Fall of the Etruscans

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But there was also a time in ancient history when Rome wasn't the Italian superpower that we regularly think of today, but in fact was dominated by another neighbouring people, a people centred to the north in present-day Tuscany that were, for several centuries, a major player in the western Mediterranean, the Etruscans. Today, they're seen as a rather mysterious ancient Italian culture, but the archaeological record for them is rich, particularly in their burials, in their tomb paintings, in their pottery and so on.
Their popularity amongst you ancients listeners is high. In a recent poll we released on Spotify, we asked which overlooked civilizationisation you wanted us to cover next, and the Etruscans ended up on top.
It was the Etruscans who the Romans would topple as the leading power in central Italy, stories about which would become embellished with myths and heroic legends retold by later Roman writers like Livy. So what do we know about the Etruscan decline? What does the literature tell us? And also, what does the archaeology tell us? How do the Etruscans go from major players in the Western Mediterranean to subjects of Rome? That is what we're going to cover today.
It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and joining me to talk through the fall of the Etruscans is the author and Etruscan expert, Dr.
Lucy Shipley. Now, I've interviewed Lucy once before, two years ago, all about the origins and the rise of the Etruscans in the early first millennium BC.
We will put a link to that episode in the description of this one, because this is almost a continuation of that episode. We've done the origins and Rise, now we're doing The Zenith and Fall of the Etruscans.
We're going to start this episode by looking at the Etruscans at the height of their power and then how it ultimately came crashing down in the face of Rome. Lucy was brilliant, she knows so much and is so enthusiastic about all things Etruscans and I really do hope you enjoy.
Lucy, it is wonderful to have you back on the podcast. Oh, thank you so much.
I'm thrilled to be back. You're more than welcome.
I think last time we chatted, it was some two years ago now, wasn't it? And we covered the earlier stage of the Etruscans, their origins and their rise to supremacy. But this is the other end.
Is it Etruscans versus Rome or is it more complicated than that when we're studying their fall? I think it's always more complicated than that. I'm sure if you ask any of your guests, they're going to say, oh, it's always a bit more complicated than that.
And I'm not going to be the exception. And I'm going to be naughty as well, because I know that you want to talk about the fall of the Etruscans, but I just want to take a little bit of time to really enjoy them at their height because it's such an easy thing to do, isn't it? We talk about the rise and the origins and then vroomf, we're straight through the good part and then on to the destruction and the end.
And I don't want to just race to the end. I want to really examine and go into all the ways in which the Etruscans were really flourishing at their peak, if that's okay.
Yes, let's do that. So let's kick it off with the Etruscans.
I mean, set the scene with us, Lucy. Who were the Etruscans and define their world when they are at their peak? Yep.
Reminders for everybody that is kind of not listened to, not listened to the first part of the Etruscans episode as a warm-up for this. Come on, people.
So we are talking central Italy. You know, the heartland of the Etruscans is that land between the River Tiber, the river that flows through Rome, and the River Arno that flows through Florence, if that gives you a nice little boundary.
What we're going to be talking about today is the kind of period where they're at their absolute height. So we are talking about, so we'll probably start around 600 BC, and then we'll roll forwards in time from there.
So I think in our last episode, we talked a lot about historical texts, the issue of the Etruscans being featured in a lot of other people's historical texts, but not leaving us very much of their own writings, although we know they were writing. So they're kind of this tantalising people almost on the edge of written history, which is, I think, one of the things that I find so absolutely fascinating about them.
Archaeologically, there's this real preconception that the Etruscans are mostly known through their burial archaeology. Hopefully, that's changing.
I'm going to talk a bit more about that through this episode. Hopefully, in the first episode, we made that clear as well.
It's not just tombs, but it is definitely also tombs, to steal a tagline from another history hit podcast. Yes, I know.
So yeah, we're kind of starting this story. And when we left off last time, we just started talking about this kind of figure that appears in the classical sources.
And we talked about this chap called Demaratus of Corinth. And I think that's quite a good place to start this episode.
And there's a lot of hoo-ha about, is this person real? Are they real? Are they not? Is this a genuine historical figure? I think it's always really dangerous to be assuming that we can identify individuals from 600 BC, especially when they tend to come with all these magical things that they brought to Italy, which actually the archaeology shows was very much already present at this time. Because that's the first thing that strikes out.
Demaratus of Corinth sounds like a Greek. I'm guessing he was a Greek, yet he's involved with the Etruscans in 600 BC.
Yeah, absolutely. So we know that the Etruscans are trading heavily with Greece.
It depends whose viewpoint you have here, whether they're pirates or whether they're traders. It depends if you're a Greek person wanting to expand into the Western Mediterranean, in which case they're a complete pain and an obstruction.
Or if you're an Etruscan person, then who are these Greeks coming over here into the Western Mediterranean? What are they doing on our trading routes? So there's kind of different perspectives there. And we find these Corinthian wares in Etruria, and then we move forwards in time and we see the Attic black and red figure wares get really popular in Etruria.
So there's a lovely statistic that I really like to trot out at every possible opportunity, which is something like 85-90% of the vases that you see in museums will have come from Etruscan tombs. So if you're wandering around the British Museum, admiring their beautiful attic black figure, attic red figure vases, those have mostly come from Etruria because the Etruscans are putting them in tombs and they're being removed in the 19th century and then heading to these big museums, these big institutions around the world.
So if it wasn't for the Etruscans, I'm sorry, you Beasley, Boardman, all you people with your Ezekias painters and this and that, you wouldn't have that if it wasn't for the Etruscans. So really, all these Greek archaeologists owe a debt to the Etruscans, but they really probably wouldn't like to be told that at all.
So 600 BC, they've got strong connections with Greece. You mentioned this particular figure from Corinth.
So what is the state of the Etruscan world? Is it ruled by a king or is it influential cities? What do we know about the whole makeup of the Etruscan world? So in theory, according to the historical text, there are these 12 cities of the Etruscan Lee, the Dodecapolis, and they make up a collective that identify themselves together as the Rasna, Rasena, the people of the Etruscans. However, what we're starting to see from the archaeology is that the picture for central heartland Etruria is a lot more complicated than that.
There are these smaller settlements, more archaeological excavations at places like Progettivitate, which is near Siena, and recent amazing discoveries at places like San Cassiano de Bagno, although that's a lot later. They show that there's much more activity taking place in Etruria outside these 12 traditional cities.
And it used to be that people would say Etruria is a really good model of this traditional

