OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS

Published under the supervision of a Committee of theFaculty of Classics in the University of Oxford

The aim of the Oxford Classical Monograph series (which replaces the OxfordClassical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish books based on the besttheses on Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and ancient philosophyexamined by the Faculty Board of Classics.

From Asculumto Actium

The Municipalization of Italy from

the Social War to Augustus

EDWARD BISPHAM

1

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Preface

This book began life, a long time ago now, as a doctoral thesis, submitted in thethen Faculty of Literae Humaniores, at Oxford; I was a graduate student at JesusCollege, where I had also been an undergraduate. During the writing of the thesis,and subsequently, I have accumulated many debts, too many to be able to thankhere all of those whom I ought to acknowledge.

The Wrst preoccupation of most students is money. I was fortunate enough toobtain a now-extinct grant called a British Academy Major State Studentship,without which I might never have started further study. Concurrently, and afterthe end of the period of the grant, I was able to obtain other sources of funding,including a Graduate Scholarship, and other subventions, for subsistence andtravel, from a college which was enlightened enough to try to give its graduatestudents as much support as it could to help them Wnish up as soon as possibleand to attend conferences. Grants from the Craven Committee, including theHenry Francis Pelham Studentship, allowed me to undertake the study visits inItaly without which the present work would never have been written. The researchwas completed, and most of the writing up done, in the Wrst term of a RomeScholarship at the British School at Rome in the autumn of 1994 (I still havepleasant memories of dodging the rush hour traYc on crisp Novemberevenings after escaping from the library of the Germanico). It is humbling to reXecthow much has depended so completely on the support and generosity of so manyinstitutions.

Human beings are their own greatest resource (and at times worst enemy).Money will prevent many discomforts and allow some pleasures; but it will not,I have found, motivate for study; it will not support, listen, understand, encour-age, or inspire. It is not compassionate, generous, or forgiving, and has no senseof humour. Without being able to call on these over the last Wfteen years, I wouldhave given up a long time ago. So many friendsin Oxford, London, Edinburgh,Rome, and elsewherehave made time for me at crucial junctures, and sup-ported me selXessly, over the years, that it makes me quite ashamed to estimatethe one-sidedness of the bargain. You know who you arethank you.

I also have to thank those who made me want to be like them, and do what theywere able to do, to share their knowledge, and to steal some of their magic andpass it on to others. From A. J. Pudden, who taught me Latin and Greek whenI was (quite literally) in short trousers, to my colleagues in Oxford today, I havenever been short of mentors, teachers, and peers who have, by their abilitiesand enthusiasm, dragged me on and made me try to better myself and others.A splendid set of teachers at Malvern College were led by John Hart, whomI am proud still to call a friend, and who swiftly got me interested in Greekhistory as well as literature. At Oxford I was incredibly (and I use the word

advisedly) lucky to be taughtand mentoredby Don Fowler, not just a clas-sicist of extraordinary stature, but a remarkable and life-aYrming human being,and lucky to be made by Don and Peta a part of a big, close-knit family. No lesssatisfying was being taught by, and remaining friends with, Peta Fowler. SimonHornblower taught me ancient history: his enthusiasm and energy were utterlyinfectiousand it is only now, as an Oxford tutor, that I see how much of histime and eVort he gave his pupils. He also managed to make me switch allegiancefrom Greek history to Roman; more than that he so excited me about munici-palization (with the throw-away remark that he thought everyone might bewrong in attributing the lex Iulia municipalis to the Dictator, when there was acase to be made for L. Iulius Caesar, the consul of 90, who passed a lex Iuliaatthe distance of a dozen years I cannot recall which was more exhilarating, the ideaitself, or the possibility that everyone else might be wrong and a right answerwaiting to be discovered).

My doctoral supervisor, Barbara Levick, was a model of selXessness towards hergraduate students which I have been unable to emulate; at almost impossiblespeed she returned large chunks of undigested epigraphic comment, covered incomments and often other amusing notations. Her patience with my wayward-ness and eccentricities was astonishing, and I learnt much from her beyondRoman republican history. Two apophthegmata stand out, from the Wrst encoun-ter. One was the admonition that it wouldnt do simply to bake a new crust forSherwins pie; the other a question: what are you going to do with these laws,other than let them smile bronzily at you? Barbara made doing the doctorate lotsof fun, but then and since she has been a constant source of support andencouragement. The thesis was examined by Fergus Millar and John Patterson,who were sympathetic judges, but also made a series of valuable suggestionsabout additions and improvements; both have given much time and effort inhelping me follow them through.

Colleagues in Edinburgh (especially Karen Stears, John Richardson, Bill Nicoll,and Keith Rutter, as well as the late GeoV Lewis) made a young lecturer feel verywelcome, and oVered advice and encouragement. In Oxford I have been veryfortunate to have colleagues in Brasenose and St Annes who have combined agreat deal of intellectual stimulation with a good deal of fun: Matthew Leigh,Llewelyn Morgan, Bob Cowan, Alan Bowman, Roger Crisp, Adrian Kelly, Kath-erine Harloe, Annalisa Marzano, Damian Robinson, Richard Smail, and TrevorEvans have been a privilege to work with. In the Faculty, Nicholas Purcell andAndrew Lintott (my faculty mentor) have been conspicuous in oVering supportand guidance as needed (and in Andrews case, reading the Wrst half of themanuscript); and Fergus Millar acted as my conscience on the numerous occa-sions when doing other things seemed more attractive than Wnishing an increas-ingly overdue book. Very many colleagues all over the world have been generouswith their time and ideas: this is my chance to thank a very few, whose assistanceand goodwill has been far greater than a short mention can indicate: Guy Bradley,Will Broadhead, Alison Cooley, Tim Cornell, Robert Coates-Stephens, Emma-nuele Curti, Emma Dench, Peter Derow, Claude Eilers, Lisa Fentress, Domenico

vi Preface

Fossataro, Fay Glinister, Ittai Gradel, Olivier Hekster, Lawrence Keppie, SusanKane, Robin Lane Fox, Ray Laurence, the late John Lloyd, Henrik Mouritsen,John North, Stephen Oakley, Robin Osborne, Jonathan Prag, Benet Salway, KeithSwift, Nicola Terrenato, Edmund Thomas, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, JonathanWilliams, Andrew Wilson, Peter Wiseman, Rob Witcher, Christian Witschl, andLiv Yarrow; and I have had valuable criticism and responses from graduatestudents, especially Mark Bainbridge, Matt Gibbs, and Rowena Holt. In Oxford,London, and above all in Rome (where the kindness and skill of Valerie Scottand Beatrice Gelosia at the British School has been unfailing), I have been able touse regularly outstanding research libraries; in Italy Maria Pia Malvezzi at theBritish School transformed a dry list of entries from epigraphic corpora into asmooth series of meetings with obliging museum staV and SuperintendencyoYcials.

Greater yet has been the contribution of three individuals, without whom thisexercise would have been utterly diVerent, and lacked what merit it may have.John Patterson patiently and courteously guided the thesis into book form; heread the whole twice, and I have lost count of the number of insightful sugges-tions which he oVered, which have greatly improved every aspect of what I wrote.Mark Pobjoy accompanied me for some of the Weldwork for the thesis; I havebeen fortunate to have him close to me for the last Wfteen years, since we met in alift in the now defunct Institute of Classical Studies building in Gordon Square,for him to discover that I was a year into his planned research topic. His learningand his scholarship are a model to everyone else working on Roman Italy; and hiscompanionship, tested to the limit in pursuit of inscriptions, bridges, and the wayout of the cellar of the Mad Inventor of Aeclanum, is uplifting. Finally, MichaelCrawford: Michael is a unique Wgure in many ways: he has founded a schoolof Italian studies through his pupils; at no small cost to himself, in terms of timeand money, he has made it possible for a relatively large number of graduatestudents to visit parts of Italy which are inaccessible on a student budget. Aswell as grounding the studies of those accompanying him in the principles ofItalian topography, he has also inculcated a love of Italy and Italian culture.It is impossible for me to imagine Italy without it being mediated by Michael,nor to imagine how I would have ever got hold a large number of obscurepublications without ready access to the wonderful library formerly housed inGordon Mansions. None of those named is responsible for the errors in thisbook, nor for the delays which have compounded them.

At OUP Hilary OShea, Dorothy McCarthy, and Kathleen Fearn have beenmodels of cordial efficiency in preparing the book quickly in a very busy year.Jane Robson and Richard Ashdowne, copy-editing and proof-reading, bothimproved the finished product immeasurably.

Fergus Millar once remarked to me that Wnishing a book has a high socialcost. My family, my sisters, and my wife, Lisa, know this all too wellI hopeI will Wnd some way to express my profound gratitude to Lisa for the myriadways in which she has made Wnishing this book, and so much else, possible.My daughters, Emma and Susannah, have oVered the most pleasant distractions

Preface vii

imaginable to the long process of writing the Wnal drafts, and at times tried tospeed things up by typing themselves while on my kneeagain, they are notresponsible for any errors. This book is dedicated to my parents. Only theyknow the sacriWces they have made over so many years to make its appearancepossible.

E.H.B.Brasenose and St Annes Colleges

viii Preface

Contents

List of Figures x

Abbreviations xi

Introduction 1

1. Making Italy: Terra Italia 53

2. Roman Italy: The Second Century 74

3. Allies: Latins and Italians in the Second Century 113

4. Municipalization and the Politics of Enfranchisement of Italy 161

5. Leges dare and Constituere: Municipal Charters 205

6. The Simple Quattuorvirate (Nude Dictus) 247

7. Quattuoruiri Iure Dicundo 294

8. Quattuoruiri quinquennales, and Other Variations 337

9. The Duovirate 380

10. Tota Italia: Remaking Italy? 405

Appendix 1. Pompeii and Other Double Communities 447

Appendix 2. Romans of High Status Acting as Patrons andMagistrates of Italian Communities betweenthe Social War and Actium 457

Appendix 3. The Roman Republican Municipia 462

Appendix 4. Puzzles 471

Addendum to Chapters 69 473

Bibliography 511

Index Nominum 549

Index Rerum 557

Index Locorum 563

List of Figures

1. Stemma of the Cocceii Nervae 301

2. Q25 (Clusium): inscription recording building work by quattuoruirQ. Considius 480

3. Q86 (Perusia): tombstone of quattuoruir C. Atilius Glabrio 501

4. D19 (Caiatia): inscription recording construction carried outby duouiri M. Herennius Gallus and Q. Veserius 510

Abbreviations

AE LAnnee Epigraphique (Paris, 1888-present)

Anderson, Imagined Communities B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: ReXectionson the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edn.(London, 1991)

ANRW H. Temporini and W. Haase (eds.), Aufstieg undNiedergang der romischen Welt, 66 vols. (Berlinand New York, 1972present)

ARS A. C. Johnson, P. R. Coleman-Norton, and F. C.Bourne (eds.), Ancient Roman Statutes (Austin,Tex., 1961).

