Etruscan and Roman Italy

It has been forty-one years since I presented my initial work on the Etruscan language to the curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. It was about this time of the year and at the time I was thirtyeight years old. The curator kindly met with me but was not able to help me beyond suggesting meeting with some professors at the Sorbonne University. I was looking, of course, for the scholastic world s interest in the work and help in pursuing it in detail. I went to the Sorbonne without any positive result. I had been working then on the Etruscan language for about ten years, having been curious about Michael Ventris decipherment of Linear B, a writing system used in Crete by the Mycenaean civilization. Having spent some time on it and Linear B (which continues to be undeciphered, I switched to the examination of a curious Etruscan lead tablet called the Magliano Disk which had an inscription in the form of a spiral or meander. The Magliano Disk has been date to be around 500 B.C. Another document like the Magliano Disk is the Phaistos Disk which dates to 2,000 B.C. The Magliano Disk prompted me into searching out all of the Etruscan texts I could find, the results of which are provided on my Etruscan Phrases web pages. All written documents are intended to be understood and assume that the reader knows the value of the characters used to communicate the ideas expressed in a document. The Etruscan characters posed a unique problem, since they are almost the same as the Roman or Western alphabet and one is tempted to assign the values we know and understand to the Etruscan writings. But there is a problem with this, since the Etruscan writing often did not separate characters, phrases, or sentences, and separating distinct words in the texts is a challenge. Complicating the reading of the texts is the problem peculiar to Phoenician and later Hebrew texts where vowels are omitted. The omission of vowels in the Etruscan texts, however, did not appear to be systematic. The values of the Etruscan characters turn out to be not the same as our alphabet. The V, for instance, is not the Roman v but used as a u and o. The Etruscan F is interesting since it serves both as a consonant and a vowel. It is a v and a u, as in the word for Dionysus, Bacchus, L. Euias, Euan, which is Etruscan EFAIS, Euais. Euan is Etruscan EFAN. These and other similar relationships will be seen in the Copeland-English-Etruscan Dictionary (as well as the Etruscan Glossary A). In any event, it is now October 17, 2022 after preparing the Introduction to the Etruscan Language and further pursing the draft findings of this document, identifying specific declension and grammatical applications, another document has grown out of the work which is the Copeland-English-Etruscan Dictionary. It has been compiled using a worksheet at the end of this document called the Etruscan Glossary. Since the Etruscan Glossary is an excel spreadsheet, it could be used to organize refine and translate the Etruscan words of the Etruscan texts. Associated with preparation of the Etruscan Glossary is my Indo-European Table1 which is in 11 parts, available on academia.edu at: Introduction to the Etruscan language 2 https://www.academia.edu/35148685/Etruscan_Phrases_Indo_European_Table_1_Update_02_06_22_ The purpose and function of the table can be easily discerned by one s first look at the table and its succeeding 10 parts. Its 11 parts can also be easily accessed at: http://www.maravot.com/indo-european_Table.html. The Indo-European Table is not what I intended it to be, for it has grown into a table and worksheet on Eurasian languages. Each language represented in the Table reveals relationships that may be surprising. For instance, those who are interested in the origins of certain English words will see entries on origins (taken from The Concise American Heritage Dictionary, 1987 Houghton-Mifflin Company. Many of the English source or origin entries may not be correct, as will be seen in the Table. What does all this have to do with the Etruscans, who date from about 1,000 B.C. in Tuscany, Northern Italy? A good part of the English language derives from Latin, and Latin is very closely related to Etruscan (an older civilization that the Latin/Roman civilization). Civilizations influence on another, either by trade or conquest or both. We know the relationship of English-Latin, or French-Latin, etc. because of the Roman conquests. The Etruscan-Latin relationship is more perplexing, since the Etruscans had an established civilization long before, hundreds of years before, Rome came into existence. There were Latin-speaking tribes that were neighbors of the Etruscans but since the relationship between them and the Etruscans was before Rome came into existence we can t speak to the history of the Etruscans and Latin-speaking people. Could they understand one another? It s hard to say. We can assume that old Latin was closer to Etruscan than Roman Latin. The name of Hercules, for instance, in Etruscan is HERCLE, in old Latin it appears to be the same. In French the name of Hercules is Hercule. There is a possibility that we can write a history the Etruscan world from the Etruscan point of view and that is through the translation of the Etruscan texts. This leads you to the Copeland-English-Etruscan Dictionary, currently in preparation. There are 136 pages in the document and growing, as I convert the Etruscan Glossary A data into a working dictionary. The final Etruscan dictionary will be in excess of 300 pages, estimated to include about 3,000 words.

Reviews:
Journal of Roman Archaeology 31.2 (2018) 563–567 [N. De Grummond]; Etruscan Studies 20.1 (2017) 100–107 [I. Edlund-Berry]; Opuscula Romana 10 (2017) 190–91 [F. Tobin]; American Journal of Archaeology [online] 122.3 (2018) [L. Taylor]; Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2018.04.41 [V. Riedemann Lorca].

