Managing Empire: Romano-Italic Relations and the Origins of the Social War by Owen James Stewart, BA (Hons) School of Humanities Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Tasmania February, 2019 STATEMENTS AND DECLARATIONS Declaration of Originality This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by the University or any other institution, except by way of background information and duly acknowledged in the thesis, and to the best of my knowledge and belief no material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis, nor does the thesis contain any material that infringes copyright. Owen James Stewart Date: 18/02/2019 Authority of Access This thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying and communication in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. Owen James Stewart Date: 18/02/2019 Statement Regarding Published Work Contained in Thesis The publisher of the paper comprising the majority of Chapter 1.4 (pages 29 to 42) hold the copyright for that content and access to the material should be sought from the respective journal. The remaining non-published content of the thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying and communication in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. Owen James Stewart Date: 18/02/2019 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those who served as my supervisor throughout this project: Geoff Adams, with whom it all began, for his enthusiasm and encouragement; Jonathan Wallis for substituting while other arrangements were being made; and Jayne Knight for her invaluable guidance that made submission possible. I would also wish to thank my parents for their unending support. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii List of Illustrations and Tables vii Abstract viii Introduction 1 0.1 Review of Literature 2 0.2 Focus 6 0.3 Chapter Overview 11 The Importance of Alliance Management 16 1.1 Beyond the foedera 17 1.2 The Role of the Statuses 21 1.3 Amicitia and the Benefits of Compliance 25 1.4 Identifying the Tactics of Alliance Management 28 1.5 Dynamic Alliance Management 43 Achieving Peninsular Hegemony 46 2.1 The Fragility of Rome’s Leadership 47 2.2 Local Assistance 52 2.3 Intermarriage of Roman and Local Elites 57 2.4 The Fate of Hostile Entities: Exemplary Deterrents 61 2.5 The Benefits of Roman Leadership 64 2.6 Rome and the Italic Communities to 264 BCE 68 iv 2.7 Conclusion 72 The Effects of Regional Hegemony 74 3.1 The Effects of a Competitor: The Case of Hannibal 75 3.2 Superiority: ‘The Strong Do What They Want…’ 83 3.3 Alliance Management in the Second Century 90 3.4 A New ‘Benefit’: Special Grants of Roman Citizenship 96 3.5 Conclusion 100 Italy Within the Empire 102 4.1 Additions to the Empire: The Romans in Spain and Greece 104 Empire Beyond the Italian Peninsula 104 ‘Roman’ Spain (216-133 BCE) 105 ‘Roman’ Greece and Macedonia (197-146 BCE) 108 Holding the Empire 110 4.2 The Troubled Position of the Italian Allies 113 4.3 The Inflation of Interests: The Consequences of Success 119 4.4 Conclusion 122 The Growth of Romano-centric Policy 124 5.1 The Rise of the Publicani and the Equites 126 5.2 The Political Alternative: Populares and Popular Politics 134 5.3 The Gracchan Programme and the Italian Allies 140 5.4 The ‘Privileged’ Citizenship and Its Desirability 147 5.5 Conclusion 153 The Social War 155 6.1 An Interlude 156 v 6.2 Roman Citizenship and the Italian Allies in the 90s 162 6.3 A Case for Irrationality 169 6.4 The Citizenship Solution 176 6.5 Conclusion 179 Conclusion 181 Bibliography 188 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES Table 1: Citizenship Status After the Latin Settlement 36 Table 2: Primary Language at the Time of Latin Settlement 36 Chart 1: The Cycle of Allied Compliance 44 Chart 2: Revolts Against Rome By Italic Communities 82 vii ABSTRACT Managing Empire: Romano-Italic Relations and the Origins of the Social War Owen James Stewart Despite the importance of the Social War to events of Late Republican Rome much debate exists over the nature of the conflict itself. The conflict’s origin as well as the motives of the combatants remains a topic of contention. This thesis uniquely considers the outbreak of the Social War in 91 BCE as a failure of Rome’s alliance management. It proposes that tactics the Romans utilised to ensure the compliance of the Italian allies ceased to function effectively at the turn of the first century. By contrasting the Romans’ approach to alliance management in the fourth and third centuries with that of the second, I argue that changes within the alliance gave rise to the possibility of conflict. To incentivise compliance in the earlier period, the Romans had secured the political and economic interests of the Italic