ASMG Atti e Memorie della Societa` Magna Grecia, 36 vols.(Naples, 1962present)

Badian, Clientelae E. Badian, Foreign Clientelae (Oxford, 1958)

Badian, Studies E. Badian, Studies in Greek and Roman History(Oxford, 1964)

Beloch, RG K. J. Beloch, Romische Geschichte bis zum Beginnder punischen Krieg (Berlin, 1926)

Blake, Construction M. Blake, Ancient Roman Construction in Italyfrom the Prehistoric Period to Augustus (New York,1947)

BNP M. Beard, J. A. North, and S. R. F. Price, Religionsof Rome, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1998)

Bourgeoisies M. Cebeillac-Gervasoni, Les Bourgeoisiesmunicipales italiennes aux IIe et Ier siecles av. J.-C.(Naples, 1983)

Buonocore, Abruzzo Molise M. Buonocore, LAbruzzo ed il Molise (LAquila2002)

Bradley, Ancient Umbria G. Bradley, Ancient Umbria (Oxford, 2000)

Brunt, Fall P. A. Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic andRelated Essays (Oxford, 1988)

Brunt, Manpower P. A. Brunt, Italian Manpower, rev. edn. (Oxford,1987)

B-W H. Beck and U.Walter (eds.),Die fruhen romischenHistoriker, 2 vols. (Darmstadt, 2001, 2004)

C M. Chassignet (ed.), LAnnalistique romaine,3 vols. (Paris, 1996, 1999, 2004)

CAH Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd edn., 14 vols.(Cambridge, 19702006)

Campanile and Letta, Magistrature E. Campanile and C. Letta, Studi sulle magistratureindigene e municipali in area italica (Pisa, 1979)

Capogrossi Colognesi, Cittadinie territorio

L. Capogrossi Colognesi, Cittadini e territorio:consolidamento e transformazione della civitasRomana (Rome, 2000)

Castren, Ordo P. Castren, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus (Rome,1975)

Cebeillac-Gervasoni, Les Elites M. Cebeillac-Gervasoni, Les Elites municipales delItalie peninsulaire des Graccques a` Neron (Naplesand Rome, 1996)

Chilver, Cisalpine G. Chilver, Cisalpine Gaul (Oxford, 1941)

Cichorius, Studien C. Cichorius, Romische Studien (Leipzig, 1922)

CIE Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum (Pisa and Rome,18931970)

CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, 17 vols. (Berlin,1853present)

Coarelli, Santuari F. Coarelli, I santuari laziali in eta` repubblicana(Rome, 1987)

Communita` indigene J. Mertens and R. Lambrechts (eds.), Communita`indigene e problemi della romanizzazione nellItaliacentro-meridionale (IVIII sec. av.C.) (Brusselsand Rome, 1991)

Cornell, Beginnings T. J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome (London andNew York, 1995)

Costabile, Istituzioni F. Costabile, Istituzioni e forme costituzionale nellecitta` del Bruzio (Naples, 1984)

Crawford, RRC M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage,2 vols. (Cambridge, 1974)

D. The Digest of Justinian

DArms, Bay of Naples J. H. DArms, Romans on the Bay of Naples andOther Essays on Roman Campania, ed. F. Zevi(Bari, 2003)

Dalheim, Struktur und Entwicklung W. Dalheim, Struktur und Entwicklung desromischen Volkerrechts im dritten und zweitenJahrhundert v. Chr. (Munich, 1968)

David, Conquest J.-M. David, The Roman Conquest of Italy, rev.repr. (Oxford, 1997)

Degrassi, SVA A. Degrassi, Scritti vari di Antichita`, 4 vols. (Rome,1962, Trieste, 1967, 1971)

De Martino, Storia F. De Martino, Storia della costituzione romana,3 vols. (Naples, 1973)

Dench, Barbarians E. Dench, From Barbarians to New Men (Oxford,1995)

xii Abbreviations

Diz. Ep. E. De Ruggiero (ed.), Dizionario epigraWco diantichita` romane, 5 vols. (Rome, 1886present)

Dyson, Community S. L. Dyson, Community and Society in RomanItaly (Baltimore, 1993)

EpigraWa S. Panciera (ed.), EpigraWa: Actes du Colloque enmemoire de Attilio Degrassi (Rome, 1991)

Epigraphic Landscape A. Cooley (ed.), The Epigraphic Landscape ofRoman Italy (London, 2000)

Evidence and Experience E. H. Bispham and C. J. Smith, Religion in Archaicand Republican Rome and Italy: Evidence andExperience (Edinburgh, 2000)

FGrH F. Jacoby (ed.), Die Fragmente der griechischenHistoriker, 19 vols. (Berlin, 19236, Leiden,194099)

FIRA C. G. Bruns (ed.), Fontes Iuris Romani Antiqui,7th edn. rev. O. Gradenwitz (Tubingen, 1909)

Gabba, Esercito E. Gabba, Esercito e societa` (Florence, 1973)

Gabba, Republican Rome E. Gabba, Republican Rome, the Army and theAllies (Oxford, 1976)

Galsterer, Herrschaft H. Galsterer, Herrschaft und Verwaltung inrepublikanischen Italien (Munich, 1976)

Gargola, Lands D. J. Gargola, Lands, Laws and Gods (Chapel Hill,NC, 1995)

Greek and Roman Colonization G. J. Bradley and J.-P. Wilson, Greek and RomanColonization: Origins, Ideologies and Interactions(Swansea, 2006)

Hardy, Some Problems E. G. Hardy, Some Problems in Roman History(Oxford, 1924)

Harris, Etruria and Umbria W. V. Harris, Rome in Etruria and Umbria(Oxford, 1971)

Hellenismus P. Zanker (ed.),Hellenismus inMittelitalien, 2 vols.(Gottingen, 1976)

Humbert, Municipium M. Humbert, Municipium et Civitas sine SuVragio(Rome, 1976)

ILLRP A. Degrassi (ed.), Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae ReiPublicae, 2 vols. (Florence, 1965 (2nd rev. edn.),1963)

ILS H. Dessau (ed.), Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae,3 vols. (Berlin, 18921916)

Inscr. It. A. Degrassi (ed.), Inscriptiones Italicae

Italy and the West S. Keay and N. Terrenato (eds.), Italy and the West:Comparative Issues in Romanization (Oxford,2001)

Abbreviations xiii

Italia dei Sanniti R. Cappelli (ed.), Studi sull Italia dei sanniti(Milan, 2000)

Keaveney, UniWcation A. Keaveney, Rome and the UniWcation of Italy(London and Sydney, 1987)

Keppie, Colonisation L. Keppie, Colonisation and Veteran Settlement inItaly (London, 1983)

Keppie, Roman Army L. Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army(London, 1984)

LaY, Adtributio U. LaY, Adtributio et Contributio (Pisa, 1966)

Laurence, Roads R. Laurence, The Roads of Roman Italy (Londonand New York, 1999)

Lintott, Judicial Reform A. W. Lintott, Judicial Reform and Land Reform(Cambridge, 1992)

LTUR E. M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum UrbisRomae, 6 vols. (Rome, 19932001)

Lugli, La tecnica G. Lugli, La tecnica edilizia (Rome, 1957)

Luraschi, Foedus G. Luraschi, Foedus, Ius Latii, Civitas: Aspetticostituzionali della romanizzazione in Transpadana(Padua, 1979)

Manni, Per la storia E. Manni, Per la storia dei municipi Wno alla guerrasociale (Rome, 1947)

Mediterranean Valley G. Barker (ed.), A Mediterranean Valley (Leicester,1995)

Millar, Republic and Revolution F. G. B. Millar, The Roman Republic and theAugustan Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002)

Modus Operandi M. M. Austin, J. Harries, and C. J. Smith (eds.),Modus Operandi: Essays in Honour of GeoVreyRickman (London, 1998)

Momigliano, Secondo contributo A. Momigliano, Secondo contributo alla storia distudi classici (Rome, 1960)

Mommsen, GS Th. Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, 7 vols.(Berlin, 19059)

Mommsen, StR Th. Mommsen, Romisches Staatsrecht, rev. edn.,3 vols. (Berlin, 1887)

Mommsen, Strafrecht Th. Mommsen, Romisches Strafrecht (Leipzig,1899)

Mouritsen, Elections H. Mouritsen, Elections, Magistrates andMunicipal Elites (Rome, 1988)

Mouritsen, UniWcation H. Mouritsen, Italian UniWcation: A Study inAncient and Modern Historiography (London,1998)

xiv Abbreviations

MRR T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the RomanRepublic, 3 vols., including suppl. (New York,1951, 1952; Atlanta, Ga., 1986)

Nicolet, Ordre C. Nicolet, LOrdre e`questre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1967)

Nissen, Landeskunde H. Nissen, Italische Landeskunde (Berlin, 1902)

NSA Notizie degli scavi di antichita` (1876present)

OLD P. G. W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary(Oxford, 1982)

ORF H. Malcovati (ed.), Oratorum RomanorumFragmenta, 4th edn. (Turin, 1976)

P H. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae, 2ndedn., 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1914); rev. edn. (Stuttgart,1967)

