THE ETRUSCANS - A mistery disclosed

From the IX cent. b. C., Tuscia has been the cradle of the Etruscans, From the IX cent. b. C., Tuscia has been the cradle of the Etruscans, the pre-Roman culture which influenced Tuscany and Latium, and for some respects is still widely mysterious.
The Tuscia on the whole has Etruscan origins and very important witnesses can be found in Vulci, San Giovenale, Norchia, Corchiano, Castel d'Asso and Tarquinia, one of the main cities of the Etruscan Dodecapoli, particularly important for its harbour.

Etruscan Population Origin
Birth, origin and development of the Etruscan people is a very discussed subject both in past and recent times. Ancient literary sources tell us about movements of various peoples, or small navigator groups who came to central Italy guided by bold leaders, sometimes king's sons. The first ancient author who dealt with the problem of the Etruscan origin problem was Dionisio di Alicarnasso (1st cent. B.C.).
He quoted some older works ,and wrote Antichità Romane, an historical treatise made of twenty books. The first one deals with the origin of the ancient Italic peoples, Etruscans included.
On the basis of the available data, he stated the autochthonous nature of this population, thus refusing the former tradition, talking about an eastern origin from Lidia, in Asia Minor (Erodoto), or connected with the famous Pelasgi (Ellanico di Lesbo).
He stated autochthonous origin, on the basis of their linguistic and cultural originality and individuality, in comparison with the ancient Italic peoples. Early conjectures concerning the Etrusca origin, sometimes quite fanciful, began with the development of historical studies during Humanism. This period was characterized by the search for epigraphic and archaeological findings in order to work the problem out. Among the many erudites who dealt with this subject, there was Annio da Viterbo (link con file Annio) who stated their Semitic descent.

A scientific statement concerning the question of the origin appeared in 1700. It was based on three different theories: eastern, northern and local origin.
The first one is conncted to an eastern provenience and it refers to Erodoto's writings: the migration of a number of Lidii from Lidia to Italian coasts through the Tyrrenian Sea led by Tyrrenus, Ati's son.
Greeks called the Etruscans Tyrrenji that's Tirreni, referring to their leader.
Altough strongly refused but at the same time drawn on even in modern times, such eastern origin was supported by the discovery of some epigraphs in the Lemmo Isle (now Turkey). These epigraphs are quite similar (both for what concern writing and some features) to language spoken in the isle before Greek colonization. Some other studious have asserted an eastern origin referring to the large number of objects imported from East and, in general, to VII and VI century b.C.'s culture widely influenced by "eastern" elements: as to say "orientalizing".
According to these scholars, the several eastern culture elements could not be justified but a strong immigration in Etruria of people coming from that same lands.
Another theory, based on archaeological studies carried out by the paleoethnologist Luigi Pigorini, states a coming from North of Etruscan and Italics populations which brought cremation as funerary rite, replacing the inhumation.
Here the Etruscan element is the villanovan one, but it was an exploded theory.
The third theory, linked to Autochthounous theory supported by Dionisio di Alicarnasso, derived from various linguistic studies. They proved the existence of a linguistic phase called "tirrenic" pre-Indoeuropean, much older than Italic dialects such as latinum, oscum, umbrum, faliscum, sanniticum all of them Indo-European stock.
Consequently Etruscan population would be derived by the union of cultural and ethnical features of pre-existing phase plus the features belonging to Bronze Age.
In addition to the three theories concerning Etruscan origin, the interpretation by Professor Massimo Pallottino, recently died, the greatest studious of Etruscology.
He reaffirmed to avoid to schematic statemants of a very complex problem. He analized available data not referring to provenience but to formation of this ethnos, to this population and its culture. He stated that "formation process of Etruscan nation could not happen but in the same Etruria".
Contacts, trade and cultural exchanges with travellers coming from Egeo, attracted by metalliferous resources, had a very important role in this process.
According to Pallottino "the mark received by early, fresh, primitive, flexible soul of oldest Etruscan, influenced by great overseas cultures, was as great as to definitely draw spiritual trends and the structure of the nation".
We talk about cultural influence enthusiastically received and greatly absorbed by this population , instead of provenience from East.

