Third Centuries

The conquest of Italy allowed the Romans to devise and perfect the techniques with which they were later able to establish and maintain control over an empire that extended beyond the peninsula and, indeed, beyond the Mediterranean region. These ranged from extreme violence to diplomatic initiatives, which often involved co-opting the support of local elites, and were deployed according to the sociopolitical structures the Romans encountered among their enemies and the nature of local reaction to the advent of Roman power. While the Romans normally saw themselves as responding to threats to their own interests, and the military ethos of Roman society and the ambitions of individual generals had an important part to play (see also Chapter 26), recurrent long-term strategies can also be detected, though the ways in which they were implemented reflected local circumstances.2

A significant turning point in this respect was the ‘‘Latin war’’ of 341-338. In the aftermath of a revolt by the Latins, the ancient alliance between Rome and the

Peoples of Latium was dissolved and a new framework of relationships between Rome and the Italian peoples was established in the vicinity of Rome and beyond. Some communities were incorporated into the Roman state and received full citizenship; others were granted civitas sine suffragio (‘‘citizenship without voting-rights’’), and were liable for the same burdens and responsibilities as full citizens but without the right to participate in Roman politics. Alliances were also established with individual communities or peoples beyond Latium who had not been awarded either form of citizenship. All had to provide manpower for the military forces led by Rome (see also Chapters 13 and 26): by 264 the Romans had over 150 such allies.3

Also particularly characteristic of this period, and central to Roman strategy in Italy, was the establishment of new communities known as ‘‘Roman’’ (or ‘‘citizen’’) and Latin colonies. The former tended to be small in scale (perhaps only several hundred men) and consisted of Roman citizens; the latter were rather larger and might include several thousand colonists, comprising Latins and even elements from the existing local populations as well as Romans. Those settled in Roman colonies retained their citizenship, while settlers in Latin colonies became citizens of their new community, which acquired political institutions and structures modeled on those of Rome. Both forms of colony, however, were strategic in aim, establishing strongholds loyal to Rome in areas currently being brought under Roman rule or recently conquered.4 How this worked in one particular area, the central Apennines, can be seen from the establishment of Latin colonies at Cales (334), Fregellae (328), and Interamna Lirenas (312) in the valley of the Liri, and Luceria (314) in Daunia to the east, which together surrounded the Samnite heartland. After the Samnites rose in support of Pyrrhus’ invasion, additional colonies were set up at Beneventum (268) to the south and Aesernia (263) to the north, which further contributed to isolating them. In the same way, Latin colonies were established at Alba Fucens in 303 and (after several years of trying) in 298 at Carsioli, which controlled the territory of the Aequi (Livy 10.3.2, 10.13.1).5

Hand in hand with the establishment of colonies went the construction and extension of the Roman road network. Sometimes following preexisting routes and sometimes adopting new ones, the roads had an overtly military purpose - in this case to allow Roman armies to travel swiftly across Italy and to provide links with the colonies. The Via Appia, built to connect Rome and Capua in 312, also linked Rome with Suessa, founded the previous year, and the colonies subsequently established at Sinuessa and Minturnae (296). The Via Appia also provided an alternative to the Via Latina between Rome and Campania, which followed the valleys of the Sangro and the Liri. The Via Latina is persuasively dated by Coarelli to the 330s or 320s and is to be connected with the establishment ofCales, Fregellae, and Interamna. The building of the Via Valeria in 307, extending the Via Tiburtina eastward into the Apennines, likewise appears to be the precursor of the military campaigns against the Aequi in 304 and the foundation of the colonies at Alba Fucens and Carseoli. Road building and the establishment of colonies can be seen as working together to establish Roman military control of potentially hostile territory. There were more general consequences, also, however: the building of new roads created a symbol of the increasing Roman control over Italy, a message reinforced by the milestones recording the names of those who had built or restored the road: the earliest extant example, from the Via Appia, dates from the mid-third century (CJL10. 6838 = ILS 5801 = ILLRP 448; cf. Figure 3.3 above). Roads had the effect of restructuring the geography of the peninsula, marginalizing areas which they bypassed and contributing to the economic and political advancement of those places through which they ran.7 Equally, the land-division schemes associated with the establishment of colonies also had a major impact on the rural landscape: this can best be seen from the well-preserved centuria-tion grids of the Po valley, which divided the countryside into square or rectangular units of land, while the colonies themselves can also be seen as models of Roman urbanism for the surrounding peoples (see also Chapter 3 and cf. Figures 3.2a-c).8