Pailler, Bacchanalia J.-M. Pailler, Bacchanalia: La Repression de 186 av.J.-C. (Rome, 1988)

PCIA Popoli e civilta` dellItalia antica, 11 vols. (Rome,197492)

PIR2 E. Groag, A. Stein et al. (eds.), ProsopographiaImperii Romani, 2nd edn., 7 vols. (Berlin andNew York, 1933present)

Poccetti P. Poccetti, Nuovi documenti italici, acompletamento del Manuale di E. Vetter (Pisa,1979)

Potter, Landscape T. W. Potter, The Changing Landscape of SouthEtruria (London, 1979)

Rawson, Culture E. Rawson, Roman Culture and Society (Oxford,1994)

RDGE R. K. Sherk (ed.), Roman Documents from theGreek East (Baltimore, 1967)

RE Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischenAltertumswissenschaft, ed. G. Wissowa et al., 33vols., 15 suppls. (Stuttgart, 19831978 (sic))

RIB R. G. Collingwood, R. P. Wright et al. (eds.),Roman Inscriptions of Britain, 2 vols. (Oxford andStroud, 196595)

Rix, Sabellische Texte H. Rix, Die sabellische Texte (Heidelberg, 2002)

Romanisation du Samnium La Romanisation du Samnium aux II e et I er sie`clesav. J.-C. (Naples, 1991)

Rosenberg, Staat A. Rosenberg, Der Staat der alten Italiker (Berlin,1913)

RS M. H. Crawford (ed.), Roman Statutes, 2 vols.(London, 1996)

Abbreviations xv

Rudolph, Stadt H. Rudolph, Stadt und Staat im romischen Italien(Leipzig, 1935)

Salmon, Colonization E. T. Salmon, Roman Colonization (London, 1969)

Salmon, Making E. T. Salmon, The Making of Roman Italy(London, 1982)

Salmon, Samnium E. T. Salmon, Samnium and the Samnites(Cambridge, 1967)

Samnium S. Capini and A. Di Niro (eds.), Samnium:archeologia del Molise (Rome, 1991)

Sartori, Problemi F. Sartori, Problemi di storia costituzionale Italiota(Rome, 1953)

SdR A. Momigliano, A. Schiavone et al. (eds), Storia diRoma, 4 vols. (Turin, 198893)

Sherwin-White, Citizenship2 A.N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship, 2ndedn. (Oxford, 1973)

Solin, Iscrizioni H. Solin (ed.), Le iscrizioni antiche di Trebula,Caiatia e Cubulteria (Caserta, 1993)

Staatsvertrage H. Bengtson and R. Werner (eds.), Staatsvertragedes Altertums, ii (Munich, 1962)

State Identities E. Herring and K. Lomas, State Identities in theFirst Millennium B.C. (London, 2000)

Supp. It. S. Panciera (ed.), Supplementa Italica, 23 vols.(Rome, 1981present)

Syme, RP R. Syme, Roman Papers, 7 vols. (Oxford, 197991)

Syme, RR R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939)

Taylor, Voting Districts L. R. Taylor, The Voting Districts of the RomanRepublic (Rome, 1960)

TDGR Translated Documents of Greece and Rome, 5 vols.(Cambridge, 19838)

Terzo Congr. Epig. Atti del Terzo Congresso Internazionale di EpigraWaGreca e Latina (48 settembre) (Rome, 1957)

Tibiletti, Storie locali G. Tibiletti, Le storie locali dellItalia romana(Pavia, 1978)

Torelli, Tota Italia M. Torelli, Tota Italia: Studies in the CulturalFormation of Italy (Oxford, 1999)

Toynbee, Legacy A. Toynbee, Hannibals Legacy, 2 vols.(Cambridge, 1965)

Vetter, Handbuch E. Vetter, Handbuch der italischen Dialekte(Heidelberg, 1953)

VI Kongr. Epigr Akten des VIo internationalisches Kongre furEpigraphik (Munich, 1973)

Walbank, Commentary F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary onPolybius, 3 vols. (Oxford, 195779)

xvi Abbreviations

Willems, Le Se`nat P. Willems, Le Se`nat de la republique romaine(Paris, 1885)

Williams, Rubicon J. H. C. Williams, Beyond the Rubicon (Oxford,2001)

Wiseman, New Men T. P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate(Oxford, 1971)

ZPE Zeitschrift fur Papyrusforschung und Epigraphik

Abbreviations xvii

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Introduction

In the year 1773 Samuel Johnson and James Boswell set out on a long-projectedtour of theHighlands of Scotland; observationsmade on the trip formed the basis ofJohnsons Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland. The disastrous defeat at Culloden,and the consequent English repression were barely a generation old, and time wasnot proving a great healer. Johnson summed up the apparent changes since1746 (the year, as it happened, inwhich he had signed the contract for hisDictionaryover breakfast in the Golden Anchor in Holborn) with concise eloquence:

There was perhaps never any change of national manners so quick, so great, and so general,as that which has operated in the Highlands, by the last conquest, and the subsequent laws.We came thither too late to see what we expected, people of peculiar appearance, and asystem of antiquated life. The clans retain little now of their original character, theirferocity of temper is softened, their military ardour is extinguished, their dignity ofindependence is depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and the reverencefor their chiefs abated. Of what they had before the late conquest of the country, thereremain only their language and their poverty. Their language is attacked on every side.Schools are erected, in which English only is taught, and there were lately some whothought it reasonable to refuse them a version of the holy scriptures, that they might haveno monument of their mother tongue.1

Johnson found himself in a land which had in the course of a generation beensubjected to enormous change. Military conquest and subsequent legislation hadprofoundly aVected local culture, and both broader processes of change, and activerepression, had brought poverty in their train: only the Gaelic language remained,and this, Johnson noted, was being undermined institutionally, through education,and was threatened socially, with a question mark attached to the future of theGaelic scriptures. Independence was clearly extinguished to all intents and purposeswith the outcome of the war, and the people, bent to the will of an external powerin Westminster, were losing respect even for their own leaders.2

Reading Johnsons description of the Highlands, I began to wonder how muchof this experience, mutatis mutandis, would have been shared by a non-Italianvisiting Italy in the aftermath of the Social War (9187 bc). In fact, such a visitor

1 Samuel Johnson, Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, 73; Johnson goes on here and elsewhere

to look forward to a reduction of poverty in the Highlands. On Johnson, his dictionary, and his views

of the Scots tongue, a good introduction is to be found in McCrum et al., The Story of English, 13646.

2 Johnson has much to say on the change in traditional social structures, above all in the clan, e.g.

Journey, 94101; see brieXy on the legislation against Highland culture, Trevor-Roper, in Hobsbawm

and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 235; and cf. Morgan, ibid. 44.

need not be wholly hypothetical: we know that the great Stoic philosopherPoseidonios of Apamea visited Italy in 87/6 on the latest in a series of whatmust by then have become a familiar procession of embassies from his adoptedcity, Rhodes; while in Rome we know that he saw the dying Marius.3 He musthave seen at least something of the state of Italy after the war, and it is possiblethat Strabos description of urban decay in Samnium (which follows on from adescription of Sullas vengeance on the Samnites) is derived from Poseidonianautopsy: it cannot at any rate have been what Strabo himself saw.4

Were ordinary Italians disaVected from their principes (leading men), who hadled them into a short, brutal, and largely disastrous war?5 The citizenship, which,as we shall see, had resulted, albeit in Wts and starts, from the Social War,undoubtedly represented a gain, but it had to be set against other losses,none of which, arguably, were more signiWcant than the loss of independentpolitical existence and cultural identity.6 Were the languages of Italy under

3 Plut.,Marius 45. 4; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 8 n. 9. On Poseidonios history, see Malitz,Die Historien

des Poseidonios; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 5, suggests a date c.7065 bc for the publication of the history.

On possible Poseidonian inXuence on Diodoros: E. Schwarz, RE v s.v. Diodorus, cols. 663, 669, 6901;

Ca`ssola, in ANRW II/30. 1. 76373; Malitz, Historien, 3442; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 9 (a single

source . . . likely to have been Posidoniusyet perhaps the contradictory nature of Diodoros account

of Italian motives highlighted by Mouritsen (ibid. 6) militates against a single source here, and ibid. 13).

4 Strabo 5. 3. 10, 238C, 5. 4. 11, 24950C, 6. 1. 2 2534C (admittedly Strabo uses the state of some of

these places partly to illustrate the eVects of Sullas vengeance on the Samnites after the battle of the

Colline Gate, but the connection may be his own, and does not rule out Poseidonian autopsy, for which

see also Coarelli, in Strabone e lItalia antica, 79; see also Prontera, ibid. 100, Gabba, Italia romana, 69 n.

21, on this passage). On Strabos reaction to the devastation wrought by Sulla in Samnium, manifested in

the loss of local culture and cities lost or turned into villages, see Foraboschi, in Strabone e lItalia antica,

179 (loss of cities epitomizes cultural regression of the Samnites); and Lloyd, in Mediterranean Valley,213, 249; what Lloyd saw as an exaggerated picture of devastation can be partly explained by attribution

to Poseidonios; note also ibid. 223 for candidates for the Samnite communities shrunk to villages. See

generally on Strabos description of Italy Pedech, Ancient Society, 1971, Mossaro, in Madoli (ed.),

Strabone: Contributi allo studio della personalita` e dellopera, i, and Maddoli (ed.), Strabone e lItalia

antica. Pasquinucci, in Strabone e lItalia antica, 58, notes that Social War is prominent among the

historical events referred to by Strabo in his treatment of central Italy, and that his treatment of Samnium

is historical rather than geographical, with Sullas vengeance on the Samnites as a major element.

5 See in general Ch. 10 for the various fates of local elites after the Social War; many families which

survived beyond the Sullan period retained local inXuence down to the Empire. In this book I use

Italians generally to mean inhabitants of Italy: I hope the context will make clear whether I mean

Italian allies of Rome before the Social War or Roman citizens in Italy after the war, and whether in the

latter case I mean new or old citizens. I have tried to use Italici to denote the Social War rebels when

discussing that conXict and its immediate aftermath; as normally, Italiotai are to be understood as the

inhabitants of the Greek cities of southern Italy.

