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Review Of Annie Dillard's Etruscans, Losing Their Edge

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Review of Annie Dillard’s “Etruscans, Losing Their Edge” In the feature article “Etruscans, Losing Their Edge,” author, Annie Dillard, explains her opinion about the bronze statuettes that photographer, Carol Munder, finds on Mediterranean villages. While the Etruscans made these figures, which was kept in glass cases, the Romans were working on Plato’s dialogues in which their words are still alive after all these centuries. The article suggests that the Etruscans came from Lydia and produced a culture 2,700 years ago. Etruscans also are known for settling in Tuscany along with Umbria. Meanwhile, peninsula natives collected and refined iron ore. The author suggests that the Etruscans used the photo-Greek alphabet, meaning we can pronounce …show more content…

Building city-states left and right reaching all the way out to the coast of Spain. Though you can find their work all the way in France, building the entire town of Pompeii. The Etruscans didn’t really thrive until 550 B.C., when the Pythagoras thought of taking mathematics to the purest level. Dillard also points out that Rome’s last three kings came about in Etruscans dynasty. For example, the mother of the first was actually a prophet in the dynasty. This absolute power, according to the article, lasted 106 strong years. They even built some of Rome’s walls during this time. However, due to the hatred of the third king of the Etruscans, Tarquin, in 510 B.C., Rome declared itself a republic and separated from the Etruscans. They then banished Tarquin north of the Tiber, but even with doing so, Romans took control of the Etruscans civilizations to the point they ceased to …show more content…

It seems that Benton and DiYanni provides more information on Etruscans temples, tombs, and sculptures such as on pages 129 and 130 than Dillard even mentioned in the entire article. Also on page 132, they claimed that Rome declared itself a republic in 509 B.C. when Dillard states they did so in 510 B.C. The perception that Dillard provided in her article was as if the Romans and Etruscans grew to hate one another which led to the capture of all Etruscan civilizations when in the book Benton and DiYanni wrote, they make it seem like they never hated one another and that the separation just happened without reasoning. Two completely different perceptions of the same events are displayed here. However, both agreed that Etruscans had the ability to work in metal which was rare during this period of time. One major contrast between the two is that in Dillard’s article, the main sculptures created by the Etruscans were the human like figures that stood flat footed as for the in the book Benton and DiYanni wrote on page 131, the twin infants added in the Renaissance actually became the symbol of Rome making the figures less important than what Dillard described them

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