L'etnonimo Italiotes tra identità regionale e identità politica: alcune riflessioni sull'identificazione degli Ita-lioti nelle fonti epigrafiche

This paper will focus on the ethnonym Italiotes in the epigraphic documentation with the aim of verifying whether its use connoted a political identity. Though the formation of the Italiote League could conceivably have prompted such an identification, the cases examined instead suggest a generic, non-political value for the ethonym. This conclusion is established through comparison with several Greek cases on the one hand, in particular Achaia and Boeotia, which differ from the Italiote situation in terms of ethnic and political cohesion, and on the other by highlighting the clear prevalence of the city ethnonym over the regional one when Italiote individuals were identified in various parts of the Greek world. In this respect, significant insights can be gleaned from comparison with the ethnonym Sikeliotes