Richard Norton and Robert Seymour Conway

“ It is this incorporation of Italic elements into the Etruscan nomenclature—itself a familiar and inevitable feature of the pirate-type of conquest and settlement, under which many women who bear and nurse and first name the children belong to the conquered race—that has entrapped so many scholars into the delusion that the language itself was Indo-European. ”

“ Metals also suggest that another source of their wealth was that of the middleman. Their towns were the centres of exchange, where the north and west met the south and east. They had no mines of gold or tin, but the carriers of tin, iron or amber [7] from the north met in the markets of Etruria the Phoenician and Greek merchants bringing gold and ivory and the other luxuries of the East. The quantities of gold, silver and bronze found in Etruscan tombs prove this clearly. Of these metals the only one found in unworked form, in what are practically pigs, is bronze. ”

“ The history of Etruscan art has usually been wrongly estimated owing to the widespread delusion that objects found in Etruria were in the true sense products of native artists and indicative of native-grown culture. It is only recently, and not even yet completely, that the term “Etruscan” has been given up as the name for the terra-cotta vases (which were found in the 19th century by the earlier archaeologists of the modern scientific school in great quantities in the Etruscan tombs) ; these are now known to have been made by Greek potters. There are few books on the subject of Etruscan art. ”

“ Work in relief for the friezes and the other decorations of temples was very common, and shows remarkable skill in the mere processes of modelling and baking the slabs of terra-cotta that were fastened by nails to the beams. So far as the figures themselves are concerned, they seem to have but little meaning in connexion with the building they decorate. Satyrs and maenads, chariot-races and such scenes taken over from Greek models are perhaps the commonest. ”

“ In the study of the monuments a division must be made distinguishing between the obviously Greek works, the works done with a desire to copy Greek models and the work of native artists. To separate the objects in the way suggested required a very considerable familiarity with Greek art, and though in many cases the result may be doubtful, still so much must be taken from the Etruscans that they are shown to have little more artistic feeling than the Romans. ”

“ The Etruscan and Roman portraitist thought, on the other hand, of his subject as illustrating character in ways of action; hence pure Etruscan and Roman portraits are much more tense in line, and the expression of the eye is not dreamy but distinctly focussed. They are different, but, as art, one is as fine as the other. The scenes on the sides of these urns are, as in the case of the gems and mirrors, very frequently taken from Greek story, and often are scenes of battle. ”

“ Objects of large size, as the bronze doors of Veii, [31] the chariots of Perugia in the New York museum, or large Bronze. tripods or shields, show that the artisans had large quantities of the material at their disposal. As with the vases or gems, so in these metal objects the distinction must be drawn between pure Etruscan work and the work that was done by Greek workmen or by artisans copying the Greek style. As Etruscan art has been wrongly estimated through forgetfulness of the Greek influence, so Greek bronzes have possibly received credit that does not belong to them. ”

“ In considering the trade of the country it has been pointed out that its chief political connexions were with Carthage, but the artistic sense of Carthaginians or other Phoenicians was not more developed than that of the Etruscans. They were traders, and doubtless brought the Etruscans some of the Egyptian and Eastern objects which have been found in their tombs, articles that date from the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. But beside the Phoenicians the Ionian Greeks from the 9th century had been trading and colonizing in Sicily and Italy. ”

“ What we learn from them merely serves to strengthen what we learn from the pottery—that the Etruscans depended on the Greek world for their artistic conceptions. Though many Phoenician gems (in fact, scarcely any other kind) have been found in Sardinia, these are comparatively rare in Etruria, where the earliest gems occur about 650 B.C. Some of these earliest show the Ionian influence, which is also shown in certain gold rings, but most of them represent the Attic style as seen on the black-figured vases of Athens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Intercourse with Athens, however, came to an end about 480, when the Sicilian Greeks mastered the trade of the western Mediterranean, so that in the Etruscan tombs later than this date we find fewer and fewer imported vases, and more and more native imitations. It is generally taken for granted that these Attic vases were brought to Etruria by Greek traders, but considering how little the Greek historians, even Herodotus, knew of that country, this is unlikely. ”

“ The wealth that was the source of this power of the Etruscans must in the main have been drawn from agriculture and forestry. The rich land with its many streams could scarcely be surpassed for the raising of crops and cattle, and the hills were heavily timbered. That it was such material as this, which leaves no trace with the passing of time, that they sold cannot be doubted, for there is plenty of evidence that their country was visited by foreign traders of many lands, and that they bought largely of them, especially of metals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The chariots above mentioned and the tripods in the Harvard museum are plainly Greek; the round shields with ornament in bands are native. Antefixes of tombs were of bronze, and in some cases the eyes of the figures were inlaid with glass paste. The best-known articles of bronze are the mirrors, [32] which are very dependent on Greece for their models, though the poor style in which the scenes that decorate them are in most cases carved shows that these articles of common use were produced, as was natural, mainly by ordinary workmen. ”

“ Over all these ruled Mantus and Mania, the counterparts of Pluto and Persephone in Greece. As a result of this complete hierarchy of divine powers the priesthood of Etruria was large, powerful, and of such fame that Etruscan haruspices were sent for from distant places to interpret the sacrifices and the oracles (Livy v. i. 6, xxvii. 37. 6) .
Art.—The evidence drawn from tradition and custom which we have so far considered in relation to the origin and beliefs of the Etruscans has taken us into the prehistoric times much earlier than those when the handicrafts developed into true fine arts. ”