6 According to Cicero (Balb. 21), the Italiote cities of Heraclea and Neapolis were split as to whether

to accept Roman citizenship in 90 bc, or foederis sui libertas (the freedom of their own treaty),

cf. Sherwin-White, Citizenship2, 1323, and for Italian libertas (freedom) as oppressed by Rome

(a rhetorical context) see Vell. Pat., 2. 27. 2. Mouritsens claim that anything less than full identiWca-tion with Rome cannot explain the allied wish for citizenship (UniWcation, 82) does not ask what

citizenship might mean; at ibid. 8799 the Roman citizenship is considered in more detail, and its

signiWcance drastically downplayed; he is very far from proving that in the second century the Roman

citizenship had not yet developed into a higher legal status attractive to outsiders or that it was linked

to Roman soil (ibid. 91).

2 Introduction

threat?7 Were local manners vanishing as a result of the war? In both cases wecannot simply answer either yes or no; the question is much more complicatedthan the formulation allows.

The years between the Social War and Actium saw major change in Italy. Locallanguages, with the exception of Greek,8 disappeared as living speech systems(except perhaps as the sort of rural patois we cannot hope to know about), andwith them undoubtedly many customs and practices peculiar to communities orregions of Italy. As for other cultural changes, Roman mediations of Hellenisticstyles in private and public art proliferated. As never before, Rome became thefocus of cultural, economic, and political aspirations for Italians, and the inte-gration of Italy into the Mediterranean economy reached a new intensity. Thesechanges intersected with the creation of a uniWed political system in Italy predi-cated upon on a political hegemony exercised through, and sometimes aimed atcontrolling, the political institutions of the res publica populi Romani (common-wealth of the Roman people). We may then want to use the term Romanization todescribe these changes, post-colonial hand-wringing apart.

Yet such a clunky and qualiWed deWnition show that Romanization is a deeplyproblematic description of change. For a start, the idea of cultural changeadumbrated above is now widely rejected;9 Romanization is often understoodtoday as self-Romanization. Further, the changes described had not begun onlywith the Social War: they can often be traced back, in some parts of the peninsulainto the second century bc and beyond.10 What kind of change is signiWcant, howit is measured, depends on ones perspective. Viewed in a macro perspectivereaching back to the early Iron Age, Italy as a whole can be seen as culturallyrelatively homogeneous as opposed to clearly heterogeneous, and to have enjoyeda high degree of connectivity: Benelli is not seriously overstating the case to urgethat Roman expansion . . . takes place within a fairly uniWed context, in terms ofculture, in which local peculiarities stand out as indicators of diversity.11 Others,like Mouritsen, have argued that claims of political and cultural convergencebetween Rome and Italy in the second century bc, which he sees as read back

7 Note the warning of Purcell, in CAH vi2. 395, about modernizing assumptions about language

death: The attitude of its last speakers towards Messapian is unlikely to have resembled the defence of

Scots Gaelic.

8 See Benelli, in Italy and the West, 8, on the special status of Greek.

9 For Rome as the motor of urbanization/urban monumentalization: Salmon, Making, 100, 159,

Gabba, in Modelli di citta`, 117, Torelli, in Bourgeoisies, 243, id., in Gros and Torelli, Storia dellurba-

nistica: Il mondo romano, 158, id., in Augustus und die verlorene Republik, 30, contra Mouritsen,

UniWcation, 756. Against the idea that villas are necessarily ubiquitous or a very Roman form of

economic exploitation, and thus markers of Romanization: Terrenato, in Italy and the West, 3, 623,

arguing for a contextual appreciation of their absence or presence in diVerent territories in Italy; cf.Munzi and Terrenato, Ostraka (1994), 389.

10 No one today would, however, accept the thesis of Devoto (Cahiers dhistoire mondiale (1956),

457) that the Romanization of Italy was completed by the time of the Social War.

11 Italy and the West, 7, cf. 12 (drawing on the work of Massimo Pallotino); Vallat, LItalie et Rome

21831 av. J.-C., 2014, Crawford, in Boardman et al., The Oxford History of the Classical World; id., in

CAH x2. 414.

Introduction 3

from the fact of later political uniWcation via a deterministic historiography, needat least to be questioned;12 in a micro-perspective, Samnium and Rome wereculturally, linguistically, and economically very diVerent in the second century.

Let us take the case of language.13 There seems little doubt that some locallanguages were declining in the face of Latin, and that others (note the lex OscaBantinasee Chapter 3for Oscan)14 show evidence of Latinization.15 Latin, for

12 UniWcation, 23, 5986. Mouritsen (ibid. 8) sees romanization after the Social War as eroding

cultural distinctiveness; he does not satisfactorily discuss what Romanization in Italy might be (hence

too extreme a dichotomy between complete cultural assimilation and traces of Roman inXuence (ibid.

86). He does argue rightly (ibid. 745.) against reading back from imperial provincial Romanization,and models for understanding it, to 2nd-cent. Italy; he does see such an approach (ibid. 86) as more

applicable to the 1st cent. (cf. 173, the 1st cent. sees the real eradication of cultural diVerence in Italy).

13 See Salmon,Making, 80; Campanile, in SdR ii. 1; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 7983, on the extent of

Latinization, and the contexts, social, and functional, in which knowledge of Latin might be desirable

and be acquiredany dealings with Roman military or administrative/political oYcials made a

knowledge mandatory (Val. Max., 2. 2. 2); note also Cicero, Brutus 169 (members of Marsic and

Vestine elites proWcient in Latin oratory; see Sumner, Orators in Ciceros Brutus, nos. 115 and 119, and

David, in Bourgeoisies, 30923, for the extent and the limitations of such oratorical prowess); on the

Latinity of Picene urban culture, see Diodoros (37. 12) on Saunio the comic actor (gelotopoios)

described as a Latinos and popular with Romans but appearing in the theatre in Asculum in 91 bc,

and Rawson, Culture, 46970. The anecdote about Marsic/Latin fraternization in the Social War need

only tell us about the misconceptions of Diodoros about the language situation in Italy, pace

Mouritsen, UniWcation, 80. On the Xourishing of Greek culture, see below.

14 Latinization of Oscan: note the bilingual tile from Pietrabbondante (Macchiarola, in Capini and

Di Niro, Samnium), and the inscribed loomweight from Forentum published by Torelli, in Tagliente,

Italici in Magna Grecia: Lingua, insediamenti e strutture, cf. id., Tota Italia, 11516; there is a single

Latin text from the large pre-Social-War corpus of Pompeii (where Oscan also continues in graYti after

the Social War): M. De Vos, in Pompei 79, 165. On the survival and decline of Oscan, and the use of theLatin alphabet, see Tagliamonte, I sanniti, 22134. Oscan also continues at Teanum Sidicinum in some

contexts up to the Social War (Morel, in Communita`, 136) and perhaps after (see Izzo,Ostraka (1994),

27980, for a graYto on the base of a Black Gloss jug dated by Izzo to c.80 bcnoMorel form is given

for the piece, which is in private hands, and has no stratigraphic context, so some hesitation is

justiWable in the present state of the documentation; yet Poccetti, nos. 1378, are Oscan funerary texts

from Teanum from the late 2nd and early 1st cent. bc, so Izzos date is not per se implausible);

Mouritsen, UniWcation, 801. Contrast Cumae (below).

15 Mouritsen, UniWcation, 7983, denies a change on this scale, speaking of Latin being widely

understood and perhaps even spoken in some quarters (ibid. 80, diVerent emphasis ibid. 81). We see a

good example of his technique here: having rightly questioned the idea of adoption of Latin on the

part of (some) allies out of a sense of aspiration towards a superior culture, Mouritsen then argues that

Latin was learnt among the allies only for practical reasons (political and military; although ibid. 81 n.

97 he stresses rather frequency of contact with Latin speakers as the catalystand it should be added

that economic interaction would have been an important context); from here it is a small step to

arguing for disinterest and a limited spread of acquaintance with a necessary evil. The dichotomy

between Romans and allies is, for a start, too simplistic: see below on the situation at Roman, Oscan-

speaking Cumae in the early 2nd cent., not discussed byMouritsen. Further, as the century progressed,

the wealth of patronage available in Rome inevitably meant that Rome became the centre of literaryculture in Italy, even though, other than history, little was homegrown; some allies, above all Latins,

may have indeed begun to feel some attraction to what was happening culturally in Rome (but for

dialectal diVerences between Rome and Latin cities in the 2nd cent., see Plaut.,Trin. 6089,Truc. 6901,

Quint., Inst. Or. i. 5. 56 ( Lucilius 1322M, aVectation or boorishness?), Paulus, p. 157L (Praeneste);Festus p. 156L, Paulus p. 157L (Lanuvium); and cf. Festus p. 410L (Tusculum, Falerii); although

4 Introduction

example, was well on the way to displacing the so-called central Italic dialectssuch as Marsic and Vestinian in the third century (cf. ILLRP 7 for an early Latintext from the Marsic area); or rather, the local languages were displaced by a Latinwhich would have sounded decidedly odd in the Roman Senate, in that itmanifested dialectal traits betraying the interaction of Latin with the precedinglinguistic stratum.16 Contemporary Paelignian, however, seems to resist Latin,succumbing later than its neighbours.17 Umbrian too survived longer, but fromthe mid-second century public inscriptions in this part of Italy tended increas-ingly to be in Latin, and Umbrian texts themselves, like the latter part of theIguvine tables, to use Latin characters.18 Etruscan, the hardiest indigenous sur-vivor, lost ground at diVerent rates in diVerent places (faster in the south than inthe north) and diVerent contexts, with Latin appearing for the Wrst time infunerary texts in the Wrst decades of the Wrst century bc.19

The Romanization of Italy was something which acted as a reXex of theprocess of conquest and domination, the need by local elites and masses to adjust,evenindeed, usuallywithout direct prompting, to the new circumstances ofRomes hegemony.20 Consequently, the ways in which change happened were

formulations like those of Salmon,Making, 121, andKeaveney,UniWcation, 23, overstate the case), but not

because theirownculturesweredeWcient.While thecitiesofMagnaGraecia couldattractpoets ashonorary

citizens (such asArchias), only one philosopher is thought to have resided in an Italian town (signiWcantly

Teanum Sidicinum, on the Latin/Campanian border): Wiseman, in Bourgeoisies, at 301. Mouritsens

observations are often shrewd and salutary, but undermined by his need to reduce RomanItalian

integration in all its aspects in order to provide a plausible context for his (quite persuasive) ideas on the

SocialWar.

