The Augustan Empire 43 BC

Beard and Crawford 1985 (a 3) ch. 2.

witnessed the beginning of large-scale grants of citizenship in the provinces, massive colonization overseas and the emergence of Rome not simply as a world power, but also as a world state. It is in this context significant that the possibility of holding Roman citizenship along with that of a foreign state emerges for the first time in the age of Caesar.[552]Contrasts between Italian communities formerly of different statuses will perhaps have seemed secondary to the need to create and conserve a sense of Italian identity against the background of a rapidly changing outside world. It is worth noting that when Augustus seized power in Rome and served as a focus of loyalty to Italy and the empire alike, the privileged status of Italy was carefully preserved.

Against this background, Cicero captures for us towards the end of his life both the awareness that much had changed in Italy in the previous generation and a sense of the constraints on change (De Legibus 11.1.2-2.5):

'... this is my and my brother's real country (germana patriay ... 'But' replied Atticus 'what was it that you said just now, that this place — for I take it that you mean Arpinum - is your real country. For surely you do not have two countries; rather Rome is the country of us all. Unless perhaps the country of Cato was not Rome, but Tusculum.' 'But I do think that he and everyone from a municipium has two countries, one by descent, one by citizenship.'[553]

The central problem, then, is to try and understand just how far, and why, the different local cultures of Italy, in the sense of shared and transmitted practices and values within particular regions, survived into and beyond the age of Augustus.

One point must first be made, namely that the tenacity of Greek culture in some cities of the south cannot be taken as typical. Its survival was helped by two factors, the existence outside Italy of thousands of cities of Greek language and culture, contact with which reinforced Greek culture and institutions in Italy, and the value attached by the Roman elite to Greek culture, which served to nurture those centres of Greek civilization which lay close at hand.[554] This factor had probably already begun to operate before the Social War. And the Greek cities of Italy were largely exempt from the convulsions which we shall shortly see to have played a major part in the Romanization of Italy in general. It is in this context that we should understand the hesitation of Neapolis and Heraclea before accepting Roman citizenship when they were offered it in 90 B.C.; the survival of local issues of coinage at Heraclea, Velia and indeed Paestum;¹⁹ and the persistence of the Greek language and of Greek institutions in general, at Neapolis, Velia, Rhegium, Tarentum, Canusium.²⁰ It is curious that the two Latin municipal charters of the republican period which we possess come from the Greek city of Tarentum and from a shrine in the territory of Heraclea; Heraclea drifted quietly out of existence in the age of Augustus; but Tarentum continued as a recognizably Greek city in the early Empire. And the separateness of the south in the age of Augustus is reflected in the fact that Strabo discusses Bruttium, Lucania and Magna Graecia in the context of a Greek tradition which contrasted the archaic and classical periods with the hellenistic and Roman, but saw the whole as the single history of a separate area.²¹ Even so, and despite the disappearance of much evidence — C.T. Ramage, an intrepid Scot who walked the length and breadth of Magna Graecia just after the Bourbon restoration, saw a Greek inscription of the second century a.d., now lost, recording an agonistic festival at Scolacium - there is no good reason to suppose that any part of Italy remained recognizably Greek beyond the middle of the third century a.d.²²

Of local practices, and of men's attachment to them, Cicero preserves a couple of rare glimpses. The first is no more than a casual reference to the occasion, 'cum eius in nuptiis more Larinatium multitudo hominum pranderet', 'when at his marriage according to the custom of the people of Larinum a large number of people were dining together' (Clu. 166). But the second relates to the slave ministri, attendants, of Mars at Larinum, where 'repente Oppianicus eos omnis liberos esse civisque Romanos coepit defendere', 'suddenly Oppianicus began to claim that they were all free and Roman citizens'; so attached were the people of Larinum to their customs that they persuaded A. Cluentius Habitus to be their advocate and take their case to Rome (Clu. 43-4). A further glimpse

" Crawford 1985 (в 320), 71—2; for isolated survivalsof non-Roman units of reckoning, weights and measures, see ibid., 14-16, 177-8; there is a full description, based on autopsy, of the mensa ponderaria at Pompeii in Conway 1897 (e 23) 1, App. I. The stone is cut according to the Oscan foot. When the mensa ponder ana was converted to the Roman system, the five original holes were enlarged and four new ones cut (Prosdocimi I978(E 100) 1072-5); but the sextarius remained Oscan, while the ratios with the other measures of capacity became Roman.

