The Etruscans are considered the first great Italian civilization: they lived in the area between present-day Tuscany, Lazio and Umbria mainly between the 10th and 4th centuries BC. Much of their history has been lost – especially after their conquest by the Romans. We know for sure that they were excellent artisans, excellent merchants and that their end was largely linked to their incredible economic power within the Mediterranean Sea.
Origin of the Etruscans
The Etruscan civilization has very ancient origins. Although there have been various theories about their origin since ancient times, archaeological research has shown that they are an indigenous people of the Italian peninsula. Already from the 10th century BC the first evidence is known in the main settlements which will soon expand into current Lazio, Tuscany, Umbria, Campania, Emilia Romagna. The choice to live in these places was not accidental. Along the coast there were plains with fertile countryside and in addition they were excellent areas for marine traffic and fishing.
Further inland, however, there were areas rich in natural resources, such as the metalliferous hills. Let’s keep in mind that on a temporal level we are at the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, a period in which there was a boom in metal tools, objects and weapons, and therefore people needed metal mines to become increasingly powerful and more technologically advanced. Just to say, the Island of Elba was very rich in iron mines, so much so that in Etruscan times it was called “the island of a thousand fires“, precisely because here, in addition to the mines, it was full of forges. The exploitation of these resources quickly led to the development of the ancient villages which began to expand, to the point of forming real cities.
The Etruscan cities
Initially the Etruscans built rather simple villages: there were mainly rounded houses made with mud and reed walls and thatched roofs. As time passed, however, their building skills improved, moving on to much more comfortable homes, often equipped with multiple and communicating rooms. Sometimes they even had a large room and a private courtyard.
In addition to houses, in Etruscan cities it was possible to find numerous shops and they soon equipped themselves with walls, which at the time of the clashes with Rome were also equipped with arches. And think about it? They were the ones who invented the vaulted arch! Or rather, the arch itself had already existed for some time in the Mediterranean but they were the first around the 6th century to create complete arches with stone ashlars. That is, we associate the bow with the Romans but they will apply the idea from the Etruscans themselves.
However, like many cities of the past, the central element was not the arch and not even the houses, but rather the temple. The Etruscan temple, at least apparently, was quite similar to the Greek one that we all have in mind… even if in reality there are some differences. For example, the columns were only in the front portico, which however was larger than its Greek counterpart. In short, these were great works and consider that some cities of Etruscan origin still exist today, such as Tarquinia, Cerveteri, Orvieto or Populonia.
You understand well that the population who lived in such important population centers needed someone to govern them. Initially at the head of each city there was a priest-king, but soon it became an oligarchy – so power was in the hands of a few people, not a single king. Among other things, an interesting thing about the Etruscan civilization is the role of women. In the sense that compared to other peoples of the same period, women had much more freedom and we have testimonies of very high-ranking women who were considered equal to men. Women also played a key role in the religious life of the community, given that – as we will now see – religion for the Etruscans was the most important thing of all.
The polytheistic and divinatory religion
Before we talked about temples and said that they are similar to the Greek ones. The same also applies to their divinities, in the sense that the Etruscan divinities were aesthetically the same as the Greek ones, even if they often attributed different values to them. And just like the Greeks, the Etruscans also sometimes made animal sacrifices, especially to predict the future. In fact, there were priests called haruspices who had the task of analyzing the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the liver, to understand what the future would be like. Here, for example, what you see is the so-called liver of Piacenza. This is a very important find because it is a sort of “guide” used by soothsayers to correctly interpret divine signals.
But it doesn’t end there: the priests also dealt with auspices, that is, the reading of omens in some natural phenomena, such as lightning, earthquakes or the flight of birds. In fact, even today, after almost 3000 years, the expression “auspicious” is used precisely to indicate something that will bring good in the future. A final interesting element of their religion is burial: the Etruscans practiced cremation for a long time in their history and the deceased were always placed inside the necropolises, that is, real cities for the dead. I tell you this because almost much of what we know about the Etruscans, and in particular about their writing, we owe precisely to the tombs.
Etruscan writing
As we will see shortly, the Etruscans were conquered by the Romans. After this conquest almost all the written works of this people were lost, as was their history. What remains of Etruscan writing are mainly inscriptions on sarcophagi. So today, above all thanks to the Etruscan tombs, we know their alphabet and have managed to reconstruct part of their language, although obviously with so little information we don’t know everything about their language. It’s like wanting to learn German or Japanese simply with the sentences we find on the graves in a cemetery… it’s almost impossible.
The tombs are actually also important for another reason, that is, inside them we found a large quantity of paintings and above all Etruscan jewels and pottery, and this testifies to their great skills as artisans.
Crafts and trade
The Etruscans specialized in gold processing, and in particular developed two techniques that are still used today, namely granulation and filigree. In the granulation, very small gold spheres were created which were then melted next to each other to form tiny decorations. Filigree follows a similar concept, except that instead of making balls, very thin threads were made which were then intertwined together.
But the Etruscans were famous not only for their gold, but also for their wine – the tradition of which was later also acquired by the Romans – and for bucchero. Without going into too much detail, it is a particular type of unpainted but entirely black ceramic: during the firing phase it was cooked slowly in a sealed oven and after polishing the surfaces, dark and very shiny vases were obtained, similar to metal, extremely valuable and sought after by the elite. Given their skill as artisans, they soon understood that the best way to do business was to sell all these wonders to other peoples… and coincidentally, in a short time the Etruscans became an enormous commercial force in the Mediterranean… and this, in reality, contributed to their end.
Because the Etruscans disappeared
In fact, they, together with the Phoenicians and Greeks, became one of the three main powers of the Mediterranean. Just think that the Greeks called them “Tyrrhenian”, and for this very reason the sea in which they were most present today is still called the Tyrrhenian Sea. This success, as often happens, was viewed unfavorably by all the other peoples who traded in the Mediterranean, who began to be increasingly envious of the Etruscan commercial power. And this envy soon transformed into real attacks on Etruscan cities, as the Greeks did for example.
These repeated clashes began to weaken the Etruscans, and before long they had to face not only this threat by sea but also the Celts, who began to advance from the north. In the end, however, the final blow came from their neighbors, the Romans. In fact, starting from 396 BC Rome – which at the time was not yet an empire – made some Etruscan cities such as Veii, Orvieto, Vulci and Cerveteri capitulate, putting an end to the first great Italian people.
As we said before, their writings were mostly destroyed and therefore today we do not know many things about the Etruscan civilization. At the same time, the Romans themselves assimilated many of their customs and traditions into their culture, thus preserving a part of their culture that would otherwise have been irremediably lost.
