As Roman rule expanded first into Sicily and then beyond, the Italian contingents in the army were of vital importance: indeed, Rome needed to wage war continually in order to exploit the alliance effectively, as the benefits it derived from it came in the form of manpower rather than income.14 Although Rome provided food for allied military contingents, the allies themselves were responsible for paying their soldiers; by contrast, Roman citizens no longer had to pay tribute after 167.15 According to Polybius, indeed, the need to keep the allied forces occupied was one factor which induced the Romans to mount a campaign against the Dalmatians in 157: ‘‘they did not wish the men of Italy to become effeminate as a result of the lengthy peace’’ (Polyb. 32.13.6; see also Chapter 26). Italian troops, allies and colonists alike, took a leading role as armies led by Roman generals advanced into northern Italy, Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Africa: indeed, there are indications that allies might be chosen for particularly perilous missions and that losses among them might be treated more lightly than Roman casualties. Livy reports that only about a hundred soldiers among the Roman-led forces at the battle of Pydna died in action, ‘‘the great majority of them Paelignians’’ (44.42.7-8).16 On the other hand, sculptural reliefs depicting scenes from the battles of Magnesia and Myonnesos in 190 were displayed in a house at Fregellae, quite likely reflecting the householder’s own participation in those campaigns, in which we know that a unit of Fregellani was involved (Figure 24.21 above).17 The displays of these scenes, recalling those in the atria of triumphal generals at Rome, indicate a pride in their role on the part of the commanders of the Latin contingents. When the Roman commander L. Mummius destroyed Corinth in 146, the statues and paintings he brought back were displayed in towns across
Italy, and another case is also known from Italica in Spain.18 Whereas a century before it was the towns of Italy that were being despoiled for the benefit of the Romans - statues removed from Volsinii in 264 were displayed in the temple of Fortuna and Mater Matuta below the Capitol, for example - now the Italians were themselves beneficiaries of Rome’s conquest of overseas territories (see also Chapter 24).
The impact of participation in these wars of empire was highly significant for the Italian communities in many different ways, and paradoxically this contributed to consolidating the structure established by the Romans to control Italy as well as laying the seeds of allied unrest which were to lead eventually to the outbreak of the Social War. Individual soldiers in the allied armies received the same quantities of booty as their Roman counterparts. When in 177, exceptionally, the allied troops were only granted half the booty the Roman soldiers received, this led to great ill feeling and a silent protest at the general’s triumph (Livy 41.13.8). The allies could benefit also from allocations of land in colonies and the increased availability of slaves. In addition, there were considerable benefits to be derived from commercial activity in the provinces, in which it is clear that Italians had a very significant involvement. Large numbers of Italians are known to have been involved in trade at Delos, which in 166 became a free port and was the main center for the slave trade in the Aegean (Strabo 14.5.2). Many of these traders came from south Italy, and the names of Oscan derivation attested there indicate an origin in Campania or the central Apennines for a substantial proportion of them.19 The ‘‘agora of the Italians’’ at Delos, a building with a colonnade surrounding an open space, has been variously interpreted as a slave market or an exercise area for the Italian community. Casual finds across central and southern Italy of second-century, small-denomination coins from Greece tend to confirm that contact with the Greek world was not an unusual experience for the local populations.21 By the end of the second century there were substantial numbers of Italians settled not only on the islands of the Aegean but also in the provinces of Asia and Africa.22 Many victims of Jugurtha’s assaults on the cities of Cirta and Vaga were Italians (Sall. lug. 26, 47, 66-7);23 when in 88 Mithridates led an uprising in Asia against Rome and called for a massacre of Romans, a high proportion of those killed were Italians (App. Mith. 23; Plut. Sull. 24.4): evidently the rebels did not differentiate between Romans and Italians, who were collectively termed Romaioi.2
Italian communities benefited from this influx of wealth collectively, as well. An exceptionally generous benefactor in the late second or early first century at Aletrium, some 70 km southeast of Rome, single-handedly transformed the appearance of his home town:
By decree of the town’s Senate, L. Betilienus L. f. Varus saw to the construction of the buildings listed below: all the pavements in the town; the portico by which one enters the citadel; the exercise-area for sports; the sundial; the market-building; the basilica which was to be plastered (?); public seating; the bathing pool; the reservoir at the city gate; he also brought water up 340 feet into the upper city, constructing aqueduct arches and solid pipes. (ILS 5348 = ROL 4:146-7 no. 6).25
The family’s wealth was in part derived from the export of oil amphorae from the region of Brundisium, again exploiting the commercial openings made possible by the Roman conquest of the Aegean.26 Indeed, the building of monumental sanctuaries seems to have been particularly characteristic of this period in Latium and the adjacent territories: grandiose examples dating to the late second/early first centuries BC have been identified at Fregellae, Praeneste (Figure 24.1a-b), Tibur, Cora, and elsewhere, modeled on Hellenistic sanctuaries such as those at Kos, Lindos, and Delos itself.27 Even the Samnite sanctuaries of the central Apennines - Pietrabbon-dante, S. Giovanni in Galdo, Vastogirardi, and others - were rebuilt in Hellenistic style in the same period, with colonnades and (in the case of the late second-century phase at Pietrabbondante) a theater: both the resources needed to build the sanctuaries and the architectural inspiration for their design came from the East.28 It is worth emphasizing that the cultural influence of the Greek world on these areas of Italy appears to have been direct or transmitted via the agency of Campania rather than mediated through Rome: in general, Rome was rather slower than its Italian allies in adopting cultural innovations such as the theater, the first permanent example of which at Rome (the theater of Pompey) was built in 55 (see also Chapters 4 and 24).
World History