16 ILLRP 147 (Vetter, Handbuch, 220Rix, Sabellische Texte, MV5), a Vestine text according toRix. M. Peruzzi,Maia (1962); Letta, I Marsi e il Fucino nellantichita`, 28 and n. 18; id., SE (1976); Lettaand DAmato, EpigraWa della regione dei Marsi, 33940, for Marso-Latin texts, Marinetti, Atti

dellIstituto Veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti (19845); Mattioco and Tuteri, Bolletino di archeologia

(1991); Mouritsen, UniWcation, 81; Benelli, in Italy and the West, 8.

17 ILLRP 143 ( Vetter, Handbuch, 217 Rix, Sabellische Texte, Pg6, Pg7), 144. Sironen, in Solinet al. (eds.), Acta Colloquii Epigraphici Latini (Helsinki, 1995), 3436, Benelli, in Italy and the West, 9.

18 See on Umbrian, Harris, Etruria and Umbria, 16987; Coarelli, in Bonamente and Coarelli

(eds.), Assisi e gli Umbri nellantichita`, 24558; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 81; Benelli, in Italy and the

West, 89. Other cases are less clear cut, but Apulian languages seem to suVer competition from Latin

in private contexts already in the 2nd cent. bc. See Benelli, ibid. 9, although change was slow and

patchy; Santoro, in La Puglia in eta` repubblicana; for a new Messapic text, the 2nd-cent. epitaph (in

Greek characters) of Platorias Anneihi fromMessagne, see Cocchiaro, Taras (2001), 945., Wg. 55 for

photographCocchiaro notes elements which are culturally Roman, rather than Messapic, in the

tombs corredo (grave goods); Venetic lasts into the Augustan period (Benelli, in Italy and the West, 12).

19 Harris, Etruria and Umbria, 16987, Kaimio, AIRF (1975). See now Benelli, Le iscrizioni bilingui

etrusco-latine; id., in Italy and the West, 10 (Caere), 11 (latest Etruscan texts, Augustan, and Tiberian,

stressing a certain continuity of bilingualism).

20 On Romanization see Torelli, in Augustus und die verlorene Republik, 2340 (a very broad

interpretation of change driven by Rome); Mertens and Lambrechts (eds.), Communita`; Woolf, Becom-ing Roman; and contributions in Keay and Terrenato, Italy and the WestI am not sure that the latter

(ibid. pp. ixxii) make a convincing case for the retention of Romanization even loosely to describe the

creation of a uniWed political system in Italy or the Mediterranean. Terrenato e.g. (ibid. 16) stresses the

tendency of traditional discussions of Romanization to disallow positive local involvement, to see Italy as

passive in the face of Roman aggression, and to obscure the diversity of the Italian peninsula. For theories

Introduction 5

complicated. The onomastics of Caere demonstrate a unique situation in thethird and second centuries bc, with names recorded in Etruscan, but instead ofthe normal name structure of South Etruria, we encounter a formula (praenomen(Wrst name) gentilicium (gentilicial name) patronymic and abbreviation forson or daughter) which is clearly modelled on the Roman.21 Yet, whatever thedate of the grant of Roman citizenship to Caere, it is surely wrong to see in thischange of practice a direct reXex of the enfranchisement,22 above all in a muni-cipal and funerary context where the name of the deceased surely need notrespond to the citizens (presumed) duty (but not the need of the ciuis sinesuVragio (citizen without the vote)?) to give a Roman style name to the Romancensors. The choice is cultural, as Benelli stresses, and must reXect not simply thecitizen status of Caere, but the broader phenomenon of its special historicalrelationship with Rome.

Well before the Social War, Hellenistic tastes and inXuences can be tracedacross Italy, from monumental architectural to the material culture of privatelife, and it is no exaggeration to state that, in the generation before the Social War,some Latin and allied cities were more highly Hellenized, and greater centresof intellectual ferment and experiment, than famously conservative Rome.23

of Italian elite adoption of Roman culture (1) as a demonstration of the loyalty to the hegemonic power

(which in turn sustained them): Galsterer, Herrschaft, 13851; A. Pontrandolfo Greco, I Lucani, 140,

1645; Gabba, in CAH viii2. 228; Volpe, La Daunia nelleta` della romanizzazione, 44; M. R. Torelli, in

Tagliente, Italici in Magna Grecia, 93; Torelli, DdA (1992), cf. id., Tota Italia. Terrenatos view is

essentially less sceptical, cf. Morel in Communita`, 13444; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 71. For adoption of

Roman culture (2) as a route to sharing the beneWts of empire: Salmon,Making, 157; Gabba, CAH viii2.

209; Campanile, in SdR ii/1, at 306. Mouritsen, UniWcation, 723, asks pertinent questions of this view,

but they are not unanswerable. Romanization is perhaps least problematic when employed of changes

in institutional and political practice, e.g. in magisterial titulature; on such changes among the Italian

socii (allies) before the Social War, and the persistence of indigenous elements, see Camporeale, Atti

Accademia Toscana (1956); Salmon, Samnium, 878; Harris, Etruria and Umbria, 18792; Sherwin-

White, Citizenship2, 120, 12933 (reviewing the arguments of Beloch, Italische Bund, 159); Cristofani, inPCIA 7, 88102; Campanile, in Campanile and Letta, Studi dulle magistrature indigene e municipali in

area italica, 1528; Prosdocimi, Atti Ist. Veneto (1984); Brunt, Fall, 11819; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 767

(add Teanum Sidicinum for the tribunatesee below Ch. 4), stressing the diversity and creative

adaptation in these borrowings; I cannot agree, however, that they reXect only superWcial Romanization

(ibid. 77); Mountsen has to explain away the lex Osca Bantina (ibid. 789) as exceptional and

unparalleled. The evidence for Romanizing magistracies in Italian towns in the 2nd cent. needs to be

set against the fuller context of this text, without overstating the case.

21 Benelli, in Italy and the West, 10.

22 As does Kaimio, AIRF (1975), followed by Benelli, in Italy in the West, 10; for an early Latin

abecedarium from Caere, see Gasperini, in Roma medio-repubblicana, 71, no. 46, tav. XV.

23 Cic., De or. iii. 43, Brutus 169; Arch. 5 (pre-102 bc); see Wiseman, in Bourgeoisies, for the

Hellenized cultural horizons of the Italian elites; Rawson, Culture, 46887, ead., Intellectual Life in

the Late Roman Republic, 5, 1937; Torelli, in Bourgeoisies, for their building programmes. OnCampanian examples of Hellenistic building types, see Johannowsky, DdA (1970), 46071; id.,

in Hellenismus, 26788; Zanker, Pompeji: Stadtbilder als Spiegel von Gesellschaft und Herrschaftsform,

517; id., Pompeii, 3260; Lauter, in Hellenismus, 41322; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 617, has a valuable

survey of Hellenization in Campania and Samnium, although he downplays the Roman evidence

slightly, and extrapolates too readily from cases studied.

6 Introduction

Notoriously, in Rome, despite multiple attempts, the Senate prevented the con-struction of a permanent theatre until the completion of the theatre of Pompeius(ostensibly a series of temples with a massive semi-circular staircase); in Campa-nia there had been stone theatres in a half a dozen cities for a hundred-odd yearsby that point.24 Often (as at the Samnite fortiWed centre of Monte Vairano in themiddle Biferno valley, where second/Wrst-century Rhodian amphorae have beenfound25) imported or Hellenizing artefacts seem to show no plausible sign ofdirect mediation through Rome.26 Local cultures and attitudes responded tostimuli other than the Roman across the second century, and these have to beweighed in the balance when assessing change. It seems that knowledge ofHellenistic matrices of analysis and use of myth, along with other intellectualfashions and traditions, on the part of Italian elites was already favouring interestin, and preservation of, local traditions and identities in the second centuries bc,a process within which Mario Torelli has located the production of CatosOrigines, going so far as to speak of a culture of the Origines.27

So, it would be reasonable to expect Poseidonios, or any other Johnsoniantraveller in Italy in the generation after the Social War, to have seen substantialevidence of dislocation and destruction (especially in the eighties), and to havebeen aware of change, although perhaps not to fully pick up on important regionalvariations.28 But not all developments can be ascribed to the Social War: many needto be ascribed to, or at least woven into, longer processes of change.29 Nor was it all

24 Mitens, Teatri greci e teatri ispirati allarchitettura greca in Sicilia e nellItalia meridionale c. 350

50 a.C., 15474; Mouristen, UniWcation, 62 and n. 12, 63.

25 De Benedittis, in Samnium, 127, in the house of LN.

26 For an example of cultural change explained through diVusion from Rome to the Italian periphery,

see Torelli, in Bourgeoisies, 243. For evidence for the contrary view see Crawford, in Bourgeoisies;Bevilacqua and De Benedittis, in Sannio. Pentri e Frentani dal VI al I sec. a.C.; Mouritsen, UniWcation,

601, 657, 70, 80, exploding the idea of Roman cultural superiority (stressing instead the opportunities

for literary Wgures to Wnd patronageand, one might add, a wider audiencemore quickly) and

questioning Roman mediation of Hellenism; ibid. 612 on artistic Hellenization at Rome, with

preceding bibliography (a perversely reductivist discussion); contra Salmon, Making, 100, 117, 159.

