ancient Italic people

▪ people

Introduction

      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 (ancient Greek civilization), 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 (Etruscan)

      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 20th-century 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 (Doric order) 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.

General considerations

Nomenclature

      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 (fl. c. 20 BC), the Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, and this statement finds confirmation in the form rasna in Etruscan inscriptions.

 

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 (Sea People) 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 BC, 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

      The presence of the Etruscan people in Etruria is attested by their own inscriptions, dated about 700 BC; it is widely believed, however, that the Etruscans were present in Italy before this time and that the prehistoric Iron Age culture called “Villanovan (Villanovan culture)” (9th–8th century BC) 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 BC), 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 BC; the Archaic period to the 6th and first half of the 5th century BC; the Classical period to the second half of the 5th and the 4th century BC; and the Hellenistic period to the 3rd to 1st centuries BC. Etruscan culture became absorbed into Roman civilization during the 1st century BC and thereafter disappeared as a recognizable entity.

Language and writing

      Etruscan (Etruscan language), 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 (d. AD 54) 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 AD 410, when Etruscan priests were summoned to conjure lightning against the barbarians.

      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 (Phoenician language), 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 BC.

      The 20th-century notion that there is a “mystery” regarding the Etruscan (Etruscan alphabet) language is fundamentally erroneous; there exists no problem of decipherment, as is 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 BC 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 BC] 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 BC) 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 BC) 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 BC) 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 (tomb) 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 BC), 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 AD) 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 (bucchero ware) (beginning c. 680 BC), 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 (mirror), 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 (dress) also had many unique elements such as a hem-length braid down the back (7th century BC), pointed-toe shoes (c. 575–475 BC), and the mantle with the curved hem known to the Romans as the toga (6th century BC 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 (Greek mythology) 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.

Origins

      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 20th century but has now lost much of its intensity. The leading scholar in Etruscan studies, Massimo Pallottino, has 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 BC. 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 BC 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 BC 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 BC). 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 BC. 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 BC), 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 BC.

      After contact was made with Greeks and Phoenicians (Phoenicia), 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 BC), 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 (city-state) featuring fortified walls and other public works flourished both in Etruria and in its spheres of influence. The Rome (ancient 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 (Sea People) 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 BC. 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 (Phocaea) 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 BC) 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.

Organization

      From the 6th century BC 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 BC) 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 BC. 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 BC).

      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 (Celt), 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 BC 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 BC) and on the other as far as Puglia.

      In the 4th century BC ancient Italy had become profoundly transformed. The eastern Italic people of Umbro-Sabellian stock diffused over most of the peninsula; the Syracusan (Syracuse) empire and lastly the growing power of Rome (ancient 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 BC, 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 (slavery) class. The noble Cilnii family at Arretium called for help with a revolt of the lower classes in 302 BC, while at Volsinii the situation deteriorated so badly that the Romans marched in and razed the city (265 BC), 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 BC, when the sources are largely silent about Etruria.

      But the saddest chapter of all remained to be written in the 1st century BC. In 90 BC 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 BC). 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 BC–AD 14) brought new economic stability and reconciliation. By this time Latin had almost completely replaced the Etruscan language.

 

Other Italic peoples

Local populations in areas colonized by Greece

      The presence of the Siculi in Sicily and in the Italian peninsula is attested by the historical sources (Thucydides and Polybius). But the extent of their diffusion and their connections with other peoples of the peninsula (such as the Ligurians, the Itali, the Oenotrii, the Ausones) is more difficult to establish. A few small non-Greek inscriptions found in eastern Sicily and referable to the Siculi (the most noteworthy was found at Centuripe), coin legends, and Siculan words reported by Classical writers demonstrate the Indo-European character of the Siculan language, which seems to show an affinity with Latin and also has connections with the Umbro-Sabellian dialects. The immigration of the Siculi from the Italian peninsula into Sicily goes back to a prehistoric but not extremely early epoch; this assumption is based on the fact that there are some echoes of it in tradition and that a continental archaeological influence suddenly appears at the end of the Bronze Age. The characteristic Siculan iron culture, evident in the necropolises of Pantalica near Syracuse and of Finocchito near Noto, flourished between the 9th and the 5th centuries BC and was progressively submerged in the superior civilization of the Greeks.

