Etruscans: Map & History

Legend and history

According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Etruscans called themselves Rasenna (Greek Ῥασέννα), a stem from the Etruscan Rasna (𐌛𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀): "the people". Evidence of inscriptions as Tular Rasnal (𐌕𐌖𐌋𐌀𐌛 𐌛𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀𐌋), "boundary of the people", or Mechlum Rasnal (𐌌𐌄𐌙𐌋 𐌛𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀𐌋), "community of the people", attest to its autonym usage. The Tyrsenian etymology, however, remains unknown.

In Attic Greek, the Etruscans were known as Tyrrhenians (Τυρρηνοί, Tyrrhēnoi, earlier Τυρσηνοί Tyrsēnoi), from which the Romans derived the names Tyrrhēnī, Tyrrhēnia (Etruria), and Mare Tyrrhēnum (Tyrrhenian Sea).

The ancient Romans referred to the Etruscans as the Tuscī or Etruscī (singular Tuscus).

Economy

The Etruscan economy rested on three principal foundations: agriculture, the exploitation of the region's rich mineral resources together with the working of metals, and Mediterranean trade, the last favoured by the Etruscans' strategic position on the Tyrrhenian coast. Land was regarded as the fundamental source of wealth, but it was above all the mineral riches of the subsoil and the metal trade that gave the coastal cities their exceptional prosperity and drew Greek and Phoenician merchants to Etruria.

Culture

The Etruscan system of belief was an immanent polytheism; that is, all visible phenomena were considered to be a manifestation of divine power and that power was subdivided into deities that acted continually on the world of man and could be dissuaded or persuaded in favor of human affairs. How to understand the will of deities, and how to behave, had been revealed to the Etruscans by two initiators, Tages, a childlike figure born from tilled land and immediately gifted with prescience, and Vegoia, a female figure. Their teachings were kept in a series of sacred books. Three layers of deities are evident in the extensive Etruscan art motifs.