Etruscans

Etruscans, one of the cultured nations of antiquity, who were the dominant people of Italy before their overthrow by the Romans (280 B.C.). Their chief seat was the valley of the Arno, and thence south to the Tiber; but they had also reached the Adriatic slope, where they held "the cities of Adria, Ravenna, Felsina (Bologna), and Mantua. On the west side, where their southernmost stronghold was the island of Capri, they had established a confederacy of twelve towns in Campania, while their navies or piratical fleets swept the Tyrrhenian Sea, named from them. The Etruscans, who called themselves Rasena, were known to the Greeks as Tyrrheni (Tyrseni) from a mythical leader, under whom they were fabled to have reached Italy from Lydia (Asia Minor), though more trustworthy tradition brought them over the Alps through Rhoetia down to the valley of the Po. But the origin of the Etrusci or Tusci, as the Romans called them, is still wrapped in deep obscurity, and has given rise to endless discussion amongst ethnologists and philologists, some regarding them as Italic or Celtic Aryans, others affiliating them to the Semites or to the "Turanian" (Mongolo-Tatar) stock, while Brinton has recently, on shadowy grounds, proposed a Libyan (Berber) connection. Unfortunately their language, which survives only in numerous short sepulchral and other inscriptions and in one long document lately found enveloping an Egyptian mummy, has failed to solve this difficult question, the structure and affinities of the language itself being even more angrily discussed than the origin of the people. Sir W. Betham freely interpreted the Etruscan texts through the medium of the Irish (Celtic), of which he had little knowledge; Corssen explains them by means of the Italic, regarding Etruscan as fundamentally connected with Latin, Umbrian, Oscan, and the other members of that family; lastly, Robert Brown and many others have, with some show of success, expounded these inscriptions by the aid of the

Finno-Tataric group, of which they consider Etruscan to be undoubtedly a distinct branch. Yet the Etruscan physical type, as preserved on the cinerary vases and even still surviving amongst some of the modern Tuscan peasantry, is neither Italic, nor Celtic, nor yet Mongolic, as postulated by these theories based on doubtful linguistic evidence. The Etruscans, who under Hellenic influence developed a characteristic school of art, appear to have been a short, thick-set race, inclined to obesity. with broad shoulders, arched nose, broad receding forehead, kinky hair, dark or swarthy complexion, and dolichocephalic (long)head. Their artisticsense seems to have permeated all classes, and may still be studied in their numerous sepulchral monuments, painted vaults, bas-reliefs, bronzes, 'candelabra, fictile vases and pottery of all kinds, gems, fibulee, bracelets, and other ornaments. From the Etruscans the Romans received their first lessons both in art and in such religious practices as divination and sacrificial offerings. The Cloaca Maxima, the oldest extant monument in Rome, was built by them, as were also the Mamertine Prison and the walls attributed to Servius Tullius. Even the bronze wolf preserved in the museum on the Capitoline Hill, and associated with the earliest Roman legends, is said to be the work of an Etruscan artificer; but the Etruscans nowhere succeeded in developing a great military power - their scattered colonies forming so many independent kingships or republics unconnected by any strong political ties. The Gauls had little difficulty in overrunning Etruria in 590 B.C., and three centuries later it fell an easy prey to the conquering Romans, who rapidly destroyed Etruscan culture and the national records, though the Etruscan language still survived in some rural districts down to the time of Augustus and Claudius. It was written usually from right to left in a great variety of characters, all, however, based on the archaic Cadmean alphabet introduced at a remote epoch by the Greeks into Italy. A literature in the ordinary sense of the term seems to have never been developed, and to this, combined with the iconoclastic spirit of the Roman conquerors, is mainly due the sudden extinction of Etruscan civilisation. (Lanzi, Saggio della Lingua Etrusca, Rome, 1789; Corssen, Ueher die Sprache der Etrusker, Leipzig, 1874; Conestabile, Iscrizioni Etrusche, etc., Florence, 1858; Robert Brown, jun., Etruscan Studies, in the Academy, 1886-92,passim.)