      Evidence is quite scarce for the Siculi in the peninsula and for the other primitive indigenous populations of what is now Calabria and of Lucania (the Oenotrii, Ausones, Chones, Morgetes, and Itali) and Campania (the Ausones and Opici). Modern scholars have hypothesized that along the Tyrrhenian coastal arc there extended in earliest times a belt of paleo-Italic peoples (so-called western Italics or Proto-Latins) originally related to the Latins and distinct from the eastern Italic peoples inhabiting the Apennine and Adriatic regions. (The archaeological documentation consists of cemeteries with Iron Age graves, but there are also traces of cremation necropolises, especially in the province of Salerno and in Calabria.) Large fortified towns arose, particularly in the interior zones of Lucania. The ethnic individuality of these ancient peoples, however, was progressively obliterated between the 8th and the 4th century BC by the Greek penetration and by the expansion of the Etruscans and the eastern Italics (Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttii).

The Apulians

      The inhabitants of the southeastern extremity of the Italian peninsula formed a definitely characterized group of populations that the ancients often called Iapyges (whence the geographic term Iapygia, in which “Apulia” may be recognized). The territory included the Salentini and the Messapii peoples in the Salentine Peninsula (ancient Calabia) and the Peucetii and the Dauni farther north. (Sometimes the designations Iapyges and Messapii are used with identical reference.) Ancient tradition insists upon an overseas origin for these tribes, held to be Cretan or Illyrian. The Iapygian, or more commonly, Messapian (Messapic language) (Messapic) language is known from a considerable series of public funerary, votive, monetary, and other inscriptions written in the Greek alphabet and found in the Apulian area, especially in the Salentine Peninsula, from words reported by the ancient writers, and from toponomastic (local place-name) data. Messapian is without doubt an Indo-European language, distinct from Latin and from the Umbro-Sabellian dialects, with Balkan and central European analogies. This confirms the overseas provenance of the Iapyges from the Balkans, the more so because there existed in Illyria a tribe called the Iapodes and because a people known as the Iapuzkus lived farther north, on the Adriatic coast of Italy. Rather than a true immigration, however, there was a gradual prehistoric penetration of trans-Adriatic elements. The expansion of the Iapyges must have brought them to Lucania and even to what is now Calabria, as would be deduced from traditional and archaeological indications.

      The Apulians' civilization, which was considerably influenced by that of the nearby Greek colonies, developed from the 9th to the 3rd centuries BC. In the most ancient period there were pit graves, sometimes in large stone tumuli. In the Siponto area, near what is now Manfredonia, the graves were accompanied by anthropomorphic stelae with geometric bas-reliefs. Geometrically painted ceramics in linear motifs persisted to the threshold of the Hellenistic age. Later graves took the form of large trunks and of catacombs with paintings on the sides. Burial was the disposition exclusively used.

      Beginning in Archaic times, large cities developed, linked to each other by bonds of confederation. These included Herdonea (now Ordona), Canusium (Canosa), Rubi (Ruvo), Gnathia, Brundisium (Brindisi), Uria (Oria), Lupiae (Lecce), Rudiae, and Manduria. They preserved their independence, tenaciously defended against the Greeks, until the age of the Roman conquest.

The Latins (Latin)

      The Latin nation had a relatively limited territory, south of the Tiber, which was reduced, in historic times, by the invasion of the Volsci to the region between the Alban hills and the Aurunci mountains (the so-called Latium Novum). The principal Latin centres included Alba Longa, Tusculum, Lavinium, Ardea, Tibur (now Tivoli), and Praeneste (Palestrina) and the early Volscianized cities of Velitrae (Velletri), Signia (Segni), Cora (Cori), Satricum, Antium (Anzio), and Anxur (Terracina). The importance of the Latins is essentially linked with the fortunes of Rome, the forward bulwark of Latinity in the direction of the Etruscan realm. Intermixtures with the legends of the origin of Rome make the ethnographic traditions of Latium very diverse and complex. The linguistic evidence, which begins with inscriptions of the 7th to 6th century BC, indicates an individuality of the Latin world distinct from the neighbouring Etruscan and eastern Italic peoples.

