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Etruscan language

Extinct language of ancient Italy

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Perugia, Museo archeologico Nazionale dell'Umbria, cippo di Perugia, III sec. a.C.
SBAUmbria · CC BY-SA 3.0

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The consensus among linguists and Etruscologists is that Etruscan was a Pre-Indo-European and Paleo-European language, closely related to the Raetic language that was spoken in the Alps, and to the Lemnian language, attested in a few inscriptions on Lemnos.

The Etruscan alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet, specifically from the Euboean script, which Greek colonists brought to southern Italy. Therefore linguists have been able to read the inscriptions in the sense of knowing roughly how they would have been pronounced but have not yet understood their meaning. However by using combinatory method it was possible to assign some Etruscan words to grammatical categories such as noun and verb, to identify some inflectional endings and to assign meanings to a few words of very frequent occurrence.

A comparison between the Etruscan and Greek alphabets reveals how accurately the Etruscans preserved the Greek alphabet. The Etruscan alphabet contains letters that have since been dropped from the Greek alphabet, such as the digamma, sampi and qoppa.

Grammatically the language is agglutinating, with nouns and verbs showing suffixed inflectional endings and some gradation of vowels. Nouns show five cases, singular and plural numbers, with a gender distinction between animate and inanimate in pronouns.

Etruscan appears to have had a cross-linguistically common phonological system, with four phonemic vowels and an apparent contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops. The records of the language suggest that phonetic change took place over time, with the loss and then re-establishment of word-internal vowels, possibly due to the effect of Etruscan's word-initial stress.

Etruscan religion was influenced by that of the Greeks, and many of the few surviving Etruscan-language artifacts are of votive or religious significance. The Etruscan language is also believed to be the source of certain important cultural words of Western Europe such as military and person, which do not have obvious Indo-European roots.

History of Etruscan literacy

Etruscan literacy was widespread over the Mediterranean shores, as evidenced by about 13,000 inscriptions (dedications, epitaphs, etc.), most fairly short but some of considerable length. They date from about 700 BC.

The Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. Livy and Cicero were both aware that highly specialized Etruscan religious rites were codified in several sets of books written in Etruscan under the generic Latin title Etrusca Disciplina. The Libri Haruspicini dealt with divination by reading entrails from a sacrificed animal, whilst the Libri Fulgurales expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the Libri Rituales, may have provided a key to Etruscan civilization: its wider scope embraced Etruscan standards of social and political life as well as ritual practices. According to the 4th-century AD Latin writer Maurus Servius Honoratus, a fourth set of Etruscan books existed, dealing with animal gods, but it is unlikely that any scholar living in that era could have read Etruscan. However only one book (as opposed to inscription), the Liber Linteus, survived, and only because the linen on which it was written was used as mummy wrappings.

By 30 BC Livy had noted that Etruscan was once widely taught to Roman boys but had since been replaced by the teaching of Greek, whilst Varro noted that theatrical works had once been composed in Etruscan.

Demise

The date of the extinction of Etruscan is held by scholarship to have been either in the late 1st century BC or the early 1st century AD. Freeman's analysis of inscriptional evidence implies that Etruscan was still flourishing in the 2nd century BC, still alive in the 1st century BC and surviving in at least one location in the beginning of the 1st century AD; however the replacement of Etruscan by Latin likely occurred earlier in southern regions closer to Rome.

In southern Etruria the first Etruscan site to be Latinized was Veii, when it was destroyed and repopulated by Romans in 396 BC. Caere (Cerveteri), another southern Etruscan town on the coast 45 kilometres from Rome, appears to have shifted to Latin in the late 2nd century BC. In Tarquinia and Vulci Latin inscriptions coexisted with Etruscan inscriptions in wall paintings and grave markers for centuries, from the 3rd century BC until the early 1st century BC, after which Etruscan is replaced by the exclusive use of Latin.

In northern Etruria Etruscan inscriptions continue after they disappear in southern Etruria. At Clusium (Chiusi) tomb markings show mixed Latin and Etruscan in the first half of the 1st century BC, with cases where two subsequent generations are inscribed in Latin and then surprisingly the third, youngest generation is transcribed in Etruscan. At Perugia, monolingual monumental inscriptions in Etruscan are still seen in the first half of the 1st century BC whilst the period of bilingual inscriptions appears to have stretched from the 3rd century to the late 1st century BC. The isolated last bilinguals are found at three northern sites. Inscriptions in Arezzo include one dated to 40 BC followed by two with slightly later dates, whilst in Volterra, there is one dated to just after 40 BC and a final one dated to 10–20 AD; coins with written Etruscan near Saena (Sienna) have also been dated to 15 BC. Freeman notes that in rural areas, the language may have survived a bit longer and that survival into the late 1st century AD and beyond "cannot wholly be dismissed", especially given the revelation of Oscan writing on the walls of Pompeii.

Despite the apparent extinction of Etruscan, it appears that Etruscan religious rites continued much later, continuing to use the Etruscan names of deities and possibly with some liturgical usage of the language. In late Republican and early Augustan times various Latin sources including Cicero noted the esteemed reputation of Etruscan soothsayers. An episode where lightning struck an inscription with the name Caesar, turning it into Aesar, was interpreted to have been a premonition of the deification of Caesar because of the resemblance to Etruscan aisar, meaning 'gods', although this indicates knowledge of a single word and not the language. Centuries later and long after Etruscan is thought to have died out Ammianus Marcellinus reports that Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor, apparently had Etruscan soothsayers accompany him on his military campaigns with books on war, lightning and celestial events, but the language of these books is unknown. According to Zosimus, when Rome was faced with destruction by Alaric in 408 AD, the protection of nearby Etruscan towns was attributed to Etruscan pagan priests who claimed to have summoned a raging thunderstorm, and they offered their services "in the ancestral manner" to Rome as well, but the devout Christians of Rome refused the offer, preferring death to help by pagans. Freeman notes that these events may indicate that a limited theological knowledge of Etruscan may have survived among the priestly caste much longer. One 19th-century writer argued in 1892 that Etruscan deities retained an influence on early-modern Tuscan folklore.

Around 180 AD, the Latin author Aulus Gellius mentions Etruscan alongside the Gaulish language in an anecdote. Freeman notes that although Gaulish was clearly still alive during Gellius' time, his testimony may not indicate that Etruscan was still alive because the phrase could indicate a meaning of the sort of "it's all Greek (incomprehensible) to me".

At the time of its extinction, only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as Marcus Terentius Varro, could read Etruscan. The Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – AD 54) is considered to have possibly been able to read Etruscan and wrote the Tyrrhenika, a (now lost) treatise on Etruscan history; a separate dedication made by Claudius implies a knowledge from "diverse Etruscan sources", but it is unclear if any were fluent speakers of Etruscan. Plautia Urgulanilla, the emperor's first wife, had Etruscan roots.

Etruscan had some influence on Latin, with a few dozen Etruscan words and names being borrowed by the Romans, some of which remain in modern languages, among which are possibly voltur 'vulture', tuba 'trumpet', vagina 'sheath', populus 'people'.

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