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To: Ptarmigan
Interesting. I know the Roman Empire was first estbalished in 753 BC. I heard that the Romans came from the Etruscans originally. Some say Basque is related to Etruscan language.

The date sounds crudely right, but Rome was a Kingdom, then a Republic, then an Empire. The first transition is described in the article, the second occurred after the assassination of Julius Caesar and a complicated civil war in the last century BC.

It's unlikely that the Romans sprung from Etruscan stock. Latin is an Indoeuropean language with similarities to Greek, Celtic, and even Sanskrit. Etruscan is a language isolate, apparently unrelated to anything so far known (including Basque). Only about 300 words of Etruscan have been deciphered, mostly related to funerals and monuments.

The best guess would be that the Etruscans were a remnant of some earlier inhabitants of the Italian peninsula. The Romans probably arrived from the East in later waves of immigration at crudely the same time as the Greeks and Celts.

19 posted on 11/07/2004 6:09:35 PM PST by VadeRetro (A self-reliant conservative citizenry is a better bet than the subjects of an overbearing state. -MS)
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To: VadeRetro

Etruscan is a mysterious language, like Basque or Bushushaski.


20 posted on 11/07/2004 6:10:53 PM PST by Ptarmigan (Proud rabbit hater and killer)
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To: VadeRetro
"The date sounds crudely right, but Rome was a Kingdom, then a Republic, then an Empire."

It's interesting that when Rome was still a small city-state, relatively unknown, Alexander the Great decided to go around Rome and leave it alone on his conquest of the known world.

29 posted on 11/07/2004 7:24:31 PM PST by TheCrusader ("the frenzy of the Mohammedans has devastated the Churches of God" - Pope Urban II, 1097 A.D.)
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To: VadeRetro

I think (perhaps wrongly) that Claudius was of Etruscan stock. (Would that be I Claudius as opposed to II Claudius? We are talking about Graves though.)


33 posted on 11/08/2004 10:28:50 AM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: VadeRetro; Ptarmigan

Well, the common folk of early Roma were of Italic stock (as were others from the Latin grounds to the south and east of Rome) but they definitely WERE on the border between Italics and Etruscans and the Romans DID have Etruscan kings until Tarquin the Bold. They possibly did have some Etruscan blood


40 posted on 11/09/2004 10:41:30 PM PST by Cronos (W2K4)
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