Santa Clara University Scholar Commons Classics College of Arts & Sciences Fall 2013 Client prefects?: Rome and the Cottians in the Western Alps Carolynn Roncaglia Santa Clara University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.scu.edu/classics Part of the Classics Commons Recommended Citation Carolynn Roncaglia. 2013. “Client prefects?: Rome and the Cottians in the Western Alps”. Phoenix 67 (3/4). Classical Association of Canada: 353–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7834/phoenix.67.3-4.0353. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Sciences at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Classics by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. CLIENT PREFECTS?: ROME AND THE COTTIANS IN THE WESTERN ALPS Carolynn Roncaglia introduction When Augustus and the Romans conquered the central and western Alps at the end of the first century b.c.e., most of the newly subjugated regions were brought under direct Roman control. The central portion of the western Alps, however, was left in the hands of a native dynasty, the Cottians, where it remained until the reign of Nero over a half-century later. The Cottians thus serve as one of many examples of a form of indirect Roman rule, its “two-level monarchy,” wherein the rulers of smaller kingdoms governed as friends and allies of the Roman state in an asymmetrical power relationship with Rome.1 This article explores how a native dynasty like the Cottians presented and legitimized their relationship with Rome to a domestic audience.