Society

It may be safely assumed that within the various Etruscan cities there was strife between the well-to-do aristocratic classes and the lower classes who constituted the majority of the popula­ tion. The so-called "Prophecy of Vegoia" documents, for the beginning of the first century BCE, a conflict between owners and servants, a category probably encompassing all those who found them­ selves in a subordinate position. In general, the agrarian structures of Etruri a, especially in the north, were noticeably stable over an extended period of time, a stability that Rome was anxious to preserve, up to the outbreak of the Social War (91-89 BCE). If great properties belonging to the nobility were the fundamental component of the agrarian economy, the legal conditions of the laborers who worked them remain uncertain. The presence of slaves or at any rate indentured workers is certain; less clear is the situation of the classes of small dependent workers that are beginning to be identified through archaeological investigation. And while it appears excessive to speak of Etruscan society of the beginning of the first century BCE as an "open society," there does seem to have been a trend towards the mitigation of social con­ flict through a process of economic development and in consequence a reasonably acceptable politi­ cal equilibrium within the community of citizens.