The archaeological evidence of the next hundred years contrasts strongly with the intensity of building activity and artisanal production from the period between the seventh century and the first decades of the fifth. Already at the beginning of the sixth century the cemeteries of Rome and Latium, in contrast with their Etruscan counterparts, no longer contain grave goods: almost certainly this phenomenon reflects an ideological choice, with parallels from the Italiote Greek world. The reason may have been the adoption of sumptuary laws that restricted opulent funerals, but the result is that one of the richest sources of the most useful archaeological documentation for the reconstruction of ancient society is missing. Silence also fell upon public building that, after the great exploits of the early Republic, would only start again at the beginning of the fourth century. All of this has caused many archaeologists to talk about a ‘‘crisis of the fifth century,’’ the proof of political, economic, and social difficulties that the young Republic encountered, steering between wars with neighboring peoples and social conflict that pitted patricians against plebeians. It is evident that serious social and military problems persisted throughout the century. From the very beginning of the fifth century, in fact, Italy seems to have been subjected to the uncontainable pressure of the Italic mountain tribes moving toward the more hospitable areas of Italy, the countryside of Latium and Campania. Latium attracted the interest of several Umbrian tribes, the Aequi, the Marsi, and especially the Volsci, who conquered the Pontine swamps, one of the breadbaskets of Rome and of Latium. Thus there was undoubtedly a crisis, but not entirely as it has traditionally been understood. At the heart of all the political, social, and economic disarray of the fifth century unquestionably lies the closing of the patrician order which is recorded in Rome under the year 486, but very probably was part of a general phenomenon in Latium and in Etruria. This was an oligarchic decision that took the form of an absolute rejection of every type of social mobility, both horizontal - which until that time had been sustained by the entry of foreign clans into the local aristocracies - as well as vertical, which consequently excluded the citizens of the lower classes from political life. The great difficulties outlined above began to multiply. Plebeian political liberty was limited, and aristocratic social groups from outside of the city were barred from the civic community and political integration; these actions in turn unleashed conflicts of a varied nature that pitted Romans against the threatening Italic tribes on the one hand, and on the other, pitted the Senate and the magistrates of the Republic against the plebeian assembly and tribunes entrenched in their sanctuary on the Aventine (see also Chapter 6).
The political and social closure imposed by the patrician oligarchy banished from the civic stage any opportunity to transgress the rigid rules demanded by the need to bring about an absolute equality among patricians. The sharp change further manifested itself on the public level with the complete cessation of every type of building activity. In the near-century between the initial phases of the Republic with the construction ofnumerous monumental temples through the dedication ofthe temple of the Dioscuri in 484 until the vigorous recovery initiated by Camillus after the conquest of Veii in 393, the sources mention the building of only two temples. One, dedicated in 466 to Semo Sancus (an obscure deity associated with sowing), was a minor building, as Livy’s description of it as a shrine (sacellum) (7.20.8) indicates, and may actually have been only a restoration of a preexisting building from the monarchy. The second, dedicated to Apollo in 433 in the context of the plague that struck Athens in 429, was built on the same place as a shrine or an altar (Apollinar) originally belonging to the monarchic period. Other building activity, such as the site ‘‘paved in white stone’’ near the Circus Maximus in 487 that commemorated the death, possibly by a lightning bolt, of the nine military tribunes with consular power, or the lacus Curtius (‘‘Curtius’ Pool’’) fenced off in the center of the Forum in 445 allegedly to celebrate the self-sacrifice of the eques Mettius Curtius, does not rise above the level of modest acts of expiation. The Villa Publica in the Campus Martius, erected to meet the requirements of the censors carrying out the census and dedicated in 435, is more closely connected to minor, private architecture than to public building intended for display.
In conformity with the lacuna in temple dedications during these hundred years is the total lack of evidence of architectural terracotta decoration. Bucchero pottery, poorly produced almost everywhere in very few forms until the middle of the fourth century, was by now a pale shadow of the high standard of the archaic period. Fine pottery consisted almost exclusively of unpainted simple ware, while imported pottery, either Greek or Etruscan, became so rare as to be virtually nonexistent. Since we possess hardly any contemporary archaeological data for Rome, it is difficult even to form a precise notion of the archaeological assemblages representative of this period. So faint are the characteristic traces of this ‘‘austere’’ period, which are barely discernible also in the thin and elusive levels of the Latin and Roman colonies of the fifth century, including Ostia.10
World History