²⁰ A provisional statement in Crawford 1978 (f 20) 195 n. 12; note a statue of a Greek in a toga at Velia, de Franciscis 1970 (e 40); and see Sartori 1976 (e 118); Keuls 1976 (e 67); Lepore 1983 (e 76); see Appendix II, p. 981. It will not do to talk in the same breath of Tarentum and the rest of Italy as does Torelli 1984 (e 132) 42-3. ²¹ Prontera 1988 (e 99).

²² The Nooks and Byways of Italy. Wanderings in Search of Its Ancient Remains and modern Superstitions (Li verpool, 1868)133; there is no reason to believe that the Pettorano fragment of the Prices Edict of Diocletian is of Carrara marble or that it was ever displayed in a Greek-speaking part of Italy; Guarducci (198 5 (в 238)) has now revealed that the sample shown to her experts was diminutive; and visual identifications of diminutive fragments are worthless.

comes from a letter of the emperor Marcus Aurelius to Fronto in the middle of the second century a.d., recording how a nauve of Anagnia knew and cared enough to explain to him, when he visited the city, that a religious formula inscribed in Latin above a gate of the city used a technical term of Hernican origin (Fronto, 66—7 Naber = 60 van den Hout).

The survival of such pracdces was no doubt favoured by the extent to which the communides of Italy not only administered their own cities, but also performed tasks which other sociedes assign to central struc­tures. The main lines for the government of Italy were presumably laid down in the immediate aftermath of the Social War, in order to cope with the incorporation of half the communities of Italy into the Roman citizen body. But it is also important to remember that the age of Cicero was in addition a period which saw the normalization of the government of communities which had long been Roman. Capua, deprived of the right to govern itself in 211 b.c., became a colony in 5 9-5 8 b.c. A constitution was given to Cingulum by T. Labienus on the eve of the outbreak of war in 49 b.c. The constitution of Arpinum was revised in 46 b.c., with the support of Cicero, by his son and his nephew and a colleague. The same period saw the progressive elimination, by promotion to municipal status or by incorporation in another municipium, of the praefecturae,fora and conciliabula which had served as provisional communities for groups of Roman citizens in the course of the conquest and setdement of Italy. Normalization may also be observed in a different context. The pagi of the Frentani, Carricini, Marrucini, Paeligni and Vestini, the via of the Vestini, Marsi, Aequiculi and Sabini, both were accommodated into the structure of Roman Italy in the generation after the Social War, but were eliminated thereafter, probably by Caesar. Naturally, there was never one single measure which regulated all the affairs of every single municipium. But there are some minimal elements which must have figured in the Lex lulia granting citizenship in 90 B.C. or in a subsequent statute; and there are many institutions which are common to many of the new municipia of the period.

It is perhaps not very important to decide whether these were imposed by measures passed at Rome or introduced by the men who provided the new communities with their charters, drawing on the shared experience of centuries of giving constitutions to communities in Italy or overseas. The Lex lulia itself must have imposed the rule that a community must vote to accept the Roman citizenship; it may also have laid down the obligation that the new municipia must be constituted by an appropriate person or persons.²³ Their supreme magistrates seem normally to have

²³ For particularly interesting cases of constitutio, see Harvey 1975 (e 57); Gabba 1985 (e 47); for this paragraph as a whole, see Crawford, forthcoming (e 29).

been Illlviri, probably flanked by praefecti iure dicundo, prefects in charge of jurisdiction, as replacements when necessary; the institution of the interrex was perhaps also transmitted to the government of the municipia at this point.²⁴ Such aspects of municipal government were perhaps directly imposed by statute, rather than emerging from the consensus of the men who constituted the new municipta. And at some point a general statute was certainly passed that governed the co-optation of decurions in municipia.²⁵ The arrangements for local censuses recorded in the Tabula Heracleensis almost certainly go back to the period immediately after the Social War;²⁶ and the recurrence in the late Republic and early Empire of the phrase 'coloni (or municipes), incolae, hospites, adven- tores', 'citizens of the colony (or of the municipium), resident outsiders, guests, visitors', suggests very strongly that this was an official definition of the population of an Italian community.²⁷ There are in addition references already in the late Republic to formal rules governing expenditure by local magistrates on games or buildings.²⁸ Municipal charters probably also included rules for the location of ustrina, crema­toria, and cemeteries.

