The Etruscans ( ih-TRUSK-ən) created a civilization in Etruria, in ancient Italy, with a common language and culture, and formed a federation of city-states. After adjacent lands had been conquered, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roughly what is now Tuscany, western Umbria and northern Lazio, as well as what are now the Po Valley, Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy, southern Veneto and western Campania.
A large body of literature has flourished on the origins of the Etruscans, and the consensus among modern scholars is that the Etruscans were an indigenous population. The earliest evidence of a culture that is identifiably Etruscan dates from about 900 BC. This is the period of the Iron Age Villanovan culture, considered to be the earliest phase of Etruscan civilization, which itself developed from the previous late Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture in the same region, part of the central European Urnfield culture system.
The territorial extent of Etruscan civilization reached its maximum around 500 BC, shortly after the Roman Kingdom became the Roman Republic. Beginning in the late 4th century BC, it succumbed to the expanding Rome during the Roman–Etruscan Wars; Etruscans were granted Roman citizenship in 90 BC, and by 27 BC the whole Etruscan territory was incorporated into the newly established Roman Empire.
Its culture flourished in three confederacies of cities: Etruria (Tuscany, Latium and Umbria); the Po Valley, including the eastern Alps; and Campania. The league in northern Italy is mentioned by Livy in his Ab Urbe Condita. In the Etruscan political system, authority resided with individual cities and likely with individual families. At the height of Etruscan power, elite Etruscan families grew very rich through trade with the Celts to the north and the Greeks to the south, and they filled their large family tombs with imported luxuries.
The earliest known examples of Etruscan writing are inscriptions found in southern Etruria that date to around 700 BC. The Etruscans developed a system of writing derived from the Euboean alphabet, which was used in the Magna Graecia coastal areas in Southern Italy. The Etruscan language remains only partly understood, making modern understanding of their society and culture heavily dependent on much later and generally disapproving Roman and Greek sources.
Legend and history
Ethnonym and etymology
According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Etruscans called themselves Rasenna (Greek Ῥασέννα), a stem from the Etruscan Rasna (𐌛𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀): "the people". Evidence of inscriptions as Tular Rasnal (𐌕𐌖𐌋𐌀𐌛 𐌛𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀𐌋), "boundary of the people", or Mechlum Rasnal (𐌌𐌄𐌙𐌋 𐌛𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀𐌋), "community of the people", attest to its autonym usage. The Tyrsenian etymology, however, remains unknown.
In Attic Greek, the Etruscans were known as Tyrrhenians (Τυρρηνοί, Tyrrhēnoi, earlier Τυρσηνοί Tyrsēnoi), from which the Romans derived the names Tyrrhēnī, Tyrrhēnia (Etruria), and Mare Tyrrhēnum (Tyrrhenian Sea).
The ancient Romans referred to the Etruscans as the Tuscī or Etruscī (singular Tuscus). Their Roman name is the origin of the terms Toscana, which refers to their heartland, and Etruria, which can refer to their wider region. The term Tusci is thought by linguists to have been the Umbrian word for Etruscan, based on an inscription on an ancient bronze tablet from a nearby region. The inscription contains the phrase turskum ... nomen, literally 'the Tuscan name'. Based on knowledge of Umbrian grammar, linguists can infer that the base form of the word turskum is *Tursci, which would, through metathesis and a word-initial epenthesis, be likely to lead to the form, E-trus-ci.
As for the original meaning of the root, *Turs-, a widely cited hypothesis is that it, like the Latin turris, it means 'tower' and comes from the ancient Greek word for tower: τύρσις, likely a loan into Greek. In this hypothesis, the Tusci were called the 'people who build towers" or "the tower builders". This proposed etymology is made the more plausible because the Etruscans preferred to build their towns on high precipices reinforced by walls. Alternatively, Giuliano and Larissa Bonfante have speculated that Etruscan houses may have seemed like towers to the simple Latins. The proposed etymology has a long history, with Dionysius of Halicarnassus having observed in the first century BC, "[T]here is no reason that the Greeks should not have called [the Etruscans] by this name, both from their living in towers and from the name of one of their rulers." In his recent Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Robert Beekes claims the Greek word is a "loanword from a Mediterranean language", a hypothesis that goes back to an article by Paul Kretschmer in Glotta from 1934.