idea about core and periphery.

So taking models of Greek city-states and you have the city at the center and then you

have the periphery and the tribute and the trade goes in and then the city gets rich.

But in Etruria, I don't think the more and more we understand the Etruscan countryside, I think the more problematic that model becomes. Yet again, it's not as simple as that.
And there's an awful lot more going on. And I like people to remember that as we go on and talk about the kind of interactions with Rome, because this is something that's going to come up time and again.
And you asked about kings. So king is a really tricky thing.
So if you look at the historical sources, they will quite often, and more as we go on, as we talk about those interactions with Rome, they will talk about Etruscan kings. The reason I brought up Demaratus is because he ends up being very closely linked to the Etruscan kings of Rome.
But are these figures really kings? Are they kind of elite families that are important? How do we define what a king is? Is a king someone who's just called a king? What does it matter? We don't have nation states, so why does it matter that we pick up on the semantics of this word king? I think it matters because there are so many different people kind of vying for roles where they have influence, roles where they have power. We know from the Etruscan texts that they have quite a complicated system of magistrates,

the people who are doing these important administrative roles. We know that there are people with an awful lot of resources and presumably political sway and influence to go with that.
I don't know whether I would be happy to call them a king. I would probably say, go and talk to Christopher Smith because he's wonderful and he'll tell you more and more about this.
So going back to kind of the geography for a minute there. So we have this 12 Etruscan cities, but at the time that we're starting to think about the Etruscans on this podcast today, they've also expanded to the north and to the south.
So in the north, they've headed all the way to almost kind of the Venetian lagoon area. Amazing site called Spina, which is this incredible Etruscan trading city

on the Adriatic.

Also the Bologna area as well.

So they seem to be building almost like a colonia,

like a deliberately designed town.

There's an example there called Marzoboto,

which we talked about in the last episode

in relation to kind of architecture,

Etruscan domestic architecture.

But you have evidence of like city planning there, the design of the city, all these features like public space, the design of streets, all of those things are present at Marta Bota, which is really interesting. Before we head south, Lucy, I guess very quickly, tangentially, if they're going north, that must mean, because we talk about interactions with the Greeks, we'll get to the Romans in a minute as well, but the Celts as well, the Goulds, they must have big connections with the Celts as well.
I remember doing an episode about that. Oh, absolutely.
Yes, I really want to talk about this. It's something that quite often gets caught up and forgotten to one side between the relationships of the Greeks and the Romans, which I was just about to do.
So thanks very much for stopping me. We could talk for a long time about relationships between Etruria and Northern Europe, between Etruria and Gaul in particular.
I just talked about colonies. They're in the south of France, Marseille, that area.
There are definitely Etruscan settlements there, trading settlements. There's fantastic Etruscan materials.
The very famous Vix burial, the infamous Vix burial. Not just the crater, but there's also an Etruscan oinike or jug in that burial as well.
So if those things are coming there through Etruscan trade routes, which they might well be, we can see Etruscan influence there. There's an amazing, enormous Hilfort site in Germany called the Heineberg.
And there's a ton of Etruscan material. I'm exaggerating, but there is Etruscan material from there as well.
And then in Spain as well. So we have Etruscan material from the south of Spain near Cadiz.
The Etruscans are really dominating this Western Mediterranean trading world. They seem to have a relationship with the Phoenicians and North Africa, which seems quite collegial.
They ally with each other at various points. I like to facetiously portray them as, from the Greek sources' perspective, they're like an axis of evil, stopping the Greeks from having this trading in the Western Mediterranean when the Etruscans and the Phoenicians team up.
These are these horrible barbarians who are just stopping us from accessing all these exciting markets. But then let's go back to Italy, south of those heartlands of the Etruscans.
What is this relationship that the Etruscans have with, let's say, Rome and that area south of Rome too, because that's also big at this time? Yes, I'm going to kind of start with south of Rome because I think we're going to talk, we're going to inevitably talk a lot about Rome. So let's put it off for as long as we can.
So the Etruscans expand all the way down into Campania. And it seems like there's a almost like a little boundary here.
So the. The Greek influence of real Magna Graecia, southern Italy, butts up against Etruscan influence.
The second longest Etruscan inscription that we have actually comes from Capua, southern Campania, Santa Maria Capua Veteres, excavations there. This is all Vesuvius area, isn't it? Yeah, Vesuvius area, exactly.
And it's just fascinating that this huge, long Etruscan inscription is actually found there rather than kind of somewhere that you'd really expect. So it's just showing that people are writing Etruscan.
Presumably, if you're writing Etruscan, you're also going to be able to read the Etruscan. And we can see that happening there, which is really interesting.
You can also see it in kind of burial styles, beautiful, famous painted tombs at Paistum and the Tomb of the Diver, really very Etruscan kind of influenced in the styling. Also in sort of pottery, we can see it in place names.
I think all those things show that this is a really Etruscan-influenced area. It's hard to tease apart politically what that might mean.
Are these people who are part of, can we call it an Etruscan empire? I don't want to. Are we seeing heavy influence? Are we seeing actual people going there and governing this? It's really tricky to pull apart the actual day-to-day nature of what it would