Surviving fragments of charters alas often pose more problems than they solve. The only straightforward text is the Lex Tarentina, the preserved part of which makes it clear that the text relates solely to Tarentum; it contains the remains of chapters dealing with the improper handling ofpequnia publico, sacra, reliĝiosa; the security given by the first IIHviri and aediles of the municipium and by candidates for election; the property qualification for decurions; the demolition of buildings; viae, fossae, cloacae-, and departure from the municipium²⁹ By way of contrast, the fragments of statutes from Falerio seem to be concerned with the regulation of jurisdiction, but in more than one community;³⁰ the fragment from Ateste certainly regulates jurisdiction in any subordinate community without restriction of locality.³¹ In some ways, our best evidence comes from the substantial portion which has been preserved of the charter for the Caesarian colony of Urso in Spain, where the text relates once again solely to Urso.³² The range of material is similar to that

ILLRP 55J (Beneventum); 627 (Narbo); ILS 6285 (Formiae); 6279 (Fundi); ILS 6975 (Nemausus); CI L iv 54, also 13, 50,53,56, 70 (for C. Popidius at Pompeii. The import even of these texts is not wholly clear; and 48, 3822 and 9827 are manifestly irrelevant; Castren 1975 (e 12) 51 is misleading); Gonzalez, Aetas I Cong.And.Est.Clas. (Jaen, 1982), 223 = AE 1982, 511 (Siarum); see also Roman Statutes 1995 (f 684) no. 25, ch. 130 (Urso).

See the Lex Irnitana, Gonzalez 1986 (в 235), ch. 31, where 'quod ante h(anc) l(egem) rogatam iure more eiius municipi fuerunt' is clearly the result of imperfect adaptation of a chapter of a general statute; the charters of the Flavian municipia of Baetica can hardly have been individually passed through an assembly at Rome. ²⁶ Roman Statutes 1995 (f 684) no. 24, lines 142—58.

Paci 1989(6260) 125-33; the phrase is echoed by Cicero, Leg.Agr. 11.94: 'nos autemhinc Roma [to Capua] qui veneramus, iam non hospites, sed peregrini atque advenae nominabamur'.

ILLRP 648 (Pompeii); compare 675 (Telesia). ²⁹ Roman Statutes (f 684), no. 15.

³⁰ Ibid. nos. 17, 18. ³¹ Ibid. no. 16. ³² Ibid. no. 25.

in the Lex Tarentina, though, since much more is preserved, there are many aspects which are not represented at Tarentum; but two of the chapters at Tarentum reappear at Urso, as also in the charters issued by the Flavian emperors to the new Latin municipia of Baetica, those dealing with the demolition of buildings and with viae, fossae, с1оасае.^ъъ Inferences about earlier charters on the basis of the Flavian charters, however, would be very dangerous; it is clear that they are much better organized and much more economically drafted than the Tarentum or Urso charters and it may be that they are more comprehensive. The two remaining texts are both entirely sui generis.[555] The Tabula Heracleensis comes from a sanctuary near the borders of the territories of Heraclea and Metapontum; it appears to contain excerpts from a Roman statute dealing with roads and public space in the city and from another (or from others) dealing with qualifications for decurions and magistrates, cen­suses in the towns of Roman Italy, constitution of municipia. What we have of the text of the Lex de Gallia Cisalpina comes from Veleia, in the Apennines near Parma, and seems to be a statute which transmitted to Cisalpine Gaul after it became part of Italy in 42-41 в.с. many, perhaps all, of the substantive rules of the Roman ius civile-, the single surviving tablet bears the number IIII and goes from the middle of Ch. XIX to the middle of Ch. XXIII, dealing with operis novi nuntiatio, damnum infectum, pecunia certa credita, any other debt, the actio familiae erciscundae, all at a very high level of technicality and complexity.[556]

The communities of Italy did not possess capital jurisdiction after the Social War;[557] but it is striking that they preserved some military and police functions, not only in the late Republic, but even beyond. Archaeological evidence reveals substantial wall-building in the late Republic, for instance at Spoletium and Ferentinum, not surprising in the disturbed circumstances of the period and carefully to be dis­tinguished from the symbolic walls with which Augustan foundations like Saepinum or Augusta Bagiennorum were equipped.[558] And an inscription from Praeneste refers to the building of vigiliae, guard posts, two inscriptions, from Brundisium and Formiae, to the building of an armamentarium, arms depot;[559] while Cicero refers to the Larinates who have come to Rome to defend his client who would otherwise have been available to defend their city (Clu. 195). And at some point in the troubled history of the late Republic, Ostia was perhaps rescued from attack not by a Roman magistrate, but by C. Cartilius Poplicola, Ilvir of Ostia.³⁹