The Birth of Cities

During the initial stage of the Iron Age, larger built up areas, more populated and better organized appeared on the territory that was to become Etruria. Their birth was linked to the phenomenon called sinecismo,
that is the disappearance of minor villages, whose population moved to more important built-up areas: in this stage, between X and VIII century B.C., we can notice important changes in the Etruscan society.
From an analysis of Villanovan funerary outfits, above all those of the advanced Villanovan (half - end of the VIII century B.C.), we notice a marked differentiation from man to man, witnessed by the increase in the number of items in the outfits and by the presence of valuable artefacts, real status symbols of the age:
for example, besides imported ornaments and jewels (vitrified gypsum scarabs from Egypt and golden Punic pendants ) and ceramics (above all refined and painted clay, made in Greece), appear bits for horses, whose possession was probably linked to the wealthiest class.

Built-up areas involved in sinecismo will be the core of future Etruscan and Faliscan cities-state of Tuscia: among themTarquinia, Vulci, Bisenzio, Sutri, Nepi and Falerii.Thanks to trade development and from relationships with sailors coming from the Aegean Sea, from Sardinia and the coasts of southern Mediterranean, attracted by metalliferous resources of Etruria,
the contact with these people gave birth in the dominating class to new ways of thinking. The exchange of gifts between sailors and important figures of the cities brought to more frequent relationships between the Etruscans and the other peoples;
they soon became in their turn skilful sailors, controlling with swift ships the Tyrrhenian Sea which took its name from the Etruscans themselves, called Tirrenji by the Greeks, and often charging them of piracy.
The Etruscans were clever and showed a certain ethnic unity, with a common foreign policy towards other peoples: this will prevent Greeks from settling colonies on Etruscan lands, limiting the presence of foreigners to areas reserved on purpose to trade activities, that is trade centres. In these areas, nearby the coasts, took place exchanges between sailors and merchants;
the far-sightedness and the tolerance of the Etruscans will allow the creation of sanctuaries and temples for foreign worships: some examples are the Greek temple dedicated to Apollo (Aplu) in the Tarquinia harbour of Gravisca, and the Punic one dedicated to Astarte
(Leucotea Ilizia - Juno - Uni), near Pyrgi (nowadays Santa Severa, province of Rome), one of Caere's harbours.

For what concerns the exchange of goods and ideas, from the contact with the Greek world the Etruscan began to approach "urban society", where the living place of settlements definitively left the "pre-historic" conception of it, characterized by irregular agglomerates of huts, interpolated with areas for working agricultural products, vegetable gardens and fences for domestic animals.
Now we witness to a relative planning of space, with a rational research of areas suitable for buildings, sacred areas, markets or necropoles.
An example is Tarquinia, where the plateau of the Etruscan city appears to have several funerary areas all around. Right in this built-up area we find an evidence of the course of urbanization of Etruscan cities: the monumentalization of the Civita area, that is the built-up area, which took place around the half of the VII century B.C., during the Orientalizing period.
These and other similar interventions let us know how during the Orientalizing period the urban phase of this people began.

