The Etruscans ' objets d ' art are of incalculable value, causing a brisk black market and equally brisk law enforcement effort, as it is against the law to remove objects from Etruscan tombs unless authorized by the Italian government.

The city was most probably founded and named by the Etruscans, for a parma ( circular shield ) was a Latin borrowing, as were many Roman terms for particular arms, and Parmeal, Parmni and Parmnial are names that appear in Etruscan inscriptions.

The origins of the Etruscans are lost in prehistory.

When Etruscan settlements turned up south of the border, it was presumed that the Etruscans spread there after the foundation of Rome, but the settlements are now known to have preceded Rome.

Lucca was founded by the Etruscans ( there are traces of a pre-existing Ligurian settlement ) and became a Roman colony in 180 BC.

* The Etruscans are granted Roman citizenship.

The origins of the Etruscans are lost in prehistory.

The Etruscans are generally believed to have spoken a non-Indo-European language or an ancient Anatolic language ( Luvio ).

* Cheyne thinks that " Tarshish " of and " Tiras " of, are really two names of one nation derived from two different sources, and might indicate the Tyrsenians or Etruscans.

* Rome deals with renewed trouble from the Etruscans, who are persuaded by the Samnites to cease their alliance with the Romans.

The ancient people of Etruria are labelled Etruscans, and their complex culture was centered on numerous city-states that rose during the Villanovan period in the ninth century BC and were very powerful during the Orientalizing and Archaic periods.

The Etruscans are credited with influencing Rome's architecture and ritual practice ; it was under the Etruscan kings that important structures such as the Capitolium, Cloaca Maxima, and Via Sacra were realized.

* The second Samnite war formally ends with a peace agreement in which the Samnites obtain peace on terms that are severe but not as crushing as those agreed by the Romans with the Etruscans four years earlier.

Archaic cults to Ceres are well-evidenced among Rome's neighbours in the Regal period, including the ancient Latins, Oscans and Sabellians, less certainly among the Etruscans and Umbrians.

* The Etruscans are badly defeated by the Romans and abandon their attacks on the city and sue for peace.

Long after the assimilation of the Etruscans, Seneca the Younger said that the difference between the Romans and the Etruscans was thatWhereas we believe lightning to be released as a result of the collision of clouds, they believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning: for as they attribute all to deity, they are led to believe not that things have a meaning insofar as they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have a meaning.

As in the preceding culture, the richly ornamented pottery is very characteristic, while many aspects such as the metal-working, burial customs and religion are strongly influenced by its neighbours, primarily the Etruscans and Celts.

The pepla are a specific class of Italian adventure or fantasy films that have subjects set in Biblical, medieval or classical antiquity, often with contrived plots based very loosely on mythology, legendary Greco-Roman history, or the other contemporary cultures of the time, such as the Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans, etc.

Among the Sea peoples identified in Egyptian records are the Ekwesh, a group of Bronze Age Greeks ( Achaeans ); Teresh, Tyrrhenians, ancestors of the Etruscans ; Luka, an Anatolian people of the Aegean ( their name survives in the region of Lycia ); Sherden, probably Sardinians ; Shekelesh, probably the Italic tribe called Siculi ; Peleset, generally believed to refer to the Philistines, who might have come from Crete and were with the Tekrur ( possibly Greek Teucrians ) the only major tribe of the Sea Peoples known to have settled permanently in the Levant.

* 508 BC: The office of pontifex maximus ( high priest ) created when these powers are stripped from the consuls ; possible second siege of Rome by Etruscans: Roman-Etruscan Wars

The circumstances of this are disputed ; a majority of scholars, at least in Italy, would ascribe Aegean Tyrrhenians to the Etruscan expansion from the 8th to 6th centuries, putting the homeland of the Etruscans in Italy and the Alps particularly because of their relation to the Alpine Raetic population.

In historical times, some ethnonyms are believed to correspond to Pre-Indo-European peoples, assumed to be the descendants of the earlier Old European cultures: the Pelasgians, Minoans, Leleges, Iberians, Etruscans and Basques.

The Etruscan terracotta warriors are three statues that resemble the work of the ancient Etruscans, but are in fact art forgeries.

The conclusion is that Hellanicus believed the Pelasgians of Thessaly ( and indirectly of Peloponnesus ) to have been the ancestors of the Etruscans.

The Etruscans believed their religion had been revealed to them by seers, the two main ones being Tages, a childlike figure born from tilled land who was immediately gifted with prescience, and Vegoia, a female figure.

The Etruscans believed in intimate contact with divinity.

Through these images of the grotesque, violence and blood-letting, the Etruscans may have believed that they helped to fend off evil spirits from the tomb as well as sanctify the tomb perhaps in place of the actual ritual sacrifice of an animal usually performed in funerary rites.

The Etruscans believed in Nine Great Gods, who had the power of hurling thunderbolts ; they were called Novensiles by the Romans.

The last person known to have been able to read Etruscan was the Roman emperor Claudius ( 10 BC – AD 54 ), the author of a treatise in twenty volumes on the Etruscans, Tyrrenikà ( now lost ), who compiled a dictionary ( also lost ) by interviewing the last few elderly rustics who still spoke the language.

Inscriptions have been found in north-west and west-central Italy, in the region that even now bears the name of the Etruscans, Tuscany ( from Latin tuscī " Etruscans "), as well as in modern Latium north of Rome, in today's Umbria west of the Tiber, around Capua in Campania and in the Po valley to the north of Etruria.

The very few extant Lemnian inscriptions suggest that the Etruscans may have originated in Asia Minor, in which case subsequent syncretism between Greek Athena and Italic Minerva may have been all the easier.

The Etruscans could have used any model of the eastern Mediterranean.

Some have speculated that " ravenna " is related to " Rasenna " ( later " Rasna "), the term that the Etruscans used for themselves, but there is no agreement on this point.

The Etruscans appear to have had no systematic ethics or religion and no great visions.

Recent archaeological discoveries have revealed cultural and economic relationships between the Hernici and the Etruscans around the 7th century BC, perhaps it was commercial center, which conducted trade with Magna Graecia.

Over the years historians have proposed various alternative scenarios wherein one or both of the consuls campaigned against both the Samnites and Etruscans.

This led to speculation that the mummy may have had some connection to either the Liber Linteus or the Etruscans.

Alberto Giacometti is said to have derived much of his inspiration from the Etruscans, but became internationally known.

These last may have been an Illyrian or Celtic tribe, or Etruscans, which is more likely in view of their linguistic relationship.

The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria ( modern Tuscany plus western Umbria and northern Latium ) and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna ( where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls ).

Some scholars also see in Urartian art, architecture, language, and general culture traces of kinship to the Etruscans of the Italian peninsula.

The Greek historian Herodotus stated that the Etruscans came from Lydia, repeated in Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid, and Etruscan-like language was found on the Lemnos stele.

The Etruscans were a diachronically continuous population, with a distinct language and culture during the period of earliest European writing, in the Mediterranean Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium B. C.

In addition to the Italic peoples were the Etruscans, whose language was unrelated to Indo-European, but who exerted a strong cultural influence throughout much of Italy, including early Rome.

Another hypothesis connecting the Tyrrhenians and the Eruscans posits that the Etruscans derive at least partially from a 12th century BC invasion from the Aegean and Anatolia imposing itself over the Italic Villanovan culture, with some scholars claiming a relationship or at least evidence of close contact between the Anatolian languages and the Etruscan language.