It is then not surprising that these largely autonomous local administ­rations of late republican Italy should have invested heavily in building programmes in general, to create an urban centre where none existed before, to provide for the administration of the newly constituted community, simply as an expression of civic pride.⁴⁰

And naturally enough also, the existence of local administration in the late Republic and in the imperial age was reflected in the inscription of lists of local magistrates and priests and in the erection of elogia of local worthies, past and present. But such practices are as much evidence of the influence of Roman models as they are of local particularism. As evidence of the survival of a local culture, in the sense in which we have defined it, they leave much to be desired. In particular, the Elogia Tarquiniensia and the Fasti of the haruspices reflect the fact that the senatorial families of Etruria were competing in the political life of Rome; for they transfer to Tarquinii practices characteristic of the urban aristocracy.⁴¹ Against the background of this general pattern, little weight should be attached to the occasional use of a local era for dating purposes, conspicuously at Patavium, where a handful of inscriptions are dated by an era beginning in 173 в.с.; Rome had intervened to resolve internal strife in 174 в.с. (Livy, xu.27.3-4) and the magistrates of the following year no doubt regarded themselves as the first of a re- founded community.⁴²

II. SURVIVAL OF LOCAL CULTURES

The following discussion, then, of the survival of local cultures concentrates on what seem to be four important identifying features of any ancient culture with a claim to be individual and distinctive: language, religion, family structures, disposal of the dead. We shall of course never know in detail in what ways the behaviour and mentality of the peasants of Etruria or Samnium changed during the century which

³' Zevi 1976 (e 142) 56-60. For the overly zealous police of Saepinum in the second century a.d., see now Lo Cascio 1985-90 (e 79); Brunt 1990 (a 12), 427-8. ⁴⁰ Gabba 1972 (e 44).

Fasti: Illal xiii 2, no. 6 (Venusia); C/L x 1233 (Nola); 5405, with Solin 1988 (в 285) 90-1 (Interamna); AE 1905, 192 (Teanum). Lists ofpontificer. CIL ix 5254 (Sutri); Elogia Tarquiniensia: Torelli 197 5 (в 291); Cornell 1976 (e 24); Cornell 1978 (e 2 5); Gabba 1979 (e 46), arguing rightly that the erection of the Elogia Tarquiniensia is to be explained in the context of the antiquarianism of Rome of the second century a.d., rather than in that of the local culture of Tarquinii.

Harris 1977 (e 56); Linderski 1983 (e 78) (the resolution of the letter N); there are isolated examples of the same phenomenon at Feltria, also at Interamna Nahars, Bovillae and Puteoli (ILLRP 518); compare also Cato, Orig. fr. 49 p = ii. 16 Chassignet, on Ameria.

saw the collapse of the Republic and the establishment of the Empire. But the four themes discussed have the merit that the evidence for them carries us to a level far below that of the inner core of the elite. And, in principle, the catalysts which were at work should have affected all levels of society in largely equal measure.

i. language

The only two indigenous non-Latin languages of Italy for which there is any significant evidence later than the Social War are Etruscan and Oscan, though little of the evidence for the latter comes from Samnium, because of the ravages of Sulla.⁴³ Furthermore, the process of transition seems to have been extremely rapid; there is only one Oscan bilingual inscription; and even in the case of Etruria, where the phenomenon is on a somewhat larger scale, it is actually quite restricted.⁴⁴ As for late texts in Etruscan, apart from a gem from Tarquinii, which may have migrated after being inscribed, and a stone from Pesaro, which certainly did so, the thirty or so texts, mostly of the very end of the second and the first half of the first century B.C., all come from the region of Clusium, Arretium, Perusia and Volaterrae, mainly from Clusium. No local language can be shown to have lasted in public use much into the first century a.d.; only Etruscan survived in some form for a time, a preserve of scholars and antiquarians. It is in this context significant that the family of Urgula- nilla, wife of Claudius, emperor and Etruscologist, was quite untypical in the extent to which it consciously kept itself Etruscan.[560]

We simply do not know to what extent Rome willed the disappear­ance, at any rate at an official level, of languages other than Latin. If we could hold that the Lex Osca Tabulae Bantinae fell after the Social War, we should have an indication that Latin was not prescribed for municipal charters. But it is almost certainly earlier (see above); and the municipal charter of the indubitably Greek city of Tarentum was promulgated in Latin, probably sometime in the 80s or 70s b.c. In any case, it is unlikely that in Italy after 90 b.c. Rome recognized any language other than Latin for her own purposes; and certain institutions, such as ethnic con­tingents in the Roman army, which will have helped to preserve local languages before the Social War, disappeared at or soon after the same date.[561] The literary language of late republican and early imperial Italy is remarkably uniform, despite the diversity of origin of those who wrote it.

