Mario Guarnacci

Mario Guarnacci was born at Volterra 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]

• Dissertazione sopra le XII Tavole (Florence, 1747);
• Vitae et Res Gestae Pontificum Romanorum, etc. (Rome, 1751);
• Origini Italiche (Volterra, 1768);
• Poesie di Zelalgo Arassiano (Lucca, 1769).

•  This article incorporates public domain material from McClintock, John; Strong, James (1867–1887). Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. Harper and Brothers.
• Vannini, Fabrizio (2003). "GUARNACCI, Mario". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 60: Grosso–Guglielmo da Forli (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.