Ethnicity and the Etruscans 419vessel of the seventh centuryBCE(ETTa 6.1). Attributed to Cerveteri is an inscription
of the same period that names Larth Telicles (ETOA 2.2); in both cases, thenomen
suggests that a Greek used his own name in an Etruscan formula with a localpraenomen.
(Colonna 2005b [1970], 1585).
Cerveteri, also on the coast and in the deep south of Etruria, must have been a
multicultural city, judging from inscriptional evidence. Besides the Latin name Licine,
there are a number ofpraenominarecognized as Italic—for example, Vethie, Kaisie, and
Metia (Colonna 2005b: 1584). The Phoenician language occurs as well, at Pyrgi, the
port of Cerveteri, on one of the three famed gold tablets, ca. 500BCE, in which the king
Thefarie Velianas declares his dedication to the goddess Uni/Astarte in both Etruscan
and Phoenician. Clearly, there were Phoenicians calling on the shores of Etruria,
following trade lanes that stretched from Italy, Spain, and North Africa back to the
eastern end of the Mediterranean. Numerous exotic imported objects were carried into
Etruria and buried in tombs of the coastal cities during the well-named Orientalizing
period of the seventh centuryBCE(Rathje 1979). These cannot be used, however, as
evidence for ethnicity, only as proof of contacts. Such objects originated from a wide
variety of cultural contexts and dates—Phoenician, Assyrian, Cypriot, Egyptian—and
cannot be used to support a theory of migration of a homogeneous group from
the East.
On the borders of Etruria, there would have been interaction, and very likely intermar-
riage, with neighbors such as the Latins in the south (well documented), the Umbrians
on the east, and, especially in later centuries, with the Celts (Gauls) to the north. There
is probably some truth in the tale that Arruns, ruler of Chiusi, summoned Gauls to his
court to aid in his personal conflicts and introduced them to wine, after which they did
not want to leave (Livy 5.33.2–4). In any case, their presence in Italy from the fourth
century on is well known, and it is not surprising to find that Gauls did settle in the
Po Valley and around Bologna. Excavations at the fourth–third centuryBCEvillage and
cemetery of Monte Bibele (Monterenzio) have revealed what is convincingly interpreted
as a mixed settlement of Gauls and Etruscans (Grassi 1991: 87–93).
In the second and early first centuriesBCE, there is a dramatic increase in the number of
Etruscan inscriptions referencing freedmen of foreign extraction, especially in the north-
ern and inland Etruscan cities of Chiusi and Perugia. The situation has been explained as
resulting from a change in slavery practices in Italy after the Second Punic War (Benelli,
2013). Hellenistic Greek names (e.g., Apluni, Evantra, Nicipur, Clepatra) suggest that
these individuals came from Eastern Mediterranean slave markets; they were evidently
able to obtain their freedom as readily as their counterparts in Roman cities and live their
lives with a new status. They represent the amazing multicultural wave and transforma-
tion of society that swept through Etruscan territory in the early Roman Empire, leaving
it changed forever.
REFERENCESAchilli, Alessandro, Anna Olivieri, Maria Pala et al. 2007. “Mitochondrial DNA Variation of Mod-
ern Tuscans Supports the Near Eastern Origin of Etruscans.”The American Journal of Human
Genetics, 80: 759–68.