Where Rome’s enemies were not organized in towns, a direct assault was frequently the preferred strategy, and this might be followed up by the establishment of colonies in the ravaged landscape. A case in point is that of the Aequi: Livy reports that 31 of their oppida (fortified centers) were destroyed and burnt, and sees this brutality as an exemplum which intimidated the neighboring peoples into requesting an alliance with Rome (9.45.17-18): Alba Fucens itself was apparently established on the site of one of these oppida.9 The abandonment of nucleated sites across the Salento peninsula following the Roman conquest in 267-266 likewise suggests a violent and disruptive intervention, and in 244 a Latin colony was established at Brundisium.10 Where the Romans came into contact with peoples with a strong urban tradition, however, the situation was more complex. In dealing with the Greek communities of south Italy, the Romans needed to involve themselves in intricate relationships of rivalry and enmity between the individual city-states on the coast and between them and the Lucanians and other indigenous populations inland; they frequently had to address councils and assemblies and persuade the communities in open debate. In the 280s, for example, Roman support was deliberately sought by Thurii, Rhegium, and other cities, but this aroused the hostility of Tarentum, and a Roman embassy was humiliated by the assembly there (App. Sam. 7, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 19.5).11 The Romans became adept at exploiting for their own advantage the internal civic strife to which Greek cities were (according to our sources) notoriously prone, typically supporting (and being supported by) the upper classes against the demos (the mass of the people): at Naples in 327, we find the demos favoring the Samnites and the oligarchs the Romans (Dion. Hal. 15.6). In the same way we find the Romans intervening in internal disputes in the cities of Etruria (Livy 10.5.13): in 296, to the approval of the local upper classes, they suppressed ‘‘seditions’’ in Lucania on the part of ‘‘needy plebeian leaders’’ (Livy 10.18.8), while the consequence of a revolt of serfs at Volsinii in 264 was that the Romans crushed the rebels, restored the traditional elite to their traditional authority in the community, and moved the city to a new site some miles away (Zonar. 8.7).12

Livy, describing the events of 320 when the Roman army, which had been defeated and humiliated by the Samnites at the battle of the Caudine Forks in the previous year, won a dramatic victory over the same enemies at Luceria, pauses to speculate what would have been the outcome had Rome come into conflict with Alexander the Great (who had died only three years previously). 3 Livy’s conclusion, not surprisingly, is that the Romans would have been victorious. He stresses not only the skill of the Roman commanders and the superior tactics and equipment of the Roman soldiery but especially the manpower at Rome’s disposal, which enabled them to fight on several fronts at once (Livy 9.16-19). It was the nature of Rome’s relationship with the Italian allies that enabled them to mobilize and deploy this manpower so effectively (see also Chapter 13). Italy had become a patchwork of communities of differing status and with a range of formal relationships to Rome: Latin and Roman colonies, those holding citizenship of various types, and allies. This plurality of statuses both reflected the cultural and political diversity of the peninsula but also reduced the likelihood of the Italians joining together in rebellion, as the allied communities were unable to have dealings with each other except through Rome. The Romans were thus in a position of immense power, able to ‘‘divide and rule’’ a population already fragmented by local cultural identities, while at the same time controlling the manpower they needed for further imperial expansion. That the majority of Italians remained loyal to Rome even during the crisis of Hannibal’s invasion illustrates the strength of the system they had devised.