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Etruscan Language

Etruscan language

Etruscan was a language spoken and written in the ancient region of Etruria (current Tuscany) and in parts of what are now Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls), in Italy. However, Latin superseded Etruscan completely, leaving only a few documents and a few loanwords in Latin (e.g., persona from Etruscan phersu), and some place-names, like Parma.

History

Parma.]] The Etruscans are thought by some to be indigenous people of Italy, living there before the Indo-European migration and the arrival of the Latins, around 1000 BC. Herodotus (Histories I.94), however, describes the Tyrrhenians as immigrants from Lydia in western Anatolia, led west, fleeing famine, by their leader Tyrrhoeus, to settle in Umbria [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/etrucans2.html]; the Tyrrhenians of Herodotus are sometimes identified with the Etruscans, although there is no material cultural evidence to back this up. Literacy was fairly common, as can be seen by the great number of short inscriptions (dedications, epitaphs etc). Though, in the 1st century BC, the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus noted that the Etruscan language was unlike any other, the Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. With the rise of the Roman Republic that conquered Etruria, Latin hegemony hastened the decline of the Etruscan civilization, and by 200 BC, Etruscan was already replaced by Latin, except perhaps among some isolated mountain or fenland communities and, in a field that was more accessible to Latin authors, in the traditional contexts of religious cult. By the late Republic, however, only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests (such as Varro) could read Etruscan. The last person known to have been able to read Etruscan was the Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – 54). 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 from the entrails of the sacrificed animal, the Libri Fulgurales expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the Libri Rituales, would have provided us with the 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 Latin writer Servius, a fourth set of Etruscan books existed, dealing with animal gods, but it is probably unlikely that any contemporary scholar could have read Etruscan at such a late date. Christian authorities collected such works of paganism and burnt them during the 5th century; the single surviving Etruscan book, Liber Linteus, being written on linen, survived only by being used as mummy wrappings. Etruscan had some influence over Latin. A few dozen words were borrowed by the Romans and some of them can be found in modern languages.

Classification

The majormost consensus is that Etruscan is related only to other members of what is called the Tyrrhenian language family which in itself is isolate, that is, unrelated to other language groups as far as we can tell. There is no doubt that Rhaetic and Lemnian are among this family. In his Natural History (1st century AD), Pliny wrote about Alpine peoples: "The Rhaetians and the Vindelicans border with these Noricans], all distributed in numerous cities. The Gauls maintain that the Raetians descend from the Etruscans, pushed back under the leadership of Raetus." Based on this and linguistic data it's clear that Etruscan ought to be related to Raetic. However, beyond these known facts, there is ample debate and hearsay that follows. Debate continues on concerning the relationship of Eteo-Cypriot, Eteo-Cretan and Minoan to this family. The Amathus bilingual written in Eteo-Cretan shows important structural similarities bearing what appears to be a genitive in -O-SE (Etruscan <-as> and Lemnian <-š>) as well as a 3ps animate pronoun A-NA (Etruscan 'he, she'). The meagre text however makes it difficult to prove a kinship for certain. Eteo-Cretan likewise shows grammatical similarities and vocabulary terms but again the number of texts are meager. Since Minoan texts are also few and far between, any grammatical similarities with Etruscan are always tentative. However it has been noted by some online that the oft-repeated Minoan U-NA-KA-NA-SI and U-NA-RU-KA-NA-SI may bear resemblence to what would be written in Etruscan as
- unχva cenase "bearing libations" which is surprisingly reasonable considering that the objects on which this is consistently written are in fact libation tables. (The value of as 'libation' is proven by its repeated usage in the Liber Linteus.) Time will tell whether these connections bear fruit. Some modern scholars have claimed that Etruscan as part of a larger Tyrrhenian family is distantly related to Indo-European, citing similarities in grammatical endings and vocabulary. By extension, because Indo-European is a classified as a Nostratic language by some, it is therefore presumed if related that Etruscan and its family are also Nostratic. Nothing yet can be ascertained considering the paucity of texts in general other than those of Etruscan. For now, many remain conservative and consider Tyrrhenian to be isolate. A connection with IE is merely one of the strongest possibilities so far but not proven by a long-shot.

Other less accepted theories

The interest in Etruscan antiquities and the mysterious Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Dominican monk, Annio da Viterbo, "il Pastura" (1432—1502), the cabalist and orientalist who guided Pinturicchio's allegorical frescoes for Pope Alexander VI's Vatican apartments. In 1498 Annio published his antiquarian miscellany titled Antiquitatum variarum (in 17 volumes) where he put together a fantastic theory in which both the Hebrew and Etruscan languages were said to originate from a single source, the "Aramaic" spoken by Noah and his descendants, founders of Etruscan Viterbo. Annio also started to excavate Etruscan tombs, unearthing sarcophagi and inscriptions, and made a bold try at deciphering the Etruscan language. It is long ago been disproven that Etruscan can possibly be on its own a member of the Indo-European branch of Anatolian languages because of the discovery of the Lemnian language, which backs up Herodotus' ancient account of an eastern origin of the Etruscans and their language. Furthermore, Etruscan is very different from IE languages, having a 1ps mi while Indo-European languages have
- h1ego:. It also lacks any pronominal endings, a thematic class of verbs in
- -e-, ablaut between
- e and
- o in the verb stem, and other clear features that are specifically those of the IE family. While there is debate about Etruscan and the Tyrrhenian family being
- related to
- IE, the debate about Etruscan
- being
- an IE language is very much dead now. The obscurity of Etruscan's roots continue to attract further investigation for good or for bad. A recent (2003) study by linguist Mario Alinei has attempted to gather evidence for the idea that Etruscan may have been an archaic form of Hungarian. Alinei supported his theory with similarities in magistrature names and other linguistic lookalikes, then further drew from any archaeological evidence that could point the beginnings of Etruscan culture to the Carpathian basin. This theory however is not widely accepted by academics, neither by archaeologists nor linguists. In fact it is hotly criticized for failing to adhere to strict scientific methodology. However due to its self-evident political and cultural leanings, its failings unfortunately do not dissuade a number of laypeople who are seduced by this romantic but contorted vision of the origins of Hungary and its people. Lacking strong evidence to back up his claims, Alinei's theories have been charged as being politically motivated and ideological, not scientific.

Geographic distribution

Etruscan was spoken in north-west and west-central Italy, in the region that even now bears their name: Tuscany, and in the Po valley to the north of Etruria.

Related Languages

One language certain to be very closely related to Etruscan is the language once spoken on the island of Lemnos before the Athenian invasion (6th century BC), aptly named Lemnian. A stone tablet called the Lemnos stele was found there written with a script related to Etruscan and is dated to approximately 600 BCE. We know that the inhabitants actually spoke this language due to the plethora of ceramic pieces with inscriptions written with this same alphabet. However, we do not know when or how speakers of this dialect arrived on this island. It is probable that Rhaetic, a language attested in Northern Italy, is also related to Etruscan, sharing with it some common features such as grammatical inflections and vocabulary, although the number of inscriptions in this language are few. The most notable inscription in a language known to linguists as Eteocypriot is the Amathus Bilingual, so named because it bears a partially translated version of the Eteocypriot text in the ancient Attic dialect of Greek. Like Lemnian, it bears similarities in vocabulary and grammar to Etruscan and is likely to be part of the same family. Tentatively, some note a possible relationship with Minoan (aka Eteocretan) to Etruscan, written in the Linear A script. While this may seem too bold for some, this view would be perfectly in line with Herodotus' account in Histories that Etruscans originate from Asia Minor, suggesting that an entire family of now extinct languages may have once existed in the area extending from Greece and neighbouring islands to Western Turkey. Indeed, this in turn may remind us of the theory proposed by Beekes of a pre-Greek substrate present in some Greek words of otherwise obscure "non-Indo-European" origin. In all, the old view that Etruscan is an isolated language can be put to rest. In modern times we see that Etruscan is part of a larger linguistic family that is now known as Tyrrhenian, based on the Greek name for the Etruscans, "Tyrrhenoi".

