[extropy-chat] Romans

[Amara Graps]

Lee Corbin:
>Thanks for the tidbit; I hadn't realized that it's not completely clear
>whether culturally the early Romans assimilated the Etruscans or it
>happened the other way around.

I don't know if "assimilated" is the right word (perhaps to strong), but
clearly the Etruscans were in the area first, and had well-established
city-states and many of their technology and traditions permeated
through the Roman membrane. There were marriages, codependencies, but
alot of murders and wars too. What the Romans didn't absorb, they
destroyed, but the Etruscans were victors some of time too.

 From the nice writeup at Wikipedia (surprising to me how much
information is there.. instead, I've been studying the Etruscans from
books I've bought in local museums)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_civilization

we read, for example

--------------

The Question of the founding population

"Due to the fact that Rome was destroyed by the Gauls, losing most of its
inscriptional evidence about its early history (according to Livy), most
of that history is legendary. Archaeology confirms a widespread level of
destruction by fire dated to that time. Legend; namely, the story of the
rape of the Sabine women, says outright that the Italic Sabines were
brought into the state."

Later history relates that the Etruscans lived in the Tuscus vicus, the
"Etruscan quarter", and that there was an Etruscan line of kings (albeit
ones descended from Demaratus the Corinthian) as opposed to the
non-Etruscan line. These views must come from the later reduction of
Etrurian cities and absorption of the Etruscan populations into the
Roman state. If we begin recounting all the institutions and persons
said to be Etruscan, and comparing cultural objects to ones we know to
have been of Etruscan origin, an originally Etruscan Rome appears
unmistakably before our view. Rome was founded by Etruscans, all the
kings were Etruscans, and the earliest government was Etruscan."

--------------

more information  on that page too.

Amara


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