Symposium Offered in Celebration of "Worlds Intertwined:
Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans," Permanent New Suite of Classical
World Galleries 28 FEBRUARY 2003, PHILADELPHIA, PA—The Etruscan
civilization, the preeminent culture of central Italy from
800-100 BC, has attracted a renaissance of interest among
scholars and the public in recent years. From the Etruscan
alphabet and the language, to the furnishings, architecture,
fashion and city planning initiatives, these inventive pre-Roman
people have left an enduring legacy. They shocked Greeks and
Romans with the freedom of their women, their technological
prowess, and their control of the sea—and then gradually lost it
all to Rome's military campaigns. Yet, with little in the way of
actual Etruscan texts preserved, the cultural artifacts that
remain—strange, beautiful, sometimes seductive or
frightening—pose challenges to archaeologists and historians
eager to tease out a better understanding of the Etruscan
contributions to the Roman culture that eventually subs