Around 700 BC, the Bronze Age people we call the Villanovans began to be influenced by the Greeks and Phoenicians who were sailing around the Mediterranean . They began to do things the way the Greeks and the Phoenicians did them. Historians call these people the Etruscans (ee-TRUSS-kins). People used to think that the Etruscans came from someplace in West Asia , because the Greek historian Herodotus tells a story about some people from West Asia , the Lydians, who might have been the Etruscans. He says that these people fell on hard times, and didn't have enough to eat. Now these people loved to gamble with dice. So they decided to only eat on even days, and on the odd days they would gamble, to take their minds off how hungry they were! But the famine went on for years, and Herodotus says that after a while these people decided that half of them should go look for a better place to live. So historians thought maybe these were the Etruscans. But now we think that the Etruscans always lived in Italy .

The Etruscans lived mainly in northern Italy . Because they were learning from the Greeks and the Phoenicians, they learned how to do a lot of things that the Latins living around Rome didn't know how to do yet. The Etruscans built cities with stone walls. They built big stone temples and they put big statues in them. They dug canals and ditches to irrigate (bring water to) their fields. They had organized governments with kings. Soon some of the other people in Italy began to copy the Etruscan ways of doing things.

About the same time as the Etruscans, a lot of Greeks also came to make Greek colonies. At first they were probably mainly trading posts, but later Greek people settled down there and began farming. The Greeks settled in southern Italy , where they took over most of the Etruscan land there. The Greeks founded the city of Naples , which became an important port (and it still is today).

The Etruscans traded a great deal with the Greeks and with the Phoenicians. The Etruscans sent lumber, furs, and probably slaves to the East. They bought jewelry, spices, perfume, and Greek vases from the East. Most of the Greek vases we have in museums today were found in Italy , in the tombs of the Etruscans!

The city of Rome lay between the northern and southern parts of Italy where the Etruscans lived. Because it was a good place to cross the Tiber River , the Etruscans wanted to control it. For a while, Rome may have been under the rule of Etruscan kings. These kings, like other Etruscan kings, made people build strong stone walls and stone temples and canals for water.

700 BC

• Etruscans borrow alphabet from Greeks

650 BC

• Etruscans spread to Capua and Pompeii

535 BC

• Etruscans and Carthaginians join in battle against the Greeks at Alalia
• Weakens Greek position, causing withdrawal
• Etruscans capture Corsica

• Herodotus Histories, I.94  The Lydians have very nearly the same customs as the Hellenes, with the exception that these last do not bring up their girls the same way. So far as we have any knowledge, the Lydians were the first to introduce the use of gold and silver coin, and the first who sold good retail. They claim also the invention of all the games which are common to them with the Hellenes. These they declare that they invented about the time when they colonized Tyrrhenia [i.e., Etruria], an event of which they give the following account. In the days of Atys the son of Manes, there was great scarcity through the whole land of Lydia. For some time the Lydians bore the affliction patiently, but finding that it did not pass away, they set to work to devise remedies for the evil. Various expedients were discovered by various persons: dice, knuckle-bones, and ball, and all such games were invented, except checkers, the invention of which they do not claim as theirs. The plan adopted against the famine was to engage in games one day so entirely as not to feel any craving for food, and the next day to eat and abstain from games. In this way they passed eighteen years.
• Still the affliction continued, and even became worse. So the king determined to divide the nation in half, and to make the two portions draw lots, the one to stay, the other to leave the land. He would continue to reign over those whose lot it should be to remain behind; the emigrants should have his son Tyrrhenus for their leader. The lot was cast, and they who had to emigrate went down to Smyrna, and built themselves ships, in which, after they had put on board all needful stores, they sailed away in search of new homes and better sustenance. After sailing past many countries, they came to Umbria, where they built cities for themselves, and fixed their residence. Their former name of Lydians they laid aside, and called themselves after the name of the king's son, who led the colony, Tyrrhenians.

