Imagining the Etruscans: Modern European Perceptions of an Ancient Italian Civilization

The Etruscans, ancient people of pre-Roman Italy, have been the subject of lively discussions among both scholars and disseminators of popular pseudo-scientific theories from the late Humanistic age, an interest and popularity that reached a crescendo in the 18th to 20th centuries. This paper aims to explore the ideological features of the foundation of the highly specialized but often self-referential discipline, the so-called “Etruscology” that finally developed in the 20th century, with particular reference to the complicated connections between the very Italian territorial context of Etruscan civilization and the European dimension of its reception and popularization.

For whom no bell tolled

This chapter describes infant burials and their history. When cities were established in Mesopotamia in the fifth millennium b.c.e., particular burial places evolved: adults and older children were interred in cemeteries outside the dwelling sites, infants were disposed of within their natal homes. On the Greek island of Astypalaia, a specific cemetery for newborns was used from 750 b.c.e. At the Athenian Agora, 449 fetal and neonatal skeletons were uncovered in a well. In Roman Italy, deceased infants were mostly disposed of in mass graves. From the 5th century, burial in church-associated cemeteries became the usual pattern in Anglo-Saxon Britain. Funeral rites included viewing of the deceased, prayer and religious service, procession to the gravesite, and burial. For deceased newborn infants, the adult rite was often practised in a simplified form. During the 19th century, burial clubs providing funds for funeral expenses were abused to make money from infanticide. The maintenance of unique mortuary practices lasting millennia suggests that newborns, especially when preterm or malformed, were considered unfinished, and of little societal importance.

The unity of Roman Italy

Further research (following Chapter 31) on anomalies in the supposed unity of Roman Italy shows the abundant (and mysteriously neglected) evidence, which does much to question the ‘standard view’ of the topic, as enshrined in Toynbee, ‘the political unification of the Peninsula by Rome…led eventually to the population of the whole Peninsula becoming uniform in language and culture’. We are talking about explicit evidence in authors of the late Republic and early Empire about ample and specific instances of regional diversity.

The unity of Roman Italy

Starting from the reproach of Patavinity laid at Livy’s door by Asinius Pollio, this paper examines contemporary thinking about regional anomalies of language in Roman Italy and the ways in which the inhabitants of ancient Italy expressed dislike, disgust, or surprise at the way ‘others’ in the peninsula behaved, or were alleged to behave; tota Italia was a slogan—then as now—if not invalidated, then at least weakened and impugned by numerous inconvenient exceptions and anomalies.