      The Latins had a federal organization, centred at the sanctuary of Jupiter on Albanus Mons. Their religious heritage survived in the beliefs and cults of the Roman world. The most ancient Latin culture (9th–8th century BC) was characterized by cremation as the funeral rite, a practice it had in common with the cultures in the Etruscan and northern Italian territory, and by an iron culture showing affinities with the proto-Villanovan culture and with the cultures of Tyrrhenian southern Italy. Etruscan political control of Latium (probably 7th–6th century) coincided with an evident Etruscan cultural and artistic influence; while, from the south and from the sea, elements of Greek civilization penetrated, beginning with the alphabet.

      North of Latium lived tribes ethnically akin to the Latins, with principal centres at Capena, Narce, and Falerii (whence the name Faliscans (Faliscan language)). Their political and cultural history merges with that of the Etruscans. The Faliscan dialect, known from inscriptions, was originally Latin but was contaminated and modified by eastern Italic and Etruscan elements.

The eastern Italics

      A great part of the central and southern Italian peninsula was occupied in protohistoric and historic times by populations forming a vast ethnic and linguistic unit—the eastern Italics or Umbro-Sabellians. To the south, in the mountains of the Abruzzo, lived the Samnites (Samnite), who later spread into Campania, Lucania, and what is now Calabria. In the centre were the Vestini, Paeligni, Marrucini, Marsi, Aequi, Volsci, and Sabini. Farther north lived the Umbri. The origin and relationship of all these peoples is unclear. Ancient ethnographic traditions bearing on central Italy link the Samnites to the Sabines and the Sabines to the Umbri, locating their primitive centre of dispersion in the Rieti basin and in the area of Amiternum. Their diffusion was attributed to the mass emigration of an entire generation in search of a new homeland (so-called sacred spring).

      The linguistic data prove the unity of the group of eastern-Italic idioms, belonging to the Indo-European stock but differing from the Latin. Within this group may be distinguished a southern variant (Sabellic or Oscan) known from an abundant harvest of epigraphic documents from Samnium, Campania, and southern Italy. This variant is to be attributed to the Samnites and to a large part of the minor stocks of central Italy, including the Sabines, known from isolated inscriptions in central Italy. On the other hand, a northern (Umbrian) variant is represented by inscriptions of Umbria—principally bronze tablets from Gubbio (Iguvine Tables), inscribed between the 4th and 1st century BC by a brotherhood of Umbrian priests—and by a bronze tablet from Velletri. The eastern Italic words reported by the Classical writers, as well as toponomastics, confirm these conclusions.

      Notwithstanding the original unity of stock and of language, these populations had diverse histories and cultures. The Samnites from Molise (the Caraceni, the Pentri, and the Frentani) in the 5th and 4th centuries BC occupied Campania—where they vanquished Etruscans and Greeks (ancient Greek civilization) and assumed from the local tribes the name Opici, or Osci—as well as Lucania (with the Hirpini or Lucani), reaching what is now Calabria—where they took the name Bruttii—and finally Sicily. Defeated by Rome in the Samnite wars (4th and early 3rd centuries BC), the Samnites tried for the last time, in the period of the Social War (90–83 BC), to counterpose to the Romans an Italic nationality of their own. A considerable difference existed between the culture of the mountain Samnites—organized in confederate tribes centred on fortified villages and in the 5th and 4th centuries still retaining aspects of the “iron culture”—and the high civilization of the Campani and Lucani established in the ancient cities of Capua, Nola, Nocera, and Paestum and dominated by Greek and Etruscan influence.

      Some central tribes—the Marrucini, Vestini, Paeligni and Marsi—appear to be linked historically, politically, and culturally to the Samnites. The case is different with the Sabines, the Aequi, and the Volsci, whose period of expansion (6th and 5th centuries) is closely connected with earliest Rome and who had early contact with the Etrusco-Latin civilization.

      The diffusion of the Umbri toward the north and beyond the Apennines lent credence to the ancient traditions relating to the great size of their territory. The traditions, however, are more probably based on the fact that the name Umbri is derived from that of a most ancient population, probably not Indo-European and certainly not Italic, living in the Apennine region before the diffusion of the eastern Italics. The history of the Umbrian cities—Iguvium (now Gubbio), Hispellum (Spello), Spoletium (Spoleto), Tuder (Todi), and others—is known only beginning with the period of the struggle of the Etruscans and Gauls against Rome. Umbrian civilization is revealed by the Gubbio Tablets, a document unique in its kind. The Umbrian artistic and material culture derived in large part from that of Etruria.

