Society

Abstract

The basic unit of Etruscan society was the family, established in a lawful marriage, which also formed a residential unit. Presumably there existed in Etruria an institution comparable to the Roman pater familias. Women enjoyed a somewhat public existence but were excluded from political office; female cultic activity in public service is difficult to verify. The onomastic system based on gentilicia shows that the individual was defined primarily by his membership of a broader community of descendants, membership which was transmitted in the father’s line. The importance of the gens changed over time; while in the Orientalizing period and again from the fourth century BCE it played a certain role, this appears to have diminished considerably in the sixth and fifth centuries. A strongly hierarchical society with unequal division of wealth and power was typical for the Orientalizing period, which was dominated by the principes. In the course of the sixth century, a number of factors led to the formation of new social strata and the establishment of a broader urban upper class. Beginning in the fourth century, the circle of those who shared in political power once again tightened more strongly. A small oligarchical and very prosperous upper class dominated the Hellenistic city-states of Etruria. We are considerably less well informed about the middle and lower social strata. An urban middle class must have begun to come into being in the Archaic period. These citizens certainly had to perform military service, but their integration into the political life of the community is unclear. In the later sixth and the fifth centuries there may well have been a free peasantry owning modest amounts of land. As for the lower classes of population, they comprised an urban proletariat and lower rural classes. Beginning in the second half of the fourth century, considerable social tensions arose, especially in the strongly industrialized cities of northern and inner Etruria, but a clear distinction between discriminated Etruscans and real slaves (mostly foreigners), whose numbers strongly increased during the fourth and third centuries, sometimes proves problematic. The liberalizing tendencies of the Hellenistic period led on the whole to a substantially more varied social spectrum than before (e.g. new forms of marriage, freedmen). With the lex Iulia of 90 BCE Etruria definitely became part of the Roman world.