ETRUSCAN INFLUENCE IN ROME
In the older group of tombs of the latter part of the sixth and the earlier part of the fifth centuries B.C. we find a bright and cheerful delight in the material pleasures of life, and a clear confidence in the belief that the race, whose means are sufficient to provide and adorn a sumptuous sepulchral chamber, will also be permitted to enjoy all this—from wine and women to hunting and sanguinary games—in the hereafter. Thus it is not for nothing that these tombs synchronize with the time of Etruscan imperialism. Previous to this, the maritime power of Etruria had made it dreaded and hated by the Greeks, whose ships were exposed to seizure and piracy as often as they ventured across the ‘Tyrrhenian Sea’, so that the Greeks had only one colony on the north coast of Sicily, and had great trouble in keeping up communications with the Campanian Kyme and with Massilia.[74] ‘The savage Etruscan’ already appears in post-Homeric poetry, where Circe bears Odysseus two children, Latinus and Agrius (the savage), who represent the two principal races of Italy, the Latins and the Etruscans. At length, in 474 B.C., the Kymeans, in alliance with Hieron, the ruler of Syracuse, succeeded in gaining a sea victory over the Etruscan fleet, which Pindar has celebrated in the first Pythian Ode (i. 72 ff.), and after which Hieron sent to Olympia a bronze helmet with an inscription recording the victory, now in the British Museum. This defeat was the first warning that the Etruscans had reached the zenith of their power, but as late as the latter part of the fourth century their piracy was still dangerous and troublesome to Greek shipping, as is seen from a passage of Aristotle and an inscription of 325-324 B.C.[75] As a bulwark of their maritime power, as early as the sixth century they had conquered Corsica, and on land they ruled from the plain of the Po, which they likewise conquered in the sixth century, to the southernmost part of Campania, where they made Capua itself submit to their power.[76] Cato was justified in saying that almost the whole of Italy in the days of old had been ‘in the power of the Tuscans’,[77] and when Sophocles[78] would enumerate the districts of Italy he mentions only three: Oinotria (South Italy), the Tyrrhenian, and the Ligurian land. When the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War undertook the desperate campaign against Syracuse, they allied themselves in 415 with the Etruscans, whose auxiliaries were amongst the bravest in the Athenian offensive force.[79] In the period of the wall-paintings in question, Rome herself was also made subject to them and had to pay contributions to the powerful Etruscan confederation, after the king of Clusium, Porsenna, had seized the city in 508 B.C. As is well known, attempts were made by later historians to gloss over this capture of the town, and the honorary decrees of the senate to Porsenna are described as voluntary, but tell quite plainly their own tale of subjection.[80] Against the background of this event the contemporary Tomba della Scimmia at Chiusi acquires a new interest; it was constructed for one of those families which took part in the victory over Rome. But previous to this, the names of the Roman kings: Lucius Tarquinius and Tarquinius Superbus—Tarquinius is the Etruscan Tarchna[81]—bear witness to the dependence of Rome, which is also evident from the permanent Etruscan occupation of the Janiculum. It is quite possible that the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus does not mark the fall of the national monarchy, but was simply an attempt to throw off the foreign yoke, an attempt which led to Porsenna’s occupation of the city two years later and thus did not bring about the emancipation of the Romans.[82] It is in this period of dependence that the Etruscans left their mark on the laws and customs of Rome, that the three oldest Roman tribes, Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, got their names, which, as stated by Varro,[83] on the evidence of an Etruscan tragedian Volnius, are Etruscan, a view shared by the modern philologist Wilhelm Schulze.[84] The insignia also of the Roman officials, such as the curule chair and the toga praetexta,[85] and the twelve consular lictors with the fasces,[86] are rightly traced back to Etruria. For the Etruscan confederation consisted of twelve towns, and each of these chose a king who appeared at the gatherings followed by a lictor, and only when they chose a common overlord and war-leader could he appear with twelve lictors. It is therefore rather improbable that the Roman kings appeared with twelve lictors in their train; more probably this large retinue only became the privilege of the consuls after the suppression of Etruria. But it was upon the nobility of Rome that those years of Etruscan predominance left their deepest impress, and it has thus been possible for Wilhelm Schulze, through his investigations of Etruscan and Latin proper names, to throw a remarkable light on the earliest history of Rome and to prove that a great number of the oldest patrician families of Rome were descendants of the Etruscan ruling race, and that intermarriage with Etruscans, and Etruscan influence on Rome, persisted down to the end of the Roman republic.[87] It is also beyond doubt that the peculiar Roman system of patron and client, by which clients attached themselves to a nobleman as followers (cluentes), added his name to their own, and paid him dues in peace time, though they were originally immune from military service,[88] was of Etruscan origin, nay, was the essential feature in the structure of the Etruscan community. In course of time the Roman clients became liable to military service, obtaining at the same time civic rights, and it is presumably this fact which accounts for Rome’s final victory over the Etruscans, whose proud Lucumones reserved to themselves both civic privileges and military skill, and were therefore doomed to extinction when luxury and effeminacy had sapped their strength.
