Etruscans or Greeks?

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1. When you look at Ancient Roman history [from 200-BC to about 200 AD] what was the role of Greece and Greek culture to the Romans?
Many aspects of the Roman culture were appropriated from the Ancient Greeks. In spite of the political turbulence and chaos of the fourth century BC, Greece was poised on its most triumphant period: the Hellenistic age, just prior to this period (200 BCE to 200 AD). It is important to look to an early time, to understand what ushered in this period.
The word, Hellenistic, is derived from the word, Hellene, which was the Greek word for the Greeks. The Hellenistic age was the "age of the Greeks; during this time, Greek culture and power extended itself across the known world. While the classical age of Greece produced great literature, poetry, philosophy, drama, and art, the Hellenistic age "hellenized" the world. At the root of Hellenism were the conquests of Philip of Macedon and his son, Alexander. However, the Macedonians did more than control territory; they actively exported Greek culture: politics, law, literature, philosophy, religion, and art. This was a new idea, exporting culture, and more than anything else this exporting of culture would deeply influence all the civilizations and cultures that would later erupt from this soil: the Romans, the Christians, the Jewish diaspora, and Islam (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GREECE/GREECE.HTM).
This leads us into the period from 200BC to about 200AD. By the time of the Macedonia province in Rome in 148 BCE, Greek culture had infiltrated the Ancient Roman world (see helpful timelines http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/civil_n2/hist_2.html and http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/civil_n2/hist_3.html).
Thus, Greeks influence was immense. For example, in architecture and sculpture, the continuity between Greek models and Roman imitations are apparent. The chief Roman contributions ...