Etruscan civilization: Encyclopedia II - Etruscan civilization - Etruscan Society

Etruscan civilization - Etruscan Society

Etruscan civilization - Kinship

The cemetaries of the Etruscans give us considerable information about their society. They were a monogamous society that emphasized pairing. The word for married couple was tusurthir. The lids of large numbers of sarcophagi are adorned with sculpted couples, smiling, in the prime of life (even if the remains were of persons advanced in age), reclining next to each other or with arms around each other. The bond was obviously a close one by social preference.

The names of persons are generally binomial: Vethur Hathisna, Avile Repesuna, Fasti aneina. The second name is typically a patronymic, but it is often made into a gentilical name with a -na suffix. Presumably, clans are a later development of a richer landed society. Dedications to Selvans (Sylvanus), the god of boundaries, are common. The Etruscans at their height used lautun, syncopated to lautn, to mean gens.

Kinship is defined with relation to the ego, or “I”. I then may state whatever “I”am or you are to me. Females could state that they were the daughter of a father, sec or sech, and the wife of a husband, puia. A man apparently was never a husband, only a man. Etruscan society therefore was patrilineal and probably patriarchal.

Kinship among the Etruscans was vertical, or generational. They kept track of six generations. In addition to the mi (“I”) an individual recognized a clan (“son”) or a sec (“daughter”), a nefts (“grandson”), and a prumaths (“great-grandson”). Every self had an apa and ati (“father”and “mother”) and relatives older than they.

A division of relatives as maternal or paternal seems to have existed: the apa nachna and the ati nachna, the grandfather’s and grandmother’s relatives. On the level of the self, the lack of any words for aunt, uncle or cousins is notable. Very likely, apa was a generational word: it meant father or any of father’s male relatives. Similarly, ati would have meant any female relative of mother’s age or generation. Ruva (“brother”) is recognized, but no sister. A ruva was probably any related male of the self’s generation.

This horizontal telescoping of relatives applies indirectly to the self as well. The telals are the grand offspring, either male or female, of the grandmother, and the papals of the grandfather. Nefts can mean either grandson or grandnephew. One is reminded of Julius Caesar’s adoption of his grandnephew as son. Julius was clearly a patriarch accepting any male of Octavius' generation as a lineal descendant.

The Etruscans were careful also to distinguish status within the family. There was a step-daughter and step-son, sech fanthana and clan thuncultha, as well as a step-mother, atiu, an adopted son, clanti, and the universal mother-in-law, netei. Other terms were not as high or democratic in status. The system was like that of the Roman. The etera were slaves, or more precisely, foreign slaves. When they had been freed they were lautni (male) or lautnitha (female), freed men or women, who were closely connected to the family and were clients of it in return for service and respect.

Of the several formal kinship classifications, the Etruscan is most like the Hawaian, which distinguishes sex and generation, but otherwise lumps persons in those classes together. The lack of a sister does not fit; however, the Etruscan dictionary is still in progress. Perhaps one will turn up.

Etruscan civilization - Government

The historical Etruscans had achieved a state system of society, with remnants of the chiefdom and tribal forms. In this they were ahead of the surrounding Italics, who still had chiefs and tribes. Rome was in a sense the first Italic state, but it began as an Etruscan one.

The Etruscan state government was essentially a theocracy. The government was viewed as being a central authority, over all tribal and clan organizations. It retained the power of life and death; in fact, the gorgon, an ancient symbol of that power, appears as a motif in Etruscan decoration. The adherents to this state power were united by a common religion.

The political unit of Etruscan society was the city-state, which was probably the referent of methlum, “district”. Etruscan texts name quite a number of magistrates, without much of a hint as to their function: the camthi, the parnich, the purth, the tamera, the macstrev, and so on. The people were the mech. The chief ruler of a methlum was perhaps a zilach.

