GREEKS

GREEKS: translation

One of the two major groups (together with the Phoenicians) of state-organized societies that were contemporaries of the Etruscans. The Greeks have been credited with immense influence on the Etruscans by a process of Hellenization. This process, under the influence of postcolonial theory, can be shown to have been much more complex than a simple copying of Greek ideas. The Greeks were not themselves formed out of one coherent group, but broken down into politically independent city-states with connections to so-called colonies in the West. One clear material connection with the Greeks was the presence of large quantities of intact Greek pottery in Etruscan tombs, so much so that without exaggeration, the provenance of most Greek pottery found in European museums is Etruscan, most frequently from Vulci.