Sounds

The reconstructed phonemes of Etruscan (IPA encoding):

Vowels

- letter: A
- letter: E
- letter: I
- letter: V
- letter: F

Consonants

- letter: H
- letter: P
- letter: Phi
- letter: T
- letter: Theta
- letter: K
- letter: Khi
- letter: Z
- letter: S
- letter: San
- letter: 8, FH
- letter: L
- letter: R
- letter: M
- letter: N Rix (see Refs.) postulates several syllabic consonants, namely and palatal as well as a labiovelar spirant but this is not the view shared by most Etruscanologists. Some scholars (see Cristofani et al.) also view the aspirates as palatal rather than aspirated.

Texts

Helmut Rix, Etruskische Texte, works as a kind of incomplete thesaurus, a main key to studying the Etruscan language. First of all Rix and his collaborators present the only two unified (though fragmentary) texts available in Etruscan: the Liber Linteus used for mummy wrappings (now at Zagreb, Croatia) and the Tabula Capuana (the inscribed tablet from Capua). All the rest of the recovered inscriptions follow, grouped according to the localities in which they were found: Campania, Latium, Falerii and Ager Faliscus, Veii, Caere, Tarquinia, Ager Tarquinensis, Ager Hortanus, and finally, outside Italy, in Gallia Narbonensis, in Corsica and in North Africa. (Two inscriptions from Sardinia, published in 1935, escaped Rix.) Less precisely identified inscriptions follow, and finally inscriptions on small movable objects: bronze mirrors and cistae (boxes), on gems and coins. Archeological inscriptions in Etruscan include inner walls and doors of tombs, engraved stele, ossuaries, mirrors and votive gifts. Inscriptions are highly abbreviated and often casually formed, so that many individual letters are in doubt among the specialists. The Pyrgi Tablets are a short bilingual text in Etruscan and Phoenician. Some surviving Etruscan inscriptions appear on thin gold sheets. A "book" of gold sheets bound with gold rings went on display in May 2003 at the National History Museum in Sofia, Bulgaria. It consists of six bound sheets of 24-carat (100%) gold, with low-reliefs of a horseman, a mermaid, a harp and soldiers, with text. It was claimed to have been discovered about 1940 in a tomb uncovered during digging for a canal along the Strouma river in south-western Bulgaria, kept secretly and anonymously donated by its 87-year-old owner, living in Macedonia. Museum director Bojidar Dimitrov confirmed its authenticity with Bulgarians and experts in London. Bulgarian linguist Vladimir Georgiev is working on a translation of the text. About 30 single golden sheets with Etruscan inscriptions are known, according to the Sofia museum's curator of archaeology, Elka Penkova.
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2939362.stm BBC News report]

Vocabulary

:See the list of Etruscan words and list of words of Etruscan origin at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project Due to its isolation, no significant certain translations from Etruscan into modern languages have been produced yet, however we can be fairly certain of how the language was pronounced as the Etruscan speakers wrote using a variant of the Greek alphabet. Latin borrowed a few dozen words from Etruscan, many of them related to culture, like ellementum (letter), litterae (writing), cera (wax), arena, etc. Some of these words can be found in modern languages, especially in Romance languages. Some English words derived from Latin — e.g. people, person, population — are considered to be of Etruscan origin.

Writing system

The Latin alphabet that is used in English owes its existence to the Etruscan writing system, which was adopted for Latin in the form of the Old Italic alphabet. The Etruscan alphabet employs a Euboean variant of the Greek alphabet using the letter digamma (or "F") and is ultimately of West Semitic origin.

External links

- [http://etp.classics.umass.edu/ The Etruscan Texts Project] A massive online database open to the public which contains all known Etruscan texts known to date. A valuable resource for budding Etruscanologists.
- [http://ling.cornell.edu/Weiss/CGL_35-Etruscan.pdf Etruscan grammar (pdf)] A detailed explanation of the grammar of the related Etruscan language by Micheal Weiss of the Cornell University.
- [http://web.archive.org/web/20021207170759/http://www.netaxs.com/~salvucci/VTLhome.html The Languages of Ancient Italy]
- [http://web.archive.org/web/20021213221136/http://www.netaxs.com/~salvucci/VTLetrvocab.html An Etruscan Glossary]
- [http://etruskisch.de/pgs/vc.htm Etruscan Glossary]
- [http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/EtruscanGlossary.htm Another Glossary]
- [http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/etrweb/etrmain.htm Etruscans on the Web]: Language links here are divided between 'Mainstream' with the professional linguists, and 'Alternative,' where you can read up on connections between Etruscan and Ukrainian, Turkish, or Slovenian.

References

-
-
-
-
- 2 vols. Category:Ancient languages Category:Pre-Indo-Europeans Category:Language isolates Category:Etruscans ja:エトルリア語

Language

A language is a system of symbols, generally known as lexemes and the rules by which they are manipulated. The word language is also used to refer to the whole phenomenon of language, i.e., the common properties of languages. Though language is commonly used for communication, it is not synonymous with it. Human language is a natural phenomenon, and language learning is instinctive in childhood. In their natural form, human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for the symbols in order to communicate with others through the senses. Though there are thousands of human languages, they all share a number of properties from which there are no known deviations. Humans have also invented (or arguably in some cases discovered) many other languages, including constructed human languages such as Esperanto or Klingon, programming languages such as Python or Ruby, and various mathematical formalisms. These languages are not restricted to the properties shared by natural human languages.

Properties of language

Languages are not just sets of symbols. They also contain a grammar, or system of rules, used to manipulate the symbols. While a set of symbols may be used for expression or communication, it is primitive and relatively unexpressive, because there are no clear or regular relationships between the symbols. Because a language also has a grammar, it can manipulate its symbols to express clear and regular relationships between them. For example, imagine going on a walk with a person who only knew individual symbols, or words. If you saw a dog, he might say, "Dog scare" or "Scare Dog". Although any English speaker would have some notion of what he was talking about, the relationship between the words is unclear. Is he scared of dogs? Or just that dog? Or does he want to scare the dog off? Does he think the dog is scared? But if you respond, "I’m not scared of dogs," the relationship between dog and scare is quite apparent and hence the meaning of the utterance. Another important property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean nothing. That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian speakers nada means hope. However, it must be understood that just because in principle the symbols are arbitrary does not mean that a language cannot have symbols that are iconic of what they stand for. Words such as meow sound similar to what they represent, but they could be replaced with words such as jarn, and as long as everyone memorized the new word, the same concepts could be expressed with it.

