King Tyrsenos of Lydia (Turkey), according to Herodotus, led a migration of the people who became the Etruscans from Anatolia to escape famine shortly after the Greeks sacked Troy. The refugees settled in central northwest Italy (Tuscany), in an area called Etruria, north of the minor city-state of Rome.
In Etruria, the Lydians interbred with Tuscany’s Iron Age Villanovans. The Villanovan/Lydians collectively came to call themselves the Rosenna. The Rosenna mined the rich mineral deposits and fecund soil. They developed and, traded their products with Phoenician and Greek ships and ports.
By 800 BCE, the Rosenna called themselves ETRUSCANS. Etruscan civilization lasted until 300 BCE, when Rome absorbed all their city-states.
PRODUCT EXCHANGE ALLOWED EVER MORE ELABORATE TOMBS
FOR WEALTHY ETRUSCANS
The Villanovan/Etruscans traded pine nuts, olive oil, and grain, as
well as locally mined iron, pottery, and gold and silver jewelry, to Phoenicia
and Greece and from them got slaves and Greek pottery in exchange. Etruscans
with ever-increasing wealth from trade built increasingly expensive and showy
tombs, laid next to each other to form a grid of cities of bone-monuments.
ETRUSCAN WOMEN WERE MORE EMPOWERED THAN GREEK WOMEN BUT STILL LIMITED
The freedom Etruscan women enjoyed differed from the restriction their female contemporaries suffered in the male-dominated Anunnaki-programmed societies of Italy, Greece, Sumer, Egypt, Phoenicia, and the other Eastern Mediterranean cultures.
In Etruria, women could own land. In their domestic life, Etruscan woman held much higher status and say than women held elsewhere in the area. But Etruscan men denied their women a voice in political decisions. Women could not vote for their cities’ elected Ruler-for-a Year.
GOVERNANCE
Governance in Etruscan Cities began with kings and nobles and developed into oligarchies free of kings. In their oligarchies, male citizens or a council of elders, each more loyal to their clans than to the city, voted in as Ruler for a one-year period.
THE ETRUSCAN LEAGUE: The Etruscan city states –Arretium, Caisra, Clevsin,
Curtun, Perusna, Pupluna, Veii, Tarchna, Vetluna, Volterra, Velzna, and Velch
as well as Rome formed the ETRUSCAN LEAGUE.
The league met to discuss joint concerns.
ROME KILLED THE ETRUSCAN KING &, CITY BY CITY, DESTROYED THE ETRUSCAN LEAGUE & ABSORBED THE ETRUSCANS
523 BCE: Romans overthrew King, Tarquin The Proud, and the cities of the Etruscan League reverted to its independent city states again.
Rome won war against adjoining Etruscan city state Veii in 510 BCE.
Rome crushed the Etruscan monarchy and disbanded it; the other city-states became independent from this. Then, one by one, Rome marched North and took each Etruscan state.
By 264, Rome took the last of the Etruscan City States and assimilated the Etruscans. [Maquire, 2021].