Origins
Ancient sources
Literary and historical texts in the Etruscan language have not survived, and the language itself is only partially understood by modern scholars. This makes modern understanding of their society and culture heavily dependent on much later and generally disapproving Roman and Greek sources. These ancient writers differed in their theories about the origin of the Etruscan people. Some have suggested that they were indigenous to central Italy, while others have hypothesized that they were Pelasgians.
The first Greek author to mention the Etruscans, whom the Ancient Greeks called Tyrrhenians, was the 8th-century BC poet Hesiod in his work the Theogony. He mentioned them as residing in central Italy alongside the Latins. The 7th-century BC Homeric Hymn to Dionysus referred to them as pirates.
In the 5th century BC, some Greek writers began to associate "Tyrrhenians" and Pelasgians, with some using these terms merely as generic labels for "non-Greeks" and for the supposed indigenous ancestors of the Greeks. The logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos, derived the Tyrrhenians from a Pelasgian migration from Thessaly that colonized the region he called Tyrrhenia. Myrsilus of Lesbos, as quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, proposed the reverse account: the Tyrrhenians originated in Italy and, after leaving their homeland, became known as Pelargi (later identified with the Pelasgians) as they migrated into Greece and other regions.
Herodotus also placed the origins of the Tyrrhenians in the East. In an account explicitly attributed to the Lydians themselves, part of the people of Lydia, led by Tyrrhenus, son of king Atys, emigrated by sea and settled in central Italy, where they took their leader's name.
The emigrants went down to Smyrna and built ships, and sailed away in search of a livelihood. After passing many nations, they came to the land of the Ombricans, where they built cities and have lived ever since. They no longer called themselves Lydians, but after the name of the king's son who led them out, they called themselves Tyrrhenians.
Later Greek authors combined and reworked these stories, often inconsistently. Thucydides and Strabo associated the Tyrrhenians with the Pelasgians of Lemnos, and Strabo had the Pelasgians of Lemnos and Imbros follow Tyrrhenus to Italy. In this literature "Tyrrhenian", like "Pelasgian", was a fluid label applied to various non-Greek peoples of the northern Aegean, such as a group near Creston in Macedonia mentioned by Herodotus and the mixed "Pelasgian Tyrrhenian" population of the Athos peninsula described by Thucydides; these notices reflect the vagueness of the ethnonyms rather than any documented migration of the Etruscans.
A separate strand of the question is linguistic. The Lemnos stele is inscribed in a language structurally close to Etruscan, which has led modern scholars to posit a Tyrsenian language family linking Etruscan, Lemnian and the Alpine Raetic. This is a matter of language classification, however, and does not in itself confirm the ancient migration narratives: the nature, direction and date of the connection remain debated.
However, the 1st-century BC historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek living in Rome, dismissed many of the ancient theories of other Greek historians and postulated that the Etruscans were indigenous people who had always lived in Etruria and were different from both the Pelasgians and the Lydians. Dionysius noted that the 5th-century historian Xanthus of Lydia, who was originally from Sardis and was regarded as an important source and authority for the history of Lydia, never suggested a Lydian origin of the Etruscans and never named Tyrrhenus as a ruler of the Lydians.
For this reason, therefore, I am persuaded that the Pelasgians are a different people from the Tyrrhenians. And I do not believe, either, that the Tyrrhenians were a colony of the Lydians; for they do not use the same language as the latter, nor can it be alleged that, though they no longer speak a similar tongue, they still retain some other indications of their mother country. For they neither worship the same gods as the Lydians nor make use of similar laws or institutions, but in these very respects they differ more from the Lydians than from the Pelasgians. Indeed, those probably come nearest to the truth who declare that the nation migrated from nowhere else, but was native to the country, since it is found to be a very ancient nation and to agree with no other either in its language or in its manner of living.