Human languages

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science studying them is linguistics. Making a principled distinction between one language and another is usually impossible. For example, the boundaries between named language groups are in effect arbitrary due to blending between populations (the dialect continuum). For instance, there are dialects of German very similar to Dutch which are not mutually intelligible with other dialects of (what Germans call) German. Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not always possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.) The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache, and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

Origins of human language

Scientists do not yet agree on when language was first used by humans (or their ancestors). Estimates range from about two million (2,000,000) years ago, during the time of Homo habilis, to as recently as forty thousand (40,000) years ago, during the time of Cro-Magnon man. The nature of speech means that there is almost no data on which to base conclusions on the subject.

Language taxonomy

The classification of natural languages can be performed on the basis of different underlying principles (different closeness notions, respecting different properties and relations between languages); important directions of present classifications are:
- paying attention to the historical evolution of languages results in a genetic classification of languages—which is based on genetic relatedness of languages,
- paying attention to the internal structure of languages (grammar) results in a typological classification of languages—which is based on similarity of one or more components of the language’s grammar across languages,
- and respecting geographical closeness and contacts between language-speaking communities results in areal groupings of languages. The different classifications do not match each other and are not expected to, but the correlation between them is an important point for many linguistic research works. (There is a parallel to the classification of species in biological phylogenetics here: consider monophyletic vs. polyphyletic groups of species.) The task of genetic classification belongs to the field of historical-comparative linguistics, of typological—to linguistic typology. See also: Taxonomy, Taxonomic classification—for the general idea of classification and taxonomies.

Genetic classification

The world’s languages have been grouped into families of languages that are believed to have common ancestors. Some of the major families are the Indo-European languages, the Afro-Asiatic languages, the Austronesian languages, and the Sino-Tibetan languages. The shared features of languages from one family can be due to shared ancestry. (Compare with homology in biology.)

Typological classification

An example of a typological classification is the classification of languages on the basis of the basic order of the verb, the subject and the object in a sentence into several types: SVO, SOV, VSO, and so on, languages. (, for instance, belongs to the SVO language type.) The shared features of languages of one type (= from one typological class) may have arisen completely independently. (Compare with analogy in biology.) Their cooccurence might be due to the universal laws governing the structure of natural languages—language universals.

Areal classification

The following language groupings can serve as some linguistically significant examples of areal linguistic units, or sprachbunds: Balkan linguistic union, or the bigger group of European languages; Caucasian languages. Although the members of each group are not closely genetically related, there is a reason for them to share similar features, namely: their speakers have been in contact for a long time within a common community and the languages converged in the course of the history. These are called areal features. NB. One should be careful about the underlying classification principle for groups of languages which have apparently a geographical name: besides areal linguistic units, the taxa of the genetic classification (language families) are often given names which themselves or parts of which refer to geographical areas.
Constructed languages
One prominent artificial language, called Esperanto, was created by L. L. Zamenhof. It is a compilation of various elements of different languages, and it is intended to be an easy-to-learn language. Another prominent artificial language, called Ido, is intended to be reformed Esperanto. Other constructed languages strive to be more logical than natural languages; a prominent example of this is Lojban. Other writers, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, have created fantasy languages, for literary, artistic, or personal reasons. One of Tolkien’s languages is called Quenya, which is a form of Elvish. It has its own alphabet, and its phonology and syntax are modelled on Finnish. Linguist Mark Okrand has devised Klingon and Vulcan for Star Trek, which have since been developed into full languages.
The study of language
The oldest surviving written grammar for any language is believed to be the Tolkāppiyam (தொல்காப்பியம்), a book on the grammar of the Tamil language, written around 200 BCE by Tolkāppiyar. Its classification of the alphabet into consonants and vowel was a breakthrough. The historical record of the study of language begins in North India with Pāṇini, the 5th century BCE grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology, known as the (अष्टाध्यायी). grammar is highly systematized and technical. Inherent in its analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme, and the root; the phoneme was only recognized by Western linguists some two millennia later. In the Middle East, the Persian linguist Sibawayh made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 CE in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi an-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book he distinguished phonetics from phonology. Later in the West, the success of science, mathematics, and other formal systems in the 20th century led many to attempt a formalization of the study of language as a "semantic code". This resulted in the academic discipline of linguistics, the founding of which is attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure.
Animal (nonhuman) language
While the term animal languages is widely used, most researchers agree that they are not as complex or expressive as human language; a more accurate term is animal communication. Some researchers argue that there are significant differences separating human language from the communication of other animals, and that the underlying principles are not related. In several widely publicised instances, animals have been trained to mimic certain features of human language. For example, chimpanzees and gorillas have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language; however, they have never been taught its grammar. There was also a case in 2003 of Kanzi, a captive bonobo chimpanzee allegedly independently creating some words to mean certain concepts. While animal communication has debated levels of semantics, it has not been shown to have syntax in the sense that human languages do. Some researchers argue that a continuum exists among the communication methods of all social animals, pointing to the fundamental requirements of group behaviour and the existence of "mirror cells" in primates. This, however, may not be a scientific question, but is perhaps more one of definition. What exactly is the definition of the word "language"? Most researchers agree that, although human and more primitive languages have analogous features, they are not homologous.
Formal languages
Mathematics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages (including programming languages and markup languages, but also some that are far more theoretical in nature). These often take the form of character strings, produced by some combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.
See also

- Common phrases in different languages
- Computer-assisted language learning (a historical perspective)
- Deception
- Ethnologue, which provides a fairly complete list of languages, locations, population and genetic affiliation
- Extinct language
- FOXP2 (Language gene)
- ILR scale (defines five levels of language proficiency)
- ISO 639 (2- and 3-letter codes for language names)
- Language education
- Language reform
- Language policy
- Language school
- Linguistic protectionism
- Linguistics basic topics
- List of language academies
- List of languages
- List of official languages
- Naming
- Non-verbal communication
- Non-sexist language
- Official language
- Orthography
- Philology and Historical linguistics
- Philosophy of language
- Profanity
- Psycholinguistics
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Slang
- Symbolic communication
- Speech therapy
- Terminology
- Tongue-twister
- Translation
- Whistled language
References

- Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Crystal, David (2001). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Katzner, K. (1999). The Languages of the World. New York, Routledge.
- McArthur, T. (1996). The Concise Companion to the English Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
- Kandel, Jessel, and Schwartz (1991). Principles of Neural Science. McGraw Hill (esp. p. 1173).
External links

- [http://www.zompist.com/ Mark Rosenfelder’s Metaverse] provides a useful listing of 5000 languages and dialects (grouped by their relationships), where the numbers one to ten in each language may be found
- [http://www.geocities.com/agihard/mohl/mohl_languages.html Museum of Languages]
- The [http://www.ethnologue.com/ Ethnologue], a catalog of the world’s languages
- [http://www.language-capitals.com Language Capitals] Guide to 8 major languages of the world with facts, characteristics and varieties
- [http://www.vistawide.com/languages/ World Languages and Cultures] — Practical information and resources on languages and language learning
- [http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/animals.html Animal sounds in different languages]
- [http://www.netz-tipp.de/languages.html Distribution of languages on the Internet]
- [http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/ Speech accent archive]
- [http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/G_Kunkel/homepage.htm a collection of bird songs] provides many kinds of bird songs
- [http://acp.eugraph.com The Animal Communication Project]
- [http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/categories/lang.html Language Articles]
- [http://www.primitivism.com/language.htm Language: Origin and Meaning by John Zerzan] Category:Technology als:Sprache zh-min-nan:Gí-giân ko:언어 ms:Bahasa nb:Språk ja:言語 simple:Language th:ภาษา