27 Torelli, Tota Italia, 1449; cf. Wiseman, in Bougeoisies 3001, 3034; Rawson, Intellectual Life in

the Late Roman Republic, 25, suggesting the 2nd cent. as a likely context. Italian communities myths

also become (more) deeply enmeshed in the myth-history current in the Hellenistic world.

28 So tooGohler,Romund Italien, 38; Salmon, Samnium, 316; id.,Making, 1245, Pallotino, in PCIA

7, 390; Gabba, Italia romana, 1731; id., in Bourgeoisies 401, 404; id., in Lingua e cultura degli oschi;

Keaveney,UniWcation, 27, 199;Mouritsen,UniWcation, 5986 (on regional variation, rejecting, however,

the thesis of gradual change towards something more Roman, and the idea of inevitablity: 835;

nevertheless, if Romanization has no Aristotelean telos, the idea that there was a tipping point

(or better points in diVerent areas), beyond which Roman predominance in political and economic

terms wouldmean that some forms of change, like language death in the face of globalization andmass

media today, became irreversible, is attractive). On approaching regional variation, see Terrenato, in

Italy and the West, 645. Awareness of cultural change in Strabo: 6. 1. 2, 2534C.

29 See e.g. Terrenato, Italy and the West, 34, speaking of the gradual levelling of diVerences across arange of disparate phenomena such as elite taste, the organization of land or political systems, across

a peninsula where . . . local peculiarities had always played the strongest role, culminating (when is

unclear, sometime between the 3rd and 1st cents bc it seems) in a new cultural habitat, in which the

previously shocking prospect of uniWcation becomes suddenly acceptable; cf. Benelli, ibid. 14.

Seminal in this respect is the review article of Curti, Dench, and Patterson, JRS (1996).

Introduction 7

the sort of change in histoire evenementielle (history of events) which might beexpected to follow in a clear process of cause and eVect from the events of the waritself, or even from its consequences, such as enfranchisement.30 Some were verydeeply rooted, and not to be worked out to any sort of conclusion in, say, a decade.Other changes, although caused by the war, were nevertheless longer term processes(like some of those observed by Dr Johnson), such as the eVect on Roman socio-politics of the entry of the new citizens as voters or aspirants to oYce, and wouldarguably only reach fruition in the establishment of the Principate, a more widelybased and less exclusive brand of politics.31 How profound were these changes?

Writing in 1988, and taking as his starting point the armistice signed betweenVittorio Emmanuele III and the Allies in September 1943, Paul Ginsborg statesForty-Wve years later, Italy has been transformed out of all recognition.32 Was theItaly of 44 bc changed beyond all recognition from that which had witnessed theoutbreak of the Social War? It is true that the processes of change which I havebeen discussing, whether caused or exacerbated by the Social War, had to awaitthe Augustan Principate to be considered in any sense concluded. These processeswere bound up with, and indeed overtaken by, other changes of a diVerent naturebut equally profound: the substitution of autocracy for aristocratic isonomicpluralism; the enormous mixing up of populations in Italy caused by the settle-ment of the time-served armies of the generals who had destroyed a Republic,often in areas with which they had little or no prior connection;33 and thediVusion of normative cultural fashions in urbanism, public architecture, andart, the Augustan neo-classical style so integral to showcasing and legitimatingthe ideology of the optimus status (the best situation).34 Yet this is perhaps atsome sixty years remove from the Social War. In 44 bc, however, one would behard pushed to argue for a transformation such as that which Ginsborg has somasterfully traced for post-war Italy. The preconditions of civic life, religion,

30 Benelli, in Italy and the West, 10, would be mistaken in my view to directly link the change to

Latin in Caeretan funerary nomenclature to the concession of full citizenship after the Social War, were

it true that the status of ciuitas sine suVragio persisted here this latebut such a situation is unattested

and unlikely.

31 To take an area of cultural change, we may note Benellis Wnding that the funerary inscriptions of

Perusia and Clusium show the rapid spread of Latin in the second half of the 1st cent. bc, albeit a Latin

tinged with Etruscan linguistic, and more importantly, onomastic elements (see the Addendum for

examples: Q27, 29, 86), and an epigraphy which is linguistically Latin but culturally not Roman, and

articulates its changes at a generational rhythm: Benelli, in Italy and the West, 11, 14 (cf. 1112 on the

Veneti), drawing in part on Kaimio, AIRF (1975), and also on Benelli, Le iscrizioni bilingui etrusco-

latine, id., in Protostoria e storia del Venetorum angulus; id., SE (2001). For urban change and

monumental convergance in Italy as really a 1st-cent bc phenomenon: Torelli, in Bougeoisies, 249;

Gabba, Italia Romana, 63103; Crawford, in CAH x2.

32 Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 1.

33 On the latter, see Keppie, Colonisation; Crawford, in CAH x2.34 Suet., DA 28. 2. See Mouritsen, UniWcation, 81 (although p. 86 seems to argue that change during

the 1st cent. explains uniformity found in the Augustan period); Terrenato, in Italy and the West, 579,

stressing that the signiWcant changes become widely diVused only with the end of the Civil Wars and

the establishment of the Augustan Principate; for the artistic changes and their relation to Augustan

society, see the classic exposition of Zanker, Power of Images in the Age of Augustus.

8 Introduction

economic and cultural interaction were essentially the same as they had been in91 bc. Millennarian anxieties and a zeitgeist of dislocation and angst had prob-ably been produced by the massive shock of two civil wars in the space of less thanforty years. Yet the profoundest changes were those yet to hit Italy.35

Yet to say that a transformation was not one which altered its object out of allrecognition is not to say it is a trivial or uninteresting transformation. Leavingaside the perhaps short-term desolation visible through the curtains of Poseido-nios hypothetical litter, the Social War had profound eVects on many aspect ofItalian life.36 This book is about one of them: what happened to the collectivitieswhich ceased to exist with the extension of the Roman citizenship: the Italianpeoples. My story is their institutional journey, from sovereign peoples to Romancommunities.

The enfranchisement of Romes former allies during and after the Social Warmore than doubled the size of Roman territory in Italy and the number of Romancitizens in the peninsula.37 Administering these new areas, let alone integratingthem into the political, military, and Wscal structures of the res publica, posedcomplex problems for the governing oligarchy in Rome, and consequences ofsome repugnance to the urban plebs.38 Within a few years of the end of the SocialWar, in a breathing space between civil conXicts, the newly enlarged Roman statewas subjected to the start of what was to be a radical reorganization.39 Sulla,victorious on the battleWeld, conservative reformer of Romes political institu-tions, was constrained to accept one legacy from his Cinnan victims, and leaveenfranchisement untouched.

As a result of these changes, the greater part of the newly Roman Italy was nowarticulated and administered through autonomous units, based on existing (andin the main nucleated) settlements, many of them until less than a decadepreviously the central places of autonomous allied peoples: the municipia (char-tered towns). There was precedent for their new status in existing Roman

35 See further Ch. 10.

36 Terrenatos judgement that the Social War arose from struggles over administrative balances . . .

rather than [being a] determined attempt . . . to break away from the Empire (in Italy and the West, 5)

is very wide of the mark indeed.

37 For the demography of Roman and non-Roman Italy, as far as they can be known, see Afzelius,

Die romische Eroberung Italiens, Brunt, Manpower.

38 The classic whipping up of the jealousy of the urban plebs by imagining their advantages usurped

by new citizens: the speech of Fannius de sociis et nomine Latino (on the allies and the Latin name)

(ORF4 32, F3; Cic., Brut. 99 for the speech as ghost-written by many nobles), cf. Meier, s.v.

populares, RE Supp. x (1965), 549615, at 556, 593; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 111 (and compare for

the reaction to Iunius Pennus expulsion order of 126 bc, C. Gracchus speech, ORF4 48, F212;

Lucilius, 1088M (bk 30, written between 129 and 123 bc, probably expresses sympathy for the

expelled: Cichorius, Untersuchungen zu Lucilius, 21112; Mouritsen, UniWcation, 111 n. 4). Mouritsen

discusses practical administrative, military, and economic problems likely to be caused by massenfranchisement of Italians, and sources of tension between Roman and Italian elites, above all in

the area of aspiration to the consulship by the principes Italicorum (leaders of the Italici)for the

consulship as dominated by Roman nobiles (nobles) see Sallust, Iug. 63. 67, with Badian, Chiron

(1990), 412.

39 LaY, in VI Kongr. Epigr., 37.

Introduction 9

municipia, which had been evolving since the fourth century. Yet never before hadRome been compelled to take such sweeping measures across such a large area.40Previous enfranchisements and the creation of municipal structures had occurredat irregular intervals to satisfy the needs of Romes expansion in Italy. Thenumbers involved had been comparatively small, and Rome had been able tosubject most of the non-Latin communities to a slow-stream entry to fullpolitical rights within the Roman citizenship, beginning with a grant of citizen-ship without voting rights (ciuitas sine suVragio). In the course of her expansionin Italy Rome had generally respected local traditions of administration andpower structures, something which explains the array of magistracies found inthese areas of Italy: dictators (dictators), praetors (praetors), aediles (aediles), andoctouiri (boards of eight).41 Furthermore, Rome had not incorporated any peopleentire since 268 bc, fearing that further expansion would undermine her existenceas a city-state, although she had continued to send out Latin and Roman colonies,the latter until the Gracchan period.42 These latter, however, were more or less exnovo foundations, in some ways more self-consciously Roman than municipia,and thus had only a limited use as exemplars for a wide-scale organization of newcitizen territories.43

The situation in which Rome found herself after the Social War was utterlydiVerent from those which had obtained for the incorporations of the fourth andthird centuries, as was the scale of the enfranchisements. Moreover the simplegrant of citizenship could not mask wide diVerences in the cultural and politicalexperiences of the peoples incorporated. In the fourth and third centuries Romehad been drawn into conXict with a number of ethnic groups in succession; nowshe had to deal with a dozen or so all at once; enthusiasts and secessionists, city-dwellers and those used to the more scattered, pagano-vicanic settlements of thetribal cantons.44 How was this huge diversity of culture, language, tradition,outlook, and aspiration to be managed?

