ABSTRACT

The ambiguous term “Romanization,” which indicates at once a work in progress and the end result of this process, can legitimately be applied to the slow phenomenon occurring in Etruria between the third and first centuries (all dates bc), which resulted in the almost complete disappearance, at the beginning of the Empire, of the Etruscan culture, institutions and language. Yet it is not a new or unique fact that Rome was founded in immediate contact with an Etruscan territory itself long permeable to Latin influences, and the “century of the Tarquins,” the sixth century, resulted in a deep Etruscanization, against which transpired the birth of the Roman Republic. Latinization, and then Romanization of Etruria and Etruscanization of Rome formed a process that thus retained over more than seven centuries, a mixture of cultures that was more closely cemented by a solid mortar, that of the Greek culture which, in successive waves, touched, to varying degrees, all the peoples of the Italian peninsula. The Etruscan civilization was still alive at the beginning of the Roman conquest, which certainly did not put an abrupt end to its development, even though every one of the major city-states that formed Etruria – twelve, according to the tradition – presents very specific characteristics that deeply differentiate it from its neighbors. The idea of “decadence,” dear to the scholars of the nineteenth century ad, still weighs heavily on the history of this period, and this is justified etymologically, since it opens with the loss of independence of Etruria. But these three centuries were also those of deep transformations in all areas, which led ultimately to a form of successful integration.