Slaves, freedpeople and non-citizens in the Etruscan world: evidence from epigraphy

In Etruscan epigraphy, the identification of non-citizens usually relies on name forms, although their interpretation is not always straightforward. The first section of the present paper offers a brief overview of the most common ambiguities in the name forms employed in inscriptions. The only way to try to understand Etruscan personal names is by studying evidence from each city on its own terms. The second part of the paper is devoted to the study of the social standing and behavior of freedpeople in Clusium through epigraphic evidence. The study also makes use of comparisons with data gathered from Perusia; they can sometimes be more informative than Clusine evi-dence, thanks to the availability of a more accurate body of knowledge on the tomb as-semblages, which may prove crucial for the understanding of the inscriptions found in them. A review of some tomb groups shows that in a specific area of the Clusine territory, around the middle of the second century BC, an elite family that owned large estates in that area had disappeared; its estates were not acquired by another family of comparable status, but were divided into smaller plots, which gave lesser families, some even of unfree origin, the opportunity to become smallholders and, with time, even to climb the social ladder.