- chapter 21: Slavery and manumission –
ultimately to subversion of rules and destruction of social order, is not uncommon in Greek
political thought; it reappears, for instance, in the charges against Athenian democracy in
Ps.-Xen. Ath. Pol. 1.10–12 (Cataldi 2000).
17 Use of peculium in the form of land-plots and other goods as an incentive for agricultural
slaves: see especially Cha 1988, p. 434; Roth 2005, p. 291; Aubert 2009, pp. 179–183, with
references.
18 Bradley 2011, pp. 246–247; sources on slave uprisings before the outbreak of the fi rst great
revolt in Sicily in 141 bc: Capozza 1966 (the ideological bias of this unquestionably precious
work can be hardly overestimated).
19 Torelli 1975, pp. 80–82.
20 Cristofani 1995, pp. 29–30. The odd municipal government of Imperial-age Caere
(comprising a dictator, an aedilis iure dicundo, an aedilis annonae and a censor perpetuus: see CIL
XI, 3593, 3614, 3616–3617) probably reproduced Etruscan age magistracies, culminating
with a single eponymous zilath, and had nothing to do with a kingship that had presumably
long since disappeared. Some lines of the inscription of the aequipondium from Caere with
zilath-dating are poorly preserved, and various readings have been proposed; the most reliable
is probably Maggiani’s one: Moretti Sgubini 2001, p. 153.
21 Sources in Capozza 1966, pp. 17–72; see also Storchi Marino 1997, p. 196.
22 The best account of the evidence is Harris 1971, pp. 115–118. The narrative of events in
Volsinii is probably not unrelated to widespread ideas about Etruscan tryphè: the behavior
of the supposed “slaves” and their masters fi ts suspiciously into such a framework: see
especially Liébert 2006, pp. 242–255. The inevitable connection between all narratives of the
Volsinian uprising and the theme of tryphè/luxuria is correctly stressed also by Capozza 1997,
a thorough examination of the literary sources about the event, with fundamental references
to the signifi cance the ancient authors themselves could have attributed to this episode (a
circumstance helping to explain the differences between the sources).
23 Even the exceptional and innovative policy adopted by Nabis to attempt a renewal of Spartan
fortunes was not intended to free all helots, but only a part of them – maybe even a minority:
see Cartledge & Spawforth 1989, pp. 69–70.
24 See for instance Colonna 2003, p. 145.
25 Rix 1994, pp. 96–116. In some inscriptions, the word lautni is used as an adjective meaning
“belonging to the family” (e.g. CIE 5470 > ET Ta 1.182, śuθi lavtni, “family tomb”).
26 This archaic form appears only in the Tabula Capuana: see Cristofani 1995a, pp. 52, 101–
105, but also Rix 1994, p. 115.
27 The inscription, despite its classifi cation in ET, is not funerary at all; it is incised on a stone
weight, and is generally recognized either as proprietary, or as a mention of the person whose
authority guaranteed the weight itself.
28 See especially López Barja de Quiroga 2007, pp. 108–113; Bradley 2011, pp. 243–244 and
Gardner 2011, with references.
29 About slavery in Etruria and Rome in the Archaic period, and the possible sources of slaves
before the establishment of large slave markets in the middle- to late-republican age, see
(especially) Welwei 2000, Auliard 2002 and Nash Briggs 2002–2003 (maybe over-simplistic).
30 CIE 11155 (Volcii); Colonna 1989–90, p. 895, of unknown provenance (but safely attributable
to Caere thanks to palaeographical elements); ibid. p. 891, of unknown provenance (generically
from southern Etruria).
31 Funerary inscriptions from Clusium and Perusia often did not reproduce the complete offi cial
name of the deceased; fundamental components of the name formula could be omitted, while
other elements could be added. This probably refl ected the circumstance that inscriptions
were usually on objects put inside the tomb, and not on public display; the inscribed name
identifi ed the deceased in a form that suited the needs of the group that had access to the
tomb. This is true for freeborn people as well as for freedpersons, whose names appear