• Livy History of Rome, Book 5.1: The Veientines, on the other hand, tired of the annual canvassing for office, elected a king. This gave great offence to the Etruscan cantons, owing to their hatred of monarchy and their personal aversion to the one who was elected. He was already obnoxious to the nation through his pride of wealth and overbearing temper, for he had put a violent stop to the festival of the Games, the interruption of which is an act of impiety. The Etruscans as a nation were distinguished above all others by their devotion to religious observances, because they excelled in the knowledge and conduct of them....
• Book 7.2. But the violence of the epidemic was not alleviated by any aid from either men or gods, and it is asserted that as men's minds were completely overcome by superstitious terrors they introduced, amongst other attempts to placate the wrath of heaven, scenic representations, a novelty to a nation of warriors who had hitherto only had the games of the Circus. They began, however, in a small way, as nearly everything does, and small as they were, they were borrowed from abroad. The players were sent for from Etruria; there were no words, no mimetic action; they danced to the measures of the flute and practiced graceful movements in Etruscan fashion. Afterwards the young men began to imitate them, exercising their wit on each other in burlesque verses, and suiting their action to their words. This became an established diversion, and was kept up by frequent practice. The Etruscan word for an actor is istrio, and so the native performers were called histriones. These did not, as in former times, throw out rough extempore effusions like the Fescennine verse, but they chanted satyrical verses quite metrically arranged and adapted to the notes of the flute, and these they accompanied with appropriate movements.
• Several years later Livius for the first time abandoned the loose satyrical verses and ventured to compose a play with a coherent plot. Like all his contemporaries, he acted in his own plays, and it is said that when he had worn out his voice by repeated recalls he begged leave to place a second player in front of the flutist to sing the monologue while he did the acting, with all the more energy because his voice no longer embarrassed him. Then the practice commenced of the chanter following the movements of the actors, the dialogue alone being left to their voices. When, by adopting this method in the presentation of pieces, the old farce and loose jesting was given up and the play became a work of art, the young people left the regular acting to the professional players and began to improvise comic verses. These were subsequently known as exodia [after-pieces], and were mostly worked up into the Atellane Plays. These farces were of Oscan origin, and were kept by the young men in their own hands; they would not allow them to be polluted by the regular actors.

The Latins (also known as the Latini) were an Indo-European people of the Italic branch who about the beginning of the 1st millennium BC have been settled in Central Italy, in a country south of the banks of the Tiber River that was called Latium (modern Lazio). It was believed their names originated from the legendary king Latinus who ruled the city of Alba Longa in the 9th c. BC.

Politically, ancient Latium was a loose federation of city-states, such as Alba Longa , Tusculum , Lavinium, Ardea, Tibur (now Tivoli ) and Praeneste (Palestrina), centered at the sanctuary of Jupiter on Albanus Mons. The city of Rome (in Latin Roma) was founded in the northern part of Latium in 754 or 753 BC by the twin brothers Romulus and Remus (it was called after Romulus) and for centuries served as a bulwark of Latinity against the Etruscan power. Starting in the late 6th c. BC the Romans gradually conquered Italy and in the eve of the Christian era accomplished conquering the lands around the Mediterranean Sea , thus creating an immense empire.

Under the Roman power the Latins had the status of socii (i.e. allies), which gave them great inner autonomy. After the so called Social war in 90-89 BC they obtained the rights of Roman citizens and subsequently all the people originating from Italy and speaking Latin as their mother tongue appealed themselves Romans. In 211 the Constitutio Antoniana de Civitate granted Roman citizenship to all the people under the rule of Rome . Since then the term Roman became a designation of a political community and as such went beyond the primary ethnic frames. It was applied to Celts, Iberians, Daco-Thracians and Illyrians who have abandoned their own languages for Latin and in this manner were completely assimilated, but also to the Greeks in the Eastern provinces who, though preserving their Greek language, adopted the name of Romans (in Greek Rhômaíoi) as a mark of their rise to political predominance in the state affairs of the East.

750 BC

• First successful Greek colony in Italy at Cumae in south-central near present day Naples
• Other Greek movement leads to Etruscan influence in Italy
  • Herodotus Histories, 1.94, p. 40. According to Herodotus, a severe famine caused King Atys of Lydia to divide the population "into two groups and determined by drawing lots which should emigrate and which should remain at home. He appointed himself to rule the section whose lot determined that they should remain, and his son Tyrrhenus to command the emigrants. The lots were drawn, and one section...finally reached Umbria in the north of Italy, where they settled and still live to this day. Here they changed their name from Lydians to Tyrrhenians [Greek name for the Etruscans], after the King's son Tyrrhenus, who was their leader."