Introduction

Italy was (and is) characterized by the variety of its natural landscapes (see also Chapter 5), and this natural diversity has been reflected in the diverse histories of the different regions of the peninsula - cultural, political, and economic. The multiplicity of languages spoken (and written) in ancient Italy in addition to Latin included Oscan, Umbrian, Etruscan, and Greek, which was used by the settlers who had established cities on the western and southern coasts of Italy during the eighth to sixth centuries. Urban settlement was characteristic also of the Etruscan peoples in the seventh and sixth centuries; by contrast, the Samnites and their Oscan-speaking neighbors in the central Apennines largely lived in scattered communities organized around hillforts, villages, and sanctuaries, and a range of possibilities can be detected between these two extremes. Funerary practices again show great diversity, with different forms of inhumation and cremation being used in the various regions and sometimes a combination of the two: in Daunia, for example, the deceased might be cremated on a pyre within the tomb, which was then sealed up, as in the case of the ‘‘Tomb of the Osiers’’ at Canusium.1

Writing the history of Italy in the period of the Roman Republic inevitably involves taking account of these patterns of variation: indeed, it was only with Augustus that a unified entity resembling modern ‘‘Italy’’ came into being. The Transpadani (peoples occupying the territory between the Alps and the river Po) were granted Roman citizenship only under Julius Caesar, and during the Empire Sicily and Sardinia continued to have the status of provinces. A further complication is the nature of the source material available: the literary texts on which we largely rely for the narrative of Rome’s conquest of, and subsequent relationships with, the peoples of Italy tend to see the history of Italy from the point of view of the victorious Romans rather than that of the Italians. These texts, frequently written centuries after the events they describe, are also influenced by the political context in which the authors

(or the sources on which they themselves rely) were writing, whether the fierce rivalries of high politics in republican Rome or the more peaceful but equally misleading perspective of the imperial provinces (see also Chapter 2), and it is frequently difficult to tell how far the anecdotes they report can be used to construct a more general picture of the economic and social changes of the period. By comparison with the Empire, few Roman inscriptions were set up in the Republican period, though some inscribed texts in languages other than Latin have been preserved which cast light on the traditions of indigenous cultures and the changing political institutions of Rome’s allies, for example, the adoption of Roman terminology for magistracies (see also Chapter 3). Archaeology therefore takes on a particular importance in our understanding of republican Italy, helping to demonstrate the degree to which Roman rule impacted on different areas of the peninsula, and in particular the ways in which Italians adopted Roman (or Greek) cultural traditions as well as the social and economic effects of Roman conquest, in terms of the impact on patterns of rural settlement and the development of urban centers. In this period, Rome’s relationship with the Italian peoples was central to virtually all aspects of Roman political and economic life: the Italians provided substantial contingents for Rome’s armies throughout, the grants of citizenship following the Social War dramatically increased the number of Roman citizens, and the effects of civil war, coupled with more general patterns of agricultural change, led to an instability in the countryside of Italy which was to contribute in a significant way to the eventual collapse of the Roman Republic. All the more reason, then, to seek to understand the nature of Rome’s relationships with Italy and its peoples in this period; though the complex picture being revealed by current archaeological work warns against excessively generalizing explanations.