Ettore Ciccotti (Potenza, 23 March 1863 - Rome, 20 May 1939) was a historian, lecturer and politician from Italy, member of both the

Italian Chamber of Deputies The Chamber of Deputies ( it, Camera dei deputati) is the lower house of the bicameral Italian Parliament (the other being the Senate of the Republic). The two houses together form a perfect bicameral system, meaning they perform identical funct ...

and

Italian Senate The Senate of the Republic ( it, Senato della Repubblica), or simply the Senate ( it, Senato), is the upper house of the bicameral Italian Parliament (the other being the Chamber of Deputies). The two houses together form a perfect bicameral sy ...

Early life

Born into a liberal family of the lawyer Pasquale Ciccotti, a landowner and several times mayor of

Potenza Potenza (, also , ; , Potentino dialect: ''Putenz'') is a ''comune'' in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata (former Lucania). Capital of the Province of Potenza and the Basilicata region, the city is the highest regional capital and one ...

, he studied in the local high school. In 1879 he enrolled at the Law Faculty of the

University of Naples The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 depar ...

. He became a follower of

Mazzini Giuseppe Mazzini (, , ; 22 June 1805 – 10 March 1872) was an Italian politician, journalist, and activist for the unification of Italy (Risorgimento) and spearhead of the Italian revolutionary movement. His efforts helped bring about the in ...

and adhered to

Italian irredentism Italian irredentism ( it, irredentismo italiano) was a nationalist movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Italy with irredentist goals which promoted the unification of geographic areas in which indigenous peoples ...

. He had a particular interest in both ancient history and for the social problems of Southern Italy, inspired by the example of the historian

Giustino Fortunato Giustino Fortunato (4 September 1848 – 23 July 1932) was an Italian historian and politician. Biography He was born in Rionero in Vulture (Basilicata), from a bourgeois family. His great-uncle Giustino Fortunato (1777-1862) was the prime minis ...

.Ciccotti, Ettore
Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 25 (1981) Ciccotti, raised in the poor southern region of

Basilicata it, Lucano (man) it, Lucana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = ...

, adhered to the group of socio-political thinker's known as ''meridionalisti'' ("southernists"), aspiring to solve the economic problems of Southern Italy after the

Italian unification The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...

. They claimed that the economic policies of the central government of the new state discriminated against the interests of the south while favoring those of north.

Academic and political activist

In 1889, Ciccotti attended the University of Rome and gained a teaching qualification in classical antiquities. He won the competition for the ancient history chair at the Scientific-Literary Academy (''Accademia scientifico-letteraria'') in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

in 1891. Meanwhile, he started to cooperate with the socialist

Filippo Turati Filippo Turati (; 26 November 1857 – 29 March 1932) was an Italian sociologist, criminologist, poet and socialist politician. Early life Born in Canzo, province of Como, he graduated in law at the University of Bologna in 1877, and participa ...

and his journal ''

Critica Sociale ''Critica Sociale'' is a left-wing List of newspapers in Italy, Italian newspaper. It is linked to the Italian Socialist Party. Before Benito Mussolini banned opposition newspapers in 1926, ''Critica Sociale'' was a prominent supporter of the ori ...

''. He adhered to the

Italian Socialist Party The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parties of the country. Founded in Genoa in 1892, ...

(PSI), where he raised the issue of the underdevelopment of Southern Italy. His political involvement caused him the hostility of the Milanese conservatives, and in 1897 he lost his position at the Academy. He was appointed professor of ancient history at the

University of Pavia The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it one ...

, but his attacks on the government and solidarity for the workers on the occasion of the tragic events in Milan in May 1898 earned him an arrest warrant for subversive incitement. He went into exile, taking refuge in

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...

(Switzerland), hosted by

Maffeo Pantaleoni Maffeo Pantaleoni (; Frascati, 2 July 1857Milan, 29 October 1924) was an Italian economist. At first he was a notable proponent of neoclassical economics. Later in his life, before and during World War I, he became an ardent nationalist and syndi ...

. Here he met

Vilfredo Pareto Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto ( , , , ; born Wilfried Fritz Pareto; 15 July 1848 – 19 August 1923) was an Italian polymath (civil engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher). He made several important contribut ...

and the German social-democrat

August Bebel Ferdinand August Bebel (22 February 1840 – 13 August 1913) was a German socialist politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) in 1869, which in 1875 mer ...

, and wrote a report on the events in Milan, ''The revolt of Milan: Notes of a refugee'', but lost his job at Pavia. As a historian, Ciccotti was the first to give a Marxist economic account of the decline of

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

in the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...

, in contrast to religious-ethical explanations in his book ''Il tramonto della schiavitu nel mondo antico'' (The Sunset of Slavery in the Ancient World), published in 1899. Economic changes rendered slavery expensive and inefficient, and doomed it to extinction.Harrill, ''The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity''
p. 48
/ref>

Political career

In June 1900, he was elected in the

(1900-1904)Ciccotti, Ettore
Senato della Republica (accessed: 1 October 2016) in the

Vicaria Vicaria ( it, residence of the Viceroy), often known as Il Vasto, is one of the 30 '' quartieri'' of Naples, southern Italy, lying immediately to the east of the historical city centre (''Centro storico''). It borders the districts of Poggioreal ...

district of

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, upsetting the traditional electoral alliance between local politicians and the

Camorra The Camorra (; ) is an Italian Mafia-typeMafia and Mafia-type orga ...

