So often with Etruscan artifacts one does apprehend these long reverberations from Asia. Nevertheless, a good many prominent archaeologists refuse to buy Herodotus’ account; they consider it a fable. They reject the idea of an immense migration—half a nation sailing into the sunset—and insist unromantically that the Etruscans were natural descendants of some Italian farmers. What a gray thought. It’s like being told the Kensington runestone is a fake—that the bloody tale of a battle between Indians and Vikings in upper Minnesota never took place. One wants to imagine.
Among the cold-blooded exponents of this autochthonous theory none is chillier than Massimo Pallottino, professor of Etruscology and Italic archaeology at the University of Rome. Indeed, Professor Pallottino sounds exasperated that other professionals could be wrongheaded enough even to contemplate the migration hypothesis, which he goes about dissecting with meticulous disdain and a glittering assortment of scalpels:
Edoardo Brizio in 1885 was the first to put this theory on a scientific footing: he identified the Etruscan invaders with the bearers of Orientalizing (and later Hellenizing) civilization into Tuscany and Emilia, and he saw the Umbrians of Herodotus—i.e. Indo-European Italic peoples—in the cremating Villanovans. Among the most convinced followers of Brizio’s thesis were O. Montelius, B. Modestov, G. Körte, G. Ghirardini, L. Mariani. . . . Herodotus may have been attracted by the similarity of the name Tyrrhenian(Tyrrhenoi, Tyrsenoi) with that of the city of Tyrrha or Torrhebus in Lydia. . . .
Nor was there an abrupt change in burial rites from the practice of cremation, typical of the Villanovan period, to Oriental inhumation. Both were characteristic of early Villanovan ceremonies, he tells us, notably in southern Etruria where the idea of cremation predominated. Later, during the eighth century B.C., the practice of inhumation gradually became established—not only in Etruria but in Latium, where no Etruscan “arrival” has been postulated.
“We should now examine the linguistic data. In spite of assertions to the contrary made by Lattes, Pareti and others, a close relationship unites Etruscan with the dialect spoken at Lemnos before the Athenian conquest of the island by Miltiades in the second half of the sixth century B.C. . . . This does not mean, however, that Lemnian and Etruscan were the same language. . . . Further, the onomastic agreements between the Etruscan and eastern languages carry no great weight (as E. Fiesel correctly pointed out) when we consider that they are based upon . . .”
Obviously this is not the stuff of which best-sellers are made, even in light doses, and with Pallottino one is forced to swallow page after page of it. The result is tedium sinking inexorably toward stupefaction, together with a dull realization that whatever the man says probably is correct. To read him is appalling. No dreams, my friend, just facts. Facts and deductions. Deductions followed by occasional impeccable qualifications. One is reminded of those medieval ecclesiastics wondering how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, it is all so academic. The difference, of course, being that these churchmen had not the least idea what they were talking about, while Professor Pallottino knows precisely.
Along the way, before telling us how it actually was, he takes a few pages to demolish that third theory, the illegitimate one. In this version, highly regarded during the nineteenth century, the Etruscans came down from the north. The reason for thinking so was linguistic: traces of an Etruscan dialect had been found among the Rhaetian Alps. But it seems that this material dates from the fourth century B.C., long after Etruscans had staked a claim in Italy.
An additional argument against it, says Pallottino, is the relationship of Etruscan to pre-Hellenic languages throughout the Aegean:“This could only be explained by accepting Kretschmer’s thesis of a parallel overland immigration into Greece and Italy originating from the Danube basin. We would then still have to explain those elements in the ‘Tyrrhenian’ toponymy. . . .”
In other words, let such nonsense be forgotten.
What remains, then, is the not particularly exciting thought that our sensuous, artistic, enigmatic Etruscans were the natural children of Villanova peasants. The nameVillanova, if anybody asks, comes from a suburb of Bologna where vestiges of a previously unknown culture turned up: hut-shaped urns filled with human ashes, bronze weapons, amber jewelry, pins and combs. Apparently these ancestors of the Etruscans, if that is what they were, drifted south into Tuscany about the eleventh or tenth century before Christ and overwhelmed whatever inhabitants they encountered.
Perhaps 300 years later the Orientalizing began. This was the time of a Dark Age in Greece, between the decay of Mycenaean civilization and the emergence of those wise marble Pericleans against whom we half-consciously measure ourselves. It was a time when that templed colossus, Egypt, was beginning to crumble. Assyrian armor glinted ominously. Phrygian trumpets bellowed. Phoenician traders drove westward, dipping their sails at Carthage and Tartessus. Fresh currents rippled the length of the Mediterranean.
So, inevitably, the rude Villanova culture was affected. Greek vase painters moved to Cerveteri, bringing the alphabet and other such radical concepts. Pallottino believes that these various intellectual and artistic transfusions have given the impression of Etrurian dependence on the East, an impression to which the ancients—notably Herodotus—succumbed, and which still inhibits the thinking of twentieth-century investigators.
D. H. Lawrence, faced