My task is to examine how Rome addressed this problem. As we shall see, theenfranchisement of the Italians in the years of the Social War was an enfranchise-ment of populi (peoples). This meant both communities and wider ethnicgroupings (sometimes for practical purposes both at the same time). Yet thelatter were at Wrst to Wnd no clear place in the organization of Italy; the pagi

40 Cf. Mouritsen, UniWcation, 110.

41 On the variety and distribution of these institutions, the material collected together by Beloch

(RG 488522), is still invaluable; see also Sherwin-White, Citizenship2, 6373, critiquing the thesis of

Rudolph that these magistracies were Roman impositions, which swept aside pre-existing structures;

for the possible evolution of the octovirate from indigenous traditions cf. Guidobaldi, in Italy and the

West, 87.

42 Sherwin-White, Citizenship2, 133.43 On Roman colonies in the Middle Republic, see Bispham, in Greek and Roman Colonisation. On

republican colonies in general see Salmon, Roman Colonization (with circumspection), and the useful

study of Gargola, Lands.

44 On diversity see Coarelli,DdA (1992), 29 and Vallat, in Italy and the West, 1023; on the pagano-

vicanic areas see now Capogrossi Colognesi, Cittadini e territorio; id., Persistenza e innovazione nelle

strutture territoriali dellItalia romana, chs. 2 and 7. On pagi and uici, see further Ch. 2.

10 Introduction

(districts) and uici (villages) of, for example, the Apennines are mentioned in thesurviving Roman juridical texts of the Wrst century bc only with the Caesarian lexRoscia dealing with newly enfranchised Transpadanes. The sea change eVectedduring the last Wfty years of the Republic was in essence an organization of Italyinto autonomous Roman towns, continuing a process (or processes) begun morethan a century before, but now operating at a global scale a policy beforeadopted only locally. This process, the transformation of Romes former alliesinto municipia, that is, political and administrative communities which theRomans recognized, is municipalization. It forms the object of my inquiry.

What, though, was a municipium? One answer is negative: a self-governingcommunity of Roman citizens which was not a colony. Between them, municipiaand colonies could be conceived of as comprising and articulating Romanterritory: in the Third Philippic Cicero, trying to get the Senate to supportDecimus Brutus in his refusal to hand his province over to M. Antonius, urgesthe Senate to pass a decree legitimating the current and future actions of Brutus,his army, and the municipia and coloniae (colonies) of Gallia Cisalpina (smallercommunities are naturally omitted).45 If the inhabitants of a province could be soenumerated, a fortiori Italy must have been susceptible to being imagined anddescribed in this way. Belonging to a particularmunicipium, and being amuniceps(member of a municipium), was one way of deWning a mans place within theRoman state, his rights and his duties; the municipium was also a place in somesense apart from the Roman res publica. This was the most immediate and basiclevel; others existed, more sublimated or abstracted: the new Roman citizen waspart of the populus Romanus; he belonged to a tribe; he had a census rating. Theprogress of municipalization meant that concern for these vital areas, which hadonce been the prerogative of the Roman state, gradually shifted into the domainof the municipia. A mans tribe was generally determined by his municipium, hisorigo (legal origin); and the tabula Heracleensis envisages decentralization of thecensus (ll. 14258). Both areas of course continued to have a function within theRoman res publica, but the ongoing decentralization of power, Wnancial auton-omy, organizational duties, and jurisdiction are a crucial outcome of the muni-cipalization of Italy after the Social War. They changed the shape of the Romanbody politic, and in such a way that a municipal system was developed whichcould without much diYculty be transplanted to the provinces, and whichpossessed the Xexibility to adapt and prosper. Without the slow municipalizationof Italy, the stability and endurance of the Roman empire would not have beenpossible.46

45 Phil. 3. 38.

46 the idea of incorporation without extinction of local peculiarities which is the key to the Roman

uniWcation of Italy and Wnally of the civilized world, the Orbis Terrarum (Sherwin-White,

Citizenship2, 8; cf. ibid. 11416 on the continuing importance of Latin status and the legacy of the

autonomous institutions of the Latin colonies under the Empire, as exempliWed by the Spanish lex

Flavia); Gabba, Italia romana, 11.

Introduction 11

As far as the area of Italy enfranchised after the Social War was concerned, twotypes of community are more prominent than others in Roman legal texts: thecolonia, a Roman foundation, and the municipium, an independent state orcommunity incorporated into the Roman citizen body, a Roman communityby adoption, not by foundation.47 The territorial divisions and settlementswhich existed at the sub-municipal level in this part of Italy, the pagi and theuici, are generally ignored in Roman juridical documents of the Republic. Vici arementioned in the lex Roscia 22 and 23, which however deals with Cisalpina, and isprobably later than the incorporation of the province into Italy in 42;48 it isconcerned to enumerate every possible type of settlement in the area. In the olderarea of the ager Romanus (Roman territory) the status of the municipium ascompared with that of the other categories of juridically recognized entities(praefecturae (prefectures),49 fora, and conciliabula (meeting places)) is lessclear. Praefecturae, jurisdictional circumscriptions under the authority of a prae-fectus iure dicundo (prefect with jurisdictional power), a delegate of the praetorurbanus (urban praetor), sometimes had their seats in municipia or coloniae, aswe shall see. It is not clear whether this is because they dispensed justice in thosecommunities, as well as to Roman ciues optimo iure (citizens with full rights)settled uiritim (individually) in outlying areas.50 Praefecturae were also centred onsub-municipal settlements, and even after jurisdictional authority had passedinto the hands of local oYcials, some were still called praefecturae. It seems thatsuch praefecturae, being often based in fora (small settlements founded by amagistrate) and conciliabula (places where legitimate meetings and assembliescould be held) where the prefect gave justice, were of an administratively inferiorlevel to themunicipia, and possessed a less sophisticated administrative structure.Thus in both the newer and older parts of Italy, one deWnition ofmunicipiamightbe: communities which functioned as autonomous administrative units withinthe Roman state. The term should, of course, be nuanced diVerently in the olderand newer parts of Roman Italy, and at diVerent times. We should, in seeking todeWne what a municipium was, beware of the historiographical inXuence ofwhat Hobsbawm calls the threshold principle. This reXected attempts withinnineteenth-century nationalist discourse to set a minimum viable size fornationhood.51 To try to set a sort of threshold beyond which a communitybecomes autonomous enough or important enough to be promoted to be amunicipium may be to ask the wrong questions.

I shall not deal in detail with colonies, or with the other types of sub-municipalcommunity: the praefecturae, fora, and conciliabula in the older areas of the agerRomanus, or the pagi and uici found all over Italy. As we shall see, even the initial

47 The municipium was revolutionary at its inception in that it allowed simultaneously valid dual

citizenship, and divorced citizenship from origin: Salmon,Making, 445, cf. 53; Cornell, Beginnings, 351.

48 For the date: RS i, no. 28, although arguing that the epigraphic text is not that of the lex Roscia.

49 As we shall see (Ch. 2) the praefectura is not in a strict sense a community.

50 SoHumbert,Municipium, 356402, inmy view probably correct; contraGalsterer,Herrschaft, 29, 31.

51 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 302.

12 Introduction

deWnition proposed above leaves uncertain what municipalness was. Was itenough to have magistrates of a certain type? Did they need particular powers?Or was the diVerence between non-municipal and municipal an intangiblematter of dignitas (status)? Did the status of ones home town depend more onwhom one knew and less on what the town was like? Are all these explanations atwork? If we can start to answer these questions with respect tomunicipia, we mayyet reach some conclusions about the other settlement types.

THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS I : MEANINGS

This is a book aboutmunicipia. As we shall see, what these were in the period afterthe Social War was disputed; getting a clear and authoritative juridical deWnitionfrom a Wrst-century bc Roman might have been far from simple. For earlierperiods the situation is yet more obscure. Two points need to be confronted: (1)municipes seems to be a term before the Social War normallyand therefore in alllikelihood properlyused of ciues sine suVragio; (2) municeps may be the termwhich has linguistic and historical priority.52 The latter implies that municipium,far from originally denoting a collective legal statusits use in scholarship todayand throughout this bookmeant in the fourth century no more than anaggregate of municipes.53 In any case, the origins of the familiar municipium ofthe post-Social War period, which are probably to be sought in the fourthcentury, are inescapably tangled up in the origins of themuniceps and his relationto the civitas sine suVragio, a question itself still debated, and likely to remain so.54Fortunately this is not a tangle which falls within the scope of this book. This isnot just a matter of not expanding an already large volume: methodologicallyspeaking, it is not clear that our written sources for the fourth century can tell usvery much about the fourth century. I do not think that it is impossible to knowor discover things about the early municipal system and its relation to Romanexpansion in Italy. Yet the overall gain would not justify the lengthy discussionrequired.55 There ismaterial to be gleaned from Livy and elsewhere which cannotbe brushed aside as late republican or Augustan Wction.56 It is, however, deeplyembedded in the relative modernity of these texts, which are more valuable fortelling us about the later periods in which they were written.

52 Municipes and ciues sine suVragio: Mommsen, StR iii. 2312; Pinsent, CQ (1954), 162; municeps

the earlier word: Pinsent, CQ (1954), 163, reversing the view of Mommsen.

53 Pinsent, CQ (1954), 163.

54 See Sordi, I rapporti romano-ceriti e lorigine della civitas sine suVragio, Sherwin-White, Citizenship2,

3894, 20014 (I do not, however, accept his distinction between the communities of ciues sinesuVragio and the oppida ciuium Romanorum (towns of Roman citizens), with only the former being

municipiathe evidence we have seems to support no such distinction, and the resulting picture is

suspiciously tidy, cf. Coarelli, DdA (1992) 28); in general Galsterer, Herrschaft; Humbert, Municipium.

55 Cf. Salmon, Making, 2.

56 Perhaps such as Livy 8. 11. 15, on the foeduswith Lavinium? Information derived ultimately from

the Lanuvine L. Aelius Stilo?