The credibility of Dionysius of Halicarnassus is arguably bolstered by the fact that he was the first ancient writer to report the endonym of the Etruscans: Rasenna.
The Romans, however, give them other names: from the country they once inhabited, named Etruria, they call them Etruscans, and from their knowledge of the ceremonies relating to divine worship, in which they excel others, they now call them, rather inaccurately, Tusci, but formerly, with the same accuracy as the Greeks, they called them Thyrscoï [an earlier form of Tusci]. Their own name for themselves, however, is the same as that of one of their leaders, Rasenna.
Similarly, the 1st-century BC historian Livy, in his Ab Urbe Condita Libri, said that the Rhaetians were Etruscans who had been driven into the mountains by the invading Gauls, and he asserted that the inhabitants of Raetia were of Etruscan origin.
The Alpine tribes have also, no doubt, the same origin (of the Etruscans), especially the Raetians; who have been rendered so savage by the very nature of the country as to retain nothing of their ancient character save the sound of their speech, and even that is corrupted.
The first-century historian Pliny the Elder also put the Etruscans in the context of the Rhaetian people to the north, and wrote in his Natural History (AD 79):
Adjoining these the (Alpine) Noricans are the Raeti and Vindelici. All are divided into a number of states. The Raeti are believed to be people of Tuscan race driven out by the Gauls, their leader was named Raetus.
Archaeological evidence and modern Etruscology
The question of the Etruscans' origins has long been a subject of interest and debate among historians. In modern times, all the evidence gathered by prehistoric and protohistoric archaeologists, anthropologists, and Etruscologists points to an autochthonous origin of the Etruscans. There is no archaeological or linguistic evidence of a migration of the Lydians or Pelasgians into Etruria. Modern Etruscologists and archaeologists, such as Massimo Pallottino (1947), have shown that early historians' assumptions and assertions on the subject were groundless. In 2000, the Etruscologist Dominique Briquel explained in detail why he believes that ancient Greek narratives on Etruscan origins should not even count as historical documents. He argues that the ancient story of the Etruscans' 'Lydian origins' was a deliberate, politically motivated fabrication, and that ancient Greeks inferred a connection between the Tyrrhenians and the Pelasgians solely on the basis of certain Greek and local traditions and because there had been trade between the Etruscans and Greeks. He noted that, even if these stories include historical facts suggesting contact, such contact is more plausibly traceable to cultural exchange than to migration.
Several archaeologists specializing in Prehistory and Protohistory who have analyzed Bronze Age and Iron Age remains that were excavated in the territory of historical Etruria have pointed out that no evidence has been found, related either to material culture or to social practices, to support a migration theory. The most marked and radical change that has been archaeologically attested in the area is the adoption, starting in about the 12th century BC, of the funeral rite of incineration in terracotta urns, a Continental European practice derived from the Urnfield culture; nothing about it suggests an ethnic contribution from Asia Minor or the Near East.
A 2012 survey of the previous 30 years' archaeological findings based on excavations of the major Etruscan cities showed a continuity of culture from the last phase of the Bronze Age (13th–11th century BC) to the Iron Age (10th–9th century BC). This is evidence that the Etruscan civilization, which emerged around 900 BC, was built by people whose ancestors had inhabited that region for at least the previous 200 years. Based on this cultural continuity, there is now a consensus among archaeologists that Proto-Etruscan culture developed, during the last phase of the Bronze Age, from the indigenous Proto-Villanovan culture and that the subsequent Iron Age Villanovan culture is most accurately described as an early phase of the Etruscan civilization. It is possible that there were contacts between northern-central Italy and the Mycenaean world at the end of the Bronze Age, but contacts between the inhabitants of Etruria and inhabitants of Greece, Aegean Sea Islands, Asia Minor, and the Near East are attested only centuries later, when Etruscan civilization was already flourishing and Etruscan ethnogenesis was well established. The first of these attested contacts relate to the Greek colonies in Southern Italy and Phoenician-Punic colonies in Sardinia, and the consequent orientalizing period.