Out of pure curiosity...

[antisocialmunky]

Didn't they have some sort of very odd probably Asiatic language?

[Arjos]

Didn't they have some sort of very odd probably Asiatic language?

Seems like they migrated from Anatolia after the bronze age collapse, but other say that they where native...
BTW great news Power2the1 ^^

[Tellos Athenaios]

Well there are province descriptions for that kind of thing. Unit wise you shouldn't expect much, certainly not for the first or second release: Etruria is undoubtedly a fascinating regions with a strong expression of its local culture *but* like on Sardinia it is already occupied by a major power (which is going to take precedence over a the quirks of a region) and on its own it will never be more than a mildly interesting rebel province.

[Arjos]

on its own it will never be more than a mildly interesting rebel province.

Of course, I wasn't expecting anything more than that, just something to show their presence along the roman side and also for other factions, as natives tried to fight against the Romans in many occasions...

But the language! It seems related to Rhaetian

Following the celtic migrations of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC into northern Italy, the etruscan "merchant outposts" were cutoff from the peninsula and so the colonist settled in Rhaetia...

[Cyclops]

Seems like they migrated from Anatolia after the bronze age collapse, but other say that they where native...
BTW great news Power2the1 ^^

Yeah one of those situatons. Obviously they have a cultural link to the east and adopt a lot of Greek ideas so an Aegean origin (at least for some of the ruling class) is quite probable, but there's heaps of continuity in the material culutre as well, so i'm guessing a great proportion of Etruscans were locals. Maybe a similar situation to "Celts" in the British Isles? Or English/Lallans speakers in Scotland?

[Arkhis]

Yeah one of those situatons. Obviously they have a cultural link to the east and adopt a lot of Greek ideas so an Aegean origin (at least for some of the ruling class) is quite probable, but there's heaps of continuity in the material culutre as well, so i'm guessing a great proportion of Etruscans were locals. Maybe a similar situation to "Celts" in the British Isles? Or English/Lallans speakers in Scotland?

This is quite likely, yes. A bit like Turks and Turkish. They've been assimilated into the Anatolian populations, but the language of the conqueror remains. Such a scenario is most likely, I doubt the population of what is Etruria would have been small enough the be absorbed by the conqueror.

But the language! It seems related to Rhaetian, and prossibly came from western Anatolia, but it's still an agglutinative language (adding suffixes to a base word, like Hungarian), which no Indo-European or Semitic languages are (they're inflective*). It must be said that inflective languages seem to be agglutinative languages where the suffixes have fused with the base word.

*To varying degrees, ofcourse. Slavic languages are a prime example of inflective languages, with lost of declensions and conjugations. English, on the other hand, has very little left.

[Loverartis]

Yeah one of those situatons. Obviously they have a cultural link to the east and adopt a lot of Greek ideas so an Aegean origin (at least for some of the ruling class) is quite probable, but there's heaps of continuity in the material culutre as well, so i'm guessing a great proportion of Etruscans were locals. Maybe a similar situation to "Celts" in the British Isles? Or English/Lallans speakers in Scotland?

(I'm a new member and I'm sorry if my english isn't very fluent) Hi, Cyclops.

I don't know anything about ancient people in England or in Scotland you refer to, but I agree with you on that: Etruscans, although they assimilated many aspects of Ellenism in 4rd and 3rd centuries b.C., maintained some of their cultural peculiarities but expressed them with greek art. In every case I think that their assimilation of Ellenistic and, then, Roman culture was slow and contiuous. Finally, their cultural identity was "standardized" to the Roman/Latin culture. That also happened to Iberians and to Veneti, for example.

[Cyclops]

(I'm a new member and I'm sorry if my english isn't very fluent) Hi, Cyclops....

Hello, your english is excellent.

... expressed them with greek art. ...

AFAIK the Hellenes were a wonderfully open minded people and their language and their art are a magnificent synthesis of the many culture they visited/raided/traded with on their epic ocean voyages. Not that they weren't also evil tyrannous weak strong brave cruel good bad etc like eveyone else, just making the point that their culture was especially porous and assimilative so they became a carrier for many cultures. The Etruscans and their cultural step-children the Romans adopted it (I'm guessing) because it was so readily adaptable ("yeah that god looks a bit like Zeus, he can be your version of the Thnderer, and his wife is in charge of the household orright?") as well as bweing brilliantly attractive ("you got your statues, your painting, your philosophy, your symposiums...")

I wonder about Punic culture: they were submerged by Greeks in the East when Alexander swamped them and extinguished/absorbed by Romans in the West. Were they a similar talkative adoptive people? What trace have they left in plain sight that we possibly think of as Roman or Greek?

There's a substantial caste of Syrian merchants in the Roman empire IIRC. I'm always reading about Syrian merchant colonies in Aquae Sulis in Brittania and at Marseille. Now were these "Syrians" Antiochian hellenes, Tyrian/Sidonian poeni, or something else? Assyrian descendants?

Certainly "Rome" as an empire was built of massive cultural congeries. Probably Etruscan was the first significant civilised influence on the rustic Latin/Sabine settlement on the Tiber, and it shows in the their basic institutions of magistracy, religion and warfare.

[Loverartis]

AFAIK the Hellenes were a wonderfully open minded people and their language and their art are a magnificent synthesis of the many culture they visited/raided/traded with on their epic ocean voyages. Not that they weren't also evil tyrannous weak strong brave cruel good bad etc like eveyone else, just making the point that their culture was especially porous and assimilative so they became a carrier for many cultures. The Etruscans and their cultural step-children the Romans adopted it (I'm guessing) because it was so readily adaptable ("yeah that god looks a bit like Zeus, he can be your version of the Thnderer, and his wife is in charge of the household orright?") as well as bweing brilliantly attractive ("you got your statues, your painting, your philosophy, your symposiums...")

Thanks Cyclops,
anyway we might ask this question: why greek culture was so "porous and assimilative", in comparison with other ancient cultures? You talk about religion: I agree, 'cause in my opinion religion was one of the aspects more assimilable.
Then I read in an essay that greek culture made philosophy and science not only to solve practical problems of their real life, but also for pure knowledge. Does it means something for the assimilative process?

There's a substantial caste of Syrian merchants in the Roman empire IIRC. I'm always reading about Syrian merchant colonies in Aquae Sulis in Brittania and at Marseille. Now were these "Syrians" Antiochian hellenes, Tyrian/Sidonian poeni, or something else? Assyrian descendants?

Mmm... It's a curious question. I remember that a lot of Etruscan pottery was recently found tombs near Siracusa, one of the greatest cities of Magna Graecia, so in that city we might suppose there were Etruscan merchants.

[bobbin]

I don't believe greek culture was particularly more "porous and assimilative" than others, the greeks just physically spread themselves out a lot more than most peoples and so they had the chance to interact with a greater number of different cultures