Etruscan Military History - Significant Battles

Significant Battles

The written record of the period of Etruscan is fragmentary but it is generally believed that The Etruscans vied with the early Romans for control of the central Italian Peninsula for nearly two centuries (c.700 B.C. - c.500 B.C.) before becoming one of the first neighboring cultures to succumb to Roman expansion.

In the Battle of Cumae (474 B.C.), the Etruscans and allies were defeated in the waters off Cumae by the combined navies of Cumae and Syracuse. This defeat successfully blocked the southern expansion of Etruscan influence and marked the beginning of territorial loss in southern Italy. In the Roman-Etruscan Wars, Roman authors wrote accounts of a drawn out siege on the city of Veii. According to the Roces, the army of Rome unsuccessfully laid siege to the Etruscan city of Veii for 9 years before they were able to tunnel beneath the walls of the city and bring about Veii's downfall. The veracity of the account is difficult to determine, because the accounts are told as part of the biography of Marcus Furius Camillus, a legendary figure in Roman history. Livy and Plutarch wrote about Camillus long after his death.