Greece, Etruria and Rome: Relationships and Receptions*

doi: 10.2143/AWE.9.0.2056300 AWE 9 (2010) 43-61 GREECE, ETRURIA AND ROME: RELATIONSHIPS AND RECEPTIONS* DAVID RIDGWAY for Sybille, and in memory of Francesca Romana Abstract This paper is inspired by the hope that a permanent teaching post in Etruscan and Early Italic Studies will be established at Oxford University in the foreseeable future. Its aim is to illustrate some of the reasons why it is singularly appropriate to include the study of the Etruscans and their civilisation in university-level teaching and research in Classical and European Archaeology. In particular, certain aspects of the relationship between the Etruscan civilisation and its Greek and Roman counterparts are reviewed; so too are modern attitudes to the Etruscans, some of which (especially in Britain) are giving cause for concern. Background My first task, and it is a very pleasant one, is to thank my fellow members of the Board of Management of the Sybille Haynes Fund for inviting me to deliver this first Sybille Haynes Lecture. I felt very honoured – but also delighted that I could actually do something, not only to salute Dr Haynes’s magnificent scholarly achievements in the Etruscan field and beyond,1 but also to express my heartfelt gratitude to her for many acts of personal and professional kindness to my late wife and myself. I am aware that my gratitude is matched by that of countless others: had he been lucky enough to know her, I feel sure that Voltaire would have said: ‘If Sybille Haynes did not exist, it would be necessary to invent her.’ * The following pages carry the text, only very slightly adjusted, of The Sybille Haynes Lecture in Etruscan and Early Italic Studies that I was privileged to deliver in the Auditorium of St John’s Col- lege, Oxford on 27 April, 2009; I have taken the opportunity to add, I hope usefully, a certain amount of annotation. I am most grateful to Nicholas Purcell and Irene Lemos for their organisation and hospitality, and for scheduling my lecture as the first in the otherwise distinguished graduate seminar series (‘Etruscan Archaeology, History, and Art’) that they had arranged for the Oxford Uni- versity Faculty of Classics during Trinity Term (April–June) 2009. The subsequent papers were read by G. Camporeale (Florence), C. Riva (London), A. Romualdi (Florence), S. Stopponi (Perugia) and A. Naso (Innsbruck) – for Naso’s paper, see pp. 63–86 below. 1 See further Swaddling and Perkins 2009, vi–vii. 993510_AWE9_2010_03.indd3510_AWE9_2010_03.indd 4433 22/12/10/12/10 113:163:16 44 D. RIDGWAY It remains to note here that Dr Haynes has recently added to her many services to her subject by generously causing Oxford University to set in train the proce- dures that will result – soon, let us hope – in the endowment there of a permanent university teaching post in Etruscan and Early Italic Studies. This good news was very much in my mind when I chose a title for this lecture, and even more so when I began to assemble its contents. Oxford has acquired a reputation that is second to none for the attention it has paid since time immemorial to the civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome: so I thought it would be useful to review some of the reasons why – I will not presume to suggest ways in which – Etruria and its deni- zens could, and should, be permanently integrated with those existing fields under the inseparable headings of teaching and research. The Land, Origins and Language of the Etruscans First things first. The land of Etruria is bounded on the western seaboard of the Italian peninsula by the Tiber (the river of Rome) and the Arno (the river of Flor- ence). Easily the best description of the immensely variegated landscape thus enclosed is still that first provided in 1848 by an English civil servant, George Dennis, as The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria; his book was substantially revised 30 years later, and is now usually consulted in its so-called ‘third edition’ (the 1883 reprint).2 As well as being a thoroughly ‘good read’, Dennis’s book is also important – still: for not everything that he saw and described in the 19th century has survived until the 21st. This is not the time or place to comment on the fact that Dennis had not followed a university course in Etruscan Studies or indeed in anything else: I only mention it because I think it reflects great credit on the Uni- versity of Oxford that in 1885 it conferred upon him an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law. I suspect that there were those in Oxford at the time who thought it very suitable that Dennis was honoured at the instance of Archibald Henry Sayce, the distinguished Oxford Orientalist:3 after all, no less an authority than Herodo- tus, writing in the 5th century BC, had noted in passing that the Etruscans had 2 George Dennis (1814–98) was employed in the London Excise Office from 1829 until the first publication of his masterpiece (Dennis 1848), when he transferred to the Colonial Office. He served in British Guiana (1849–63) prior to consular appointments in Benghazi, Sicily and (from 1879 until his retirement in 1888) Smyrna. Rhodes 1973 is a fascinating account of his career, travels, writings and excavations. 