovered and which in fact turned out to be only the first of numerous reverses they were to suffer in the ensuing centuries. The expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome (509 bce) deprived them of control over this strategic spot on the Tiber and also cut off their land route to Campania. Soon afterward, their naval supremacy also collapsed when the ships of the ambitious Hieron I of Syracuse inflicted a devastating loss on their fleet off Cumae in 474 bce. Completely out of touch with the Etruscan cities of Campania, they were unable to prevent a takeover of this area by restless Umbro-Sabellian tribes moving from the interior toward the coast.

All these reverses led to economic depression and a sharp interruption of trade for the cities on the coast and in the south and caused a redirection of commerce toward the Adriatic harbour of Spina. The situation in the south deteriorated even further as Veii experienced periodic conflict with Rome, its close neighbour, and became the first Etruscan state to fall to this growing power in central Italy (396 bce).

A measure of prosperity had come to the Po valley and the Adriatic towns, but even this Etruscan vitality in the north was short-lived. The progressive infiltration and pressure of the Celts, who had penetrated and settled in the plain of the Po, eventually suffocated and overpowered the flourishing Etruscan urban communities, almost completely destroying their civilization by the mid-4th century bce and thus returning a large part of northern Italy to a protohistoric stage of culture. Meanwhile, the Gallic Senones firmly occupied the Picenum district on the Adriatic Sea, and Celtic incursions reached on the one hand Tyrrhenian Etruria and Rome (captured and burned about 390 bce) and on the other as far as Puglia.

In the 4th century bce ancient Italy had become profoundly transformed. The eastern Italic people of Umbro-Sabellian stock diffused over most of the peninsula; the Syracusan empire and lastly the growing power of Rome had replaced the Etruscans (and the Greek colonies of southern Italy) as the dominant force. The Etruscan world had been reduced to a circumscribed, regional sphere, secluded in its traditional values; this situation determined its progressive passage into the political system of Rome.

Within this context, Etruria experienced an economic recovery and a rebounding of the aristocracy. Tomb groups once again contain riches, and the sequence of painted tombs at Tarquinii, interrupted during the 5th century, resumes. All the same, there is a new atmosphere in these tombs; now one finds images of a grim afterlife, represented as an underworld replete with demons and overhung by dark clouds.

Renewed resistance to the power on the Tiber proved futile. Roman history is filled with records of victories and triumphs over Etruscan cities, especially in the south. Tarquinii sued for peace in 351 bce, and Caere was granted a truce in 353; there were triumphs over Rusellae in 302 and over Volaterrae in 298, with the final defeat of Rusellae coming in 294. Volsinii also was attacked in this year, and its fields devastated. During this same bleak period, Etruscan society was wracked with class struggles that eventually led to the development of a substantial freedman class, especially in northern Etruria, where numerous small rural settlements sprang up in the hills. In some cities, the aristocracy looked to Rome for assistance against the restless slave class. The noble Cilnii family at Arretium called for help with a revolt of the lower classes in 302 bce, while at Volsinii the situation deteriorated so badly that the Romans marched in and razed the city (265 bce), resettling its inhabitants in Volsinii Novi (probably Bolsena).

By the mid-3rd century all Etruria appears to have been pacified and firmly subjected to Roman hegemony. In most cases, the Etruscan cities and their territories preserved a formal autonomy as independent states with their own magistrates, thus passing an uneventful period in the 2nd century bce, when the sources are largely silent about Etruria.

But the saddest chapter of all remained to be written in the 1st century bce. In 90 bce Rome granted citizenship to all Italic peoples, an act that in effect created total political unification of the Italic-Roman state and eliminated the last pretenses of autonomy in the Etruscan city-states. Northern Etruria, in addition, underwent a final devastation as it became the battleground for the opposing forces of the civil war of Marius and Sulla. Many Etruscan cities sided with Marius and were sacked and punished with all the vengeance the victorious Sulla could muster (80–79 bce). At Faesulae, Arretium, Volaterrae, and Clusium, the dictator confiscated and distributed territorial lands to soldiers from his 23 victorious legions. The new colonists brutally abused the old inhabitants and at the same time squandered their military rewards, sinking hopelessly into debt. Revolts and reprisals followed, but the agonizing process of Romanization was not actually completed until the reign of Augustus (31 bce–14 ce) brought new economic stability and reconciliation. By this time Latin had almost completely replaced the Etruscan language.

  • Distribution of peoples of ancient Italy c. 500 bce.
    Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
ancient Italic people
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