The newest volume in the Essays on the Ancient series: the Italian translation of “Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural History” by Sybille Haynes

"It is evident that upper-class Etruscan women and wives were treated with affection and tenderness, and that they received both in life and in death the same honors reserved for their husbands. They moved about freely, even aboard chariots, attended banquets together with their spouses, and took part in public performances, sitting on wooden stands (...] or as performers in the course of rituals or theatrical performances."

 

That of the Etruscans is a culture that has long remained mysterious and has never ceased to win the attention of scholars of all ages. Open to decisive Greek and oriental influences, but also projected toward the neighboring peoples of central and northern Italy, it managed to make its echo reach beyond the Alps.
Of this people, Sybille Haynes outlines the peculiar character and follows the historical evolution, accompanying readers among the most significant and fascinating places, finds and testimonies. Through a vast repertoire of sources, she reconstructs their life and death, religion, language, architecture, art and much more: in particular, the condition of women is investigated with unprecedented attention. From the dedicated insights, in fact, it emerges how Etruscan women, at least those of the upper class, enjoyed substantial equality of social consideration with men and a freedom far from customary for antiquity.

A journey through images makes it possible to explore and take a close look at the Etruscan world within the framework of an overall picture whose organization is marked by following the great stages of its history, from its origins to its Roman annexation, along all the moments of its flowering, crisis and rebirth. A world that, placed at the center of Mediterranean trade and influences, was able to absorb, unify and pass on customs and traditions at the origins of our culture.

Sybille Haynes was for twenty-five years curator of the Etruscan collections in the Greek and Roman department of the British Museum in London where, in 1976, she set up the first Etruscan gallery. For this initiative she was awarded the Order of the British Empire. Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural History is the most comprehensive collection of her research, now in a new, updated edition twenty years after its first publication.