Although the material prosperity derived from successful overseas campaigns benefited some sectors of the allied and other Italian populations, as also did the increasing possibility of commercial activity, there were still tensions inherent in the relationship with Rome. During the war against Hannibal several peoples and cities in south Italy, most notoriously Capua, had abandoned the Roman alliance: the Roman victory over the Carthaginians was followed by the extensive confiscation of land in the offending areas, together with other punishments. As a result, in the years after the Hannibalic war the Roman authorities had to balance anxieties about (for example) the malign influence of Greek culture in Italy with the risk of alienating the allies by excessive intrusion into their affairs. The evidence is sketchy, and the literary and epigraphic sources only occasionally illuminate episodes that attracted the attention of the Roman authorities. These are difficult to weave into a coherent narrative.
In 186 the Romans took measures to suppress the secret worship of Bacchus by cult-groups; although the evidence largely relates to Roman territory (including the Ager Teuranus, where a copy of the Senate’s decree was found [ILS 18 = ROL 4:
254-9; see also Chapters 2, 10, and 22]), the measures taken may well also have affected allied territory also.29 Certainly, when problems relating to the Bacchanalia surfaced again in 181 in Apulia, the praetor to whom the area had been allocated was instructed by the Senate to take drastic action (Livy 40.19). Increasingly the Romans were also to be found resolving local disputes, as between the people of Pisa and their neighbors at the colony of Luca in 168 (Livy 45.13.10-11); in 117 the Romans similarly resolved a boundary dispute between the people of Genua and the Veturii
Langenses, Ligurians who lived in the mountainous hinterland of that city { ILS 5946 = ROL 4:262-71). The most powerful and influential city in Italy, Rome was a natural - indeed in practical terms the only - potential arbitrator.30
At the same time, there are episodes of highhanded and illegal behavior by individual Romans in their dealings with the allies. In 173 the marble roof-tiles from the Temple of Hera Lacinia at Croton were removed by the censor, Q. Fulvius Flaccus, to be reused in the temple of Fortuna Equestris he was building at Rome. There was an outcry in the Senate, and the tiles were restored, but it was found too difficult to restore them to the roof of the temple {Livy 42.3.1-11).
When the pace of overseas conquest slowed following the destruction of Carthage and Corinth in 146, and lucrative campaigning against the wealthy cities of the East was replaced by a sequence of wars of attrition against the impoverished but hostile peoples of Spain, the underlying tensions in the relationship between Rome and Italy were exacerbated. To a great extent the military successes of the early second century and consequent influx of wealth had tended to limit stresses within the alliance, as they had within Roman internal politics; now, however, the prospect of gaining land through colonization had ceased with the end of colonial settlement, while the Romans alone were able to tender for lucrative public contracts, such as the right to collect the taxes of the province of Asia following Gaius Gracchus’ reorganization of the system of taxation there {see Chapter 8). According to Velleius there were always twice the number of allies as Romans in the army {2.15), and while the context of the passage - the grievances of the rebels at the time of the Social War - is strongly rhetorical, it does indeed appear that the pressures of military service on the allies, which had declined from a high point after the Hannibalic wars, became {or were felt to have become) much more burdensome in the late second century. 1 Partly this would have been owing to difficulties in recruiting citizens for the campaigns in question, but there are also indications from earlier in the century that individual Latins and allies alike were migrating to Rome, and such a decline in allied manpower would have increased the difficulty of fulfilling the allied states’ obligations to Rome {Livy 41.8.6-12). At the same time there was arguably a perception that ‘‘the Romans were prepared to fight to the last Italian,’’ as E. T. Salmon memorably put it.32 Furthermore, efforts to satisfy popular demands for land at Rome, notably by Tiberius Gracchus, tended to be at the expense of the allied elites, as public land they had occupied was threatened with redistribution by the Gracchan land-commissioners; Appian reports that the allies enlisted the help of Scipio Aemilianus to draw attention to their grievances {B Civ. 1.18-19). Fragments of speeches by Gaius Gracchus reveal continuing complaints of bad behavior by individual Romans toward the allies and indeed Latin colonies, which conflicted with the increasing affluence and self-confidence of their communities: in particular the case of a magistrate of Teanum in Campania, who was publicly beaten because the town’s baths were not clean enough for a visiting consul’s wife, and that of a peasant from Venusia, beaten to death for making a joke about a Roman passing in a litter {Gell. NA 10.3.3).
In this general climate of tension and hostility, and following a mysterious {but unsuccessful) attempt by the consul of 125, M. Fulvius Flaccus, to resolve the situation by proposing an extension of the citizenship, the Latin colony of Fregellae revolted against Rome, for reasons that remain unclear. The rebellion may in part reflect the changing composition of the population there: Livy reports in 177 the arrival of 4,000 Samnite and Paelignian families in the city (41.8.6-8). However, the city was an affluent one, as its archaeological remains suggest, and given its status as a leader of the Latin colonies, the leaders of the revolt may have envisaged that more general support would have been forthcoming from other colonies.3
In spite of, or reinforced by, the brutal suppression of Fregellae, Italian discontent persisted and culminated in the Social War of 91-89, in which significant elements of the alliance revolted against Rome: chiefly the Samnites, Lucanians, and the other peoples of the central Apennines together with Apulians and the Latin colony of Venusia, with some limited involvement by Umbrians and Etruscans.34 Several different interpretations of this revolt have been offered by modern scholars: the Social War is variously seen as primarily motivated by a desire on the part of the allies to gain the advantages of Roman citizenship;35 to seek greater involvement in determining Roman foreign policy, to help promote their exploitation of the Empire;3 or in essence as a rebellion against Roman rule.37 Recently H. Mouritsen has considerably strengthened the case for the latter view, pointing out that those ancient sources which stress the importance of Roman citizenship as a motivation for the rebels tend to be writing from the perspective of the Imperial period, when the benefits of acquiring citizenship were much more clear-cut than they arguably were in the early first century BC. Within the general context of discontent with Roman hegemony a range of explanations is still possible, given the possible divergence in interests between elite and masses within the Italian communities and between different communities, reflecting their cultural and political diversity; similarly, allied aims and intentions may have changed in the period leading up to and during the course of the war.3 What is clear is that the brutality and disruption caused by the war itself and by its aftermath had far-reaching consequences.
World History
