Who were the Etruscans and why are they considered the first great Italian civilization

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 – particularly 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

There Etruscan civilisation It 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 testimonies in the main towns that will soon expand into the 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 plus they were great areas for kids marine traffic and the fishing.

Further inland, however, there were areas rich in natural resources, such as 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 it 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 created 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 rooms And communicating with each other. Sometimes they even had a large room and a private courtyard.

In addition to houses, it was possible to find numerous in Etruscan cities 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 to create it around the 6th century 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, like Tarquinia, Cerveteri, Orvieto or Populonia.

You understand well that the population who lived in such important population centers needed someone who was there governed. Initially at the head of each city there was a king-priestbut soon went on to have a 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. Here the same also applies to their deities, in the sense that the Etruscan deities aesthetically they were the same as the Greek oneseven though they often attributed it to him different values. And just like the Greeks, the Etruscans also sometimes made animal sacrifices, especially to predict the future. In fact, there were so-called priests haruspices who had the task of analyzing the entrails of the sacrificed animals, especially the liver, to understand what the future would be like. Here, for example, what you see is the so-called Piacenza liver. 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 took care of the wishesthat 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 the 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 they went lost almost all written works of this people, as well as 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 of jewels And pottery Etruscans, and this testifies to their great skills as artisans.

Crafts and trade

The Etruscans specialized in gold processingand in particular they developed two techniques that are still used today, namely the granulation and the watermark. In the granulation very small gold spheres were created which were then melted next to each other to form tiny decorations. There watermark it 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 own wine – whose tradition was then also acquired by the Romans – and for the 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 what the Greeks called them “Tyrrhenian”, and precisely for this reason the sea in which they were most present is still called today 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 Etruscansand 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, come on Romans. Starting from 396 BC in fact Rome – which at the time was not yet an empire – made some Etruscan cities capitulate such as Veio, Orvieto, Vulci And Cerveteri, 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.