Ao visitar o Museo del mare e della navigazione antica na cidade de Santa Severa tive a oportunidade de colher informações raras e de difícil acesso sobre este povo que habitou a Itália séculos atrás e acho de bom grado tornar-las públicas. Para garantir a livre interpretação e utilização do material irei disponibiliza-lo na integra em inglês como se encontra no museu. Segue texto:
The Etruscans on the sea: the pirates of the tyrrhenian sea.
"... Etruscan power before Roman supremacy was wide-spread both far on the land and o the sea.
The names given to upper and lower seas that enclose Italy like an island can be considered as an evidence of such power.
The peoples of italy gave the name of Etruscan to one sea, like the name of the inhabitants of that place; the other sea was named Adriatic, like the Etruscan colony, Adria. Then the Greeks named the tw o seas Tyrrhenian and Adriatic".
This passage taken from the Chronicles by Titus Livy clarifies the importance of Etruscan naval supremacy in the period between the 9th and the 3rd century BC.
Another Roman author, Cato, wrote that in more ancient times, "... nearly all Italy was subject to Etruscan power ...".
However, Greek writers do not date Etruscan naval supremacy back as far in epic times as Roman historians do.
Greek writers generally consider the Tyrrenian people to be pirates or buccaneers in the "hottest" places of the Tyrrhenian sea, like the triangle delimited by Elba, Corsica and Italian coast or the area of the Straits of Messina, significant places for the intense trading of Greek goods.
We do not know exactly how, but Etruscan fleets dominated the sea. This supremacy was know as "thalassocracy" and was interrupted, but not destroyed, during the naval battle of Cuma, in Campania, in 474 BC.
We should recondiser the bad reputation that later Greek historians assigned to Etruscan "pirates".
In the 5th century BC, Thucydides wrotes:
"... in ancient times, when sea trading started to intesify, Greeks and barbarians who lived along the continent and island coasts used to undertake acts of piracy. The commanders were strong men who strove to get gains for themselves and for their peoples. They appeared out of the blue to plunder the cities without defence and protectives walls, or the peoples living in isolated villages. Often these actions were the only source of subsitence for them. In those times acts of piracy were not consdered shameful. On the contrary, they were considered as glorius acts and to this day some peoples on the continent are proud of their acts of piracy. Ancient poets confirm this as well: everywhere their heroes land, they are always asked the same question: "Are you pirates?" Those who are asked such a question do not consider such a pratice as shameful and those who ask such a question do not consider such a pratice as disgraceful. On the mainland acts of piracy were as common as they are still nowdays in many regions of Greece some peoples still live like in ancient times, such as those of Locri Ozoli, Etoli and Acarnani."
Hellinic historians consider the equation of Tyrrhenians with pirates, as preveiling particularly from 4th century BC onwards when Etruscans made acts of piracy on the seas, both as an activity related to trading on the sea and as the organized expansionist policy that originated from Etruscan regions in ancient times and from the aristocratic society oh the 7th century BC as well as the urban society of the 6th century BC.
FONTE:
Santa Severa: Museo del mare e della navigazione antica, 2017
