Ethnicity and the Etruscans 409The scenario behind the presence of these inscriptions (now totaling around 10) on
the island of Lemnos is open to conjecture. The recent recovery of an altar slab inscribed
in Lemnian (de Simone 2011), and a loomweight with a Lemnian word (Beschi 1996),
shows that the language was relevant in religion and daily life, and that the stele is not
an isolated phenomenon. If the inscriptions were dated substantially earlier, they would
have added considerable force to the theory of a migration of Etruscans from the east,
with a stop on the way at Lemnos. But a journey in the other direction, from Italy to
Lemnos, is made more plausible by the late date and by the usage of the western alphabet.
De Simone has even suggested that Lemnos could have been a base for the Tyrrhenian
pirates who were said to be present in the Aegean from Archaic times (Homeric Hymn7,
to Dionysos).
Quite apart from the linguistic problems is the issue of the stele itself. The iconography
and composition are remarkably similar to those of armed warriors on several grave stelai
from Etruria of the seventh and sixth centuryBCE(Bonfante and Bonfante 2002: 61–2,
140–2). But this hardly points to immigration hundreds of years earlier. The Lemnian
stele mentions a Phokaian named Holaie as a magistrate, a suggestive detail since Phokaia
had close connections with Lydia in the east, but also with the Etruscans in the west. The
Phokaians had settlements at Massilia in southern France (600BCE), at Alalia on Corsica
(561BCE), and at Velia in southern Italy (540BCE). They may also have been resident at
Etruscan Cerveteri (Hemelrijk 1984: 160). Holland (1937) suggested that Herodotos’
story of the origin of the Etruscans goes back to a Phokaian source. Is it possible that
there was a blend of populations and that the inhabitants of Lemnos were ethnically part
Etruscan and part Phokaian (i.e., Ionian Greek), some speaking a language very close to
Etruscan?
The relationship between Etruscan and Raetic is likewise intriguing. Some 100 short
inscriptions, written in the Etruscan alphabet, have survived in this language, spoken in
the Alpine regions of north-central Italy. According to Pliny (N.H. 3.20.133; supported
by Livy, 5.33), the Raeti were actually Etruscans who were driven out of the Po Valley
into the mountains by invading Gauls. Since the inscriptions are mainly names, they do
not allow for a great deal of linguistic analysis. Still, scholars have been able to observe
a few lexical correspondences, as well as the mutual usage of two different kinds of par-
ticiples and certain case endings. Obviously much more evidence is needed, but for now
the hypothesis is viable that this was an ethnic group closely related to the Etruscans
of Etruria.
Nomenclature
Etruscan inscriptions provide an immense amount of data about the names of Etruscans,
relevant for the issue of ethnicity, since there are certain names and formulas of nomencla-
ture that are unmistakably characteristic of their society. In early Etruria, as in early Rome
and other cultures of pre- and proto-historic Italy, probably originally single, individual
names were normally used, but with urbanization and increasing societal complexity it