Etruria

:This article is about the ancient Italian country. Etruria, Staffordshire is also a place in England. Etruria was an ancient country in Central Italy, located in an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium and Umbria. It is identified as the territory of Etruscans, and it was one of the most important city/states on the Italian peninsula before falling to the Roman Republic in the 3rd century BC. Etruria became dominant in the Italian peninsula after 650 BCE. Their expansion included the Po River Valley and Latium and continued south until they came in contact with the Greek colonies in Southern Italy. Etruscan kings most notably conquered and ruled Rome for 100 years until 509 BCE when the last Etruscan king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was removed from power and the Roman Republic was established. The Etruscans are credited with changing Rome from a farming village into a large city. They are also responsible for building the first road on the main street of Rome, the Via Sacra, and also temples, housing, markets, etc. The Etruscans are responsible for much of the Culture of Greece imported into Rome, including the Twelve Olympians, the Latin alphabet (adopted from the Greek alphabet), the phalanx formation, and the growing of olives and grapes. The Kingdom of Etruria was a creation of Napoleon I of France in Tuscany which existed from 1801 to 1807.

Tuscany

Tuscany (Italian Toscana) is a region in central Italy, bordering on Latium to the south, Umbria and Marche to the east, Emilia-Romagna and Liguria to the north, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. It is often regarded as among the most beautiful parts of Italy. Tuscany was essentially the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, and its artistic heritage includes architecture, painting and sculpture, collected in dozens of museums, the best-known of which is the Uffizi in Florence and in situ in even quite small cities. Tuscany is known for its wines (most famous of which are Chianti, Morellino di Scansano and Brunello di Montalcino) and has 120 protected regions (nature reserves). Notable tourist destinations in Tuscany include Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, the Maremma, the Crete Senesi, the Lunigiana and Garfagnana areas, and the island of Elba.

History

See main article: History of Tuscany

Provinces of Tuscany

- Arezzo
- Florence (Firenze)
- Grosseto
- Livorno
- Lucca
- Massa-Carrara
- Pisa
- Pistoia
- Prato
- Siena

Landscapes

- Casentino
- Chianti
- Maremma
- Mugello
- Val di Chiana

External links

- [http://www.regione.toscana.it/ Regione Toscana (Official page)]
- [http://www.italy-weather-and-maps.com/maps/italy/tuscany.gif Map of Tuscany]
- [http://www.castellitoscani.com/ Castles of Tuscany] Category:NUTS 2 Statistical Regions of Europe ko:토스카나 주 ja:トスカーナ州

Lombardy

Lombardy (Italian: Lombardia) is a region in northern Italy between the Alps and the Po Valley. It borders the Italian regions of Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, and Veneto, Trentino-South Tyrol, as well as Switzerland. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy. Its capital is Milan, the fourth-largest conurbation in Europe, with more than 6.5 million inhabitants. The current governor of Lombardy is Roberto Formigoni. Pirelli Tower, the highest skyscraper in Italy (127 m), is the seat of Lombardy's regional government. Lombardy is one of the three richest regions in Europe, with a per capita gross domestic product that is 30 percent higher than the rest of Italy. Many foreign and national companies have their headquarters in Milan, and Lombardy is home to many many top-rated clubs in football, rugby, ice hockey and basketball.

History

The region is named for the Lombards or Longobardi, who came after the fall of the (western) Roman Empire. The Lombards spoke a Germanic language akin to Anglo-Saxon. There was a close relationship between the Frankish, Bavarian and Lombard nobility for many centuries. The name "Lombardy" applied to the whole of Northern Italy until the 15th century.

Lombardy's motto

The Region of Lombardy's motto is "Una regione per fare" (in English, "A region to act"). A motto in the local language is "Se lavora di stell ai stell", meaning "One works from the stars to the stars", ie from dawn to evening.

Provinces

The region is divided into the following provinces, all named after their capital cities:
- Bergamo
- Brescia (weapon industries)
- Como (silk industries - Lake Como)
- Cremona
- Lecco
- Lodi
- Mantova
- Milano
- Monza e Brianza (effective in 2009) (furniture industries)
- Pavia (one of the most ancient universities)
- Sondrio (Valtellina)
- Varese (shoes industries) Its twelve provinces are subdivided into a total of 1,562 communes, ranging in population from Milan (1,256,211) to Morterone, near Lake Como, with only 33 inhabitants (2001 census). Lake Como

Main cities

- Milan 1,256,211 Milan
- Brescia 187,567
- Monza 120,204
- Bergamo 113,143
- Varese 80,511
- Sesto San Giovanni 78,850
- Como 78,680
- Busto Arsizio 75,916
- Cinisello Balsamo 72,050
- Pavia 71,214
- Cremona 70,887
- Vigevano 57,450
- Legnano 53,797
- Rho 50,246

Transportation

Airports

There are four main airports in Lombardy:
- Milan-Malpensa Int.l Airport (MXP),
- Milan-Linate Airport (LIN)
- Bergamo-Orio al Serio Airport (BGY)
- Brescia Montichiari (VBS) Milan-Linate Airport Milan's two airports are considered the most crowded Italian hub with more than 30 million passengers a year.

Railway service

The Suburban Railway Service (called "S" Lines, the service is similar to the French RER and German S-Bahn), composed of 8 commuter rail lines (10 as of 2008), connects the Milan Metropolitan Area ("Great Milan"), and other important cities, like Como or Varese. The Regional Railway Service (called "R"), on the other hand, links the cities of Lombardy and connects the region with the national railway system. 2008

Tourism information

Famous Lombards

- Virgil
- Pliny the Elder
- Pliny the Younger
- Archbishop Ambrose
- Archbishop Ariberto
- Cesare Beccaria
- The Verri Brothers
- Alessandro Volta
- Carlo Cattaneo
- Alessandro Manzoni
- Gianni Brera
- Carlo Emilio Gadda
- Silvio Berlusconi
- Dario Fo
- Giorgio Gaber
- Adriano Celentano

Food

- Risotto alla milanese
- Cotoletta alla milanese
- Osso buco
- Cassoeula
- Panettone
- Missoltini
- Polenta
- Torrone
- Bresaola
- Rane fritte
- Lumache in guazzetto
- Polenta taragna
- Pizzoccheri
- Gorgonzola
- Granone lodigiano
- Brasato
- Tapelucco
- Involtini di verza
- Trippa alla milanese
- Risotto alla vogherese
- Rostisciada
- Ravioli di brasato
- Pesce d'acqua dolce in carpione
- Olio d'oliva del Garda

Wines

- Inferno
- Sassella
- Sfursat
- Franciacorta Brut
- Franciacorta rosso
- Lugana
- Bonarda dell'Oltrepò
- Barbera dell'Oltrepò
- Moscato dell'Oltrepò
- San Colombano