The Dominion of the Seas and
the Splendour of the Orientalizing Period

Wile the Etruscan territory was in the Villanovan culture of the Iron Age, since the half of the IX century B.C. began a thick series of exchanges with the Aegean world: this relationships will reach a climax at the end of the following century, with the explosion of the Orientalizing culture. Let's see what happened before this cultural explosion. Relationships with Aegean merchants-sailors, coming to the Tyrrhenian coasts looking for metals (above all iron and copper for weapons, tools and ornaments) seem to begin around the half of the IX century B.C.: they were only an episode of long series of international relationships among peoples, which began since the III millennium B.C. when, for example, some Aegean sailors looking for metals came to the Iberian peninsula (Los, Millares; Vila Nova de Sao Pedro), founding in the half of the millennium some fortified settlements. In the following millennium exchanges of copper artefacts were very frequent so as the most part of triangular bladed daggers with middle ribbing (a kind of personal weapon widespread in the Copper Age), found in central-southern Europe, seems to be a produce within Rinaldone's Culture.
From the Aegean Sea in the II millennium B.C., came several sailors-metal searchers from Mycenae, whose presence is witnessed by the finding of some bronze and ceramic fragments. Fundamental were those found in the Tuscia, at Luni sul Mignone and S. Giovenale (Blera), which highlighted a period relatively mysterious of pre-history, giving the exact dating and the evidence of contacts between Apennine peoples of the Italian Bronze Age and Mycenaean civilization: "Greek" sailors of the II millennium B.C. were in front of Tuscia coasts, probably attracted by exchanging metalliferous produce from the Tolfa Mounts with their goods. Relationships with the Greek world stopped, even if not completely, between the end of the II and the beginning of the I millennium B.C.: after a brief pause, linked to the general crisis involving the Aegean world, called "Hellenic Middle Age", archaeological data witness a massive renewal of contacts.
It happened in the IX century B.C., and could be witnesses by the appearance of earthenware pots of Villanovan production, but inspired to forms of Aegean origin, in particular to "craters", that is pots for pouring wine. In this period probably spread the technology of grapevine transformation into the precious drink and with the new food custom and the "symposium" (drinking party where people relaxed, joked, and forgot joys and sorrows of everyday life). Soon the prevailing classlearned to love the new-comers and with them all the items and customs imported. We can guess that earthenware, small jewels, wine and oil were the basic exchanges between Etruscans and Greeks, wishing for raw or semi-manufactured metal. Then, series of exchanges began; through time it will become so thick as to permeate of "foreign" objects and cultural features the same Etruscan Society, until it seemed related to an Eastern people settled on Italian coasts. Among the first importation objects there are small amulets made of glass paste and faience (vitrified gypsum), produce of Egypt, or golden pendants of Punic manufacture; ceramics became more and more frequent: they were light, purified, bright and painted, unlike the black buckaroo-like mixtures, thick and heavy, of Villanovan manufacture. The request for Greek ceramic of Aegean production or imitating the Etruscan one, was so high that Greek craftsmen came to Etruria and opened small shops: their presence is a vehicle for cultural exchange that will play so important a role in the cultural training of the Etruscan people of historic age. The Orientalizing period is set by convention between the end of the VIII century B.C. and the end of the VII century B.C., with remarkable delays in places which were not near the main centres spreading this culture, that is coast and border cities of southern Etruria, such as Veio, Cerveteri, Tarquinia and Vulci.

With the increasing trade, the specialization of handicraft, the application of new techniques and methods above all in agriculture, life standard rose; this corresponds to an exponential increase of demographic growth, began in the recent Bronze Age. The aristocrats especially gathered power, authority and money, plying the trade monopoly, the control of agricultural and breeding activities as well as of lines of communication. Besides the rich tomb outfit, the structure itself identifies the wealth of these figures: great moulds, dug in the rock or built with blocks, stand in the countryside of southern Etruria, the Tuscia, dumb witnesses of an ancient world with a strong gap between aristocratic families and the population. Among the main activities increasing in this historical period, we must highlight the sea trade and in general, the control of Tyrrhenian sailing routes towards Campania, where a strong Etruscan core settled around Capua and Salerno since the Iron Age, Sardinia, contact area among Etruscans, Sardinians and Punics, and northern Tyrrhenian Sea, crossed by Greek ships.
Even if divided into several cities-state, like Greek poleis, the Etruscan people was united by a strong culture, a language and ancient customs: their cultural unity will often push them towards a common policy and this will prevent foreign colonies from settling in the area of Etruscan influence. Swift ships will sail the waters of the "Tyrrhenian Sea", thus called by the Greeks because it was Etruscan, where often ships will be attacked as invaders. The Etruscan will be long charged of piracy by the Greeks: it was a much widespread activity in the ancient times and a strong deterrent to avoid trade competition.
For the people of Rasenna, how the Etruscans proudly named themselves, it is the beginning of the period of highest splendour.

