CHAPTER EIGHT

A LONG TWILIGHT (396–90 BC):

ROMANIZATION OF ETRURIA

Vincent Jolivet

INTRODUCTION

T

he ambiguous term “Romanization,” which indicates at once a work in progress and
the end result of this process, can legitimately be applied to the slow phenomenon
occurring in Etruria between the third and fi rst centuries (all dates bc), which resulted
in the almost complete disappearance, at the beginning of the Empire, of the Etruscan
culture, institutions and language. Yet it is not a new or unique fact that Rome was
founded in immediate contact with an Etruscan territory itself long permeable to Latin
infl uences, and the “century of the Tarquins,” the sixth century, resulted in a deep
Etruscanization, against which transpired the birth of the Roman Republic. Latinization,
and then Romanization of Etruria and Etruscanization of Rome formed a process that
thus retained over more than seven centuries, a mixture of cultures that was more closely
cemented by a solid mortar, that of the Greek culture which, in successive waves, touched,
to varying degrees, all the peoples of the Italian peninsula. The Etruscan civilization was
still alive at the beginning of the Roman conquest, which certainly did not put an abrupt
end to its development, even though every one of the major city-states that formed
Etruria – twelve, according to the tradition – presents very specifi c characteristics that
deeply differentiate it from its neighbors. The idea of “decadence,” dear to the scholars of
the nineteenth century ad, still weighs heavily on the history of this period, and this is
justifi ed etymologically, since it opens with the loss of independence of Etruria. But these
three centuries were also those of deep transformations in all areas, which led ultimately
to a form of successful integration.

THE ROMAN CONQUEST

It did not take much more than a century for the early Roman Republic, after having
driven out Tarquinius Superbus, to take the offensive and set out to destroy the nearest
Etruscan city: Veii, one of the most powerful of the dodecapolis, fell in 396,^1 according to
Livy after a siege of ten years, which ancient authors compared to that of ancient Troy (Fig.
8.1). The city was destroyed, its territory entirely forfeited to benefi t the ager publicus of