Local language

- Lombard language

External links

General information

- [http://www.regione.lombardia.it Regione Lombardia] - Official website
- [http://www.italy-weather-and-maps.com/maps/italy/lombardy.gif Map of Lombardy]

Provinces

- [http://www.provincia.bergamo.it/ Provincia di Bergamo]
- [http://www.provincia.brescia.it/ Provincia di Brescia]
- [http://www.provincia.como.it/ Provincia di Como]
- [http://www.provincia.cremona.it// Provincia di Cremona]
- [http://www.provincia.lecco.it/ Provincia di Lecco]
- [http://www.provincia.lodi.it/ Provincia di Lodi]
- [http://www.provincia.mantova.it/ Provincia di Mantova]
- [http://www.provincia.milano.it/ Provincia di Milano]
- [http://www.provincia.pv.it// Provincia di Pavia]
- [http://www.provincia.varese.it/ Provincia di Varese]
- [http://www.provincia.sondrio.it// Provincia di Sondrio]

Universities

- [http://www.polimi.it/ Milan's Politecnic]
- [http://www.unibocconi.it/ Università Bocconi] (Milan)
- [http://www.unicatt.it/ Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore] (Milan)
- [http://www.unimi.it/ Università degli Studi di Milano]
- [http://www.unimib.it/ Università degli Studi Milano Bicocca] (Milan-Monza)
- [http://www.unibg.it/ Università degli Studi di Bergamo]
- [http://www.unibs.it/ Università degli Studi di Brescia]
- [http://www.unimn.it/ Università degli Studi di Mantova]
- [http://www.unipv.it/ Università degli Studi di Pavia]
- [http://www.uninsubria.it/ Università degli Studi dell'Insubria] (Varese-Como)
- Category:NUTS 2 Statistical Regions of Europe ja:ロンバルディア州 simple:Lombardy

Veneto

Veneto is one of the twenty regions of Italy. It is located in the northeastern part of the country, bordering on Lombardy, Trentino-South Tyrol, Austria, Friuli Venezia Giulia, and Emilia-Romagna, between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea. It is traversed by the Po, Adige, Brenta and Piave rivers. The capital is Venice, and other important towns include Verona, Padua, Treviso, Belluno, Rovigo and Vicenza. This region is very rich in artistic and cultural treasures. Its architectural heritage includes the unique buildings and bridges of Venice, and many of Palladio's villas. Verona's arena is an ancient Roman amphitheatre, traditionally reserved for opera. The thermal baths at Abano Terme are also an attraction. There are some fine wines from the Veneto region of Italy, these include: Soave and Valpolicella. Vacation spots are Jesolo, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Lake Garda. The regional economy, which used to depend entirely on agriculture, is now highly oriented towards manufacturing industry and fashion (Benetton and Marzotto were a major employer), together with cultural tourism. Veneto is one of the two Italian Regions whose inhabitants are granted the status of «popolo» (i.e. people) with Constitutional Law by the Italian Parliament, the other Region being Sardinia. However only Sardinia has been added the status of "autonomous". Veneto is also the name of the main battleship class which Italian navy possessed during World War II. The Veneto class battleship includes Vittorio Veneto and Rome. Both ships were damaged in the famous Taranto raid of the British Royal navy and participated in most of the major sea battles between Britain and Italy in the Mediterranean. .

Veneto History

External links

- [http://www.regione.veneto.it/channels Regione Veneto] -Official homepage
- [http://www.italy-weather-and-maps.com/maps/italy/veneto.gif Map of Veneto]
- Category:NUTS 2 Statistical Regions of Europe ja:ヴェネト州

Emilia-Romagna

Emilia-Romagna is an administrative region of Northern Italy comprising the two historic regions of Emilia and Romagna. It forms a rough triangle, bounded on the East by the Adriatic Sea, on the North by the Po river and on the South by the Appennine range. With 4,030,000 inhabitants in 22,123 sq. km (8545 sq. mi) as of the 2003 census, it is a densely populated region (especially in the plain half). Emilia-Romagna is one of the richest regions of Italy, and its cuisine one of the most characteristic. Agriculture is the most important economic activity: cereals, potatoes, maize, tomatoes and onions are the most important, along with fruit and grapes for the production of wine (of which the most famous are perhaps Lambrusco, Sangiovese and Albana). Cattle and hog breeding are also highly developed. The industry of Emilia-Romagna is also healthy, especially the food industry and tourism along the Adriatic coastline. The principal city is Bologna, an historic, cultural and entertainment center of national importance. Other important cities include Parma, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Rimini, Ferrara, Forlì, Cesena and Ravenna. The name Emilia-Romangna has roots in the Ancient Rome legacy in these lands. Emilia refers to via Emilia, an important Roman way connecting Rome to the northern part of Italy. Romagna is a corruption of Romània; when Ravenna was the capital of the Italian portion of the Byzantine Empire, the Lombardss extended the official name of the Empire to the lands around Ravenna.

Demographics

The population of Emilia Romagna is largely Italian, but there has been a rise in the number of migrants in the area:
- Italian: 3,819,823 or 94.7%
- Moroccan: 39,946 or 1.0%
- Albanian: 28,870 or 0.7%
- Tunisian: 13,800 or 0.3%
- Romanian: 10,848 or 0.2%

External link(s)

- [http://www.regione.emilia-romagna.it/ Emilia-Romagna Region]
- [http://www.italy-weather-and-maps.com/maps/italy/emiliaromagna.gif Map of Emilia-Romagna]
- Category:NUTS 2 Statistical Regions of Europe ja:エミリア＝ロマーニャ州

Gaul

Gaul (from Latin Gallia, c.f. Greek Galatia) is the region of Western Europe occupied by present-day France, Belgium, western Switzerland and the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the Rhine river. In English the word Gaul also refers to a Celtic inhabitant of that region in ancient times, but the Gauls were widespread in Europe by Roman times, speaking the Gaulish language. Besides the Gauls living on the territory of modern-day France, there were the Lepontii who had settled in the plains of northern Italy (Gallia Cisalpina), and the Helvetii who settled to the north of the alps, in Raetia. Gauls under Brennus sacked Rome circa 390 BC. In the Aegean world, a huge migration of Eastern Gauls appeared in Thrace, north of Greece, in 281 BC. Another Gaulish chieftain named Brennus, at the head of a large army, was only turned back from desecrating the Temple of Apollo at Delphi at the last minute, alarmed, it was said, by portents of thunder and lightning. At the same time a migrating band of Celts, some 10,000 fighting men, with their women and children and slaves, were moving through Thrace. Three tribes of Gauls crossed over from Thrace to Asia Minor at express invitation of Nicomedes I, king of Bithynia, who required help in a dynastic struggle against his brother. Eventually they settled down in eastern Phrygia and Cappadocia in central Anatolia, a region henceforth known as Galatia. The Gauls were called
- walha by Germanic tribes, a generic term for "foreigners" (see Etymology of Vlach).

Roman Gaul

:See main article: Roman Gaul. Roman rule in Gaul was established by Julius Caesar, who defeated the Celtic tribes in Gaul 58-51 BC and described his experiences in De Bello Gallico (About the Gallic War). The war cost the lives of more than a million Gauls, and a million further were enslaved. The area conquered by Caesar was called Gallia Comata: literally, "long-haired Gaul." The area was subsequently governed as a number of provinces. On December 31, 406 the Vandals, Alans and Suebians crossed the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gallia, and Roman rule in Gaul ended with the defeat of the Roman governor Syagrius by the Franks in AD 486.

