[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.

[VadeRetro]

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.

[SunkenCiv]

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 Roman Republic was established first. The empire didn't come about until the middle of the 1st century BC. The first emperor is generally held to have been Octavian, better known as Augustus Caesar, nephew (adopted son) of Julius, who retired to a little streetside restaurant in Naples, where he discovered the frozen orange concoction that still bears his name.

Just kidding about that last part, starting with "who retired". Julius was murdered by some political enemies in the Senate because he was waaaay too merciful in his dealings with them during the war with Pompey. :')

The Romans were not Etruscans. The Romans spoke Latin, an Indo-European tongue, and the Etruscans spoke a language that was not. Etruscan texts are almost all found on gravestones and are quite terse as one might imagine them to be. AFAIK only four longer texts survive, one of which is the Lemnos stele on the Aegean island of that name. Even today, with the indigenitis that has swept like a bias through historical studies, Etruscan is still generally (but not universally) regarded as having an origin in the eastern Mediterranean. Welcome to the GGG list by the way, and thanks again for that new topic on the Basque language. :')

---

FR Lexicon·Posting Guidelines·Excerpt, or Link only?·Ultimate Sidebar Management·Headlines
PDF to HTML translation·Translation page·Wayback Machine·My Links·FreeMail Me
Gods, Graves, Glyphs topic·and group·Books, Magazines, Movies, Music

---

[tet68]

Some say Basque is related to Etruscan language.

Naah, they’re just basquing in their glory.