Mario Guarnacci | |
|---|---|
 Mario Guarnacci | |
| Born | October 25, 1701 |
| Died | 21 August 1785 (aged 83) |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Other names | Zelalgo Arassiano |
| Occupation(s) | archeologist and historian |
| Known for | Origini Italiche |
Mario Guarnacci (October 25, 1701 – August 21, 1785) was an Italian prelate, archeologist, and historian. He was one of the first scholars to carry out systematic excavations of Etruscan tombs.[1]
Mario Guarnacci was born at Volterra, Province of Pisa, of a noble and wealthy family. He received the doctor's degree at Florence, where he pursued the course of Anton Maria Salvini. He was honored with the favor of Pope Benedict XIV, who charged him to continue Alfonso Chacón's Lives of the Popes, but he retired in 1757 to his own country. He discovered there the remains of Roman baths. He also made a collection of Etruscan antiquities, which he bequeathed to his native city. The donation also included a rich library of more than 7,000 volumes.[2] He died August 21, 1785.
His most important work was Origini Italiche (1767), in which he maintained the chronological priority of the Etrusco-Pelasgians over the other peoples of Italy and Greece. According to Guarnacci, the Pelasgian-Tyrrhenians of Italy migrated in prehistoric times and brought an Italic culture to savage and uncouth Greece. Guarnacci's theories gave rise to a lively controversy involving several prominent historians and scholars of the period, such as Giovanni Lami, Scipione Maffei and Antonio Francesco Gori.[2]