have been like living in this Etruscan influence, not Etruscan administered southern extent of that area. So in the middle of this, we have Rome.
So we've talked to the north, we've talked to the south, we've talked all about the Western Mediterranean trading world. Rome is kind of sitting smack in the middle of this.
And if we go back to our Demaratus story, in Livy, we have this very lovely, again, it's a really sort of fairy tale narrative about how the Etruscan kings, very clear that these are conceived of as kings, end up in Rome. So Demaratus from Corinth settles in Tarquinia, marries a very rich, influential Etruscan woman from a kind of highly important, one of these elite Etruscan families, marries her, they have children, things are going well.
And his son marries another very powerful Etruscan woman who has this reputation as a kind of seer. That's how she's presented in Lydia.
And again, it's kind of trope with the Etruscans. There's a book describing them as the most religious of people.
So there's this idea that they're kind of mystical. They understand things that others don't.
And this young man, Lucius Tarquinius, he marries this woman called Tanaquil, and they decide to go and seek their fortune elsewhere. And on their way, on journey, an eagle sweeps down from the skies and steals his hat.
It's such an incongruous moment. If this happened, can you imagine just walking along and then there's these blimmin talons in your hair? It would be horrible.
Tanaquil's quick thinking and she spins this as, actually, you are destined for great things. You have been chosen by the eagle.
We can see all this Roman symbolism coming in really nicely. Lucius Tarquinius and his wife, Tanacril, they end up in Rome.
They make all the big moves. They persuade the population that they are so wonderful, and they get voted in as king in about 16 to 579.
That's his reign, supposedly, if we go with Livy's dates. And he gets this new name.
He calls himself Lucis Tacranius Priscus. It's all going great until he gets murdered, because that's what happens to kings in Rome.
The throne doesn't stay with his children. It doesn't go directly to his two sons.
It goes to another person, this new king, Servius Tullius. But Tanacul's quite canny.
Servius Tullius has only got daughters, and it's her, supposedly, who arranges for these two daughters to marry her two sons. So she's canny, but she's not that canny, because she marries them to the wrong ones.
She has this personality mismatch emerges from the sources. And it seems like the younger daughter, Talia Minor, is quite ambitious.
We'll see this again and again with these figures in Roman history, these women who are ambitious and powerful. They want power for themselves.
And she gets married to Tanaka's son, Aarons, who seems to be, from all accounts, a bit of a wimp. He's quite gentle.
And I don't know if this is kind of a misplaced optimism that maybe opposites will attract, but it definitely doesn't work in this case. Talia manages to persuade her sister's husband, Tarquinius Superbus.
He ends up being called Superbus anyway. After all of this happens, he gives himself this shiny new name.
Where have we seen that before? Why not? If you can, maybe you should. And he's ambitious too, but he's married to her sister, who is kind of, again, a more gentle, retiring flower type of personality.
So the two of them scheme off together, get rid of their spouses, slightly problematic thing to do, but it only gets worse because they then go on to overthrow her father. Is this the story that ends brutally with one of them having their carriage, their royal carriage in the street, and they see their dead father in the road, and then they just have the carriage run over the corpse of their dad.
Bingo. That is exactly the story that we are talking about here.
It's presented in Livy that this is all her idea. It's coming from her.
I don't know what kind of daddy issues she has to drive her to do this. Her charioteer supposedly refuses to do this awful thing.
And she takes the reins herself and says, I'll do it then. And drives over the body of her dead father in the street.
So what more drama could you wish for? But again, we have to be careful. So it's such a rip-roaring yarn, isn't it? I saw your face when you started telling it and I'm grinning like an idiot because it's such a great story.
But remember, it's doing a job for Livy. It's showing very clearly that women can be vicious and are not to be trusted near power.
It's kind of this most awful thing to do, to desecrate your father's body, to betray your family. It's a fable.
It's not just a kind of, wow, this is awful, true crime-esque. It's putting together a lesson for the reader that actually women shouldn't be allowed anywhere near power because they will do horrible things like this.
And this is an Etruscan woman as well. We are going to talk so much about Livy's portrayal of the Etruscans, but this idea that women are powerful in Etruscan society and that that is dangerous is going to come up time and again.
Is this more of a thing that actually, if it's Servius Tullius' daughter, and Servius Tullius was a Roman, that she's married to an Etruscan and that has also influenced her becoming, well, as I said in Livy's agenda, her becoming in their eyes barbaric and that's what she's done in that case. Yeah, it's kind of infiltrated into her.
So it's that influence. So she has this very powerful mother-in-law, and it's giving her ideas, effectively, is the thing that's going on.
Oh, Tanaquil comes back into it. Okay, gotcha.
Yeah, so Tanaquil is still kind of in the picture with all of this insanity going on. Although she kind of fades out, I'd love to know if this is all real.
Goodness knows what she's thinking of all of this. She's sort of watching behind her hands going, oh my God, what have I unleashed? But in the end, really, if we think about it from her perspective, it ends up going pretty well for her because her son ends up being king after all of this has calmed down.
After the body has been cleared up out of the street, it's Tarquinius Superbus who goes on to become king in Rome but you can only outrun your karma for so long and they end up being kicked out in their turn this is another really famous story that I think a lot of people will know and it's actually their son who who kind of causes this this problem it's that rape of Lucretia story so I think I referred to this when I was on the podcast before, this idea that Lucretia is a good Roman woman. She is at home.
She is doing textile making. She is weaving.
And the king's son sort of says that there's an argument over women and which women are more virtuous. And the Etruscan women of the court are drinking and partying and having a lovely time, because apparently that's what Etruscan women do, party girls.
And actually Lucretia is a good Roman wife, and she's not doing that. So of course, you always want what you can't have.
And you've seen this exemplary woman, the king's son decides that he wants her for his own and he sexually assaults her. And then we have this kind of knock-on ripple of effects that end up with him and his father being thrown out of Rome.
And that's the end of the Etruscan kings in Rome. But it's very interesting because, again, it's that kind of fairy tale.
These are bad people and bad things happen to them. but it's not as straightforward as, oh, they're out and they're gone.
Sextus Tarquinius is the son, the bad prince who makes this decision and causes all this trouble. And he ends up being murdered in another city of Gabii, which is just close by Rome.
And it's really interesting just seeing how these different cities nearby

