{"topic":"etruscan-antiquities","count":1,"articles":[{"id":"britannica-11-etruscan-antiquities","work_id":"britannica-11","title":"Etruscan Antiquities","normalized_title":"etruscan-antiquities","slug":"etruscan-antiquities","aliases":[],"subtitle":"Internet Archive OCR import","body_text":"The large recent discoveries of Etruscan objects have not materially altered the conclusions arrived at a generation ago. It is not so much our appreciation of the broad lines of the manners and arts of the Etruscans that has altered as our understanding of the geographic and social causes which made them what they were. One great difficulty in the study of the remains is that a very large portion of them have been found by unofficial excavators who have been naturally unwilling to tell whence they came, and that certain other excavations, such as those carried out by Comm. Barnabei for the Villa Giulia museum , have been carried out under conditions which help but little towards increasing our knowledge.1 The increase has, however,, been steady, even if not all one could wish. Ethnology. — The origin of the Etruscans will most likely never be absolutely fixed,2 but their own tradition (Tacitus, Ann. iv. 55) that they came out of Lydia seems not impossible. Herodotus (i. 94) and Strabo (v. 220) tell of Lydians landing at the mouth of the Po and crossing the Apennines into Etruria. Thus it seems certain that though the earliest immigrants, known to the later Etruscans as the Rasena, may have come down from the north, still they were joined by a migration from the east before they had developed a civilization of their own, and it is this double race that became the Etruscans as we know them in tradition and by their works. To give a date to the migration of the Rasena from the north, for which the only evidence is the fact that the Etruscan language is found in various parts of north Italy,3 is impossible, but we can perhaps give an approximate one to the coming of the Lydians or Tyrrhenians (Thuc. iv. 109; Herod, i. 57). We know that there was a great wave of migration from Greece to Italy about 1000 B.C., and as the earliest imported Greek objects found in the tombs cannot be dated many generations later than this, this year may be considered as giving us roughly the time when the real Etruscan civilization began. It has been, and still is, a common mistake to speak of the Etruscans as though they were closely confined to that part of Italy called Etruria on the maps, but it is quite certain that in the early stages of their development they were differentiated from the Umbrians on the north-east and the Latins on the south in ways due rather to the locality than to race or essential character.4 To primitive peoples open seas or deserts are a greater hindrance to intercourse than mountains or rivers, and even these did not cut off Etruria from the neighbouring regions of Italy. The Apennines that separated her from Umbria were not difficult to cross, and the Tiber which formed the boundary 1 For Barnabei's excavations see Fausto Benedetti, Gli Scavi di Narce ed il Museo di Villa Giulia (1900). 1 For a further discussion see ad fin., section Language. »See Pauli, Altitalische Forschungen, vol. i.; also sect. Language 4 Cf. the contents of the graves found by Boni in the Roman Forum (Notizie degli Scavi, 1902, 1903, 1905) with the objects represented in the plates of Montelius, La Civilisation primitive en Itahe, pt. i. For the cemeteries at Novilara cf. Brizio, Monumenti antichi, vol. v. HISTORY]","body_html":"

The large recent discoveries of Etruscan objects have not materially altered the conclusions arrived at a generation ago. It is not so much our appreciation of the broad lines of the manners and arts of the Etruscans that has altered as our understanding of the geographic and social causes which made them what they were. One great difficulty in the study of the remains is that a very large portion of them have been found by unofficial excavators who have been naturally unwilling to tell whence they came, and that certain other excavations, such as those carried out by Comm. Barnabei for the Villa Giulia museum , have been carried out under conditions which help but little towards increasing our knowledge.1 The increase has, however,, been steady, even if not all one could wish. Ethnology. — The origin of the Etruscans will most likely never be absolutely fixed,2 but their own tradition (Tacitus, Ann. iv. 55) that they came out of Lydia seems not impossible. Herodotus (i. 94) and Strabo (v. 220) tell of Lydians landing at the mouth of the Po and crossing the Apennines into Etruria.

\n

Thus it seems certain that though the earliest immigrants, known to the later Etruscans as the Rasena, may have come down from the north, still they were joined by a migration from the east before they had developed a civilization of their own, and it is this double race that became the Etruscans as we know them in tradition and by their works. To give a date to the migration of the Rasena from the north, for which the only evidence is the fact that the Etruscan language is found in various parts of north Italy,3 is impossible, but we can perhaps give an approximate one to the coming of the Lydians or Tyrrhenians (Thuc. iv. 109; Herod, i. 57). We know that there was a great wave of migration from Greece to Italy about 1000 B.C., and as the earliest imported Greek objects found in the tombs cannot be dated many generations later than this, this year may be considered as giving us roughly the time when the real Etruscan civilization began.

\n

It has been, and still is, a common mistake to speak of the Etruscans as though they were closely confined to that part of Italy called Etruria on the maps, but it is quite certain that in the early stages of their development they were differentiated from the Umbrians on the north-east and the Latins on the south in ways due rather to the locality than to race or essential character.4 To primitive peoples open seas or deserts are a greater hindrance to intercourse than mountains or rivers, and even these did not cut off Etruria from the neighbouring regions of Italy. The Apennines that separated her from Umbria were not difficult to cross, and the Tiber which formed the boundary 1 For Barnabei's excavations see Fausto Benedetti, Gli Scavi di Narce ed il Museo di Villa Giulia (1900). 1 For a further discussion see ad fin., section Language. »See Pauli, Altitalische Forschungen, vol. i.; also sect. Language 4 Cf. the contents of the graves found by Boni in the Roman Forum (Notizie degli Scavi, 1902, 1903, 1905) with the objects represented in the plates of Montelius, La Civilisation primitive en Itahe, pt. i. For the cemeteries at Novilara cf. Brizio, Monumenti antichi, vol. v. HISTORY]

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