 

The populations of the Picenum (Piceni)

      In historic times, expansion of the eastern Italic peoples placed them firmly along the Adriatic coastal tract corresponding to what is now the Marches region. Epigraphic and archaeological data give evidence also of the presence in the Picenum (an ancient region between the Apennines and the Adriatic) of the trans-Adriatic Liburni and the pre-Indo-European Asili. It is possible that elements were established here that had come by sea from Illyria (the Gubbio tablets mention the Iapuzkus, whose name recalls that of the Illyrian Iapodes and of the Apulian Iapyges). Inscriptions in the southern Piceno, however, seem to exhibit a close kinship with the Umbro-Sabellic dialects.

      A material civilization flowered between the 8th and 5th centuries in the northern Abruzzo and in the Marches. This civilization is represented by the rich funerary equipment of burial tombs, whose type and decoration present affinities with the iron culture of Tyrrhenian and northern Italy and with that of the Balkans and which show Greek influence. Cremation tombs of Villanovan type have been found at Fermo. Also noteworthy is the presence of stone funerary sculpture. North of Ancona is a cultural variant, particularly in the necropolis of Novilara near Pesaro, where inscriptions are in a dialect other than that of the southern Picenum and difficult to classify.

      It may be held that the middle-Adriatic iron cultures expressed an early Archaic mixture of eastern Italic and trans-Adriatic peoples, influenced by the Etruscans and the Greeks. Contributing to their decline were the Gauls and Syracusans, who established themselves in this area in the 4th century BC. In the 3rd century, the Picenum was already totally conquered by the Romans (ancient Rome).

The Veneti (Veneti)

      Ancient tradition held the Veneti to be an Illyrian people who, coming from the east, took possession of the region named for them (Venetia). To them are linked the Histri, the Carni, and various Alpine tribes. (The name of the Veneti, or its root, is widely diffused in the ethnic onomastics of central Europe and even of Asia.) The Venetic language is known from funerary and votive inscriptions, from words cited by the Classical writers, and from onomastic and toponomastic data. It is an Indo-European language of Archaic type bearing similarities to the Latin and the Germanic.

      The principal centres of the Veneti, located at the western margin of the territory, were Padua and Este. Their culture developed from the 9th century to the period of Romanization, with relationships with the Golasecca, Villanovan, and Etruscan cultures and with the transalpine Hallstatt culture. Maximum development occurred in the 6th–4th centuries BC; particularly noteworthy is the production of figured bronze situlae (conical vessels). In the final period, Gallic (Celtic) influences are found. Phenomena parallel to those of Este appear in Istria. The Veneti were horse breeders and peaceful traders and navigators; protected by the waters of the lower Po and the lower Adige, they preserved their independence against Etruscan expansion and Celtic invasion and in the 3rd century BC entered into peaceful alliance with Rome.

The Ligurians (Ligurian)

      For the ancients, the name Ligures designated the peoples of northwestern Italy, including northern Tuscany, Liguria, Piedmont, and part of what is now Lombardy. Historical tradition also placed them in central Italy, while the Classical writers and toponomastic affinities give them a broader diffusion beyond the Alps. The Ligurians also included the peoples of Corsica. The more ancient Greeks gave all the peoples of the western world the common designation of Ligyes (i.e., Ligurians (Ligurian language)).

      Linguistic data—furnished by toponomastics, lexical survivals, and Ligurian words cited by Classical writers—betray the presence of a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean stratum akin to that of western Europe. Inscriptions found in upper Lombardy and in the Ticino exhibit Indo-European characteristics and in particular Celtic influences. Thus the Liguri seem to belong to an environment formed in northern Italy after the Celtic invasion and called Celto-Ligures.

      The Etruscan expansion in the plain of the Po and the invasion of the Gauls confined the Ligurians between the Alps and the Apennines, where they offered such resistance to Roman penetration that they gained a reputation with the ancients for primitive fierceness. Among the more considerable Ligurian monuments are rock engravings and anthropomorphic sculptures analogous to those of southern France, found in Lunigiana and Corsica. Some of these artistic manifestations are repeated in territories farther east. But it remains doubtful whether the similar cultural imprint indicates an original identity of stock. Ligurian and Celto-Ligurian tombs of the Lombard lakes region, often holding cremations, reveal a special iron culture called the culture of Golasecca, while Ligurian sepulchres of the Italian Riviera and of Provence, also holding cremations, exhibit Etruscan and Celtic influences.