start lining up on different sides.

So drawing it back to kind of,

we've talked a lot about Etruscans in Rome there.

We've talked about the Etruscan kings.

But if we draw it back again,

sort of zoom out from the picture,

we can see these other settlements,

other communities are getting drawn into this mess. With the Wealthfront cash account at Cannes, earning 4% annual percentage yield from partner banks on your uninvested cash, nearly 10 times the national average.
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Listen to Our Skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Such an important time, isn't it? This is the link to the origins of the Roman Republic, the expulsion of the kings.
And the important thing there, the king that's being pushed out is an Etruscan king with his son and so that is seen as you mentioned the rape of lucretia there all seen as the origins of the roman republic but as you've also hinted at right there that is not the end of the story the etruscans are linked to the expulsion of the kings because they are the kings but that's not the end for the etruscans now you see this ripple on effect as as it now, the line has been drawn, the line in the sand has been drawn, there is conflict ahead. Yeah.
So if you wanted to tie this up in a really neat little bow, you could kind of see this as the beginning of a major shift in the relationships between Etruria and Rome. So you could, if you want, if you want it to be very tidy, you could say that this marks the moment when Etruscan influence over Rome has fallen back completely.
So now we're sort of seeing Rome moving towards having influence over Etruria eventually. This is maybe that moment where the pendulum just shifts, shifts the middle, and then it's going to keep on going.
So it's so interesting just seeing how different communities end up being dragged into this. So Superbus goes off and he hangs out in Vey for a little while, and then he calls on other Etruscan elite families.
Livy would call them kings. Vey's another city nearby, is it, Lucy? Yeah, sorry.
I think we're going to talk more about Vey later. So Vey is about 10 miles north of Rome.
And nowadays, it's kind of absorbed into the suburbs of Rome. But it's still, at this point, it's an independent Etruscan city.
It's got huge wealth from being closely situated to the Tiber. It's also got access on what will later go on and become the Via Flaminia.
So, it's one of the most important Etruscan cities. And crucially, it's right on Rome's doorstep.
And this kind of presence, this proximity of two cities that are both starting to vie for power, vie for control of resources very close together, is not going to go well for one of them at this point. So it makes sense if you've fallen out with Rome, which Superbus has spectacularly been kicked out, where are you going to go? You're going to go to their closest kind of rival and off he goes to they.
And he kind of calls in other Etruscan allies and they try and take on Rome in order to win it back for him. However, they are unsuccessful.
So that's the kind of almost like the founding myth, this struggle against the Etruscans from a Roman perspective anyway, this struggle against these Etruscan forces. They're coming down from Ciusi, which is a city of inland Etruria.
It's quite a long distance to the north. These troops are coming down and trying to assist in the retaking of Rome for this Etruscan kingship, this Etruscan family who want to retain it.
Of course they want to retain it, but they are unsuccessful. It's interesting though, isn't it? All these stories about the creation of an independent Rome, or at least in Roman eyes, how closely linked they are to the Etruscans.
And Tarquinius Superbus, he's still a massive figure, as you've highlighted there. He's gathering in allies.
And I remember, there's another great story now, isn't there? Because they go back to Rome, they lay siege to Rome. And my mind thinks of that soldier holding the bridge or Horatius.
Yeah, Brie Horatius, the captain of the gates. The captain of the gates.
Even the Etruscans could force scarce forbear to cheer. Wow, you know that off by heart.
It's another famous story, isn't it? So talk to us before, like the Romans then start consolidating their position. How do the Etruscans try to reverse this expulsion of their king from Rome? So really, Livy goes into detail of this.
And it's this figure from Cusie. He.
He's this semi-mythical figure himself, Lars Porcena. But he's presented as this very wise king, and he recognises that actually this is a bit of a lost cause.
There's no point just shoving a king back into power, and actually all the people hate him. So the siege is not successful.
There's a story about this Roman youth who breaks in to try and murder Porcena and he gets caught because he mixes up Porcena with his servant. And then he says, oh, you can kill me.
You can torture me. I'm not scared.
And he puts his hand into a brazier of fire. But Porcena is so impressed by this that he says, oh, if this city is full of young people like this, then actually, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't fancy this.
Like these people are are these people are a bit much i'm i'm you know i think it's over for you my friend who says to his ally i'm terribly paraphrasing paul livy's probably spinning in whatever grave he's in um but again it's it's that kind of it's those stories that you see again and again it's a story it's a motif that you remember you the heroic young man you just talked about the holding holding of the bridge and horatius this captain of the guard who swims the river because he's so brave he lets the bridge be destroyed behind him and then swims the river and it you know it's it's there's a reason why this stuff comes up later you know the bit of poetry that i just quoted is from the 19th century these stories have so much power to them. But in a way, I'd like to kind of move

away from those to kind of stories that we don't maybe know so well. So at this point, what we are seeing is the beginning of that twist towards Roman power, the beginning of Rome's rise in the Italian Peninsula.
I'm sure you have episodes and episodes on Rome's rise to power and what happens next. But to go back to the Etruscan city at Vey, this is the moment that's going to spark off the steady rise in rivalry that will end with the Siege of Vey.
So we talked about a Siege of Rome, but a really big date in Etruscan archaeology is the Siege of Vae and its fall.