The Deep Worship of the Dead,
the Striking Grandeur of Necropoles

The mysterious halo still hovering about this people, contributes to increase nowadays, notwithstanding the scientific researches of several scholars and a remarkable series of highly relevant discoveries, a number of fanciful conjectures which have nothing to do with an objective historical reconstruction, is due to the fact that until the fifties, researches were led mainly in funerary contexts.
With the Renaissance enthusiasm and the renewed interest for classical ancient times, often imposed by an antiquarian will of creating collection of artistical objects more than by a wish to study aspects of ancient peoples, a sad period for began Italian archaeology and for Italian, Italiot, Etruscan and Roman monuments and archaeological areas.
A sort of unending plunder of the ancient patrimony and above all of destruction of archaeological contexts, with the only aim of recovering statues, vases, jewels.
Extraordinary examples of this wicked activity are the notorious underground passages called "Bourbon tunnels": the Bourbon rulers of the Kingdom of Naples had them dug in the thick layer of lapilli and hardened volcanic mud, covering for almost 1700 years the site of ancient Ercolano.
The city was covered by volcanic material in 79 A.D. and was buried until the excavation, in the first years of the XVIII century, of a water pit did not enter one of the rooms of "Villa dei Papiri":
the excavation in the gallery began, with the only aim of getting statues and outfits for the royal collection. The materials are nowadays in the National Archaeological Museum at Naples.

What happened in Etruria?
Several activities of "digging" more than of archaeological excavation, such as those led by Luigi Bonaparte, cousin of Napoleon, Prince of Canino, in the countryside of Vulci:
during the excavation of tombs in the rich Etruscan city, decorated vases, above all Attic ones, were kept, while those without paintings were destroyed because thought of scarce artistic (and selling) value. If on one hand we can partly justify the excavation made without any scientific criteria, since just in that century was beginning the course of studies that would have brought to the birth of modern Archaeology, we cannot say the same of clandestine excavation activities still going on undisturbed in Etruria, above all in Tuscia, at the brink of the year 2000. A waste territory, sites hardly reachable, vegetation covering of many archaeological areas gave the descendants of ancient tomborichoi, today's grave-robbers, the possibility of acting undisturbed, with a consequent destruction of important
archaeological contexts and the loss of artistical and historical data, of fundamental importance for the reconstruction of our past.
So, flourishes a rich trade in Etruscan pottery and objects, with the advantage of clients which have nothing to do with Celtic princes or rich Carthaginian merchants:
in fact, it was represented by rich Italians, Americans, Swiss and Germans, loving the past in their own way, but unable to understand the difference between love for History and Archaeology and the wish of having in useless domestic museums objects of this past.
Therefore, since the Renaissance, excavations looked for funerary contexts, because unlike those of built-up areas, they had several valuable objects, following the Etruscan custom of stocking in tombs as many valuable items as possible, for the trip of the dead in Afterlife.
In fact, in Italian and foreign Museums, the most part of collections of Etruscan findings come from these funerary contexts: History has been written on the basis of these data and on the analysis of imposing funerary structures from the past.
Thus we have the wrong and misleading impression that the Etruscan Civilization had a excessive worship of the dead, even more marked and mysterious than in the other peoples of the ancient world.
The Etruscans had surely a deep worship of their dead: besides, their respect for them, their wish of representing tombs like dwellings for eternity, the perfect placing of funerary areas and the orientation graves opening, are part of a wider sacred and religious context.
What mostly characterizes this civilization more than the funerary context is a deep religiousness, a respect for rituality as well as for divinity.