Populations of central northern Italy and of the Alps

      The ethnography of the Po and Alpine regions is complex and obscure because of the early spread of Etruscan culture and colonization. The ancients record two major ethnic groups (aside from the Etruscans and the Veneti): the Euganei, inhabiting the plain and the Alpine foothills, and the Raeti, in the valleys of the Trentino and the Alto Adige. Minor peoples in the region belonged to one or the other of these stocks or to Ligurian stocks; with regard to many of these peoples, the sources speak of an Illyrian or an Etruscan origin.

      Late inscriptions discovered in the Adige River valley and on the plain have a dialect showing some affinities to Etruscan. Some scholars see in this a blending of local and Etruscan elements, while others speak of an indigenous pre-Indo-European language with Indo-European influences. Primitive toponomastics confirm the existence of a linguistic stratum that could be defined as Raetian or Raeto-Euganean but distinguish it sharply from the Venetic and probably also from the Ligurian. Other inscriptions from the Val Camonica and the Garda district attest to a more noticeable Indo-European dialect, due perhaps to Celtic and Latin influences. To the west are the so-called Lepontian inscriptions.

      Thus in the central Alpine and sub-Alpine area, there were original populations, different from the Veneti and the Etruscans, whose kinship with the Ligurians remains uncertain. The distinction between Euganean and Raetic tribes can be based only upon an approximate geographic criterion. To this original ethnic stratum may have belonged the most ancient inhabitants of the region, who settled there before the immigration of the Illyrian Veneti and the Etruscan conquest; certain cremation sepulchres of the Verona and Mantua regions may be attributed to them. Perhaps the existence of a Venetian goddess Reitia, recorded by Strabo and mentioned in inscriptions from Este, is some proof of a Raeto-Euganean cultural persistence in the territory occupied by the Veneti.

Nancy Thomson de Grummond

Additional Reading

The basic guide is Popoli e civilità dell'Italia antica, 7 vol. (1974–78). Outdated but still useful are Joshua Whatmough, The Foundations of Roman Italy (1937, reprinted 1971); and David Randall-MacIver, Italy Before the Romans (1928, reprinted 1972). On the Etruscans there are three essential books in English that guide the reader through the bewildering maze of recent discoveries and research: Massimo Pallottino, The Etruscans, rev. and enlarged ed. edited by David Ridgway (1975; originally published in Italian, 6th ed., rev. and enlarged, 1975); David Ridgway and Francesca R. Ridgway (eds.), Italy Before the Romans: The Iron Age, Orientalizing, and Etruscan Periods (1979); and Larissa Bonfante (ed.), Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies (1986), which lists the many catalogs of exhibitions and other publications that came out as a result of “The Year of the Etruscans” in Italy in 1985. Among recent interpretations of Etruscan culture and history, the best in English are Mauro Cristofani, The Etruscans: A New Investigation (1979; originally published in Italian, 1978); and Michael Grant, The Etruscans (1980). Giuliano Bonfante and Larissa Bonfante, The Etruscan Language (1983), is a helpful introduction. Works on other individual Italic peoples, civilizations, and languages include the Ridgways' book, cited earlier; Luigi Bernabò Brea, Sicily Before the Greeks, rev. ed. (1966); Renato Peroni, Archeologia della Puglia preistorica (1967); A. Alföldi, Early Rome and the Latins (1963); Gabriella Giacomelli, La lingua falisca (1963); Giacomo Devoto, Gli antichi Italici, 3rd ed. rev. (1967); E.T. Salmon, Samnium and the Samnites (1967); G.A. Mansuelli and R. Scarani, L'emilia prima dei Romani (1961); G.B. Pellegrini and A.L. Prosdocimi, La lingua venetica, 2 vol. (1967); and on Italic inscriptions, Oronzo Parlangeli, Studi messapici (1960); and Allessandro Morandi, Epigrafia italica (1982). Nancy Thomson de Grummond

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