A small Etruscan bronze statuette of a man with his arms held out
Bronze statuette of man with extended arms, 6th to 5th century BCE
Marked Tarquinia

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Etruscans

Before Rome ruled Italy, the Etruscans of Tuscany built cities, painted tombs with banquets and dancers, and taught Rome a great deal. We can read their alphabet but understand only part of their language.

Place
Tarquinia · Cerveteri · Veii · VulciEurope
Laid out as
A civilisationA society seen from the inside: its rulers, places, work, beliefs and daily life, laid out like the rooms of a house.
Lessons
5 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. ICities of Etruria
  2. IIPainted tombs
  3. IIIA language we can read but not understand
  4. IVKings of Rome
  5. VSwallowed by Rome

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Tarquinius Priscus
  • Larthia Seianti

Objects

  • The Sarcophagus of the Spouses
  • The Pyrgi tablets
  • The Chimera of Arezzo

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

900 BC to 27 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?