Imposing and wonderful, striking and disquieting are the ancient Etruscan funerary structures, that people can visit in archaeological necropolis areas deep in an untouched nature:
it seem unbelievable how negative effects of the industrial civilization did not have a hold in the Tuscia, leaving an unaltered landscape, changed by wise farmers' hands, in perfect vineyards rows, in vegetables lining ups, in motley mosaics of hazel and olive groves.
The landscape of Tuscia is the same as that of a hundred years ago and necropoles, medieval rocks and all the ancient ruins are in the same deep vegetation found by learned travellers of the last century: tales by Dennis, paintings by Ainsley and Canina seem to be nowadays', portraying ancient graves dug or made of the volcanic rock the luxuriant vegetation clings on.
Such is the show in front of people who visit the rupestrian necropoles of Norchia, Barbarano, Castel D'Asso, Blera, Grotta Porcina (Vetralla), Corchiano and all the other archaeological sites in the Province of Viterbo.
Great is the astonishment while entering the painted tombs at Tarquinia: cloaked figures, banquet scenes, musicians, dancers, jugglers, they all seem to be infecting cheerfulness, a conception different from death,
an unavoidable event to be looked at with more serenity, which joins and overcomes us all, Etruscan, Roman, Greek, Carthaginian, Celt, medieval, Renaissance, modern men, as well as those of the XX century.

Religion, superstition and rites

One day a farmer from Tarquinia, while he was busy working in the fields, ploughing the white land with long and straight furrows, drove his harrow into the ground and saw the body of a young boy coming to the surface. According to the Etruscan tradition the young boy was Tagetes, the wise and worshipped prophet-child whose words were listened to by a crowd of people whose number apparently rose hugely with the passing of time.
Tagetes taught the Etruscans the difficult discipline of haruspicy, the art of divining the future by observing the entrails of sacrificed animals, namely the liver.
The haruspex was a priest highly thought of by this people; he was so important in divining the future that his "profession" outlived the Etruscan civilization itself for centuries, after the latter was absorbed in the Roman civilization.
The Tagetic Books were part of the sacred tradition of the Etruscan people which is famous all over the world for its deep religion: they contained the rules and the indications for better understanding the will and the signs of the divinity, and consequently for behaving through actions such as sacrifices, libations and different rites.
The Etruscan religious literature and particularly those books were greatly successful in the ancient Roman world; they were appreciated especially in the II and III centuries A.D., when similar esoteric doctrines became widespread in opposition to the dawning Christianity.
Other famous volumes are the Vegonic Books, containing the indications dictated by Vegoia, the nymph who dictated the rules to establish the boundaries of fields, real estates and the territory of cities. A short passage was handed down by Tarquitius, a I-century-b.C. writer who had had the possibility of reading some passages of those books in Apollo's temple in Rome,
where a copy of them was kept with other "pagan" volumes that were then apparently burnt by Stilicho: this passage relates the famous prophecy of the nine-centuries duration of the Etruscan people and nation.
And this is, in fact, the duration of the period of political independence of the Etruscans, if we consider the time from the Villanovan phase to the beginning of the I century b.C., that is when the Etruscans obtained the civitas, the Roman citizenship.

The relationship the Etruscans had with their divinities was quite different from the one of other peoples in the ancient world: while the Greeks believed the gods lived in their own world, often careless of the human world and accustomed to the same passions and weaknesses of humanity, the Romans had a relationship with gods merely based on juridical rules.
The Romans had a strict series of rules that often consisted of a sort of a mere exchange: if I receive a particular grace I will dedicate this ex-voto to the divinity: this is what some of them seemed to say, similarly to what happens today in the religions of the South and Centre of Italy where it often borders on paganism and fetishism.
On the contrary, the Etruscans had a relationship with the gods based on submission: the divinities lived in the sky or under the ground and it was necessary to understand their will by observing the ostenta, the signs that, through the haruspex and the augur priests, indicated the bahaviour one had to have.
This sense of deep religiousness, it may be said almost of inferiority towards anything concerning the divine, suggests a feeling of oppression. Every single action of a human being was "controlled" by that particular divinity, similarly to the popular religiousness of the other peoples in ancient Italy, namely the Latins.
Therefore all religious practices, rites, sacrifices, the division of space into "dwellings", each of them inhabited by a particular divinity, were so important in the life and culture of this people that it was admired by the other peoples for its dedication and devotion;
on the other side, Christian writers came to deprecating the Etruscan religion, like Arnobius (IV century A.D.) who apparently accused Etruria itself of being the "land of all superstitions".