communities. This incentive was not as potent in the later period. Instead, the Romans relied on deterrence against revolt, the other major component of their alliance management, to secure compliance. This is problematic for an alliance that relied heavily on cooperation. While this change occurred within the internal structure of the Italic alliances, I demonstrate that external factors were largely responsible. The addition of non-Italic communities to the alliance network and changes in domestic politics at Rome unsettled the foundations of the Italic alliances by altering the interests of both the Romans and the Italian allies. In this way, this study reveals the need for future research on the Social War to adopt a broad focus rather than treating the conflict as an isolated product of second century Italy. viii INTRODUCTION During the consulship of Sextus Julius Caesar and Lucius Marcius Philippus, in the six hundred and fifty-ninth year from the founding of the city, when nearly all other wars were at rest, the Picentes, Marsi and Peligni set in motion a most serious war. For although these communities obeyed the Roman people for a great number of years, at this time they began to claim political equality for themselves.1 Such was Eutropius’ summary of the origin of the Social War. In 91 BCE, a small, though not insignificant, number of Italic communities made the decision to commit to a war against their long-term allies the Romans. As is the case with Eutropius’ account above, the Italian rebels are traditionally ascribed the desire for Roman citizenship as a motive for their actions. Yet the nature of the extant sources has often produced a degree of uncertainty about the origin of the war, which has generated a diverse range of modern interpretations and subsequent debate.2 Eutropius’ account, written in the fourth century CE, shares many attributes in common with other ancient narratives on the Social War. The majority of surviving accounts are either brief, as in the case of Livy’s Periochae, Velleius Paterculus and Florus, or resemble Diodorus Siculus’ fragmentary state. Appian’s Civil Wars provides the only surviving detailed narrative, though this itself is the most heavily criticised of the sources.3 The state of the sources is perhaps somewhat surprising given the impact of the war on the later events of the Republic and the eventual formation of the Empire. Not only did the Social War spill over into the civil wars that brought an end to the Republic, but the enfranchisement of the inhabitants of the Italic communities at the conclusion of the Social War also drastically augmented political life at Rome.4 The newly enfranchised could now directly influence the political process.5 Furthermore, the enfranchisement of entire communities forced the old and 1 Eutr. 5.3: Sex. Iulio Caesare et L. Marcio Philippo consulibus, sexcentesimo quinquagesimo nono anno ab urbe condita, cum prope alia omnia bella cessarent, in Italia gravissimum bellum Picentes, Marsi Pelignique moverunt, qui, cum annis numerosis iam populo Romano obedirent, tum libertatem sibi aequam adserere coeperunt. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 2 Often, this modern debate concerns whether the Social War should be considered a revolt against Roman dominance (see Moursitsen [1998], Pobjoy [2000a], Keaveney [2005] and Steel [2013]) or a campaign aimed at acquiring Roman Citizenship (see Gabba [1976], Brunt [1988], and Dart [2014]). 3 See especially Mouritsen (1998) 11-14. 4 Enrolling all these people into the Roman census, however, did take over a decade. 5 Bispham (2007) 161-204. - 1 - new Romans alike to consider appropriate ways to administer the new arrangement.6 For this reason, understanding the origin of the Social War is of great significance. 0.1 – Review of Literature In recent decades interest in the Social War has increased. This interest largely stems, I suspect, from Henrik Mouritsen’s somewhat controversial monograph, Italian Unification: A Study in Ancient and Modern Historiography, published in 1998. This work challenged the conventional representation of the war by examining the pre-existing ideologies and historical contexts of both ancient and modern historians in order to gauge the effect these have had on the representation of the war.7 As a consequence of his investigations, Mouritsen dismisses much of the existing literature on the topic and offers his own reconstruction of the lead up to the Social War based on what he believes to be a neglected secondary tradition present in the ancient sources.8 Works published since tend to be formulated as a response to his conclusions. Mouritsen’s Italian Unification thus forms the starting point of my analysis of modern works on the topic of the Social War.