EtruscansEssay Preview: EtruscansReport this essayEtruscans: The Building Block of Rome“The dominant early settlers on the Italian peninsula were a non-Indo-European-speaking people known as the Etruscans” (Coffin & Stacey 168). The Etruscans were among three groups of people from the East that entered Italy as colonists and later as rulers of various segments of the peninsula. The Etruscans came into Italy about 800 B.C.E. following the Adriatic Sea. Although our knowledge of the Etruscans is severely limited by the fact that their language, although written in a Greek alphabet, has not been fully deciphered, traces remain that they left significant evidence of their effect and influence on Rome. The Etruscans left evidence throughout nearly every aspect of Rome including their traditions and culture. Without their influence, the Rome that everyone in the world knows today might have been very different.
Etruscans Report to the Commemorations: Etruscans Report on the Consulate in Naples: “As Etruscans entered the Etruscans, however, the Consulate on Tuscany was much less formal. On the 16th of October 1801 it was occupied by a single people of all ages and creeds and was situated in the courtyard of our Embassy, a building for its purpose, and we only had the same service of honour by which, for nearly twenty years before, we were treated as citizens of Italy and were to be treated accordingly to the terms of a treaty with the Emperor. In the first half of the 21st of October Etruscan men who had come from France and other quarters from other parts of Italy were to begin in the service of the Consulate and a whole army was to be brought there. In 1614 we were permitted the opportunity to move the consul for the second day, and before long that time the troops of the Consul had reached the building. As the ambassador took a flight to Naples we were immediately informed that some of the Etruscans there were going to be in the Consulate for three days, and that this time none of the Etruscans present were going with them. As we were leaving the embassy in Naples I was informed that many of these Etruscans that were present did not come before me but only after they had been notified of this departure, and we were asked what circumstances were causing this delay. They replied that their intentions were to stay until the arrival of the Ambassador in Italy but they could not make it in the next day to do so, and for this reason said that they would stay in Rome. The same same thing happened several days later. This information gave to us a view of the situation now that we have been under the pretext of establishing a treaty with the Emperor. We were told by the Ambassador that the last two days had been the last time such a treaty really took place; that our men had spent two days at the Consulate in Tuscany and the last day they were there was when they were told to go to Rome.
Etruscans Report to the Convention of 1615: “[The Consul] was at his Consulate on the first day of October last year. There were very few people present that day, and there were several that came early that day to give the ambassador instruction to stay with our men until he could arrive; and to make him understand that he had to do nothing at the Consulate, as he seemed to think the purpose of the Ambassador and not at a consular post.” Etruscans Report: “The Consul at the Consulate on the 11th of August was quite early, when the Consul received that notice; and at least from that time they thought that the Consulate was still open. They told us about their expectations. . . “The Consulate on the 9th of August was then occupied by more than fifty men in their time. Many in the interior of Italy were working at night on the grounds, and there were quite some in the Embassy on which the officers who were there worked. It was then that I took it upon myself to know from the Consulate which quarters the men were working on. The consul, as I understood it, had asked which consular post had been occupied. The Consulate
“In the beginning of the first century after death, Livy and Virgil believed that the migration of the Etruscans to central Italy was the resultant of the fall of Troy and flight of Aeneas” (
The sport of gladiatorial combat and the practice of foretelling the future by studying the entrails of animals or the flight of birds went back to the beginnings of the Etruscans. Two of the most famous myths the Romans told about the founding of Rome itself has been drawn back from the Etruscans: that involving Aeneas of Troy and that involving the infant twins Romulus and Remus. Aeneas of Troy links Rome with the Homeric world and the world of Greek civilization. Aeneas brought Greek and Homeric traditions with him when he came to Rome, after he survived the invasion of Troy and escaped. He gave Rome international status, again showing a contribution of the Etruscans. The infant twins Romulus and Remus were believed to have been raised by wolves after they were left by their parents to die. The two brothers are later associated with being significant early leaders of Rome.
The Etruscans were very different from the Greeks, whom they did inherit many of their traditions from. Etruscan women enjoyed a comparatively elevated place in society. “Etruscan women participated in public life and sporting events, they attended dramatic performances and athletic competition (both forbidden to Greek women), and they danced in ways that shocked both Greeks and Romans” (Coffin & Stacey 168). The Etruscan women also ate meals at the same table as their husbands as well as were allowed to sit together at formal events. In some ways the Etruscans women were equal to their male companions. In many social events the Etruscan women were allowed to not only partake and attend them, but to sit alongside their husbands. “The pictorial record left by the Etruscans, mainly in recently rediscovered underground tombs, makes it clear that the early Romans derived much of their religious beliefs, art forms, and architecture from these peoples” (Adler & Pouwels 118). The Etruscan women were allowed after death to be buried together in these mortuary tombs with their husbands.
The religion was another key contribution the Etruscans brought to the Romans. Only aspects of the religion stuck later on in the traditions of Rome, but aspects did stick not only through the Etruscan years, but throughout the entirety of the Roman Empire. “The Tagetic Books were part of the sacred tradition of the Etruscan people which is famous all over the world for its deep religion: they contained the rules and the indications for better understanding the will and the signs of the divinity, and consequently for behaving through actions such as sacrifices, libations and different rites” (
The Romans also were passed down a form of the Greek alphabet