- chapter 21: Slavery and manumission –
Graecanic names, which betray their origin from Eastern Mediterranean slave markets.
The evidence is heavily imbalanced between southern and northern Etruria; in the south
of the region, only three freedmen are known, all of them from votive inscriptions,^30
while southern Etruscan funerary epigraphy remained impervious to lower social classes.
In the northern cities, on the contrary, a couple of hundred funerary inscriptions of
freedpersons are known, the greatest part of them from Clusium and Perusia and their
territories. Their incidence in epigraphy is comprised between 3% in Volaterrae and 4%
in Clusium: a remarkable success for former chattel slaves, most of them of foreign origin,
only attainable in the exceptional conditions of robust economic growth of second- and
fi rst-century bc northern Etruria.
Etruscan slaves, when enfranchised, retained their individual name, transforming
it into a family name, and adding to it a citizen praenomen; the former master’s name
is almost always mentioned, as is the indication of status (lautni/lavtni or lautniθa/
lavtniθa, sometimes abbreviated, syncopated or otherwise truncated); this last element
is important especially when (as often happens) the praenomen is not explicitly written in
the funerary inscriptions,^31 and the name could otherwise appear as a slave’s name. As far
as our evidence goes, freedpersons were hardly ever buried in their former master’s family
grave (as often happened in the Roman world),^32 but usually chose (or were obliged) to do
otherwise; this was facilitated by the fact that in some northern Etruscan cities (Clusium,
especially, but also Perusia) it was possible to buy individual spaces in common tombs,
and even families or individuals who could not afford the construction of a private tomb
of their own were allowed access to formal burial (and, consequently, to archaeological
and epigraphic visibility). Freedpersons are found buried in tombs together with freeborn
people belonging to other families, in some cases even of high standing, since common
tombs were in no way reserved to individuals of lesser social level only. Typical of the later
period (fi rst century bc) are marriages between immigrant freedmen and freeborn women
of local origin, probably belonging to minor families, as their family names usually appear
for the fi rst time in epigraphy in these occasions: it is reasonable to assume that the social
gap had been crossed thanks to a (relative) wealth possessed by these immigrants; such
marriages proved advantageous for both parties concerned (providing social recognition
for immigrant freedpersons, and economic improvement for the local families).^33 We do
not know what kind of legal ties bound the freedperson to his/her former master, and
whether Etruscan law or custom contemplated something like the duties Roman patroni
could ask their freedpeople to perform.^34
Some Etruscan funerary inscriptions of freedpersons from Clusium and Perusia show
a name formula of the Roman kind, with the family name reproducing the former
master’s one; they must refer to enfranchisements following the lex Iulia of 90 bc, and
the consequent adoption of Roman law by Etruscan cities.^35 It is interesting that the
only freedman attested from Caere, to be dated probably into the third century bc, had
a genuinely Roman name formula; the city of Caere had received Roman citizenship at
some point between 390 and 273 bc, and even names of freeborn people, from the third
century bc onwards, followed Roman customs.^36
EPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCE: SLAVESThe Etruscan word for “slave” is not known to us,^37 despite some proposals by nineteenth-
century scholars, that have astonishingly survived their dismissal by linguistic research