The acceleration in the process of the Hellenization of Etruria between the sixth and the fourth century B.C. is graphically recorded in the wall-paintings at Caere (Cervetri). On the other hand, in their depiction of the torments inflicted on the damned in Hell, the Etruscan painters betray an un-Hellenic vein of sadism in the Etruscan êthos which was incidentally communicated to the Roman pupils in an Etruscan school of Hellenism, and which reappears even in a latter-day Tuscan Dante’s Divina Commedia. The origin of this sinister streak in the Etruscan tradition is a mystery. It makes the impression of being of non-Hellenic provenance (though the torments of the damned do figure in Hellenic art and legend); and it is a matter of recorded history that the institution of gladiatorial shows, which was perhaps the most atrocious of all the cruel practices that the Romans learnt from Etruscan instructors, was so abhorrent to Greek feelings that it never gained any foothold in Greek communities under Roman rule. The inference is that this Etruscan sadism was an element in the Etruscans’ Anatolian heritage which was too near to the heart of their tradition for the counter-influence of Hellenism to be able to eliminate it. Yet, if the origin of Etruscan sadism may be Anatolian, it can hardly be Hittite; for, to judge by the surviving corpus of Hittite legislation, the Hittite Civilization was as humane as the Hellenic.
A Study of History, Vol VIII, OUP, 1954 (footnote)