So Vae falls in 396 BC. So not too long, isn't it? Well, I do know it is a bit, literally 100 years or so after what we were talking about.
Yes, it's 100 years. So it's a steady process of kind of, you know, think of the mess in Rome after all of this.
Can you imagine? There's an awful lot to do and there's a lot of things that happen in that century that we can talk about. But to just focus in on storytelling.
Vei falls after a 10-year siege. Think of the Trojan War.
That's 10 years, all the stories we have from that. Because they're so close together, there's this pattern where they'll besiege Vei and then go home.
It's just so extraordinary to us, sitting here in the present, to think about how this siege might have worked and that you leave your family and you go and besiege this other city and then actually it's not going very well so you come back. And then you go back for some more.
And it's that attritional warfare that is happening. And when Ve finally falls, it's fascinating what happens.
One of the most famous things about Ve is its temples. So there's this big temple to the Etruscan goddess Uni, who is Roman Juno, Etruscan Uni, really big, important temple.
And what the Romans do is they take all the statues from it and whisk them back to Rome and then burn it to the ground. And that's such a statement, isn't it? It's just such a thing to do.
We have captured your gods and they are coming with us. And we still have some of these incredible objects.
We have some of these statues. So the Apollo of Vey is an architectural terracotta.
I think we talked a fair bit about architectural terracottas on roofs in the first episode. But we always think about Greek marble pediments and this and that.
The Etruscans love their terracotta. So this is this incredible life-size terracotta statue of the god Apollo, and that ends up being taken back to Rome.
And it's very interesting to compare different Etruscan cities as well. So we've talked a lot about Vey, but in the previous episode,

we talked a bit more about Civetri, Cere, which is another Etruscan city, again, very close to Rome,

has this coastal location, however, has this associated trading port next door to it,

effectively. So the Etruscan city is higher up and then it has this twinned port city there on the coastline.
Now, Cere, completely different relationship with Rome. It seems to almost be like a finishing school for Roman elite young men.
And they'll send people off there to go and learn religious mysteries. I always think of it as like a swish finishing school for the Roman elite.
They go off to Cere and Cere seems to have a completely different and more positive relationship with Rome. They don't have this rivalry, this intensity that we see at Vey.
It's very interesting because that gets reflected much later as well. If we look at things like the inscription evidence, we can see that Etruscan names survive for much longer in Caere, where they have this softer relationship with Rome than they do at somewhere else like Tarquinia, which I'm sure we're going to go on and talk about, where they have a much more combative relationship with Rome.
It's very interesting. One of the things that we kind of almost skipped over really, I'm talking about this amazing century.
Chivetri is a place where the Romans end up hiding their sacred objects. So they've stolen this material from Vei, but when they are threatened, they send their most sacred things off to Carate and trust that these people will look after it.
So part of you just, you know, the mind boggles at these things moving around in the landscape in these stressful times. But it's really interesting to see how these different Etruscan cities have these different relationships and to ask why.
Is this a personal relationships thing? Are these elite families in these different places that get on better? Is this a concerted policy where people at Cary have made this decision, actually,

we're not going to tangle with these guys. We're not interested.
We're just going to keep them

sweet. I'd love to know what's going on because this is a pattern we're going to see again and

again through the Roman conquest of Etruria. With Wealthfront, you can earn 4% annual percentage yield from partner banks until you're ready to invest.
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Coverage requires extenders at additional charge. With all of that, and so that slow expansion of Rome in its heartlands, you know, up the River Tiber and in that area, you mentioned at the beginning, I mean, nearer the beginning, how you've got the Etruscan heartlands to the north, but you've also got Etruscans south of Rome too.
So it almost feels like this line is being created, kind of splitting that world in two. I mean, does it seem to suggest at that same time that from the archaeology, from the sources we have surviving, that are the Etruscans being stretched elsewhere? That is not just the Romans, that you've also got, let's say, Greeks in Southern history or other Italians like Samnites or so on, or the Celts in the North.
I mean, does it seem to suggest that the Etruscan world is starting to be stretched a bit with other players? And as you say, it's not one united world. There are cities having independent choices of who they're siding with and so on.
Yeah, kind of all of the above, really. D, all of the above.
I think a really good, maybe a good way to think about this, like a good comparison to go a little bit further in time, it reminds me a little bit of Anglo-Saxon England. This is somewhere very rich, very successful, and everybody wants a piece of this pie.
So if you are on the fringes of this and it's looking a little bit shaky, then you are going to make your move. So in the south, you're exactly right.
So in the south, we have Greek colonists pushing northwards. We have the Samnites.
They caused trouble for the Romans for centuries after this. And they really pushed the Etruscans back.
And we have Gauls raiding in the north, Marzabota, that I've just talked about, that gets pretty much wiped out through Gaulish raiding. They're coming at all directions.
It's fascinating to just see things starting to fall apart for the Etruscans in all these different areas. Again, to use a later time period as well, there's this tendency to brush over Etruria and say, oh, the Gauls, when they sacked Rome, they sweep through Etruria.
But actually, if you think about the reality of what that's like for people on the ground and for these Etruscan cities that are there, they're at risk too. It's not just these big blockbuster events.
If you have an army of marauding Gauls showing up in Rome, they've come through Etruria on their way there, burning and pillaging as they go, presumably. So, yes, I think it's that thing where when you're doing very well and you're very successful and you're obviously a great source of wealth showing off through all these trading networks, the dark side of that is that everybody can see what a fantastic target you are there's a

