- Enrico Benelli –
with a substantial updating dealing especially with language and epigraphy).^5 This
reconstruction, further implemented by S. P. Cortsen,^6 found its fi nal triumph in the
furiously anticlassical mood of the years immediately following World War II,^7 and it has
required some pain to dismantle the collection of heterogeneous sources that supposedly
backed it (while linguistic arguments had already evaporated thanks especially to Emil
Vetter, Helmut Rix and Karl Olzscha).^8 The modern approach to these sources has
completely changed.^9
The idea of a slavery of the helotic kind as something completely different from a “real”
slavery (usually identifi ed with chattel slavery) appears in Greek political theories after
the success of the Messenian revolt in 370/69 bc.^10 Aristotle, discussing the various forms
of slavery, concluded that helotry was more dangerous for masters than chattel slavery,
because the connection of Helots with the territory where they lived could provide a
common ground on which to build up revolts (as it effectively happened), whilst slaves
deprived of any common identity were less likely to pose such problems (he could of course
not anticipate the slave revolts of the Roman late-republican period).^11 Modern historians
accepting this categorization, starting from Müller himself, completely upturned this
assumption, stating that it was chattel slavery that represented a “danger” for societies
(a danger of a moral kind, of course). The defi nition of a supposedly widespread category
of slavery of the helotic kind was reconstructed following lists of such “half-slaves”
concocted by late-antique lexicographers, that included groups which were outright
slaves and others who were on the contrary undoubtedly free people (only deprived of
full political rights, as often happened in strongly oligarchic societies); these sources are
now considered of limited or no use in reconstructing the real status of the various human
groups mentioned in them.^12
The equation between Etruscan lower classes and the Thessalian Penestai (a category
frequently mentioned in relation with Helots and other supposedly similar population
groups), often assumed through the evidence of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, can be ruled
out by the non-technical use the author made of this word;^13 in any case, when the term
πενέσται was used in a more technical sense, it always implied a conquest and enslaving of
local populations by invading groups,^14 a process Dionysius could hardly have imagined
for Etruria, as he was the almost sole supporter of a tradition of a totally autochthonous
origin of the Etruscans.^15 On the other hand, other sources often cited to concoct the
reconstruction of Etruscan “helotry” have completely different meanings: the description
attributed to Posidonius, for example, must be interpreted in the framework of a somehow
conventional view of Etruscan tryphè,^16 while the property right supposedly enjoyed by
Etruscan slaves sometimes reconstructed on the basis of the “Prophecy of Vegoia,” as well
as on the evidence of the peculium of the Vergilian character Tityrus (implying a highly
unlikely survival of Etruscan law in Augustan-age Mantua), is absolutely inconsistent,
the instances cited completely understandable in the context of Roman custom.^17
SLAVE REVOLTSSlave revolts in Etruria are attested at least twice in our sources, in addition to the famous
case of Volsinii in 265 bc, which requires special attention. The events of 196 bc were
hardly a problem confi ned to Etruria itself, as they are only a part of a series of outbreaks
of slave revolts in various areas of Italy.^18 It is possible that these events originated from
the massive fl ow of slaves towards Italian markets following the Second Punic War (as