All the city-states of the Etruscans were gathered into confederacies, or “leagues”. The sources tell us there were three. A league for unknown reasons, religious no doubt, had to include 12 city-states. The word for league was also mech. Once a year the states met at a fanu, or sacred place (Latin fanum) to discuss military and political affairs, and also to choose a lucumo, “ruler”, who held the office for one year. What he did is described by the infinitive, lucair, “to rule.” The Etrurian confederacy met at the fanum Voltumnae, the "shrine of Voltumna". Their league was called the “duodecim populi Etruriae” or the “twelve peoples of Eturia”.

The relationship between Rome and the Etruscans was not one of an outsider conquering a foreign people. The Etruscans considered Rome as one of their cities, perhaps originally in the Latian/Campanian league. It is entirely possible that the Tarquins appealed to Lars Porsena of Clusium, even though he was pro-republican, because he was lucumo of the Etrurian mech for that year. He would have been obliged to help the Tarquins whether he liked it or not. The kings of Rome at some point may also have been lucumo. The gens name, Lucius, is probably derived from lucair.

The Romans attacked and annexed individual cities between 510 and 29 BC. This apparent disunity of the Etruscans was probably regarded as internal dissent by the Etruscans themselves. For example, after the sack of Rome by the Gauls, the Romans debated whether to move the city en masse to Veii, which they could not even have considered if Veii was thought to be a foreign people. Eventually Rome created treaties individually with the Etruscan states, rather than the whole. But by that time the league had fallen into disuse, due to the permanent hegemony of Rome and increasing assimilation of Etruscan civilization to it, which was a natural outcome, as Roman civilization was to a large degree Etruscan.

Etruscan civilization - Religion

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. Three layers are evident in the extensive Etruscan art motifs. One appears to be divinities of an indigenous nature: Catha and Usil, the sun, Tivr, the moon, Selvan, a civil god, Turan, the godess of love, Laran, the god of war, Leinth, the godess of death, Maris, Thalna, Turms and the ever-popular Fufluns, whose name is related in some unknown way to the city of Populonia and the populus Romanus. Perhaps he was the god of the people.

Ruling over this panoply of lesser deities were higher ones that seem to reflect the Indo-European system: Tin or Tinia, the sky, Uni his wife (Juno), and Cel, the earth godess. In addition the Greek gods were taken into the Etruscan system: Aritimi (Artemis), Menrva (Minerva), Pacha (Bacchus). The Greek heroes taken from Homer also appear extensively in art motifs.

The Etruscans believed in intimate contact with divinity. They did nothing without proper consultation with the gods and signs from them. These practices, which we would view as superstition, were taken over in toto by the Romans. All the gods were the ais or eis, plurals aisar and eisar. One of them was a flere, a god. Where they were was a fanu or luth, a sacred place, such as a favi, a grave or temple. There you needed to make frequent fler, or offering.

Around the mun or muni, the tombs, were the man or mani (Latin Manes), the souls of the ancestors. Every man possessed a hinthial, or ghost, which might return if not propitiated. A special magistrate, the cechase, looked after the cecha, or rath, sacred things. Every man, however, had his religious responsibilities, which were expressed in an alumnathe or slecaches, a sacred society. No public event was conducted without the netsvis, the haruspex, or his female equivalent, the nethsra. They read the bumps on the liver of a properly sacrificed sheep. We have a model of a liver marked into sections, with unreadable writing no doubt explaining what a bump in that region should mean.

Like the Egyptians, the Etruscans believed in eternal life, but prosperity there was linked to funereal prosperity here. The tombs in many cases were better than many houses, with spacious chambers, wall frescoes and grave furniture. Most Etruscan tombs have been plundered. In the tomb, especially on the sarcophagus, was a representation of the dead person in his or her prime, probably as they wanted to be in the hereafter. Some of the statuary is the finest and most realistic of any. We have no problem visualizing the appearance of the Etruscans. They wanted us to see them smiling and intimate with their kith and kin around them, and we do.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Etruscan Society", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki