Quotes About Etruscan

The Romans borrowed theirs from their Etruscan neighbors (and at the time, in the sixth century B.C., their overlords), who had in turn adapted their script from Greeks living in south Italy.

Here where you stand, a young Etruscan woman stood in just the same way three thousand years ago—and the wind came in just this way from Africa and chased the light across the ocean.

September was a corresponding time of relaxation. Its calends were consecrated, rightly and properly, to Juno, but in this instance to the Regina whom Camillus and his juvenes had brought from Veii. Like other foreign deities, this Etruscan Uni was installed on the Aventine (near to the present-day Sta Sabina), as well as a Jupiter of Osco-Umbrian origin whose anniversary was celebrated on the same day, 1 September: a Jupiter Liber or Libertas, god of liberty and not of wine

A city with universal authority could not become immovably set in its own national pantheon - which in any case incorporated its share of already longstanding Greek influences, together with the Etruscan heritage. As the family had opened out into the city, so Rome opened out to a world it had conquered or had yet to conquer.

The Aurelii, or Sabine origin like the Claudii, had charge of the cult of the Sun, to whom they owed their name (Ausel which harked back in fact to the Etruscan Usil) and to whom the family sacrificed in the name of the Roman people

Expert in examining entrails of sacrificed animals, but also in interpreting prodigies and lightning, the haruspices were for a long time the custodians of an Etruscan science resorted to only in exceptional circumstances. They formed an official college of sixty members only from the time of the emperor Claudius (41-54), who was, as we know, passionately interested in Etruscology.

April was devoted to Venus and Ovid at once invokes this goddess in the fourth book of the Fasti. Aprilis may even have emerged from the Etruscan Aphru, which transcribes the Greek name Aphrodite

He traced his lineage to the splendid, mysterious Etruscan civilization, based in today's Tuscany

Stone houses, terrace walls, city walls, streets. Plant any rose and you hit four or five big ones. All the Etruscan sarcophagi with likenesses of the dead carved on top in realistic, living poses must have come out of the most natural transference into death they could imagine. After lifetimes of dealing with stone, why not, in death, turn into it?

About the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, the Etruscan power had reached its height.

Ryodan says softly, "Holy strawberries, Dani, we're in a jam." I look at him like he's sprouted two heads. Holy strawberries? In a jam? Even Barrons looks stumped. He continues, "But don't worry. Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods—you really butchered that one, by the way—I've got it in the bag. How about this one: holy borrowing bibliophile, let's book.

Claudius knew a good deal about Etruscan history. Among his many learned researches he had written a twenty-volume study of the Etruscans, in Greek, as well as compiling an Etruscan dictionary.