Though very little of the Etruscans religious literature has survived, we know it contained not only the indications of the divinatory practices but also the rules ans the practices concerning the civil, political and military life of this people.
The divinities of the Etruscan pantheon were numerous; some of them, entirely new, were introduced during the profound Hellenization of culture, others were identified with analogue divinities, others preceded the coming of the Greek gods.
In order to know their names and position in the universe, a bronze model of sheep liver can be helpful: it is the famous "Piacenza liver" (II-I century b.C.) divided into specific cells with the inscription of the names of the divinities of the sky such as Tinia (Jupiter) and Uni (Juno), of the sun such as Nethuns (Neptune), of the earth such as Fufluns and Selvans, and of the hell such as Cel, Culsu, Vetis, Cilens, Vanth, Charun (Charon).
We can also remember, among the divinities borrowed from the Hellenic culture, Menerva (Minerva), Aplu (Apollo), Artumes (Artemis), Maris (Mars), Turms (Mercury), Hercle (Hercules). An important divinity was Voltumna, worshipped in a shrine at Orvieto, the ancient Volsinii destroyed by the Romans in 264 b.C.;
it became the federal sanctuary of the Etruscans and, consequently, its god too became the main divinity. Some people suggested he could be identified with Vortumnus, the god worshipped in Rome on the Aventine after the distruction of Volsinii.
Maybe the name doesn't refer to a particular god, but it could be a designation of Tinia, that is Jupiter, the main divinity.
Among the main temples whose ruins can be seen in the province of Viterbo, there is the important temple of Artemis at Tarquinia, in the area of the ancient town - a relief model can be seen in the Archaeological Museum of the town itself where one can also admire the very famous winged horses that are part of the image of our home page.
In the study of temple architecture, the various temples of the ancient Falerii are really important; today they can be admired at Civita Castellana and their finds are kept in the Archaeological Museum of the Agro Falisco situated inside the town itself. Numerous small sacred areas are scattered, throughout Etruria:
we can remember the big volcanic-stone cylindrical altar of Grotta Porcina at Vetralla and also all the terraces of the cube- and semi-cube-tombs of the rupestrian necropolis, where Etruscan priests performed the rites and ceremonies in honour to the divinities of the next world and in memory of the dead.
In order to know the procedures of some of these rites, epigraphic sources can be helpful, and particularly two extraordinarily valuable documents: the Capua tile, a big terra-cotta tile with the inscription of the rules for the offering to the gods, and the Zagreb mummy, a book made of inscribed linen rolls reused in Egypt in the I century b.C. to wrap up the body of a dead person.
This mummy was taken to the West by a XIX-century merchant and precisely in the Croatian town towards the half of last century, but its importance was recognized only at the end of that century. The book arrived in Egypt with a group of Etruscans (maybe coming from Romanized northern Etruria) who went to Africa (a Roman colonial territory too) looking for a better life.
The linen bands show the black-ink inscription of a sort of religious feast-days calendar, offers and prayers that had to be dedicated time after time to the divinity of a particular day. Not all the text has been understood.
The Etruscan people, therefore, has amazed its contemporaries with their meticulous, respectful and accurate religious rites and they continue to amaze us today for the complexity of their sacred world
and maybe for the strong spirituality emanated by the ancient sepulchres, the places of living and the sacred groungs of our forefathers.

