Rome, Villa Giulia

The "Sarcofago degli Sposi"

I visited the Villa Giulia for the first time in 1982, a couple of days before my eighteenth birthday. I had read the first five books by Livy and had become fond of early Roman history, which naturally drove me to this museum, which is devoted to art of  ancient Etruria and archaic Latium. I still have some of the slides I made back then, but I do not remember much of my visit, except the double surprise that there was a picture of an elephant and that the building itself was a monument from the Renaissance.

Two years later, I returned with my father, and I remember (a) the excellent coffee and (b) that the museum was very, very big. They seemed to believe that they had to expose every object. On later visits, I started to recognize some system, and it seemed as if the size of the museum was, after all, limited. Still, I overestimated it; when I visited the Villa Giulia last week, I believed I needed several hours, but in the end, a couple of hours were sufficient to see everything and take photos.

Yes, photos. Officially, photography is not allowed, but permission to take them can easily be obtained. In every room, I went to the guard to explain that I had a permesso, but somehow, everyone already knew and smiled. I really felt as if they warmly took care of me, almost as if I belonged to a family.

The collection itself is beautiful, and explanatory notes are really good. I was impressed by the Pyrgi temple façade and the gold tablets, the statues from Veii, and the finds of Satricum. The latter are admittedly not very special and the best piece, the Lapis Satricanus, is now in the National Museum, but I have met some of the excavators, which made these finds special, at least for me. The only object I did not see, was the elephant, which happened to be on loan to another museum.

Common Errors (21): Etruscan Origins

Etruscan urn from Chiusi. Rijksmuseum van oudheden, Leiden

Just north of Rome were the cities of the Etruscans, twelve in number, according to the tradition. This nation has a reputation of being very mysterious. And it is true that they lacked the necessary credentials to give other ancient nations the idea that they understood the Etruscans: their origins were contested. The Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus claims that they came from Lydia in western Turkey (Histories, 1.94). However, the Greek writer Dionysius – also a native of Halicarnassus – objected that the Etruscans did not speak Lydian and did not sacrifice to eastern gods (Roman Antiquities, 1.30.2). He concluded that they had to be native Italians.

The mystery was not diminished when nineteenth-century scholars discovered that the Etruscan language did not belong to the Indo-European language family. Its speakers were therefore unrelated to the other Italian and Anatolian people. Because it was believed, back then, that language told something about a nation’s nature, the Etruscans were more enigmatic than ever.

It would be exaggerated to say that all riddles have been solved in the twentieth century, but much progress has been made. DNA research appears to have shown that at least part of the people that were later known as Etruscans are related to people in Asia Minor: there seems to have been a migration from the eastern part of the Mediterranean to Italy. This conclusion has been corroborated by the results of DNA research on goats, which also appear to have arrived from the east. These results have not been without criticism, though. Still, the language is now better understood than ever. Although we can not establish to which languages Etruscan is related, we can read most inscriptions, recognize cases and conjugations, and make a dictionary. There’s little left of the Etruscan mystery.

<Overview of Common Errors>

Moving Livius.Org (6)

The Nepi aqueduct

As I already announced, I am moving several pages of my website. Today, several towns in Italy -all very small pages- received new locations. In the first place, the Aeolian Islands and Mount Eryx, which means that now everything Sicilian is now more or less where it’s supposed to be for the next year. In southern Etruria, Nepete, Sutrium, and Clusium. Finally, in Latium Fidenae and Aricia. And outside Italy: four Roman milestones from The Hague. Don’t expect too much of it. As I said: very small articles.

Still 228 pages to go…