The Etruscans were a powerful and influential civilization in ancient Italy. But despite their prominence, they are often misrepresented as mysterious – a strange, unknowable people whose language and culture have largely vanished. Lucy Shipley’s history of the Etruscans presents a different picture: of a people who traded with Greece and shaped the development of Rome, who inspired Renaissance artists and Romantic firebrands and whose influence is still felt strongly in the modern world. Covering colonialism and conquest, misogyny and mystique, Etruscan history is woven with the very latest archaeological evidence to provide a unique perspective on this enigmatic culture, revealing how much we now know, and how much remains undiscovered.

The Etruscans were a powerful and influential civilization in ancient Italy. But despite their prominence, they are often misrepresented as mysterious – a strange, unknowable people whose language and culture have largely vanished. Lucy Shipley’s history of the Etruscans presents a different picture: of a people who traded with Greece and shaped the development of Rome, who inspired Renaissance artists and Romantic firebrands and whose influence is still felt strongly in the modern world. Covering colonialism and conquest, misogyny and mystique, Etruscan history is woven with the very latest archaeological evidence to provide a unique perspective on this enigmatic culture, revealing how much we now know, and how much remains undiscovered.

The Etruscans were a powerful and influential civilization in ancient Italy. But despite their prominence, they are often misrepresented as mysterious – a strange, unknowable people whose language and culture have largely vanished. Lucy Shipley’s history of the Etruscans presents a different picture: of a people who traded with Greece and shaped the development of Rome, who inspired Renaissance artists and Romantic firebrands and whose influence is still felt strongly in the modern world. Covering colonialism and conquest, misogyny and mystique, Etruscan history is woven with the very latest archaeological evidence to provide a unique perspective on this enigmatic culture, revealing how much we now know, and how much remains undiscovered.