Thanks to the increasing multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of votive contexts, a meaningful amount of information about both archaeological finds and associated faunal remains is available, giving way to interpretations about cults and sacrificial practices. This paper deals with the filling of different categories of “cavities” included in Etruscan sacred areas: the deep ones providing a connection with the underworld (mainly holding a primary hydraulic function); the wide ditches and the artificially delimited hollow spaces. In spite of the uneven quality of published data, this paper attempts to discuss and highlight their possible meaning and common distinctive features, taking into account their stratification, the sequence of operations involved and the evidence of specific rituals performed during the definitive land filling.

Updated attached exel file only, 3.09.2024. Updated to include corrections of mirrors. One mirror carries the name TIRANAII (Tyrhenni).  It is the oldest extant document containing the name Herodotus referred to and may predate Herodotus' "Histories." The Etruscan Glossary A spreadsheet presents 2,800 individual words from the major extant Etruscan texts. The texts contain a total word count of 6,000+ words, about 4,000 of which are repetitious. The Etruscan Glossary also sheds light on Etruscan declension and conjugation patterns that are similar to Latin, French & Italian. The glossary accounts for all of the 6,000+ words in the texts, including  the Zagreb Mummy wrapping and important grammatical and mythological data contained in Etruscan mirrors. Each word in the glossary has alphanumeric locators showing exactly where they are used in the cited texts.

Nell'ormai lontano 1985 discutevo presso l'Università di Pisa la tesi di specializzazione in Archeologia Classica, relatore Marinella Pasquinucci, in commissione Guglielmo Maetzke e Andrea Carandini. La scelta dell'argomento di tesi, "Le terme romane di Piazza della Signoria a Firenze. Il caldarium ed il sistema vitruviano delle volte sospese", era legata al mio interesse per i laterizi da costruzione di età romana, ma soprattutto dalla disponibilità e dall'incoraggiamento di Giuliano de Marinis. Lo scavo di Piazza della Signoria cui anch'io avevo partecipato, derivandone argomento di studio, era solo dell'anno prima (FIO 1, 1984) ed era stato diretto, come ancora sarebbe avvenuto per le campagne successive, da Giuliano.

Reviews:
Journal of Roman Archaeology 24 (2011) 512–15 [D. Ridgway]; Scholia 20.4 (2011) [R. Roth]; American Journal of Archaeology [online] 114.3 (2010) [S. Stoddart]; Antiquity 84:324 (2010) 565–67 [T. Rasmussen]; Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 85 (2010) 212–13 [B. van der Meer]; Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.02.32 [C. Smith]; Classical Review 60.2 (2010) 572–74 [L. Pieraccini].


Table of Contents

1. Between Crustumerium and Eretum: Observations on the First Iron Age Phases and the Finds from the Archaic Period / Paolo Togninelli

2. Civitalba and Roman Programs of Commemoration and Unification / Peter J. Holliday

3. Etruscan Cults in Roman Times: The Strange Ruins of Chianciano Terme / David Soren and Erin Nell

4. The Gods in the Circus / Carin Green

5. Far from Etruria: Etruscan Fakes in Japan / Stephan Steingräber

6. "Etruscan" Gold from Cerverteri (and Elsewhere) in the University of Pennsylvania Museum / Jean MacIntosh Turfa

7. From Crustumerium: A Proposal against Looting. Loans in Exchange for Resources for Preservation / Francesco di Gennaro

