Roman History

Extract

Identity studies live. This latest batch of publications explores what made not just the Romans but the Italians, Christians, and Etruscans who they were. We begin with both age and beauty, the fruits of a special exhibition at the Badischen Landesmuseum Karlsruhe in the first half of 2018 into the most famous of Roman predecessors, the Etruscans. Most of the exhibits on display come from Italian museums, but the interpretative essays that break up the catalogue – which are also richly illustrated – are by both Italian and German scholars. These are split between five overarching sections covering introductory affairs, the ages of the princes and of the city-states, the Etruscans’ relationship with Rome, and modern reception. The first contains essays treating Etruscan origins, history, identity, and settlement area. The second begins with the early Iron Age Villanova site, before turning to early Etruscan aristocratic culture, including banqueting, burials, language, writing, and seafaring. The third and longest section considers the heyday of Etruscan civilization and covers engineering and infrastructure, crafts and production, munitions, women's roles, daily life, dance, sport, funerary culture, wall painting, religious culture, and art. The fourth section treats both the confrontation between Etruscan and Roman culture and the persistence of the former after ‘conquest’ by the latter. The fifth section contains one essay on the modern inheritance of the Etruscan ‘myth’ and one on the history of scholarship on the Etruscans. Three aspects to this volume deserve particular praise. First, it includes not only a huge range of material artefacts but also individual essays on Etruscan production in gold, ceramic, ivory, terracotta, and bronze. Second, there is a recurring interest in the interconnections between the Etruscans and other cultures, not just Romans but Greeks, Iberians, Celts, Carthaginians, and other Italian peoples. Third, it includes the history of the reception of Etruscan culture. Amid the just-shy-of-200 objects included (almost every one with description and high-quality colour image), the reader can find everything from a mid-seventh-century pitcher made from an Egyptian ostrich egg painted with birds, flowers, and dancers (147), through the well-known third- or second-century bcTabula Cortonensis – a lengthy and only partially deciphered Etruscan inscription that documents either a legal transaction or a funerary ceremony (311) – to the 2017 kit of the Etruschi Livorno American Football team (364). Since we have no extant Etruscan literature, a volume such as this is all the more valuable in trying to get a sense of these people and their culture, and the exceptionally high production value provides quality exposure to material otherwise scattered throughout Italy.