Gaulish tribes

Caesar divided the people of Gaul into three broad groups: the Aquitani; Galli (who in their own language were called Celtae); and Belgae. In the modern sense, Gaulish tribes are defined linguistically, as speakers of dialects of the Gaulish language. While the Aquitani were probably Vascons, the Belgae would thus probably be counted among the Gaulish tribes. Julius Caesar's comments on these people from his book, The Gallic Wars, are worth quoting;

"All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third.

All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws.

The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani; the Marne and the Seine separate them from the Belgae.

Of all these, the Belgae are the bravest, because they are furthest from the civilization and refinement of [our] Province, and merchants least frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind; and they are the nearest to the Germans, who dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually waging war; for which reason the Helvetii also surpass the rest of the Gauls in valor, as they contend with the Germans in almost daily battles, when they either repel them from their own territories, or themselves wage war on their frontiers. One part of these, which it has been said that the Gauls occupy, takes its beginning at the river Rhone; it is bounded by the river Garonne, the ocean, and the territories of the Belgae; it borders, too, on the side of the Sequani and the Helvetii, upon the river Rhine, and stretches toward the north.

The Belgae rises from the extreme frontier of Gaul, extend to the lower part of the river Rhine; and look toward the north and the rising sun.

Aquitania extends from the river Garonne to the Pyrenaean mountains and to that part of the ocean which is near Spain: it looks between the setting of the sun, and the north star." 1

Source for The Gallic Wars

- http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.html

Loanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into by one language from another with little or no translation. A calque or loan translation is a related process whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word "loanword" itself is a calque of the German Lehnwort. Although loanwords are typically far less numerous than the "native" words of most languages (creoles and pidgins being an obvious exception), they are often widely known and used, since their borrowing served a certain purpose, for example to provide a name for a new invention.

Classes of borrowed words

Certain classes of loanwords are more common; function words, such as pronouns, numbers, words referring to universal concepts, are usually not borrowed. Examples of these words being borrowed have been attested, however. Words referring to exotic concepts or ideas are usually borrowed. What is "exotic" can vary from language to language. Thus, English names for creatures not native to Great Britain are almost always loanwords, and most of the technical vocabulary referring to music is borrowed from Italian.

Beyond words

Idiomatic expressions and phrases, sometimes translated word-for-word, can be borrowed, usually from a language that has "prestige" at the time. Often, a borrowed idiom is used as a euphemism for a less polite term in the original language. In English, this has usually been Latinisms from the Latin language and Gallicisms from French.

Loanwords in English

English has many loanwords. In 1973, a computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd edition) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff. Their estimates for the origin of English words were as follows:
- French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
- Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
- Germanic languages, including Old and Middle English: 25%
- Greek: 5.32%
- No etymology given or unknown: 4.03%
- Derived from proper names: 3.28%
- All other languages contributed less than 1% This survey shows no information about the frequency of words, however. If the frequency of words is considered, words from Old and Middle English occupy the vast majority. The reasons for English's vast borrowing include:
- its modern importance;
- its being a scientific language;
- England being invaded by the Vikings and the Normans;
- English becoming a trade language in the 18th century;
- the fact that English is fairly free of phonetic restrictions in its syllable structure. This lack of restrictions makes it comparatively easy for the English language to incorporate new words. Compare this with Japanese, where the English word "club" (itself originally from Old Norse) was turned into "kurabu" because of Japanese's numerous phonetic restrictions. However, the English pronunciation of a loanword will often differ from the original pronunciation to such a degree that a native speaker of the language it was borrowed from will not be able to recognize it as a loanword when spoken. The tendency of the English language to borrow extensively is summed up by James D. Nicoll: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." [http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf-lovers/msg/c961c46670ca97d6?oe=UTF-8&output=gplain 1]

Affixes

The majority of English affixes, such as "un-", "-ing", and "-ly" were present in older forms in Old English. There are, however, a few English affixes that have been borrowed. One example, possibly the most prolific, is the suffix -er (agentive suffix, not the comparative suffix), which was borrowed (ultimately) from Latin. The verbal suffix '-ize' comes (via, Old French, via Latin) ultimately from Ancient Greek and became utilized liberally in America, often to the chagrin of many Englishmen.

Other languages

Direct loans, expressions translated word-by-word, or even grammatical constructions and orthographical conventions from English are called anglicisms. Similarly, loans from Swedish are called sveticisms or svecisms. In French, the result of perceived over-use of English loanwords and expressions is called franglais. Germish is English influence on German.

Reborrowing

It is possible for a word to travel from one language to another and then back to the originating language in a different form, a process called reborrowing. A specific example of this is "pokémon" which is an acronym of poketto monsutā, a Japanese rendering of the English "pocket monster". The word has been borrowed into Japanese, adapted, shortened and finally been used to name an internationally successful toy product and hence made its way back into everyday vocabulary of English.

Etruscans

The Etruscan civilization flourished in Etruria and the Po valley in the northern part of what is now Italy, prior to the arrival of Gauls in the Po valley and the formation of the Roman Republic. Etruscan culture developed in northern and central Italy after ca 800 BC without a serious break out of the preceding Villanovan culture. The Villanovan culture, the earliest Iron Age culture of central and northern Italy, gave way in the 7th century to an increasingly orientalizing culture that was influenced by Greek traders and Greek neighbors in Magna Graecia, the Hellenic civilization of southern Italy.

Language

:Main article: Etruscan language. The Etruscans are generally believed to have spoken a non-Indo-European language. Herodotus (c. 400 BC) records the legend that they came from Lydia (modern western Turkey). Contrarily, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 100 BC) pronounced that the Etruscans were indigenous to Italy, calling themselves Rasenna and being part of an ancient nation "which does not resemble any other people in their language or in their way of life, or customs." Knowledge of the Etruscan language only began with the discovery of the bilingual Phoenician-Etruscan Pyrgi Tablets found at the port of Caere in 1964, and this knowledge is still incomplete. 1964, Italy.]] Some researchers have proposed that the non-Greek inscriptions found on the island of Lemnos, appearing to be related to the Etruscan language and dated to the sixth century BC, support Herodotus' hypothesis. However, recent research, referencing burial rituals, shows that there was no break in practices from the earlier settlements of the Villanovan culture to the Etruscans, indicating that they were likely indigenous after all.

Collapse of Etruscan politics

The fall of the Etruscan state can be attributed to a variety of factors, the most influential being its disunity. The Etruscan state government was essentially a theocracy. The Etruscans met annually at the shrine of Voltumna to discuss military and political affairs. Apart from this, the Etruscans could be considered, as many ancient sources describe them, “duodecim populi Eturiae” or “the twelve peoples of Eturia”. Although the divisions between the states were not as extreme as those found in ancient Greece, individual states were under no obligation to provide aid to one another, and frequently found it difficult to unify against one threat. For this reason, the Romans attacked and annexed individual cities between 510 and 29 BC. This disunity is further illustrated by the fact that Rome created treaties individually with the Etruscan states, rather than the whole. With the fall of Veii to the Romans, a key southern defense was destroyed, leaving the Etruscans pressed in on from all sides by several different forces, and ripe for conquest.