8. How Did Painters Create Near-Exact Copies? Notes on Four Center Paintings from Pompeii / John R. Clarke

9. Is Linear Perspective Necessary? / Jocelyn Penny Small

10. Some Thoughts on the Baubo Gesture in Classical Art / Larissa Bonfante

11. One More Etruscan Couple at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Marjatta Nielsen

12. Dueling Warriors on Two Etruscan Bronze Mirrors from the Fifth Century B.C.E. / Alexandra A. Carpino

13. The Blood of Animals: Predation and Transformation in Etruscan Funerary Representation / P. Gregory Warden

14. The Deified Deceased in Etruscan Culture / Giovannangelo Camporeale

15. On the Origin of the Vanth: Death Harbingers and Banshees in the Etruscan and Celtic Worlds / Anthony Tuck

16. Guests, Hosts, and Politics at Herculaneum / Carol C. Mattusch

17. The Lost Iter Hetruscum of Athanasius Kircher (1665-78) / Ingrid Rowland

18. Ingrid Edlund-Berry, Larthi, Turms, and Vel: Real Etruscans in Modern Fiction"

of which are reconciled to one another. This latest work is based upon Etruscan GlossaryA.pdf developed from our Indo-European Table 1. General note: The scripts on this page are short texts found on Etruscan mirrors selected from texts on Etruscan Phrases website, incorporated in Etruscan Phrases GlossaryA.xls. The mirrors shown here are the more interesting, from the standpoint of story-telling, as well as in the context of the confirmation of grammatical patterns. Some images are poor and will be improved when possible. The most dominant theme of Etruscan mirrors is the story of Helen of Troy (Homer's Iliad) and what happened to the heroes in and after the Trojan War. The story-line often diverges from that of the Greco-Roman version, remembered from the Etruscan point of view, as opposed to the Greek. Their point of view no doubt relates to the tradition recorded by Herodotus (Herodotus, I.94) that they are descended from a King in Lydia named Atys whose son, Tyrsenus, was selected to lead a group of immigrants to a new home among the Ombrici of southern and central Italy. He led his half of the nation abroad because of a long drought after the Trojan War. Strabo (Strabo 5.2.2) repeats this story. The people Tyrsenus led out of Lydia to Italy were known as the Tyrrheni, and the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of northwestern Italy is called after them. They were known as a powerful nation and some of the most feared pirates of their day. And their antiquity is recorded in the ancient myth of Dionysus: The Etruscans are a key to understanding the history that has been passed down to us. They had (no doubt long-standing) trade relationships with Phoenicia and Egypt, as well as Western European Celts and Iberians. They became a center in mining and trading iron and may very well have acquired iron smelting technology from Anatolia. They also were known for their

Etruscan cities facing the sea-Caere, Tarquinia, Vulci, Populonia, and Pisa-as well as those located farther inland, such as Roselle, Vetulonia, and Volterra, rose, except for Populonia, on raised mounds or spurs at a certain distance from the sea, with which they were connected by watercourses. Along the coast of southern Etruria, harbors exploited the presence of lagoons and other natural basins connected with the sea. Rivers mouths provided good shelter for ships and boats; rivers also penetrate inland and thus are useful as navigation channels. Settlements at river mouths developed from the seventh century BCE onward, following the main stream of urbanism. Trading posts were thus located outside the biggest urban centers but dependent on them, so that a binomial relationship was created between inland "powers" and specialized places on the coast, called “ports of trade” or emporia. The concept ofharbor is denoted in Greek sources with terms like limen (harbor environment), or hormos and epineion (anchorage, inner harbor). Technical literature in Latin oflater periods, especially portolans (pilot's books including nautical maps) and Itineraria, distinguishes between portus (an artificially protected area with installations easing ships’ access; cf. Vitr. 5.12.1), and statio or positio navium (minor landing site) and refilgium (small berthing place). According to literary sources of the Roman period, along the Etruscan Tyrrhenian coast there were twenty-eight landing sites at regular distances of around four to eight kilometers from Porta to the mouth of the Fiora River. The problem of identifying the named sites is not completely solved, because of coastal variation, the dearth of archaeological evidence, and frequent errors in the transcription of distances. It is not simple to distinguish archaeologically between landing sites and constructed harbors, although we know that ancient seafaring did not need specially built berths or docks. It seems certain that harbor settlements that already existed in the sixth century BCE, such as Pyrgi, Castrum Novum, Gravisca, Regae, Orbetello, Talamone, Populonia, and Pisa, differed in importance from the sites at the mouths of rivers that were natural berthing places. One may identify some recurrent elements. First of all, the choice of site, which was almost always the mouth of a river or a lagoon in the absence of a bay. In comparison with other areas of the ancient world, major Etruscan cities did not rise on the coast, although each had its own port(s) to which it was connected by a highway. Another remarkable element is the frequent close relationship between such epineia and extra-urban sanctuaries, both of which are direct expressions of the power of the city with respect to the external world.

This paper explores the forms of social interaction between Roman and non-Roman elites in Late Republican Italy.  It examines social obligations based on relationships such as guest-friendship, intermarriage and neighbourhood ties. In particular, it uses social network theory to examine the strength and effectiveness of such ties.

The Etruscan diviners known as haruspices, specialised in practices such as the reading of entrails and the interpretation of lightning omens, represent in many ways an anomaly in Republican Roman religion. Markedly ethnically distinct, regarded as reliable by virtue of their Etruscan origin, they were never fully integrated in the official Republican religious system, yet the Senate demonstrated an interest in their recruitment and education, and consulted them officially in times of crisis, not differently from the augures. Depictions of haruspices in Roman literature vary greatly: some authors treat them with respect and deference, others regard them as little more than charlatan, and Cicero appears to adopt either perspective in turn. Roman generals and politicians were followed on campaign by their own haruspices, and the nobility of Etruria celebrated its adherence to their tradition. This paper proposes to take a closer look at the evolution of representations of haruspices in Rome and Etruria in the Republican period, addressing the literature, epigraphy, and archaeology in order to better understand the real role these diviners played, as well as the changing perceptions Romans had of them. It will also address the role Etruscans, or individuals of purported Etruscan origins, had in building the 'official' image of haruspices in Rome, and selecting which elements of their religious tradition were adopted in Roman practice. Through a detailed analysis of the activity of the haruspices in the Middle and Late Republic, it will aim to understand the unique development of a religious body solidly grounded in a non-Roman tradition but profoundly shaped by Roman domination and influence.