target on your collective backs effectively and everybody's starting to nibble at the edges and then things are starting to go wrong and it's really interesting to think about how the romans conceptualize this so there's this motif that pops up in the roman source it's called the Obesus Etruscus, the overweight Etruscan. It's linked to these ideas about stoicism and luxury.
You see it in the Greek sources as well. Luxury is bad for you.
If you're having too good of a time and it's coming up for Christmas, I don't want to be fat shaming anybody. But if you're having too much of a good time, you're're getting lax you're getting soft there's this idea that actually hard a hard life is good for you and when things are getting too luxurious then you are weak and we see that in kind of representations in you know your your interest in alexander and the persian empire this representation of the persian empire is being kind of soft effectively too addicted to luxury and it falls this is this thing of like soft times breed soft people kind of vibe isn't it that you see time and time again right yeah so whether it's kind of complacency or you this this conception of these people as actually they're too addicted to their wine and their you know we talked we sort of jokingly talked in that story in the lucretia story about these etruscan women as the party girls but there is that kind of perception that comes through the sources that these people were not serious enough to defend their boundaries which i think is quite it's quite insulting and it's probably it's quite ridiculous it's almost like it's a trope isn't it it's a it's a trope to say why they were defeated in the end but i think there probably it's a little element of when you are very successful, it's very easy to sit back and enjoy the fruits of that success.
And then maybe when times change, kind of hungry dogs run faster is what they say, isn't it? Absolutely. There's these rivalries coming up.
Absolutely. If you're at the top of the hill, you're not as hungry as the person climbing the hill and stuff like that.
But does the archaeology reflect that too? Because I do appreciate we've got the literary sources and naturally some of these literary sources are very biased, pro-Roman, like Livy, as we've discussed.

But you mentioned also with Marzabotto, I mean, does the archaeology seem to suggest that, you know, that these external factors, you know, they are wrecking havoc on some of these Etruscan places?

There's evidence of destruction.

Or perhaps is there other factors like, is there evidence in the archaeology that the economic trade links that the Etruscans once had, that those links are fading too? So one of the really interesting elements of the archaeology that I think tracks the kind of, if we want to start talking about the decline of the Etruscans, one of the really interesting ways of doing that is to look at tomb paintings. And I know I said that I didn't want to talk about burial archaeology, but I'm going to do it because it's so fascinating.
So Tarquinia is somewhere we talked about a lot in the first episode. It's this Etruscan city on a high Tufa plateau and dug into the rock of these amazing painted tombs.
I think if most people know the Etruscists, they'll know these painted tombs. And they're beautiful.
Honestly, go and Google them. Go Google image search them now.
And there's 200 of these things. And the earliest ones are from about 540, 520.
And then they carry on through the next 200 years. But if we look at the motifs that are used to paint those tombs, what we can see is a real shift and a change in what they're portraying.
So it starts off with mythological scenes.

There's the scene, very famous one, the Tomb of the Bulls, one of the earliest ones,

the ambush of Troilus by Achilles. You have these amazing nine trees with different changing seasons

