Etruscan Mythology

Etruscan Mythology

The Etruscans were a diachronically continuous population, with a distinct language and culture during the period of earliest European writing, in the Mediterranean Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium B.C. They ranged over the Po Valley and some of its alpine slopes, southward along the west coast of Italy, most intensely in Etruria with enclaves as far south as Campania, and inland into the Appennine mountains. Their prehistory can be traced with certainty to about 1000 BC. At their height about 500 B.C., they were a significant maritime power with a presence in Sardinia and the Aegean Sea.

At first influential in the formation and conduct of the Roman monarchy, they fought a series of wars with the Roman Republic, and were conquered and integrated into Roman culture. Much of Etruscan religion and mythology became part of classical Roman culture, including the Roman pantheon. The Senate adopted key elements of their religion, which were perpetuated by haruspices and noble Roman families who claimed Etruscan descent, long after the general population had forgotten the language.

In the last years of the Roman Republic the religion began to fall out of favor and was satirized by such notable public figures as Marcus Tullius Cicero. The Julio-Claudians, especially Claudius, who claimed a remote Etruscan descent, maintained a knowledge of the language and religion for a short time longer, but this practice soon ceased. A number of canonical works in the Etruscan language survived until the middle of the first millennium A.D., but were destroyed by the ravages of time and by Christian elements in Roman society.