The Etruscans in Campania  "Etruscan" generally
evokes the image of the great pre-Roman
civilization in central Italy, a still somewhat mysterious people about
whom we would like to know a lot more than we ever will. You don't
generally think of Etruscans this far south, in the Campania region of
Italy, near
Naples; yet, they were here. (Clearly, their ambitions stretched
southwards but were eventually thwarted.) Indeed, Parthenope (then to become Neapolis—Naples)
was somewhat of a
late-comer in the area and could be founded only when Etruscan
influence had
weakened and almost disappeared, which it had by the mid-400s b.c., the
presumptive date of
the founding of Parthenope. A few miles north of Naples is the town of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, the modern name for the ancient city of Capua, called Campeva in ancient histories. (The modern town of Capua is right next door, but “ancient Capua” means modern Santa Maria Capua Vetere.) Well before the Romans, Campeva was founded by the Etruscans in about 600 b.c. and is the southernmost identifiably Etruscan town in Italy; it is well to the south of "Etruria" and not one of the 12 famous towns of the Etruscan confederation in north-central Italy, all of which are north of Rome. Wherever the Etruscans came from (somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean is a plausible guess) they were not indigenous to the Italian peninsula. They were in Italy, however, by the tenth century b.c. They expanded into their confederation and a number of other towns in central Italy by the seventh century and were at the height of their power by about 600. They then started to fade as they came into contact with the newly encroaching immigrants of Magna Graecia, who built towns at Cuma and Paestum, limiting further Etruscan expansion along the southern coast. In the 400s, the Etruscans of Capua also came into contact with—and were eventually subdued by—the belligerent native Italic people known as the Samnites (an Oscan tribe and one of a group of tribes referred to in the literature as “Sabellian”—from Sabine), who were about to engage the young and not-yet-imperial Romans in centuries of war for the domination of central Italy.  The Etruscans
were also defeated in important naval battles with the Greeks from
Siracuse (Sicily), first off of Cuma in 474 b.c. and then at Elba in
453; with
that, the Etruscans lost control of the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Their “last gasp,” so to speak, was in 414 b.c. when
they went to the aid of the Athenian army that was besieging Siracuse
in what is called in the history of the Peloponnesian War, the
“Sicilian expedition.” (The two-year war was an utter disaster for the
Athenians,
leading to the eventual overthrow of the Athenian democracy.) The
Etruscans were then further pressed by invading Celts in around 400
b.c. and thereafter simply dissolved into the fabric of Sabellian- and
then Roman-controlled Italy. Their cultural influence is still seen
even further south than Capua, however, in such things as the
well-known tomb decorations in Paestum (photo, above). Their presence
in the area near Capua and to the south towards Naples figures in the
display at the new archeology museum in nearby
Succivo.notes: map graphic at top is by Norman Einstein/from Wikipedia. references: "The Etruscans and the Sicilian Expedition of 414-413 B.C." by M.O.B Caspari in The Classical Quarterly, Vol.5, No. 2 (Apr., 1911) pp.113-115. to alphabetical index to portal index for archaeology |