ETRUSCAN NOBILITY AND CLIENTS
But at the period of the tombs in question the blood of the nobility is still healthy and is in no need of regeneration. This is the nobility whose long lances controlled Italy, and whose cavalry was so terrible in onset.[89] The pictures of the tombs show them at the death lament, at feasts, and on hunting expeditions, at symposia, where men and women freely indulge in wine and love, and finally in the Tomba delle Bighe as spectators seated on the stands. On the other hand, the horsemen, the dancers, the dancing-women, and the athletes are certainly of lower extraction, hired servants like the corresponding performers in Rome, perhaps, to some extent, clients.
XV
DECLINE AND FALL OF ETRURIA
But domestic and foreign enemies destroyed this race of rulers. At the beginning of the fourth century they were attacked simultaneously by the Gauls from the north, by the Samnites[90] from the south-east, and by the Romans from the south. The Gauls inundated for some time the whole of Etruria and presently captured Rome as well, but were driven back again to North Italy. The Samnites seized Capua; but a far heavier blow was the loss of the great city of Veii, the southernmost city of Etruria proper, which was captured by the Romans in 396 B.C.[91] In spite of the alliance with Carthage, the maritime power of the Etruscans also declined in the course of the fourth century, but it was not until the third century that they received the death-blow at the hands of the Romans and Latins. That they were still dangerous antagonists at the beginning of the third century may be seen from Livy’s account, but at the end of the century, during the second Punic war, their rebellious spirit was easily quelled, and even Hannibal could not tempt them to unite in revolt.[92] At that time the country was still rich, as is plainly shown by the requisitions for Scipio’s army.[93] It was not until the following century that Etruria sank into deep poverty; in the time of the Gracchi the country was almost a waste.[94] Plautus describes the Etruscan people as very immoral; in the Cistellaria (562) the poet speaks of those who procure their dowry ignobly, like the Tuscans, by selling their bodies, and in the Curculio (482) the Etruscan quarter of Rome is referred to as ‘inhabited by persons who sell themselves’. Then followed in the first century B.C. the military colonies of Sulla,[95] which gradually Romanized the country. Inscriptions, especially from the borderland of Umbria, which had been partly Etruscan, bear ample witness to the way in which the language changed even within the old Etruscan families. About the middle of the first century parts of the country were ravaged by P. Clodius Pulcher and his bands of soldiers.[96] Then comes the foundation of new military colonies by Caesar and, finally, the complete Romanization of the country under Augustus. Propertius[97] describes, not without pathos, the extermination of the last Etruscan strongholds during the Perusian war in the year 40 B.C.: ‘eversosque focos antiquae gentis Etruscae’.
The knowledge of the Etruscan language was preserved all through antiquity by the Etruscan soothsayers. The emperor Claudius was versed in Etruscan, and delivered a long address in the Senate about the preservation of the old Etruscan ritual against the invasion of new, oriental elements. The other emperors had, as a rule, an Etruscan soothsayer in their suite, whom they consulted before taking any important step, and this custom survived down to the introduction of Christianity. Julian the Apostate was accompanied by hosts of Etruscan soothsayers, who, however, undoubtedly read the sacred books in the Latin translation by Tarquitius Priscus,[98] and, as late as 408, we learn that Tuscan soothsayers and scribes still existed. If any of them at that time could still read the language, then Etruscan, as a dead and sacred language, had survived the disappearance of the people by about half a millennium.[99]