“ Gradually, however, as one comes down towards the more fixed historic periods, certain objects, obviously imported from the eastern Mediterranean, occur, and these are the first signs of an interest in the beauty or curiosity of things, an interest that local workmen could not yet satisfy, but which stirred them to endeavour. It was probably during the 9th century that this began, not long after the period when foreign trade began to flourish. ”

“ There is no evidence that the Etruscans had easel-paintings like the Greeks, but their skill in painting is well illustrated by the pictures with which they frequently covered the inner walls of their tombs. The wall was prepared with a coating of fine white stucco on which the figures were Painting. painted with a large variety of tints. The best of them have been found at Tarquinii, Chiusi, Volci, Caere, Veii. [43] The paintings exhibit the usual Greek influences. They show a certain ponderous realism, but as works of art they are of little value. ”

“ Such work shows little power of origination, but much of the interest taken by careful workmen by copying carefully, and the tendency that such workmen almost invariably display of overloading the subject with too much ornament and detail. The small ash-urns, either of stone or terra-cotta, are in certain ways more interesting than the more elaborate sarcophagi, for on these urns the heads of the figures reclining on one elbow which form the usual decoration of the covers are often obvious attempts at portraiture. ”

“ Then, too, the chief products Etruria had to give Greece were metals, so it is more likely that it was the Etruscan traders who, having carried metal to Greece (where Etruscan bronze was famous [29] ) , brought back the vases.
Though most collections make no distinction between Greek and Etruscan scarabs the differences, though slight, are quite certain, and consist in the greater elaboration of the borders, edges and backs of the Etruscan examples. The commonest material for these gems is red carnelian, and Scarabs. agate frequently occurs. ”

“ A half life size bust in the Tyszkiewicz collection [38] made probably about 600 B.C. is cast solid. Later they learned the art of hollow-casting, but their attempts to reproduce figures in the round are generally lacking in skill. One reason for this was the lack of good marble, the quarries at Carrara not having been used till Roman times. Terra-cotta was the material most commonly used, and their skill in modelling and colouring this was great. The earlier statues of large size have perished; but there are three famous sarcophagi which show the work of Ionian Etruscan artists ”

“ The bronze coinage shows a distinct scale of reduction in weight due to the increasing use of the precious metals. Many examples show a design only on one side. The designs of the majority of the types are taken from Greek models, but strangely enough the die-cutters show no such skill as that of the makers of gems. ”

“ The mediae b, g, d, though they often occur in words handed down by writers as Etruscan, are never found in the Etruscan inscriptions, though the presence of the mediae in the Umbrian and Oscan alphabets and in the abecedaria shows that they existed in the earliest form of the Etruscan alphabet, O is very rare. ”

“ Reference has been made to the scarabs set as ornament in the gold necklaces, and similarly we find amber used and, in the later work, precious stones and pearls.
As in Greece the Etruscans first carved their figures out of wood, [36] but what these figures were like we can only imagine. The earliest known figures in the round are even less successful than the contemporary Greek work. An early attempt at a female bust [37] is made not by casting but by Sculpture. riveting plates of bronze together. ”

“ In various towns there were various fashions of pottery or jewelry, but good, bad and indifferent constantly occur together in a way possible only among a people who possessed no natural artistic capacities and had no widespread standards of cultivated taste. ”

“ These traditions of the coming of Ionian Greeks to Italy are completely borne out by the archaeological remains found in Ionian lands and in Etruria, and it is agreed that a great part of what has hitherto been considered Etruscan is no more Etruscan than the Moorish plates of the 15th century found in Italy are Florentine. The best works in most of the smaller arts are almost without exception Greek, the earlier Ionian, the later Attic ”

“ In the earlier tombs this Pottery. ware is present in greater numbers than any other, and the vases exhibit considerable dexterity of manufacture so far as form goes. But it is evident from comparisons with early Ionian vases that the better proportioned of the shapes are direct copies of the Ionian. The decoration of the bucchero is either engraved, in which case it is almost always extremely rude, or formed by figures modelled or pressed by a mould on to the body of the vase. ”

“ This too was the belief of the Greek historians, many of whom considered Rome as a Tyrrhenian city. [5]
Cities and Organization.—The chief cities of Etruria proper were Veii, Tarquinii, Falerii, Caere, Volci, Volsinii, Clusium, Arretium, Cortona, Perusia, Volaterrae (Volterra) , Rusellae, Populonium and Faesulae. That the country was thickly settled is made plain by the ruins that have been found. ”

“ The alphabet is of about the 3rd century B.C.
7. From the recurrence of a number of particular formulae with frequent numerals at intervals, the book seems to be a liturgical document. Torp has pointed out that the two documents have some forty words in common, and, with Lattes (“Primi Apprenti sulla grande iscriz. Etrusca,” &c., in Rendic. d. Reale Inst. Lomb., serie ii. vol. xxxviii., 1900, p. 345 ff.) , has shown that both contain lists of offerings made to certain gods (among them Suri, Leθam, and Calu) ”

“ Strabo v. 250) , hunting, music and dancing. All these are shown in the tomb pictures, and all, with the exception of the hunting, developed first as a part of religious service, and their importance is shown by the strictness of the rules that governed them (Cicero, De harusp. resp. ii. 23) . Did a dancer lose step, or an attendant lift his hand from the chariot, the games lost their value as a religious service. ”