Introduction 13

One issue, then, is the lack of contemporary material. Moreover, I believe thatthe early Roman municipia, like the Roman and Latin colonies, constituted muchfuzzier sets than those of the late Republic and Empire, with which we have beenaccustomed to work in such a way that we often unhesitatingly use them as timelessheuristic categories.57 The early communities are the product of a historicaldevelopment, and belong to their own time. The muncipium as we see it in theWrst centuries bc or ad is not an autonomous benchmark, nor the necessaryendpoint of a natural teleology, which we can simply read back in a linear fashionto the point of origin.58 Obvious as it may seem, the Romans concept of themunicipium did not remain static between the incorporation of Tusculum in c.381(if thereafter Tusculum looked anything like what we would recognize as a muni-cipium) and the outbreak of the Social War two hundred and ninety years later.59Galsterer has rightly stressed that the juristic concept of municipium or coloniafollows, rather than precedes, a gradual smoothing away of diVerences betweenvarious communities founded or incorporated in broadly similar ways, but indiVerent historical circumstances.60 Our categories have no analytical priority,and arguments which think that they have tend to circularity. That is not tosubscribe, as some scholars have accused Galsterer of doing,61 to a theory ofjuridical primitivism; I simply prefer the idea of evolution over time to that of anAthene-like birth straight from the heads of leading senators in the fourth century.

Yet, if we cannot know what a municipium was in the fourth century, it shouldbe possible to understand what the term municeps should have meant. Thisphilological argument tells about probable original meanings of words; secondarysigniWcations, and the application of words to new contexts, are quite anothermatter, as Mommsen saw, preferring not to pronounce on whether municepsseemed to be used only of ciues sine suVragio because that was the group of men towhom the word had always been applied, or had come as a matter of usage toapply to them. Municeps, being the concrete term, ought to have logical priorityover the abstract collective conceptmunicipium, just as princeps (leader) ought toprecede principium (beginning). Indeed, it may be that, whatever a municepsoriginally was, he was such on an individual basis, and the existence of municipesin this original sense may be unrelated to municipium.62

57 Cf. Benelli, in Italy and the West, 7, on the variety of types of integration of Italians into the

Roman state.

58 For studies of municipalization up to the Social War, see Humbert, Municipium; Galsterer,

Herrschaft; Salmon, Making, 40127 and now the lucid summary in Oakley, A Commentary on Livy

Books VIX, i. 33165.

59 Sherwin-White, Citizenship2, 39, 48. On Tusculum as the Wrst municipium, Salmon,Making, 46;

does this view go back to Cato the Elder, a native of Tusculum?

60 Galsterer, Herrschaft, 1524, esp. 223.61 Coarelli, DdA (1992), with Tusculum as the Wrst municipium (28, cf. Humbert, Municipium,

15161).

62 Cf. Sherwin-White, Citizenship2, 401 (not acceptable on the implications of Livys usage), 291;

whether this early situationhas anything todowith the ciuitas sine suVragio cannotbegleaned fromancient

deWnitions. There does not seem, in the imperial era at least, to be a divorce between legal status of the

individual and the status of the community towhich a person belongs, despite arguments to the contrary.

14 Introduction

The philological arguments were set out Wfty years ago now by J. Pinsent.63 Hedemonstrated that municeps must be formed from munia (sing. *muni), whoseexistence is demonstrated by municeps itself, also munifex (one who performsduties, Plin., HN 11. 234), the adjectives munis, obliged, and immunis, free fromobligations, and the verbs municare and communicare, share), rather than frommunus, munera. What senses munia had thus becomes a matter of some import-ance, and this includes the question of whether it originally meant the same asmunera or not. The basic meaning of the former is obligations or duties (Plaut.,Trin. 1); munifex, for example, is almost certainly someone who fulWls his obliga-tions to the res publica by military service,64 but munia is never restricted to aparticular narrow sphere or spheres. Pinsent argued that munia, while later be-coming largely synonymous with munera, only survived at all into classical Latinbecause the two words came to denote diVerent things at an early stage; that theroot meaning of munus was gift (D. 50. 16. 18); and that it had early on becomerestricted to the physical object given in the system of reciprocal exchange. Munuswas used with the sense oYcium (duty) as early as Plautus (e.g. munus fungidischarge a duty, Am. 827, As. 812; cf. munera fungi: Lucilius 202 Marx), andmunus and munera in Cicero have almost supplanted munia in this sense (Livyseems, however, to use munia and munera indiscriminately). Importantly, forPinsent munus in these cases is doing duty for the singular of munia, which haditself fallen out of use; the use of munera in the sense of oYcia spread from thisspeciWc use of munus as the particular singular of the generalizing plural munia.65

What then of municeps? Despite the objections of Niebuhr, who argued that aword meaning to undertake duties would have to be formed from the verbs facere(do) or, better, fungi (discharge), not capere (take) or capessere (undertake),the term must indeed be formed from *muni-cap-s, and should be glossed is quimunia capit (he who takes munia).66 Again, the meaning of munia capere isimportant.67 Gellius (NA 16. 13. 6see below for this important text quoted infullcf. D. 50. 1. 1 (Ulpian)) is probably wrong to see the meaning sharers inthe munus (using capessere to gloss capere); Gellius is equally wrong to see this asan honoriWc status. Paulus p. 117L may be closer, if he means, as Pinsent suggests,that the municipes could not capere a magistracy, but only the part (of thecitizenship) consisting in the munus (tantum muneris partem).68 What Paulusunderstood by taking the part consisting of the munus is opaque, and modernscholars have in general been vague about how they understand capere, and have

63 CQ (1954), whence the following paragraph is derived, and to which the reader is referred for the

mass of evidence which it would be otiose to repeat here. Pinsents conclusions about munia and

municipes are accepted by Sherwin-White, Citizenship2, 201.

64 So Pinsent, CQ (1954), 1589, against Mommsen, StR iii. 225, who argued that munia/munus

did not include military obligations, citing lex repetundarum l. 79, and lex Ursonensis lxvi, cf. lxii,among other evidence.

65 CQ (1954), 15961.

66 Ibid. 161 and n. 2, 162, against Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte, ii. 62 n. 107.

67 For the passages referred to here see the next section.

68 Pinsent, CQ (1954), 161; there is, however, no explicit reference to this third category of

municipes as citizens until later in the passage under consideration.

Introduction 15

often taken it as though reading capessere. Pinsent argued that the verbs used withmunus and munia in the sense of duty or duties revealed that individualsinteracted with munia in two discrete stages: Wrst they incurred them, and thenthey discharged them; and that munia capere meant to incur, or in Pinsentswords to undertake, the said munia, which in the case of the municeps should beobligations to the Roman res publica. Now, munia capere is unknown in Latinexcept in derivations or explanations of municeps, but compounds of capere arefound in the sense of incurring or undertaking an obligation: suscipere (under-take; cf. Cic., Balb. 17, where Cicero asks the jurors to believe that he hancsuscepisse operam ac munus (undertook this trouble and task) because of hisoYcium (sense of duty), not because he liked the sound of his own voice) andcapessere (Livy, 44. 41. 1, with the sense of undertaking and discharging, as theimperfect tense shows; Columella, RR 12. 1. 4).69

Pinsent went on to argue that the undertaking of obligations, whether volun-tary or forced, could not be predicated of a Roman citizen optimo iure, since hewould possess those duties as an inseparable part of the citizenship. Themunicepsought logically to be distinguished from the full citizen, although both have incommon the discharging of obligations, as muniWcesand hence the use ofmunus facere of municipes in Livy, 23. 7. 1 (the Capuan treaty with Hannibal,although I disagree with Pinsent that the Capuans here speciWcally sought toavoid becoming Punic municipes) and Ulpian (D. 50. 1. 1).70 As Pinsent notes,however, what the word should have originally meant, even if consistent withsome later evidence, does not tell us anything about, for example, whethermunicipal status was compatible with another citizenship, or whether the muni-cipes were in fact Roman citizens or not.

THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS II : CUSTODIET

QUIS IPSOS CUSTODES?

Municeps, then, ought to have meant originally: one who undertakes obligationsto the Roman res publica. This, however, does not necessarily tell us whatmuniceps actually meant in, say, the late fourth century bc, nor for how long (ifat all) any trace of the original meaning carried over to the term municipium. So,the ancient deWnitions and etymologies which we possess for both terms (besidesentries in Festus and Gellius (below), the Wftieth book of theDigest contains manydeWnitions pertaining to municipal matters in the imperial period, includingdeWnitions of municipes71) are problematic from the outset.

69 Pinsent, CQ (1954), 1624, modifying the conclusions of Schonbauer, Anzeiger von der osterrei-

chischen Akademie (1949), 5567, who misapplies the word to inter-state relations.

70 Pinsent, CQ (1954), 1634.

71 D. 50. 1. 1 (Ulpian): municipem aut natiuitas facit aut manumissio aut adoptio, et proprie

quidem municipes appellantur muneris participes, recepti in ciuitatem ut munera nobiscum facerent

(either birth or manumission or adoption makes someone amuniceps, and indeed properlymunicipes

16 Introduction

There are, of course, grounds for arguing that antiquarians were likely, despitethe often homespun etymologizing underpinning some of their work, to Wnd,and present, more serious nuggets of data than straight historians; in otherwords, they were researchers, not writers of historical blockbusters.72 Indeed,antiquarian and historical information often conXict in interesting ways.73Antiquarian researches have not been processed for insertion in a narrative,but recorded for their own sake, and are sometimes preserved together with rivalinterpretations; they look as though they ought to represent the result of anattempt to discover and preserve, and not construct, the past.

Nevertheless, antiquarian studies should not be given too much autonomy, norset in absolute contrast to the embeddedness of the narrative historical tradition.The two create diVerent sorts of texts, providing diVerent sorts of information(although there is some overlap).74 That is hardly surprising: at the end of the dayboth are manifestations of the wish to recover and expound the past, and are bothin their ways culturally contingent: that men like Varro and Atticus buriedthemselves during times of great change in the sometimes recondite lore of acrumbling order does not make their choice any less political than Livys to writehistory (or to stop where he did)