Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin. Nicholas Ostler
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as well as the warmer laena (from Greek khlaina). They even provided the light and practical lacerna cloak, which was to become so popular in Augustus’ time that he tried to restrict its use: it seemed too informal. They provided the accessories, a belt (balteus) and cap (cappa), a cord (cimussis) to draw the cloak together, and a pair of stout shoes (calcei) on the feet. An early style of toga, the tebenna, is Etruscan. Even tunica itself, the standard Roman tunic, may be an Etruscan deformation of Greek khitōn, which is essentially the same garment. Etruscan also provided the dry-cleaning experts (fullō, nacca) to keep the clothes in good order. Cosmetics were naturally an Etruscan thing: cērussa ‘white lead’, purpurissum ‘purple’, mundus ‘toiletries’. Even the word pulcher ‘beautiful’ may be an Etruscan loan.
The kind of urbanite who would wear this stuff was termed by an Etruscan word too, scurra. The characteristic Roman attitude to such people can still be felt in the derived adjective scurrilous: in Latin they were a byword for tasteless—because disrespectful—humour. Insults to another’s intelligence evidently tripped off the tongue in Etruscan: they could call an idiot barginna, bargus, buccō, or barō (and the last of these has become the standard word for a male in Spanish, varón, and a hereditary nobleman, a baron, in English). In general, the Etruscan type for the Roman was one who enjoyed the soft and easy things of life to excess: likely to be an aleō ‘gambler’, ganeō ‘glutton’, helluō ‘splurger’, lurchō ‘guzzler’, or levenna ‘wimp’, consorting with lenōnēs ‘pimps’ and lenae ‘madams’, carisae ‘foxy ladies’ and paelicēs ‘tarts’, in the lustra ‘brothels’ of Rome, and probably resorting to calumnia ‘name-calling’ and the services of a pettifogging rabula ‘shyster’ if ever you should cross him. At least his self-indulgent madulsa ‘binge’ would be likely to leave him suffering the torments of crāpula ‘hangover’ in the morning.
The only good thing about the type, Roman traditionalists might have felt, was that special virtues correlated with their vices: their mastery in the arts of the culīna ‘kitchen’ was second to none, with a heavy emphasis on meat from the laniēna ‘butcher’s’, arvīna ‘lard’, botulus ‘black pudding’, sagīna ‘fattening’, and judicious addition of mantisa ‘sauce’ or ‘trimmings’. Lucuns ‘sweetmeat’, amurca ‘olive juice’, and even puls ‘porridge’ were Greek words (glukous, amorge, poltos) deformed on the Etruscan tongue. Cooking utensils too tended to have Etruscan names, such as calpar ‘wine jar’, clarnus ‘platter’, cortīna ‘cauldron’, crēterra ‘mixing bowl’, lagēna ‘bottle’, lepista ‘large cup’, orca ‘vessel with narrow neck’, situlus ‘bucket’, sporta ‘basket’, tīna/tīnium ‘wine jar’, urceus ‘pitcher’, urna ‘urn’.*
Much Roman shipping terminology is Etruscan, showing from whom these Italian farmers first learned to plough the waves (saburra ‘ballast’, sentīna ‘bilge water’, carīna ‘keel’), but once again most of it seems to have come originally from Greek, showing who were the original naval tutors in this part of the world (ancora ‘anchor’, antemna ‘yardarm’, aplustra ‘stern figurehead’, guberna ‘steering oars’, guberniō ‘helmsman’, prōra/prōris ‘prow’).
The Etruscans also had some effect even on Roman military language. Some of the central terms appear to be Etruscan: mīles ‘soldier’, vēles ‘light infantryman’, satelles ‘bodyguard’, clipeus ‘round shield’, tīrō ‘raw recruit’. But there are also loans for other realities of military life: cācula ‘batman’, lixa ‘camp follower’. The gruma too (an Etruscan deformation of the Greek word gnōmōn) was the key tool for Roman surveyors, for roads and other developments.
The Etruscans were great purveyors of entertainment, whether onstage (scaena) or in the arēna. The Romans derived their taste both for comic theatre and the spectacle of gladiatorial shows from them, though no doubt they took them to new heights, or depths.* Certainly many of the stock characters (dossennus ‘hunchback’, miriō ‘ugly man’, mōriō ‘dolt’) and some styles of gladiator (murmillō ‘fish-crested’) had Etruscan names; musicians too (subulō ‘flautist’) were typical of their arts.
The Etruscan roots of Rome’s performing arts were recognized by the doyens of Roman literature. Livy, the historian of the city’s early years, who wrote in the first century BC, recalled the story that stage peformances were first introduced around 365 BC, which would place them a century after the height of Etruscan influence. A pestilence was then racking the city, and one might have imagined the innovation would have been intended as a diversion. But no: according to Livy, they were introduced as CAELESTIS IRAE PLACAMINA ‘appeasements of heaven’s wrath’. Livy observed:
They are said to have introduced stage plays [LVDI SCENICI], something of a revolution for this warlike people; before that, they had known only the spectacle of the circus.† But the plays were small, as is usual when something is new, and were in fact of foreign origin. Players who performed without songs or actions to mime them were called in from Etruria: they danced to the strains of a piper and performed quite decorously in the Etruscan manner. Later young people began to copy them, putting in funny business in rough verse; and their gestures were no better than the words suggested. So the practice was taken up and grew through frequent repetition. The country artistes were given the name histriōnes, because ister was the Tuscan word for ‘player’ [Latin ludiō]. They did not, as before, swap rough and ready Fescennine verses, but whole medleys [saturae] set to flute music, with movements timed to match.13
This even suggests an Etruscan source for the one known Latin literary form with no Greek model, namely the satire. But indeed early satires are called sermōnes ‘talks’, and some have suggested that this is the meaning of the Etruscan word satri. Their scurrilous content would certainly befit an Etruscan cultural import.
Another aspect of Etruscan culture showing them to be city folk was their names.
The Indo-European system, found all over from Iceland to India, but notably retained by the Greeks despite their highly urban lifestyle, allotted each person an individual name, made more specific if necessary by referring to the name of the father: Snorri Sturluson, Rāmo Dāśarathis ‘Rama son of Dasharatha’, Aineiās Ankhīsiadēs ‘Aeneas son of Anchises’. Powerful clans distinguished themselves from time to time, perhaps as royal or tyrannical dynasties such as the Greek Atreidai and Peisistratidai, but there were never enough of them—existing in parallel in the one society—nor did they last long enough, to become reflected in a naming system.
The Etruscan system, by contrast, gave an individual a first name (Latin praenōmen ‘forename’), but added a distinct ‘gentile’ name (nōmen ‘name’ or gentilicium) for the clan to which he or she belonged: Vel Tlesna, Thefarie Veliana, Marce Caliathe; or in Latin, Gaius Marius, Marcus Antonius.* To this could be added a third, more specific name, referring to a family within a clan: Aule Titi Nurziu, Vel Tutna Tumu; or in Latin, Marcus Tullius Cicerō. The Romans called this last the cognōmen, translatable as ‘eke-name’ or ‘nickname’. Both these latter names were soon inherited by birth, like a modern surname. Overall, this was a system designed for higher urban densities, where there were just too many people to distinguish by the traditional name and patronymic.
The Romans,