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Etruscans
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The Etruscans were the other major civilization of the period, mostly living in the area between the Tiber and Arno rivers. Their language, known mostly from funerary texts, is one of the last relics of an ancient language common to the Mediterranean. Some say they arrived in Italy around the ninth century BC from western Anatolia, others that they came from the north, and a third hypothesis places their origins in Etruria. Whatever the case, they set up a cluster of twelve city states in northern Italy, traded with Greek colonies to the south and were the most powerful people in northern Italy by the sixth century BC, edging out the indigenous population of Ligurians, Latins and Sabines. Tomb frescoes in Umbria and Lazio depict a refined and luxurious culture with highly developed systems of divination, based on the reading of animal entrails and the flight of birds. Herodotus wrote that the Etruscans recorded their ancestry along the female line, and tomb excavations last century revealed that women were buried in special sarcophagi carved with their names.
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The Romans, whose culture had been greatly influenced by the Etruscans (the Tarquin rulers of Rome were Etruscans), were distrustful of Etruscan power. The Etruscans had occuped Rome itself from c.616 B.C., but in c.510 B.C. they were driven out by the Romans. In the early 4th cent., after Etruria had been weakened by Gallic invasions, the Romans attempted to beat the Etruscans back. Beginning with Veii (c.396 B.C.) one Etruscan city after another fell to the Romans, and civil war further weakened Etruscan power. In the wars of the 3d cent., in which Rome defeated Carthage, the Etruscans provided support against their former allies. During the Social War (90รข€“88 B.C.) of Sulla and Marius the remaining Etruscan families allied themselves with Marius, and in 88 B.C. Sulla eradicated the last traces of Etruscan independence.
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The Etruscans had a firm belief in the supernatural; religious ceremonies and funeral rites were of prime importance. They built tombs resembling their dwellings and placed household objects of all kinds near the bodies of their relations, for them to use in the after-life. Their priests practised divination, interpreting marks on the liver of a sacrificed animal, or shafts of lightning in the sky, as omens from the gods. The Lares, the household gods of the Romans, originated as Etruscan divinities.
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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 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.
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The Etruscans organized their towns into city-states, each ruled by a king. The city-states worked together in a league - the Etruscan League. The league began to trade with people in the east and people along the African coastline. Their trade route included the tiny village on the Tiber River. Even in very early times, Rome was a busy place. The early Romans (the Latins) learned a great deal from the Etruscan traders.
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[T]he question of the origins of the cultural features of the Etruscans has to be answered without the help of linguistic analysis. Much attention has been focused on the funerary practices of the people of North Italy. The Etruscans cremated their dead and put the ashes in elaborate funeral urns. The funerary practices of the Etruscans could well be that of the aboriginal population with the art and technology of the invading people enhancing the old practice with fancy urns. So the question of the origins of Etruscan art will probably not be settled by establishing the origins of other aspects of Etruscan culture. If it can be settled at all it will have to settled on the basis of the affinities of the art with that of the other major cultures of the region.
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Etruscans