3 1845–1933. Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford; Professor of Assyriology 1891–1915. In 1875, Sayce and a friend (‘with [Dennis 1848], one of the most delightful archaeological books ever written, in our portmanteaux’) spent ‘an exceedingly pleasant month among the tombs and museums of Etruria’: Sayce 1923, 124–25. He later stayed with Dennis in Smyrna: Sayce 1923, 167–68, 200–01; Rhodes 1973, 140–46. 993510_AWE9_2010_03.indd3510_AWE9_2010_03.indd 4444 22/12/10/12/10 113:163:16 GREECE, ETRURIA AND ROME: RELATIONSHIPS AND RECEPTIONS 45 migrated to Italy from the East, specifically from Lydia in western Asia Minor (Herodotus 1. 94).4 But life is never as simple as that. Writing more than four centuries after Hero- dotus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus declared that the Etruscans were indigenous to Italy (Antiquitates Romanae 1. 30. 2). This fundamental difference of opinion between two Greek historians was naturally the occasion of much vigorous ancient and modern debate until the middle of the 20th century,5 after which Massimo Pal- lottino, the father of modern Etruscan Studies, showed that ‘the formative process of the Etruscans can only have taken place on the territory of Etruria itself; and we can witness the final stages of this process thanks to the rich archaeological docu- mentation we possess for the period from the ninth to the seventh centuries’.6 This conclusion was reinforced in 1991 by Dominique Briquel’s demonstration that the Lydian hypothesis was deliberately fabricated by the Lydians themselves, not long before Herodotus’ day, for reasons connected with their own foreign policy at the time.7 It is worth pointing out, incidentally, that ‘the authority of Herodotus’8 is not involved: the Father of History was merely recording what he had been told – his all-too-famous note on the Etruscans begins with the fatal words ‘the Lydians say’. While I am about it, I had better mention the Etruscan language.9 It cannot be said too often that decipherment is not an issue, because the Etruscan alphabet is instantly recognisable as a slightly adjusted version of its Greek counterpart. The real problem is that no Etruscan literature has survived; which means (among other things) that we have no Etruscan historical narratives to set against the largely hos- tile Greek and Latin sources. The Etruscan texts that we do have range in date from the 7th to the 1st century BC, and consist of several thousand short inscriptions, mainly funerary or votive, and fewer than a dozen longer religious and legal pre- scriptions of a highly technical nature. Etruscan texts can be read with confidence, although they cannot always be fully understood. It is true that unlike Greek, and unlike the Italic languages, the basis of the Etruscan language is not Indo-Euro- pean: but, even within the excruciatingly limited conceptual range that is available, it is also clear that regional differences in expression were well established by the time the first Etruscan inscriptions appear. 4 Fehling 1989, 193; Munson 2006, especially 259; Asheri et al. 2007, 146 (but it is not true that ‘among modern scholars the oriental theory [of Etruscan origins] still prevails’: see n. 6, below). 5 Aigner Foresti 1974. 6 Pallottino 1975, 79. So too Barker and Rasmussen 1998, 44: ‘the development of Etruscan culture has to be understood within an evolutionary sequence of social elaboration in Etruria’. 7 Briquel 1991, especially 3–89 (and see Ridgway 1993). Another view is that of Drews 1992 (but see Pritchett 1993, 228). 8 Scullard 1966, especially 226. 9 Penney 1988, 721–26; Bonfante and Bonfante 2002; Wallace 2008. 993510_AWE9_2010_03.indd3510_AWE9_2010_03.indd 4455 22/12/10/12/10 113:163:16 46 D. RIDGWAY Etruscans and Romans As I approach the subject indicated by my title, I cannot help recalling a name that comes to the mind of anyone who talks in public about the Etruscans. It is that of a probably quite competent historian who seems to have been regarded by his immediate family as a half-wit. He was encouraged in his youth by Livy to study, and write, history, and then, at the age of 50, he somewhat unexpectedly became the Roman emperor Claudius.10 He reigned as the third successor of Augustus from AD 41 until his death in AD 54 (and Claudius it was who caused the island beyond the Oceanus, Britannia, to be added to the Roman empire – an event that was celebrated in sculpture as far away as Aphrodisias in Caria11).

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