Social classes
As far as the dawn of the history of this people is concerned, the Proto-Villanovan period (Bronze Age) and the following early Villanovan (Iron Age), no signs of a distinction of classes inside society have been noted;
on the contrary this distinction is evident at the height of Villanovan period, in the second half of the VIII century b.C.In fact, the funeral objects accompanying the dead person are a clear sign of differentiation:
a great amount of funeral objects of a very high quality, imported vases and ornaments began to appear. Something had changed in the Etruscan society, and this change was much more considerable at the end of the VIII century b.C. In the following century the Orientalizing society showed itself in all its beauty when the society was dominated by rich aristocrats whose power and prestige was based on trades with the East, agriculture and cattle breeding .
The birth of a "middle" class took place in the Archaic Age, VI century b.C., when craftsmen and merchants became aware of their abilities and worked for themselves and no longer for the rich princes.
In the social stratification there are also the lautni, the slaves imported like goods from far-off countries or captured during the numerous battles for the domination on the Tyrrhenian trade:
sometimes the burial-places of the members of this slave class have been found out; the dead persons were cremated and laid in terra-cotta vases, buried in small niches hollowed in the graves of their masters.

The family
The structure of the Etruscan family is similar to that of the Greek and Roman societies. In other words it was composed of the married couple, father and mother, often living together with children and grand-children.
This structure is reflected in the position of beds and, in some cases, of bedrooms in most of the tombs.
We know some degrees of relationship in the Etruscan language thanks to the inscriptions, like papa (grand-father), ati-nacna (grand-mother), clan (son), sec (daughter), tusurhtir (spouses), puia (bride), thuva (brother) and papacs (grand-son).

The woman
It is worth considering the social condition of the woman who, unlike the Latin and Greek world, enjyed greater regard and freedom: while for the Latins the woman had to be lanifica et domiseda,
in other words sitting and spinning the wool in her home, and, in more ancient times, the paterfamilias (head of the family) had the right of deciding her death if she was found drinking wine, for the Etruscans she could even take part in banquets, lying down on the same kline (bed) with her companion, or be present at sport-games and spectacles.
This was scandalous for the Romans who branded, without hesitation, this equality as a sign of licentiousness and poor morality of Etruscan women:
the adjective "Etruscan" became even synonym of "prostitute". However the social condition of women in the Etruscan civilization was really unique in the entire Mediterranean world, and maybe that was due to the different descent of the peoples:
Etruscans were pre-Indo-European while Latins and Greeks were Indo-European.
Women could transmit their family name to their children, especially in the highest social classes.
Sometimes in the epigraphs the woman's name (we would say the family name today) is preceded by a first name (the personal name); this shows her desire of distinguishing her individuality from the family group, unlike the Romans who commemorated only the name of her gens, the descent.
Among the most usual woman's names there are Ati, Culni, Fasti, Larthia, Ramtha, Tanaquilla, Veilia, Velia, Velka, often inscribed on the best crockery of their dwellings or on the funeral paintings.

Boats Sink..., the Beginning of Decline.

With the battle for the Sardinian sea, in the waters in front of Corsica, in 540 B.C., where the Etruscan (above all Caere) and Carthaginian fleet, allied against Greece, fought for the strengthening of the Etruscan power on the Tyrrhenian Sea, the so-called thalassocrazia:
swift ships sailed these waters in a thick network of trade and diplomatic exchanges. This war event was the inevitable consequence of the foundation of the focese colony of Aleria (546 B.C.) in Corsica, whose presence was unwelcomed by the Etruscans.
During the VI century B.C. and the first part of the V, the Etruscan civilization lived a stage of extraordinary splendour, labelled by Pallottino as the age of the "ancient flourishing". This positive phenomenon involved above all coast cities, which had direct relationships with foreign merchants and travellers, mediating exchange products with Etruscan cities of the hinterland.