represented on them, the passage of time. There's these kind of sexual figures as well.
It depends on your view. Are these kind of fertility related? Are they comic relief? Are they, you know, apotropaic? Are they kind of turning back the evil eye with something like quite comical and sexual? We don't know.
So we have all of these things. You have some of the most beautiful ones, really famous, the Tomb of the Leopards, absolutely glorious depictions of these animals.
People who are banqueting, this idea of the eternal banquet. Maybe this is where some of this perception of the Etruscans as devoted to the banquet table comes from.
This representation of people having a fantastic time in the afterlife. It looks great at this point.
So these earlier ones, the Etruscan afterlife looks fantastic, but things start to turn darker. And what we see coming in are these figures that are quite eerie and almost frightening.
So we start seeing these demonic figures. So this figure of the wolf man, there seems to be a kind of wolf demon in Etruscan religion.
His name seems to be Kalu. And this figure called Vant, who's this winged woman, they almost do machine gun bullet belts across her body.
So she's bare chested with these double belts coming across and she is bringing people to the afterlife. And we suddenly move from this lovely eternal party to actually, people are still being depicted banqueting into quite late periods, but it doesn't look as much fun anymore.
We have these quite terrifying figures. One of the really quite late examples, and not from Tocqueña, from far inland, a place called Satiano, is this Tomb of the Infernal Chariot.
Sorry, what? I'm sorry, what? Tomb of the Infernal Chariot? Tomb of the Infernal Chariot. Yeah, what a name.
Isn't it great? I want to be buried in a Tomb of the Infernal Chariot. So the paintings in this tomb are amazing.
And if you ever get a chance, if you're on holiday in Tuscany and you have the chance to go and visit, the museum there is wonderful. And you can go and see this tomb in small groups.
So when I went summer before last, it was just myself and my family. So just five of us in this tomb.
It's very special. I do recommend that people go and see it.
A little plug for Satyana there because it's kind of off the beaten track, which is why it's so special. But this is a really late tomb.
It's kind of been dated to about 340, 320. And what we have there are these terrifying demons.
So there's triple-headed snakes on the wall and they are really creepy looking, sorry for professional language there, but they are, they're horrible. And then you have this ginger-headed face and she has, he or she seems to have fangs as well.
And she's driving this chariot that's drawn by, some people have suggested, different mythical beasts. So this is not a lovely party.
And even though banqueting is depicted in the same tomb, the whole process of this eternal banquet just doesn't have the same overtones anymore. It's not fun anymore.
The party's over. So how have we gone over the course of 200 years to these very optimistic, to the extent that the roofs of these tombs are painted to look like pavilion roofs with beautiful hangings in different fabrics, like luxurious outside tents for people to recline under in the summer and have a wonderful time.
How have we gone from that to ginger demons over 200 years? And I think what we can see there is a falling away of optimism. We can see that decline.
We can see that actually people are worried about the future. So Sarteyano is just such a fascinating case study of this later Etruscan period.
Even the fact it exists at all speaks to the idea that Etruscan religion is still carrying on. This is after Rome has spread northwards, that this elite family who own this tomb still have the opportunity to spend their money to make this beautiful place for the afterlife.
But actually, they're not feeling good about it. I don't want to fall into that D.
H. Lawrence trap, but when he visits Tarquinia, he just falls under the spell of these tombs because they're so beautiful.
It's a vision of the afterlife that's just enchanting. But that's gone.
So that's gone, but I say that takes over two centuries. You see that transition, really interesting transition, which begs the question, what do we know about that whole process of Rome going from taking control of Vae at the beginning of the 4th century BC to them becoming dominant over basically the whole of the Etruscan world, the Etruscans particularly in their heartland in northern Italy, in places like Tarquinia and further afield? So Tarquinia is a really interesting case study for the Roman conquest of Etruria.
Kerrig to Etruria just staying out of things, we've talked about them, they've chosen that route. Tarquinia, not so much.
Big Etruscan city, big target. And there is a series of truces and fights and battles and agreements and people go to war for a little while and then there'll be a truce for 40 years and then all of a sudden things will break out again.
So it's kind of little by little. It's a long fall of Tarquinia.
So by Livy's reckoning, from about 358 to 281, we have this series of truces and agreements. But by 281, we see that Tarquinia has fallen.
There is this triumph celebrating victory over the Etruscans back in Rome. And then the next year, they're heading

northwards up that coastal strip where a lot of the Etruscan wealth is centred. Vulci next.
Vulci, we haven't talked about very much today, but it's very much the centre of Etruscan artisans. A lot of the Etruscan red figure vase painting is happening at Vulci.
We have these workshops there. Again, very rich coastal trading city,

and it falls again. And then Arezzo goes to, I think Arezzo watches what's happening and they think, oh my gosh, we'd better be like Kere.
They try that kind of the diplomatic route. They kind of go that softer route and they avoid things.
But then Orvieto, Etruscan Volsinia, they go the harder route and then we have more violence. In the territory of Orvieto, Volsinia, we have this Fanum Voltumne, which is this temple of all Etruria, which supposedly was the meeting place for this Etruscan League.
If we go back to the beginning, these 12 cities, they're meant to all meet here. When Rome takes Volsinia, you'll never guess what happens to the Fanonville Tonde.
It gets completely destroyed and all the goodies are carted back to Rome. Again, that statement of dismantling a political system, if we're going to take that literally, which we can argue about that, but this deliberate dismantling of an administrative system so that all power is going back to Rome in this inception.
And it's so interesting because I think the Orvieto fall, if we look at the historical sources again, there are little clues in here as to how they're justifying this. So what we're told is that there's a problem with slave revolts.
And Etruscan

class structure is something that I think I'd love to know more about. And we do have this word

laupni, which seems to mean kind of like peasantry, but it doesn't seem very clear. It doesn't seem

that there's potentially this system of slavery that's as well, not as well advanced, that's a

horrible thing to say, as well entrenched maybe as in the Greek world and in the Roman world.

Thank you. potentially this system of slavery that's as well, not as well advanced, that's a horrible thing to say, as well entrenched maybe as in the Greek world and in the Roman world.
So if there is a slave revolt, whose slaves are they and what are they rebelling against? Where has this come from? Are these peasants who are unhappy? Are these actual enslaved people? When you say slave revolt to me, I think about Spartacus, but that's not appropriate here. So what's going on? But what I think this is, is an excuse.
I think what you have are these elite families that we've spoken about already, falling out with one another. And we see this again and again in Roman history.
You can see what's coming. They're going to exploit any cracks in the social fabric and they're going to put their cards behind one family.
You look at the Roman conquest of Britain, you see this again and again, and they'll exploit that. So maybe one group of people fall out with another.
It gets called a revolt.

The Romans pile in on the other side.

And then, oh, oops, actually, we've taken your territory.