Some Etruscan cities

The cities that composed the Etruscan Dodecapoli or league of "twelve cities" has no completely authoritative roster. Those Etruscan cities most often included (with their more familiar Latin and Italian equivalents) are:
- Arretium (Arezzo)
- Caisra (Caere or modern Cerveteri)
- Clevsin, (Clusium or modern Chiusi)
- Curtun (modern Cortona)
- Perusna (Perugia)
- Pupluna (Populonium)
- Veii
- Tarchna (Tarquinii or modern Tarquinia-Corneto)
- Vetluna (Vetulonia)
- Felathri (Volaterrae or modern Volterra)
- Velzna (Volsinii, presumed modern Orvieto)
- Velch (Vulci or modern Volci). Other Etruscan cities, not members of the Dodecapoli:
- Adria
- Spina
- Felsina (modern Bologna)
- Rusellae, near modern Roselle Terme
- Alalia in Corsica (Roman and modern Aleria)
- Capeva (Capua)
- Manthva (Mantua)
- [http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/cities.html "The Etruscan League of twelve cities"]

Some Etruscan rulers

- Osiniu (at Clusium) probably early 1100s
- Mezentius fl. c. 1100 ?
- Lausus (at Caere)
- Tyrsenos
- Velsu fl. 8th century
- Larthia (at Caere)
- Arimnestos (at Arimnus)
- Lars Porsena (at Clusium) fl. late 6th century
- Thefarie Velianas (at Caere) late 500s–early 400s
- Aruns (at Clusium) fl. c. 500
- Volumnius (at Veii) mid 400s–437
- Lars Tolumnius (at Veii) late 400s–428

Bibliography

- Barker, G. and T. Rasmussen. The Etruscans. London: Blackwell, 1998.
- Bloch, Raymond. The ancient civilization of the Etruscans. Translated from the French by James Hogarth. Ancient Civilizations Series. New York: Cowles Book Co, 1969.
- Bonfante, Larissa et al. ed. Etruscan Life and Afterlife: a handbook of Etruscan studies. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1986.
- Brendel, Otto. Etruscan art. 2nd edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
- Maetzke, Guglielmo. The Art of the Etruscans. 1970. Originally published in Italian, 1969.
- Richardson, Emeline. The Etruscans: their art and civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
- Spivy, N. and S. Stoddart. Etruscan Italy. London: Batsford, 1990.
- Torelli, Mario. ed. The Etruscans. Milan: Bompiani, 2000.
- Pallottino, M. tr. Cremona, J. The Etruscans. London: Penguin Books, 1975,
- Hampton, C. The Etruscans: and the survival of Eturia. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1969.
- Macnamara, E., Everyday Life of the Etruscans. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1973.
- Haynes, S., Etruscan Civilization. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Trust, 2000.
- Ed. Bram, L., Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, Inc, 1975.
- Greenidge, A., History of Rome: During the Later Republic Early Principate. 2003, from gutenberg.org, Last accessed, 8/05/2004

External links

- [http://etp.classics.umass.edu Etruscan Texts Project], a searchable database of Etruscan inscriptions.
- [http://bcs.fltr.ucl.ac.be/EpiC.html Web bibliography of Etruscan-related sites] (in Italian)
- [http://web.tiscali.it/pittau/Etrusco/Tabula/tabcort.html Tabula Cortonensis], described by Dr Massimo Pittau (in Italian).
- [http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/educational_site/uscarc/Pendant.shtml Etruscan Lion Plaque Pendant], article on a piece of Etruscan art.
- [http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/mishkin/lombra/etruscan.html Etruscan Splendors from Volterra in Tuscany]
- [http://members.tripod.com/~Centime/Etruscans/eng.html#Spina Etruscan Engineering and Agricultural Achievements: The Ancient City of Spina]
- [http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com Mysterious Etruscans], community dedicated to the preservation of Etruscan culture. Category:Ancient Roman enemies and allies Category:Ancient Italic peoples Category:Iron Age
- ja:エトルリア

1000 BC

Centuries: 12th century BC - 11th century BC - 10th century BC Decades: 1050s BC 1040s BC 1030s BC 1020s BC 1010s BC - 1000s BC - 990s BC 980s BC 970s BC 960s BC 950s BC ----

Events and trends

- 1006 BC - David becomes king of the ancient Israelites (traditional date)
- 1002 BC - Death of Zhou zhao wang, King of the Zhou Dynasty of China.
- 1001 BC - Zhou mo wang becomes King of the Zhou Dynasty of China.
- Earliest evidence of farming in the Kenya highlands.
- Latins come to Italy in or around 1000 BC from the Danube region.
- Archaelogical evidence obtained from inscriptions excavated in 2005 dates the Tamil language, a classical language spoken in India, to around 1000 BC

Significant people

- Category:1000s BC

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: Ἡροδοτος, Herodotos) was a historian who lived in the 5th century BC (484 BC-ca. 425 BC). He is famous for his writings on the conflict between Greece and Persia, as well as the descriptions he wrote of different places and people he met on his travels.

Overview

Herodotus wrote A History of the Persian Wars.

Opinions

Herodotus' invention earned him the title "The Father of History" and the word he used for his achievement, historie, which previously had meant simply "inquiry", passed into Latin and took on its modern connotation of "history" or "story". His nickname was given to him by Cicero. Conversely, however, many historians and philosophers who take a more sceptical view of Herodotus' accounts and narratives have a different name for him, dubbing him "The Father of Lies" or "the deceiver." In many cases, Herodotus, unsure of the exact history, would give the most prominent competing historical accounts of a particular event or region, and then express his opinion as to which he believed was accurate, with an explanation of why. The Histories were often attacked in the ancient world for bias, inaccuracy, and plagiarism. Similar attacks have been made by several modern scholars, who argue that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and fabricated sources. Respect for his accuracy has increased in the last half century, however, and he is now recognized not only as a pioneer in history but in ethnography and anthropology as well. Herodotus has passed to us information current in his own day: he reports that the annual flooding of the Nile was said to be the result of melting snows far to the south, and comments that he cannot understand how there can be snow in the hottest part of the world. He also passes on reports from Phoenician sailors from Egypt that while circumnavigating Africa they saw the sun on their right while sailing westwards. Thanks to this passing on of information which he himself did not believe, he has shown us something of the extent of contemporary geographical information. Published between 430 BC and 424 BC, The Histories were divided by later editors into nine books, named after the Muses. The first six books deal with the growth of the Persian Empire. They begin with an account of the first Asian monarch to conquer Greek city-states and exact tribute, Croesus of Lydia. Croesus lost his kingdom to Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire. The first six books end with the defeat of the Persians in 490 BC at the Battle of Marathon, which was the first setback to their imperial progress. The last three books of The Histories describe the attempt of the Persian king Xerxes ten years later to avenge the Persian defeat at Marathon and absorb Greece into the Persian Empire. The Histories end with the year 479 BC, when the Persian invaders were wiped out at the Battle of Plataea and the frontier of the Persian Empire receded to the Aegean coastline of Asia Minor.

