Greeks, Phoenicians and Etruscans, c. 900 - 500 BC

From about 900 BC, the Greek world began to recover from the immense setbacks brought about by the Bronze Age Collapse (c. 1200 – c. 1150 BC) and the subsequent centuries known to history as the Greek Dark Ages (c. 1100 – c. 800 BC). The Mycenaean palatial system was no more and in its place ultimately arose a new type of political and religious community: the polis or city-state, which would become the dominant political entity in the Mediterranean world for centuries. The eighth century BC transformed the Greek motherland immensely: communities grew and developed into cities, the first monumental public buildings appeared, population numbers increased again, literacy returned and contacts with Asia Minor and the Middle East were restored and intensified. From about the middle of the eighth century BC, groups of Greeks set out to explore and settle the Mediterranean world, establishing a strong presence especially in Sicily, southern Italy and the Black Sea region by the middle of the sixth century BC. In this, they both followed and challenged the example of the Phoenicians, who had risen to become a great Mediterranean trading power throughout the first half of the first millenium BC. From their homeland on the shores of the Levant, the Phoenicians sailed far and wide, established trade relations with Egypt and Greece and built a string of trade posts and colonies, the focal point of which lay in the western Mediterranean. The Phoenicians thus also accessed and controlled the trade routes coming from the British Isles into the Mediterranean. One colony established from Tyre at the end of the ninth century BC eventually rose to build an empire of its own in the western Mediterranean: Carthage.

In Italy, a pre-Indo-European people achieved prominence: the Etruscans. Their origins are vague and debatable: one theory proclaims they migrated from the Aegean region, possibly also from Asia Minor, in the twelfth or eleventh century BC, building a new home in the land between the Arno and Tiber, which came to be known as Tyrrenia in Greek (Etruria in Latin). The Greek and Etruscan presence in Italy caused the peninsula to make major progress in its transition towards an urbanised, literate culture. The Etruscans are credited with introducing iron equipment and the Greeks spread the new alphabetical writing system. It is worth noting that the Greeks generally served as tutors to the Etruscans, which is particularly true when it came to war: the Etruscans adopted the heavily-armed Greek phalanx formation in the sixth century BC and went on to to whitewash many of the rivalling Italic peoples, whom were militarily still far behind. The Etruscans subdued Italic cities, founded new colonies and conquered much of the Po Valley in northern Italy, as well as the fertile plains of Campania in the south, thus securing a dominant position in Italy which they held until the beginning of the fourth century BC…

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