And you are going to be left here with your nice house and your riches, but you belong to us now. And I think that's something that we can see heading northwards as these Etruscan cities come under Roman influence.
I don't want to say the Roman yoke, but it is kind of a little bit like that, this playing off these tensions and these rivalries. We see it again up in the Florence area, this idea that

there's a revolt. It's fine for us to come in and tidy up because these people are losing control anyway.
That's how the Romans take it over. It's so interesting how, once again, that tactic of a power seeking expansion notices in the targeted area that they want a city, divisions, internal divisions, and they take advantage of that by backing the person who's more amenable to them.
And then they take over. It's really interesting how you see that again and again throughout history.
So that is the Roman takeover. And from then on, the Etruscans

are part of the growing Roman Republic as they then go on, you know, fighting the Samnites and

then Pyrrhus and then Hannibal and the Carthaginians and so on. But as that time goes on, I must also

ask, we've talked about like the fall of the Etruscans. Maybe it's the fall of the Etruscans

as an independent player on the Italian peninsula and further afield. But does Etruscan culture

endure with the Romans when they're under Roman rule? Can we actually say they actually fall? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting perspective to take. So we can definitely see that Etruscan culture continues on.
We were just talking about Sartiano and the example there that this family are still able to practice these death rituals that are so important to them and they're still able to spend their wealth on making this burial place. But it's not just burial rituals, it's also in religious practice.
We can see Rome honing its playbook, this religious tolerance, that it's okay to believe in your traditional religion as long as it actually doesn't get in the way with what we're wanting from you. So Etruscan religion is still really important.
And some of the most famous archaeological artifacts that we have that tell us about Etruscan religion actually date from this later period. So there's this amazing bronze liver from Piacenza, which is quite far north in Etruscan sphere of influence.
It's amazing. It's a bronze model of a sheep's liver.
You do get these from the ancient Near East. This is very much an Etruscan one.
It's divided into 16 different areas, which seem to be connected with different astrological houses. These are all related to these different Etruscan deities.
You have Selva on the Fufflans, Etruscan Dionysus. Try saying that carefully, Fufflans, and Kel, this Etruscan kind of earth deity as well.
So that's just this extraordinary piece of Etruscan religious fabric that we have from this later period, really famous. So like when I spoke to you last, it had just been discovered, the sanctuary at San Cassiano de Bagni, which is a province of Siena, these amazing bronze statues that had just been uncovered, and this combination of Etruscan and Latin inscriptions.
We see these votive figurines as well. These are all later things.
It's clearly a huge part of people's lives just continuing these remote sanctuaries. Also, we have respect for property.
So an amazing archaeological discovery, the Cortona tablets. So these were found in 1992.
The story goes there, they were found on a building site and brought into the police, but there's kind of a bit of a, were they really from that building site suggestion? And it's a bronze tablet in different pieces. It's about 200 words long, which doesn't sound like a lot, but for the Etruscans, that'll do nicely.
And what it's talking about is dealing with an inheritance, dealing with land being split up among different people. So there's a vineyard and it belongs to the Kusu family, and it's being given to another person called Atruskevis and his wife.
So potentially these independent Etruscan women

are still there. She's important enough to be mentioned in this document.
There's a list of witnesses. There's also the magistrate, talked about Etruscan magistrates.
He's named Lathcoclina Lausisa. These Etruscan names are continuing.
So this is long after the Roman supposed conquest, the Etruscan law you know's hard, isn't it? You can't kind of say, oh, Etruscan law as if it's like British law today. But the way that Etruscan land management practices are managed is still happening under this Roman rule.
So that's really interesting. I just think there's an awful lot of continuation.
And even onwards into the first century BC, we can see that Etruscan ideas and Etruscan behaviour is still happening in Etruria. And we have these amazing brave markers from the first century BC that end up in Tunisia.
And they're still demonstrably Etruscan after all this time and in a completely different space. There's this idea that they might be Etruscan refugees from the social wars that end up here, which is really interesting.
That's like a late-on revolt, isn't it, where the Etruscans and others try to fight one last time, but it doesn't end well for them. Just get the band back together for one last time, because it's really gone well for us in the past.
But I think it's fascinating, isn't it? They keep popping up again and again. Something that really spoke to me recently, I reread to my daughter, she's 10, I read her The Eagle of the Knife.
Where is Marcus the Quiller from? He's from Clusium. He's an Etruscan.
Even in these most iconic, that's a long way from Livy and the hardcore archaeology, but it's just that ghost of Etruscan people that continues on. I think we could almost have a whole episode about the afterlives of the Etruscans.
She says, plugging herself to come back in 2026, please, to talk about the afterlives of the Etruscans because they're so important. They

continue to be really influential into the Renaissance when they're rediscovered. I've argued in publications that they influence the way that different Renaissance artists painted and depicted the human form.
I just think their continued legacy is so fascinating. they never really go away.
They're still there and they're still important. There's this lovely story about it's an Etruscan seer who tells Caesar not to go to the Senate.
And it's Etruscan priests, Etruscan haruspices that are really a problem for Christians when they're taking over in Rome. And they even pop up really late.
There's a Pope who's trying to work out what to do in the face of a threat on the city. The Etruscans see us pop up and say, well, actually, if you ask us, and he's like, I didn't ask you.
Nobody's asking you, but they're still there, which is really fascinating. So again, it's that survival of religion, survival of culture, not necessarily survival of political power.
Well, I mean, there you go. It's such an interesting one.
They said full of the Etruscans, but actually the legacy of the Etruscans, as you say, could be another podcast episode in its own ride. And I'm also really glad that you mentioned some of those really interesting artifacts.
Like I've got up on my screen now, my other screen, the liver of Piacenza. I mean, that's extraordinary artifact.
I've also got the tomb of the infernal chariot up on another tab too, because I've got to have that up and the tomb of the leopards, of course. So it just shows the Etruscans, extraordinary and the story of their fall as the Romans rise, but also these other external factors too.
I'm really glad that we could cover it on the podcast today. Lucy, it just goes to me to say, thank you so much.
You've been an absolute force of nature. Just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today.
Lucy, it just goes to me to say thank you so much. You've been an absolute force of nature.
Just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today. Oh, thank you so much.
Well, there you go. There was Dr.
Lucy Shipley talking through the fall of the Etruscans and the rise of Rome as the new dominant power in central Italy more than 2,000 years ago. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients.
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