Italy and the Social War

Italian Language Groups• Greek• Oscan• Umbrian• Etruscan• Latin

The ‘Conquest’ of Italy

• 396: Veii• 390: sack of Rome by

the Gauls• Wars with the Volsci,

Satricum and Antium• 343 Citizenship

shared with Capua• 338: Defeat of the

Latin League• Samnite Wars, 3rd

ending 290

Relationships and alliances after the Latin war

• Communities (municipia) incorporated into the Roman citizen body, either given full Roman citizenship, or citizenship sine suffragio

• Civitates foederatae – allies. Retained local citizenship, had a treaty with Rome. Had to supply troops and tributum

• Colonia cives Romanorum – full citizenship • Colonia Latina – Latin rights (some benefits of

citizenship)

Roman Citizenship

• Right to vote• Right to run for office• Right to contract citizen marriage• Right to enter into commerce relationships• Right to protection from arbitrary violence • Obligation to do military service

Latin status

• ius conubii, ius commercii, ius suffragii, ius migrationis

• Citizen rights of marriage, commerce and the vote

• Right to migrate to Rome and take up Roman citizenship

ITALY IN C.300 BC

Expansion in the third century

Romanising Italy?Militia

Sena GallicaCosa PaestumBeneventum AriminumFirmum Castrum Novum PyrgiAeserniaAlsiumFregenaeBrundisiumPlacentiaCremona

Roman Roads

Via Appia• 311 Rome to Capua• 291 Capua to Venusia • 281 Venusia to Tarentum• 264 Tarentum to Brundisium

287-85? Via Clodia 283? Via Caecilia 241 Via Aurelia 220 Via Flaminia187 Via Aemilia

The Gracchi

• 125 BC Fulvius Flaccus, a supporter of Gracchus, had proposed giving Italians citizenship: defeated

• 122 BC Gaius Gracchus proposes citizenship only for Latins, because surely the senate wouldn’t refuse their own ethnic group:

• Attempting to break up Flaccus’ law into two parts?• A belief that Latin franchise would be easier to sell to

the senate and electorate than Italian franchise?

The Lex Licinia Mucia

• Many Italians and Latins who were not Roman citizens had obviously been passing themselves off as such. Had Italians been voting? The Italian aristocracy seems to have been most affected

• The set up a legal commission to investigate claims of a fraud/usurpation of citizen’s rights

• It is not clear what the consuls were hoping to achieve in the long-run, but in the short term it was a reminder of Italians/Latins inferior status

• Marius had been given the right to grant citizenship to around 30 Italians/Latins who took up places in the colonies, but this law had been annulled

M. Livius Drusus: Tribune 91 BC

• Unlike previous reformers, Drusus was well established with the so-called optimates, and seems to have been seeking a program of reconciliation by appealing to all sides:

• Lex Agraria (a new commission to look into public land allotments)

• Lex Frumentaria (grain law)• Lex de Colonia (colonies established in Sicily and Italy)• Lex Iudicaria (add 300 equestrians to the senate and take the

juries from the whole group. Any one guilty of accepting bribes was to be punished)

• Lex Monetalis (add bronze to the silver currency)• Rogatio on extending Roman citizenship to the Italians

What did Italians want?• Lex Agraria had shown the problem for Italians in lacking

citizenship• Italian allies and Latins had provided thousands of troops to

Rome for an extended period• Italian troops may have been forced to feel like second class

citizens in the ranks, hence the reform of the tribune of 122 (brought in by M. Livius Drusus’ father)

• A belief in justice had developed: ‘[Italians argued] for Roman citizenship, in order to be partners in empire instead of subjects’

• Most of the profits of empire were exclusively available to Romans.

• Moreover, Italians were still subject to tax and a range of economic/social restrictions, such as marriage

The Roman Response

• Equestrians and many senators agree on one thing: they both hate Drusus’ reforms

• Possibly a realisation that should Drusus succeed he could claim the support of tens of thousands of enfranchised voters. An oath by Italian cities to ‘support Drusus unconditionally’ seemed to support their fears

• Late in 91 Drusus lost the support of key allies, especially L. Licinius Crassus

• The consul L. Marcius Philippus argues for the annulment of Drusus’ laws, and succeeds

• Drusus assassinated in the forum• Those who had supported Drusus, or seemed to support his program,

were brought to trial on various pretexts and equestrian juries found them guilty

RebellionRoman obstinacy on the question of providing rights to Italians, in effect denying the universality of their associations, was too much. The killing of Drusus the last straw. An ethnic group had had their inferiority emphasised and reinforced. Hitherto Rome dealt with the Italian allies via unilateral treaties: why? In order to avoid the creation of a confederacy that could become a power bloc?Italians now, acting in secret, confederatedLate in 91 BC Italian armies began raiding Roman occupied spaces, killing of a Roman commander Q. Servilius in Asculum after he had threatened the town for cooperating in what looked like anti-Roman activity. The situation let loose tensions within Italian cities that had been pent up for too long: ‘and explosion of hatred against Rome’Frustration boiled over into outright war

A New Italy

• Having been rebuked/shunned by Rome for 35 years, evidence seems to suggest that many Italians were no longer fighting for Roman citizenship but freedom – Italian hegemony

• Corfinium, the largest town in the area of the Paeligni, is chosen as a command centre with a federal assembly. The assembly includes a 500 man senate with magistrates: two consuls and 12 praetors elected annually

• The assembly acted under the umbrella term ITALIA• Not all Italy is involved. Roman colonies mostly remained faithful

to Rome, while Umbrians and Etruscans took an independent line.

• It is clear that different parts of Italy had absorbed Roman/Latin culture and formed links with Rome in different ways and to different extents

A New Italy

Oscan Identity

• The confederates who came together at Corfinium were the Marsi, Paeligni, Piceni, Vestini, Samnites, Frentani, Marrucini, and Lucani peoples

• Coinage often shows Oscan language and assertion of Oscan independence and strength:

Lex Iulia de Civitate and Plautia de Civitate

• War in Italy for all of 90 and into 89 BC. Two main fronts, that against the confederates based in Corfinium and a northern alliance of Umbrian and Etruscan groups centred at Asculum. Rome used savage tactics, but mopping up took some time

• At the very end of 90, perhaps to insure that the infection didn’t spread, the consul L. Julius Caesar passed a law de civitate

• The Julian law is a topic of scholarly debate. It either provided citizenship to those Latin allies who had remained loyal – which was basically all of them – or was extended to all Italians who supported Rome

• In 89 the tribune M. Plautius Silvanus passes a law providing citizenship to all members of Italian allied states who presented themselves to the praetor within 60 days

The Allies and the Social War• Domestic story of the Gracchi part of the essential fabric of

the narrative of the Roman Republic• The story of the Italian allies should be as integral, yet it is

more often appended.• What were the relationships between the various areas of

Italy and Rome? Why was there more than one type of relationship?

• How did things go so wrong?• How do issues such as the control of the courts and land

distribution mesh with the story of the allies and the Social War?

• The result: duae patriae