- Francesco de Angelis –
he writes: “Their antiquity is quite modest, of about 600 years, if we believe public
records.”^8 He mentions a possible etymological connection between the Medici’s family
name and the Etruscan (in fact, Italic) magistracy of the meddix only to underscore its
conjectural nature.^9 Likewise, despite the treatise’s ideological agenda, Dempster does
not at all minimize Etruria’s subjugation by the Romans. On the contrary, he uses it to
refl ect on the causes of the interruption of royal power in Etruria and attributes it to civic
discord, that is, the lack of solidarity among Etruscan cities.^10
Dempster’s historical sensitivity does not imply that his approach to the past is
an innovative one. On the contrary, even the traits just mentioned only acquire their
sense within a typical seventeenth-century framework – and this is all the more true for
Dempster’s treatment of Etruscan regality. The initial part of Book 2 is in fact devoted
to demonstrating the existence and the importance of a unifi ed monarchic regime in
Etruria, against those scholars who maintained that the region had only been ruled by
aristocrats; and the rest of the book mainly consists of lists of alleged Etruscan kings and
dynasties.^11 Even though Dempster criticizes predecessors such as the notorious fi fteenth-
century forger Annio da Viterbo, most of the names he gives are spurious, too. Moreover,
he does not understand ancient and modern regality to be substantially different: in more
than one passage he draws direct parallels between Etruscan dynasties and later ones.^12
He is aware of the paucity of mentions of Etruscan kings in the Latin sources, but he
attributes this feature to the hostility of the Romans towards the Etruscans.^13
The guiding principle of Dempster’s historiographic vision is continuity.^14 This is
particularly evident in Books 4–6, where the cities of Etruria are treated one by one.
Signifi cantly, the initial part of Book 4 is still global in character and describes the fi nal
Etruscan defeat in the battle of lake Vadimo (283 bce) and the organization of the Roman
province. With the ensuing treatment of the individual cities the emphasis shifts from
history to geography. The historical nature of the account is not dismissed but gets split
into the histories of the different cities, as if once the region had lost its independence and
Etruscan kingship had ceased to exist it did not make any sense to follow its vicissitudes
from a unitary point of view. Dempster’s choice is driven by a quite perceptive concept
of Tuscan history, according to which its protagonists are the single cities – they are the
actual carriers of the continuity of Etruscan identity from the past to the present. This
fragmented identity gets reunifi ed in Book 7 that focuses on the ruling dynasty, the
Medici. Etruria’s identity for Dempster is therefore something that allows a multiplicity
of dimensions and is articulated differently according to circumstances. On the one hand
this characteristic allows him to adapt the treatise to the complexity of the topic, on the
other hand, it provides the latter with a protean quality, so that the defi nition of Etruria
can be expanded or restricted according to need. This is especially visibile as regards the
relationship with Rome: the role that Dempster accords to the Romans to defi ne a sense of
“Etruscanness” by way of opposition is not carried out consistently throughout the treatise;
the Roman origins of Florence, for example, do not prevent him from celebrating this city
in Book 6, alongside the other still existing Etruscan centers. Nor is it by chance that the
process of Romanization is only acknowledged for its institutional aspects – the passage
of the region from a monarchic regime to provincial status – but does not appear to have
consequences on the Etruscan character of Etruria even after antiquity in Dempster’s eyes.
This weak defi nition of what is Etruscan clearly originates in the offi cial ideology
propagated by the Grand Dukes. The De Etruria regali is not only the culmination
but also the endpoint of the Etruscan myth – it is not coincidental that the treatise