The Etruscans are among the irritating obscurities of history. They ruled Rome for a hundred years or more, and left upon Roman ways so varied an influence that Rome can hardly be understood without them; yet Roman literature is as mute concerning them as a matron anxious to forget, publicly, the surrenders of her youth. Italian civilization, as literate provision, begins with them: 8000 inscriptions, as well as many works of art, mingle with their remains; and there are indications of a lost literature in poetry, drama, and history.10 But only a few unrevealing words of the language have been deciphered, and scholarship stands in deeper darkness today before the Etruscan mystery than that which shrouded the Egypt of the Pharaohs before Champollion.
Consequently men still debate who the Etruscans were, and when and whence they came. Perhaps the old tradition has been too readily set aside; pedants love to disprove the accepted, which mischievously survives. Most Greek and Roman historians took it for granted that the Etruscans had come from Asia Minor.11 Many elements in their religion, dress, and art suggest an Asiatic origin; many, again, seem natively Italian. Most likely the civilization of Etruria was an outgrowth of the Villanovan culture, commercially influenced by Greece and the Near East, while the Etruscans themselves, as they believed, were invaders from Asia Minor, probably Lydia. In any case, their superior killing power made them the ruling caste in Tuscany.
We do not know where they landed; but we know that they founded, conquered, or developed many cities—not mere villages of mud and straw as before them, but walled towns with geometrically laid-out streets, and houses not only of beaten earth, but often of baked brick or stone. Twelve of these communities joined in a loose Etruscan Federation, dominated by Tarquinii (now Corneto), Arretium (Arezzo), Perusia (Perugia), and Veii (Isola Farnese).I Hardships of transportation through mountains and forests collaborated with the jealous pugnacity of men, here as in Greece, to form independent city-states, seldom united against external foes; each cherished its separate security, often stood aside while others were attacked, and, one after another, succumbed to Rome. But through most of the sixth century B.C. these allied municipalities constituted the strongest political force in Italy, with a well-organized army, a famous cavalry, and a powerful navy that for a time ruled what is still called the Tyrrhene (i.e., Etruscan) Sea.II
As in the case of Rome, the government of the Etruscan cities began as a monarchy, became an oligarchy of “first families,” and gradually gave over to an assembly of propertied citizens the right of choosing the annual magistrates. So far as we can make out from the tomb paintings and reliefs, it was a thoroughly feudal society, with an aristocracy owning the soil and enjoying in luxury the surplus product of Villanovan serfs and war-won slaves. Under this discipline Tuscany was reclaimed from forest and swamp, and a system of rural irrigation and urban sewage was developed beyond anything discoverable in contemporary Greece. Etruscan engineers built drainage tunnels to take the overflow of lakes, and cut drained roadways through rock and hill.12 As early as 700 B.C. Etruscan industry mined the copper of the western coast and the iron of Elba, smelted the iron ore at Populonia, and sold pig iron throughout Italy.13 Etruscan merchants traded up and down the Tyrrhene Sea, brought amber, tin, lead, and iron from northern Europe down the Rhine and the Rhone and over the Alps, and sold Etruscan products in every major port of the Mediterranean. About 500 B.C. Etruscan towns issued their own coins.
The people themselves are pictured on their tombs as short and stocky, with large heads, features almost Anatolian, complexion ruddy, especially in women; but rouge is as old as civilization.14 The ladies were famous for their beauty,15 and the men sometimes had faces of refinement and nobility. Civilization had already advanced to a precarious height, for specimens of dental bridgework have been found in the graves;16 dentistry, like medicine and surgery, had been imported from Egypt and Greece.17 Both sexes wore the hair long, and the men fondled beards. Garments followed the Ionian style: an inner shirt like the chiton, and an outer robe that became the Roman toga. Men as well as women loved ornament, and their tombs abounded in jewelry.
If we may judge from the gay pictures of the sepulchers, the life of the Etruscans, like that of the Cretans, was hardened with combat, softened with luxury, and brightened with feasts and games. The men waged war lustily, and practiced a variety of virile sports. They hunted, fought bulls in the arena, and drove their chariots, sometimes four horses abreast, around a dangerous course. They threw the discus and the javelin, pole-vaulted, raced, wrestled, boxed, and fought in gladiatorial bouts. Cruelty marked these games, for the Etruscans, like the Romans, thought it dangerous to let civilization get too far from the brute. Less heroic persons brandished dumbbells, threw dice, played the flute, or danced. Scenes of bibulous merriment relieve the paintings in the tombs. Sometimes they are symposia for men only, with vinous conversation; now and then they show both sexes, richly dressed, reclining in pairs on elegant couches, eating and drinking, waited on by slaves, and entertained by dancers and musicians.18 Occasionally the meal is adorned with an amorous embrace.
