Italy > Etruscans

Etruscans

It is true that this sense of mystery corresponds with the commonplace, banal image of the Etruscan world, outside of time and space.

A fixed idea of mystery surrounds the evidence of this “ancient people which resembled no other, neither in language nor in customs”, as Dionysus of Alicarnasso, a Greek historian at the time of Augustus, described them.

And yet even for those who turn to antiquity not so much - or not only - to experience vivid emotions, but to reconstruct the deep roots of our civilisation, it is difficult to escape such feelings when meeting the Etruscans.

For centuries, interpretation of their civilisation has tried the best minds in Europe, where the themes of history and archaeology have been most assiduously studied, and each generation has written its history, has given its interpretation.

In recent times, the winning line has been to? Enshrined in the glass cases of the Etruscan museums, they watch us; their smiles still alive, ironical smiles which observe the world with cynical interest.It is almost as if they are aware that for centuries they have had to act the part of a mysterious people.

Today, this mystery still seems a sullen defence of their most hidden secrets, which scholars from every country have tried to reveal through scrupulous analysis of archaeological material and the environment in which they existed.

Take the Etruscans out of the fantastical world they were often placed in, to make them more like us and understand their true nature.

To do so, we have to move closer to this people by visiting what remains of their settlements, identifying their artefacts in museum displays, and trying to interpret the few writings which have been handed down to us.

The final aim is to clear away the sense of mystery which still envelopes a civilisation which was, like our own, varied and many-faceted over the approximately one thousand years of its history - at times rich and fortunate, at others, defeated and impoverished, open to other cultures and terribly conservative, and yet always original and “different” in all its guises.

We now know that the Etruscans occupied a position of prime importance within the context of ancient Italy’s populations before the Romans unified the peninsula culturally and politically.