Herodotus's life

As to Herodotus's life, we know that he was exiled from Halicarnassus after his involvement in an unsuccessful putsch against the ruling dynasty, and he withdrew to the island of Samos. He seems never to have returned to Halicarnassus, though in his Histories he appears to be proud of his native city and its queen, Artemisia. It must have been during his exile that he undertook the journeys that he describes in The Histories. These journeys took him to Egypt, as far south as the first cataract of the Nile, to Babylon, to Ukraine, and to Italy and Sicily. Herodotus mentions an interview with an informant in Sparta, and almost certainly he lived for a period in Athens. In Athens, he tapped the oral traditions of the prominent families, in particular the Alkmaeonidai, to which Pericles belonged on his maternal side. But the Athenians did not accept foreigners as citizens, and when Athens sponsored the colony of Thurii in the instep of Italy in 444 BC, Herodotus became a colonist. Whether he died there or not is uncertain. At some point he became a logios – that is, a reciter of prose logoi or stories – and his subject matter was tales of battles, other historical incidents, and the marvels of foreign lands. He made tours of the Greek cities and the major religious and athletic festivals, where he offered performances for which he expected payment. In 431 BC, the Peloponnesian War broke out between Athens and Sparta. It may have been that conflict, which divided the Greek world, that inspired him to collect his stories into a continuous narrative – The Histories – centered on the theme of Persia's imperial progress, which Athens and Sparta as allies had brought to a halt. The quotation Neither rain, nor snow, nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds is attributed to Herodotus, describing the Persian "postal" system. The quotation is inscribed on the facade of the New York post office building, and was also used as part of the lyric in Laurie Anderson's 1981 hit, O Superman.

For further reading

- Several English translations of The Histories of Herodotus are readily available in multiple editions. The most readily available are those translated by:
- Aubrey de Sélincourt, originally 1954; revised by John Marincola in 1972. Several editions from Penguin Books available.
- David Grene, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
- George Rawlinson, translation 1858-1860. Public domain; many editions available, although Everyman Library and Wordsworth Classics editions are the most common ones still in print.
- Evans, J. A. S., Herodotus. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
- —. Herodotus, Explorer of the Past: Three Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
- Fehling, Detlev. Herodotus and His "Sources": Citation, Invention, and Narrative Art. Translated by J.G. Howie. Arca Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers, and Monographs, 21. Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1989.
- Flory, Stewart, The Archaic Smile of Herodotus. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987.
- Fornara, Charles W. Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
- Hartog, F., The Mirror of Herodotus. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988.
- [http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1994/94.04.10.html Kwintner, Michelle. The Liar School of Herodotus (Review). Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 1994.]
- Lateiner, D., The Historical Method of Herodotus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.
- Pritchett, W. K., The Liar School of Herodotus. Amsterdam: Gieben, 1991.
- Thomas, R., 'Herodotus in Context; ethnography, science and the art of persusion'. Oxford University Press 2000.

External links

- [http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_herodotus.htm Herodotus] at About.com
- A reconstructed [http://www.reportret.info/gallery/herodotos1.html portrait of Herodotos], based on historical sources, in a contemporary style.
- [http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html The History of Herodotus] at The Internet Classics Archive (translation by George Rawlinson)
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- (translation by George Campbell Macaulay, 1852-1915)
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- [http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/herodotus/ Herodotus on the Web]
- [http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/herodotus.htm Herodotus for Kids]
- [http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodotus/herodotus01.htm Herodotus of Halicarnassus] at Livius.org
- [http://nefer-seba.net/essays/Herodotus-vs-Thucydides.php Comparison of the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides]
- [http://www.greek-literature-online.com/herodotus/ Herodotus' The Histories] translated into English in an easy to read HTML format
- [http://www.losttrails.com/pages/Tales/Inquiries/Herodotus.html Herodotus Inquiries] - new translation with extensive photographic essays of the places and artifacts mentioned by Herodotus hyper-linked to the text
- [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/index.htm Parallel Greek and English text of the History of Herodotus] at the Internet Sacred Text Archive ---- An [http://www.nupedia.com/article/390/ earlier version] of this article by James Allan Evans was posted at Nupedia. Herodotus Herodotus Category:Ancient Greeks Category:Ancient Greek historians Herodotus ko:헤로도토스 ms:Herodotus ja:ヘロドトス

Lydia

:This article is about the ancient kingdom in Anatolia. For other uses of this word, see Lydia (disambiguation). Lydia is a historic region of western Anatolia, congruent with Turkey's modern provinces of İzmir and Manisa. Its traditional capital was the city of Sardis (Turkish: Sart). However, at its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. It was later the name for a Roman province. Coins were invented in Lydia around 660 BC.

Pre-history

The region of Lydia was probably settled by Indo-European peoples in the late Bronze Age (around the twelfth century BC), during the decay of the Hittite Empire. Herodotus (Histories i. 7) and Homer (Iliad ii. 865; v. 43, 11. 431) both refer to them as Meiones (Μηιονες). However, Herodotus adds that they were named after their first king, Lydos (Λυδος), who was believed to be descended from the divine couple Attis and Cybele. This mythological name gave rise to the Greek ethnic name Lydoi (Λυδοι) and the Hebrew (לודים, cf. Jer. 46.9). Their language, Lydian, is related to Hittite and a member of the Anatolian language family. Lydian became extinct during the first century BC.

Lydia in Greek legend

In Greek mythology, Omphale was a queen or princess of Lydia. It was also during his stay in Lydia that Heracles enslaved the Itones, killed Syleus who forced passersby to hoe his vineyard, and captured the Cercopes. It would be expected that accounts should speak of at least one son born to Heracles by Omphale. Diodorus Siculus (4.31.8) and Ovid in his Heroides (9.54) mention a son named Lamos. But Apollodorus (2.7.8) gives the name of the son of Heracles and Omphale as Agelaus. Pausanias (2.21.3) gives yet another name, mentioning Tyrsenus son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman" by whom Pausanias presumably means Omphale. Herodotus (1.7) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale. Later chronographers who also ignored Herodotus' statement that Agron was the first to be a king and included Alcaeus, Belus, and Ninus in their List of Kings of Lydia. Strabo (5.2.2) makes Atys father of Lydus and Tyrrhenus to be one of the descendants of Heracles and Omphale. This is likely careless error rather than independent tradition as all other accounts place Atys and Lydus and Tyrrhenus brother of Lydus among the pre-Heraclid kings of Lydia.

Geography

Cercopes Cercopes The boundaries of Lydia varied across the centuries. It was first bounded by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and Ionia. Later on, the military power of Alyattes and Croesus expanded Lydia into an empire, with its capital at Sardis, which controlled all Asia Minor west of the River Halys, except Lycia. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions. After the Persian conquest the Maeander was regarded as its southern boundary, and under Rome, Lydia comprised the country between Mysia and Caria on the one side and Phrygia and the Aegean on the other. The Lydians were the first people to establish retail shops which were permanent according to Herodotus. [http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Labyrinth/2398/bginfo/geo/anatolia.html] The name of Croesus of Lydia became synonymous with wealth. Lydia was the first country to mint coins (circa 650 BC). Sardis was renowned as a beautiful city. Around 550 BC Croesus paid for the construction of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Croesus was beaten by Cyrus in 546 BC, and the kingdom became a province of the Persian Empire. Homer speaks only of Maeonians (Iliad ii. 865, V.