Probably the lady in this case was a courtesan, corresponding to the Greek hetaira. If we may believe the Romans, the young women of Etruria, like those of Greek Asia and Samurai Japan, were allowed to obtain dowries by prostitution;19 a character in Plautus accuses a girl of “seeking in the Tuscan way to earn her marriage by the shame of her body.”20 Nevertheless, women enjoyed a high status in Etruria, and the paintings represent them as prominent in every aspect of life. Relationship was traced through the mother in a manner suggesting again an Asiatic origin.21 Education was not confined to the male, for Tanaquil, wife of the first Tarquin, was versed in mathematics and medicine as well as political intrigue.22 Theopompus ascribed a communism of women to the Etruscan,23 but no confirming evidence has come down to us of this Platonic utopia. Many of the pictures are scenes of marital concord and family life, with children romping about in happy ignorance.
Religion provided every incentive to a negative morality. The Etruscan pantheon was fully equipped to terrify the growing ego and ease the tasks of parentage. The greatest of the gods was Tinia, who wielded the thunder and the lightning. About him, as a committee pitilessly carrying out his commands, were the Twelve Great Gods, so great that it was sacrilege (and we may therefore neglect) to pronounce their names. Especially fearsome were Mantus and Mania, master and mistress of the Underworld, each with an executive horde of winged demons. Least appeasable of all was Lasa or Mean, goddess of fate, brandishing snakes or a sword, and armed with stylus and ink to write, and hammer and nails to affix, her unalterable decrees. Pleasanter were the Lares and Penates—little statuettes kept on the hearth, and symbolizing the spirits of field and home.
The sacred science of ascertaining the future by studying the livers of sheep or the flight of birds had probably come down to the Etruscans from Babylonia; but according to their own traditions it had been revealed to them by a divine boy, grandson of Tinia, who sprang to life from a furrow freshly turned, and at once spoke with the wisdom of a sage. Etruscan ritual culminated in the sacrifice of a sheep, a bull, or a man. Human victims were slaughtered or buried alive at the funerals of the great. In some cases prisoners of war were massacred as a propitiation of the gods; so the Phoceans taken at Alalia in 535 B.C. were stoned to death in the forum of Caere, and some 300 Romans captured in 358 B.C. were sacrificed at Tarquinii. The Etruscan appears to have believed that for every enemy slain he could secure the release of a soul from hell.24
The belief in hell was the favorite feature of Etruscan theology. The dead spirit, as seen in the sepulchral representations, was conducted by genii to the tribunal of the Underworld, where in a Last Judgment it was given an opportunity to defend its conduct in life. If it failed, it was condemned to a variety of torments that left their mark on Virgil (reared on Mantua’s Etruscan lore), on the early Christian conception of hell, and, through these and twenty centuries, on Tuscan Dante’s Inferno. From such damnation the good were spared, and the sufferings of the damned might be shortened by the prayers or sacrifices of their living friends. The saved soul passed from the Underworld to the society of the gods above, there to enjoy feasts, luxuries, and powers depicted hopefully on the tombs.
Normally the Etruscans buried their dead. Those who could afford it were laid to rest in sarcophagi of terra cotta or stone, and the lid was topped with reclining figures carved partly in their likeness, partly in the smiling style of the archaic Greek Apollos; here, again, Etruscan traditions contributed to medieval art. Occasionally the dead were cremated and placed in cinerary urns, which also might be adorned with the figure of the deceased. In many cases the urn or tomb simulated a house; sometimes the tomb, cut into the rock, was divided into rooms, and was equipped for post-mortem living with furniture, utensils, vases, clothing, weapons, mirrors, cosmetics, and gems. In a tomb at Caere the skeleton of a warrior lay on a perfectly preserved bed of bronze, with weapons and chariots beside it; and in a chamber behind his were the ornaments and jewelry of a woman presumably his wife. The dust that had been her beloved body was clothed in her bridal robes.25