Etruscans

Abstract

For most of the nine centuries prior to the Augustan settlement of Italy in 27 bce, the Etruscans were the most significant indigenous inhabitants of the Italian peninsula. At its height, their civilization amounted to a great deal more than a pale reflection of the glory that was contemporary Greece, or an eccentric prelude to the grandeur that was destined to suffuse Republican and Imperial Rome. Treated in its own right and on its own terms, the archaeological, architectural, artistic, historical, linguistic, political, and religious record of the largely autonomous Etruscan cities is indispensable to the proper understanding of the whole pre-Roman Mediterranean.