.Snowden, ''Naples in the Time of Cholera'',
p. 254
/ref> In 1904, he lost his seat due to active campaigning of the Camorra against him. Serena Robba (2009).
Camorra - uno stile di vita
', Tesi di Laurea, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale "Amedeo Avogadro" Camorra boss

Enrico Alfano Enrico Alfano (; 1869 or 1870 – date of death unknown), also known as "Erricone", was considered to be one of the chiefs of the Camorra, a Mafia-type organisation in the region of Campania and its capital Naples in Italy, at the turn of the 20 ...

was said to be the man behind the election in 1904 of the Count Vincenzo Ravaschieri Foschi who had the support of Prime Minister

Giovanni Giolitti Giovanni Giolitti (; 27 October 1842 – 17 July 1928) was an Italian statesman. He was the Prime Minister of Italy five times between 1892 and 1921. After Benito Mussolini, he is the second-longest serving Prime Minister in Italian history. A pr ...

.Says Politicians Hire The Camorra
The New York Times, July 13, 1911I mille spettri della camorra
La Stampa, April 3, 1982 The night before the election dissident voters were intimidated, assaulted, beaten, and sustained knife injuries by ruffians hired and encouraged by both the Camorra and the police, since the authorities equally disapproved of a socialist candidate.Atti Parlamentari 17 giugno 1907
Camera dei Deputati He was re-elected in 1909 and remained a Deputy until September 1919.
Ettore Ciccotti
Camera dei deputati, Portale storico (accessed: 1 October 2016) Meanwhile, Ciccotti initiated the translation in Italian of the major works of the Socialist theorists

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' Ferdinand Lassalle Ferdinand Lassalle (; 11 April 1825 – 31 August 1864) was a Prussian-German jurist, philosopher, socialist and political activist best remembered as the initiator of the social democratic movement in Germany. "Lassalle was the first man in Ger ...

. In the decade before the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, he gradually distanced himself more and more from the official line of the Socialist Party, although he kept on contributing to the socialist newspaper ''

Avanti! ''Avanti!'' is a 1972 American/Italian international co-production comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills. The screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is based on Samuel A. Taylor's play, w ...

''. He criticized the party, which he considered to be too much focused on the problems of the "Northern", industrialist working man, and too little inclined to understand the problems of the impoverished rural populace of the South. Ciccotti defined the prejudices against southern Italians as the

anti-Semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

of Italy.Huysseune, ''Modernity and Secession''
p. 53
/ref> In contrast with the PSI, he was in favour of an Italian intervention in the First World War.Socialists Support War; Ciccotti Stirs Italian Chamber by Patriotic Speech
''The New York Times'', 6 December 1915

Senator and death

His pro-war stance and dislike of the liberal

– Ciccotti called Giolittianism the "death of political life"De Grand, ''The Hunchback's Tailor''
p. 162
/ref> –, and in opposition to the post-war revolutionary movements, he looked sympathetically at the rising

Fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...

and its leader

Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...

. "In today's evident scarcity of political personalities, Mussolini is the one that more than any other, if not the only one, can deserve this name," Ciccotti wrote in September 1922.Falasca-Zamponi, ''Fascist Spectacle''
p. 49
/ref> In September 1924, he was rewarded with a seat for life in the

. He opposed the move to authoritarian rule of Mussolini,Senator Ettore Ciccotti; Noted Italian Historian, Long in Nation's Parliament, Dies
The New York Times, 23 May 1939 but did not resign. He mainly dedicated his time to study history. In 1931, when demanded to pledge an oath of allegiance to the Fascist regime, Ciccotti initially protested, but eventually took the oath all the same. Finally he opposed, and openly, to the dictatorship of Mussolini when he sensed that the regime was heading to the adventure of a war, which he considered the inevitable conclusion of authoritarian and populist regimes. He died in Rome on 20 May 1939 at the age of 76.

References

* De Grand, Alexander J. (2001).
The hunchback's tailor: Giovanni Giolitti and liberal Italy from the challenge of mass politics to the rise of fascism, 1882-1922
', Wesport/London: Praeger,
online edition
* Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta (1997).
Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy
', Berkeley: University of California Press, * Harrill, J. Albert (1995).
The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity
', Tübingen: Mohr, * Huysseune, Michel (2006).
Modernity and Secession: The Social Sciences and the Political Discourse of the Lega Nord in Italy
', New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, * Snowden, Frank M. (1995)
Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884-1911
', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, {{DEFAULTSORT:Ciccotti, Ettore 1863 births 1939 deaths People from Potenza Italian Socialist Party politicians Deputies of Legislature XXI of the Kingdom of Italy Deputies of Legislature XXII of the Kingdom of Italy Deputies of Legislature XXIII of the Kingdom of Italy Deputies of Legislature XXIV of the Kingdom of Italy Members of the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy Politicians of Basilicata 20th-century Italian historians 19th-century Italian historians