Who was the most significant non-latin influence upon early rome?

Answer 1

It was the Greeks. This started very early as the Greeks settled in southern Italy and Sicily between the 8th and 6th century BC. The Greeks were a more advanced civilisation and had a profound impact on the Italic peoples they came in contact with. The Italic peoples at that time lived in daub and-wattle huts. They learnt to build stone temples and houses from the Greeks. They did not have a written language and adopted the western Greek alphabet. Trade with the Greeks also developed.

Over time the Roman elites came to look up to the Greeks. They received an education in both Latin and Greek and spoke Greek fluently. The pinnacle of education for elite men was a stay in Greece to learn Greek philosophy. Rome had Greek libraries as well as Latin ones. Roman art became Greco-Roman art because it was influenced by Greek art. The Romans absorbed substantial parts of Greek mythology and Roman goods became linked to Greek gods. They also adopted the divination books of the Sibyls, who were Greek oracles.