Volume 48, Number 11 · July 5, 2001
Etruscan Secrets
By Ingrid D. Rowland
Gli Etruschi (The Etruscans)
an exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, November 26, 2000–July 1, 2001
The Etruscans
edited by Mario Torelli, translated from the Italian by Rhoda Billingsley et al.
catalog of the exhibition, Rizzoli, 671 pp., $85.00
Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural History
Sybille Haynes
J. Paul Getty Museum, 432 pp., $55.00
One of the most endearing qualities of the dead is their reluctance to talk back to us, and the Etruscans, ancient Italy's most distinctive and enigmatic people, have been no exception. No outraged Etruscan warrior has ever come knocking at the door like the statue of the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, primed to pull an errant archaeologist or a tendentious historian down to Hell for the deceptions they have wrought in the name of scholarship. Instead, constrained to discuss things among ourselves without their help, we strive bravely to reassemble the broken fragments of ancient Etruria into a serviceable past.
Review, 4132 words
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