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Daily Life of the Etruscans by Jacques Heurgon seeks to lift the mystery which enshrouds almost every aspect of this civilization, from the vexed question of their origins and curios non-Indo-European language to the enigma of their highly complex religion, in which soothsaying played so important a part. At the zenith of their power, the Etruscans controlled about a third of the peninsula and their kings held sway in Rome over a period of more than a hundred and fifty years. But after the expulsion of the Tarquins at the close of the sixth century BC they began to lose ground to the Romans; and their distinctive culture was gradually absorbed in the pan-Italic civilization which Rome established, until almost all clear record of it faded into obscurity.