- Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni –
Weege and Pericle Ducati – make it possible to fi gure out at least his indirect knowledge
of the opinions on Etruscan origins expressed by authors such as Herodotus, Dionysius
of Halicarnassus and Livy (Hostettler 1985: 241). Therefore it is worth quoting a few of
Lawrence’s considerations about the beginnings of the Etruscan civilization.
The Etruscans sailed the seas. They are even said to have come by sea, from Lydia in Asia
Minor, at some date far back in the dim mists before the eighth century BC. But that
a whole people, even a whole host, sailed in the tiny ships of those days, all at once, to
people a sparsely peopled central Italy, seems hard to imagine. Probably ships did come –
even before Ulysses. Probably men landed on the strange fl at coast and made camps, and
then treated with the natives. Whether the newcomers were Lydians or Hittites with
hair curled in roll behind, or men from Mycenae or Crete, who knows. Perhaps men of all
these sorts came, in batches. For in Homeric days a restlessness seems to have possessed
the Mediterranean basin, and ancient races began shaking ships like seeds over the sea.
More people than Greeks, or Hellenes, or Indo-Germanic groups, were on the move.
(Lawrence 2011: 40–41).Moreover, comparing the situation of Volterra to that of Tarquinia, Lawrence claims a
difference of “tribe”: “This was surely another tribe, wilder, cruder and far less infl uenced
by the old Aegean infl uences. In Caere and Tarquinia the aborigines were deeply overlaid
by incoming infl uences from the East.” (Lawrence 2011: 193.)
As we shall see, such insights might eventually become crucial for reviewing the well-
established concepts of “cultural growth” and “formation” introduced since 1939 by Massimo
Pallottino, when he was founding modern Etruscan studies. The current archaeological
consensus keeps converging on such concepts in order to represent the Etruscan culture
as the result of different waves of populations and of subsequent and persistent inputs of
foreign contacts with the autochthones of the Italian peninsula. Actually, it is worth noting
that Lawrence’s interest in the origins of the Etruscans is issued from a deep intention to
meet the core of the Etruscan culture according to his peculiar approach of “pure attention”
that he considered very close to the attitude of the Etruscan augur towards divination.
In such a way “every great discovery or decision” is made possible, “even prayer and
reason and research itself” (Lawrence 2011: 97–98). Therefore an intellectual perspective,
intermingled with his personal poetics, permeates D.H. Lawrence’s meditations on the
Etruscans. However, something similar seems also to concern Massimo Pallottino, judging
from the titles of two articles that he published after the Second World War.
“Participation” and sense of Drama in the fi gurative world of the Etruscans (Pallottino 1946)
appeared shortly before he published his monograph on the origins of the Etruscans
(Pallottino 1947). Science and poetry in quest of the Etruscans (Pallottino 1957) appeared
ten years later. This second one directly reports his personal feelings towards Etruscan
studies: “There is an Etruria for scholars and an Etruria for writers whose traditions run
on diverging tracks and, in some ways, designed to remain without communication: the
tradition of objective research and that of poetic insights” (Pallottino 1957: 10). Such a
background was evidently part of M. Pallottino’s approach towards his studies, especially
in the case of the problem of Etruscan origins that was going to be crucial to him all his
life (Briquel 2007). His scientifi c attitude was fi rst of all historical, because he took into
great consideration the prominent role of archaeology in historical reconstructions and, as
a consequence, the role of Etruscan studies too (Bonghi Jovino 2008, pp. 16–17).