The Roman Cultural Memory of the Conquest of Latium
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 The Roman Cultural Memory of the Conquest of Latium Elizabeth Grace Palazzolo University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Classics Commons Recommended Citation Palazzolo, Elizabeth Grace, "The Roman Cultural Memory of the Conquest of Latium" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1929. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1929 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1929 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Roman Cultural Memory of the Conquest of Latium Abstract In this dissertation, I examine the Roman cultural memory of the conquest of Latium and Rome’s earliest expansion through case studies of three Latin cities—Tusculum, Tibur, and Praeneste. Each of these cities underwent the transition from independent civic entity to community of Roman citizens on a different timeline than the majority of Latium: though most Latin cities came under Roman control after being defeated in the Roman-Latin Wars around 338 BCE, Tusculum had already been incorporated as the first municipium cum suffragio after 381 BCE, while Tibur and Praeneste seem to have remained independent allied cities until 90 BCE. I reconstruct the Roman cultural memory of these cities and how it changed over time, incorporating a variety of textual and material sources including literary references, inscriptions, iconography alluding to each city, and monuments or significant sites. I demonstrate that the memory of Tusculum, Tibur, and Praeneste as formerly independent, non-Roman communities persisted through the Late Republic and into the Empire, even as they became completely politically integrated with Rome. The cultural memory of these cities was shaped by continuing interactions between the Romans and the inhabitants of each conquered city, perhaps newly incorporated as Roman citizens themselves, and inconsistencies in depictions of the cities, I argue, provide evidence of the ongoing processes by which the conquered citizens of Latium and the conquerors of Latium were negotiating their history of conflict by reinterpreting and reframing their shared memory of the past. By identifying recurring themes and motifs across many types of evidence, as well as areas of dissonance and mutually incompatible characterizations, I argue that developments in the cultural memory of pre-Roman Latium should be connected to the multiple social groups within the Roman community that would have preserved different memories of Tusculum, Tibur, and Praeneste. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Classical Studies First Advisor Cynthia Damon Subject Categories Classics This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1929 THE ROMAN CULTURAL MEMORY OF THE CONQUEST OF LATIUM Elizabeth G. Palazzolo A DISSERTATION in Classical Studies Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation ______________________ Cynthia Damon Professor of Classical Studies Graduate Group Chairperson _________________________ Emily Wilson Associate Professor of Classical Studies Dissertation Committee Joseph Farrell, Professor of Classical Studies C. Brian Rose, James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology THE ROMAN CULTURAL MEMORY OF THE CONQUEST OF LATIUM COPYRIGHT 2016 Elizabeth Grace Palazzolo iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am immensely thankful for the support I have received throughout the process of writing this dissertation from every quarter of my life, and I cannot imagine having written it any other way. First and foremost, I am grateful for the education, guidance, and mentorship I have enjoyed at Penn. The breadth of topics I have been able to explore and the new skills I have been encouraged to develop—several of them well outside my comfort zone when I began graduate school—have both refined my pre-existing interests and opened up new areas of inquiry. I owe particular thanks to my committee members, Joe Farrell and Brian Rose, for their assistance in providing different perspectives on my dissertation and helping me navigate the process of learning to balance several different bodies of evidence and scholarship. Above all, Cynthia Damon is owed more thanks than I could possibly express for her insight and patience throughout the time I have spent researching and writing the dissertation. In addition to offering a truly impressive amount of her time for talking through my thoughts and reading my drafts (in many different degrees of completeness), Cynthia has been incredibly patient in helping me untangle my thoughts and ideas and translate them from an often-convoluted mental image to the written page. I am also grateful for my fellow graduate students at Penn, who have been constant friends, compatriots, and fellow-travelers through coursework, exams, and dissertation writing. For a group of people who are all incredibly busy, they have consistently displayed an incredible willingness to provide feedback on a piece of writing or help untangle a thorny bit of text, to provide company for a much-needed coffee break, and to offer a sympathetic ear at stressful times. Last, but certainly not least, I have to iv thank my family and friends, who have participated in far more of the graduate school experience than they signed up for through supporting me for the past five years. My parents, Joe and Gail, and my siblings, Mary, Margaret, Joe, and Bob, have been listening to me ramble about the ancient world for significantly longer than five years, but somehow still display an impressive tolerance for listening to my flights of enthusiasm. Finally, my husband, Chris, whose patience exceeds the bounds of my imagination, has been a constant support, sounding-board, and source of enthusiasm when my own falters. If he has tired of listening to me work through my ideas out loud, or seeing me organize my thoughts on a wall covered with color-coded notes, he has never shown it. v ABSTRACT THE ROMAN CULTURAL MEMORY OF THE CONQUEST OF LATIUM Elizabeth G. Palazzolo Cynthia Damon In this dissertation, I examine the Roman cultural memory of the conquest of Latium and Rome’s earliest expansion through case studies of three Latin cities—Tusculum, Tibur, and Praeneste. Each of these cities underwent the transition from independent civic entity to community of Roman citizens on a different timeline than the majority of Latium: though most Latin cities came under Roman control after being defeated in the Roman- Latin Wars around 338 BCE, Tusculum had already been incorporated as the first municipium cum suffragio after 381 BCE, while Tibur and Praeneste seem to have remained independent allied cities until 90 BCE. I reconstruct the Roman cultural memory of these cities and how it changed over time, incorporating a variety of textual and material sources including literary references, inscriptions, iconography alluding to each city, and monuments or significant sites. I demonstrate that the memory of Tusculum, Tibur, and Praeneste as formerly independent, non-Roman communities persisted through the Late Republic and into the Empire, even as they became completely politically integrated with Rome. The cultural memory of these cities was shaped by continuing interactions between the Romans and the inhabitants of each conquered city, perhaps newly incorporated as Roman citizens themselves, and inconsistencies in depictions of the cities, I argue, provide evidence of the ongoing processes by which the conquered citizens of Latium and the conquerors of Latium were negotiating their history vi of conflict by reinterpreting and reframing their shared memory of the past. By identifying recurring themes and motifs across many types of evidence, as well as areas of dissonance and mutually incompatible characterizations, I argue that developments in the cultural memory of pre-Roman Latium should be connected to the multiple social groups within the Roman community that would have preserved different memories of Tusculum, Tibur, and Praeneste. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................iii ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................1 I. Sources and Questions......................................................................................................5 II. History of Scholarship...................................................................................................10 A. Collective Memory.............................................................................................11 B. Memory and History..........................................................................................14 C. Cultural Memory...............................................................................................17 D. Rome and Cultural Memory..............................................................................18 III. Rome and Latium.........................................................................................................25