The History of the Ancient World: Практическое пособие по английскому языку. Часть 1. Гончарова Л.Ю. - 12 стр.

                                          12
where they lived), the Etruscans appeared to have penetrated Italy from somewhere
north of the Alps and seem to have had close contact with some of the Old European
civilizations in the Aegean Sea, as they adopted Greek characters for writing their
language.
       Villanovan grave sites have revealed lots of impressive worked metal armor
and personal artifacts, some dating from 1000 BC, the time when iron working first
became widespread in Italy.
       With the advantage provided by iron weapons, the Etruscans quickly subdued
other original Mediterranean peoples in Italy, and established a state running from the
North in the Po River valley to about a third of the way from the end of the Italian
peninsula.
       Their most notable achievement was, however, the settlement of some towns
and concentrated urban areas, one of which was later to become the city state of
Rome.
       With the arrival of new invading Indo-European tribes – in this case the most
important being the Latini – the Etruscans were absorbed into the new Roman state,
with the last official Etruscan kind being expelled from Rome in 509 BC.
       After a few hundred years, the assimilation process between the Etruscans and
the Indo-European Latini tribe – the Romans – had reached the point where the
Romans offered the Etruscans full Roman citizenship by 100 BC. By this time the
Etruscan heritage had been completely taken up into the new power which was to
dominate the known world in a way not seen before: the Roman Empire.


                                Vocabulary work

     Read and memorize the following words and expressions, suggest their
Russian equivalents:

LIST OF PROPER NAMES

The Aegean
Crete
Troy
Asia Minor
The Etruscans
The Mycenaean culture
The Roman Empire
Classical Greece
Knossos
The Latini
Homer
The Illiad
The Odyssey