2. Religion

The evidence suggests a similar change in the orientation of religious practice. First, calendars, whose centrality to Roman (as well as Greek) religion needs no emphasis. We know from a variety of antiquarian sources that in early times a number of Italian communities, even some close to Rome, had calendars substantially different from each other and from that of Rome (Varro, Antiquitates rerum divinarum, fr. 262 Cardauns):

... but in the town of Lavinium one whole month was assigned to Liber ...

and (Solinus 1.34 (so also August. De civ. D. xv. 12); see also Appendix IV, p. 985):

... for before Augustus Caesar they reckoned the year in different ways, since in Egypt it contained four months ... in Italy at Lavinium thirteen, where the year was of 374 days . . .

We know also that communities could and did change their calendars.[562]And they seem on the whole to have changed them systematically in the direction of abandoning local peculiarities. Thus, a local calendar is last attested epigraphically in Etruria at Ferentis in 67 B.C., that of Furfo in 5 8 в.с.[563] The next stage was the massive diffusion in Italy under and after Augustus of copies of the Julian calendar.[564]

The Romanization of the religious map of Italy had indeed long been under way. It had been the pontifices who had seen to the preservation of the cults of communities which had become municipia (Festus 146 L). And it seems clear that the best interpretation of the pattern of Roman reactions to prodigies outside Rome is to suppose that it was always up to the Senate to decide which to notice; and that it gradually took notice of more and more on territory that was not Roman.[565] The culmination of this process is the position under the Empire; for shrines in Italy now belong to the populus Rom anus (Tac. Ann. 111.71):

It has been established ... that all ceremonies and temples and images of the gods in Italian towns are under the control and power of Rome.

and (Frontinus, 5 6 L):

(... sacred groves in Italy), whose territory indubitably belongs to the Roman people, even if they are within the boundaries of colonies and municipia ...

The position described by Tacitus and Frontinus was no doubt the result of the enfranchisement of Italy; but it had been prepared by a long process of growing Roman involvement in the religion of Italy.

Evidence for change in religious practice is also provided by the pattern of votive offerings in the rural shrines of Italy, small and large alike. Here the evidence is now sufficient in bulk to show that the frequentation of rural shrines in Italy is a phenomenon which largely comes to an end at the turn of the eras (for some examples see Appendix V, p. 987).

Naturally, this is not to be regarded simply as a consequence of a process of Romanization, not least because it also affected shrines situated in areas which had long been ager Romanus, Roman territory. In part, we are presumably witnessing the consequence of the process of urbanization which affected much of Italy, albeit on a scale not to be exaggerated, in the first century в.с. and the first century a.d.[566] It was this process which helped to put an end to the independence of the pagi, which had flourished as a form of local administration in the territory of the Frentani, Carricini, Marrucini, Paeligni and Vestini between the Social War and Caesar, electing magistrates, raising money, passing decrees, erecting buildings.⁵² Corroboration for such a view may be found in the fact that those rural shrines which survived tended to do so because their organization was incorporated into the administrative structure of a nearby city: such is the case of the sanctuary of Hercules Curinus and Sulmo or of that of Rossano di Vaglia and Potentia; the result was similar for the sanctuary at Lacus Clitumni, given by Augustus not to a neighbouring town, but to Hispellum.

None the less, a shift of population and power from country to town is neither the only nor perhaps the principal factor at work. Rather, as we shall see, the social transformation of Italy in the last generation of the Republic and the age of revolution was responsible. Rural shrines were necessarily dependent on supporting social structures; and it was precisely these that were destroyed, in Roman and Italian territory alike, but with far more devastating consequences in the latter.

It is in the sphere of religion, moreover, that we are confronted with specific evidence for the adoption in Italy of Roman models. One of the most important recent discoveries relevant to the religion of the late Republic has been the excavation of the auguraculum of Ban da: a platform from which an augur observed the flights of the birds and a series of inscribed cippi indicating the significance of the birds which appeared above them. It now appears that a first phase of the structure, in which the Oscan names of the deities recorded on the cippi were used, is to be dated to the nineties. At a later stage, at least one text was replaced with a Roman name of the deity concerned.⁵³ Consonant with this evidence is Cicero's remark on augury by birds, as practised in Phrygia, Pisidia, Cilicia and Arabia (De Div. 1.92): 'we have heard that this also used to be practised in Umbria'.⁵⁴

3. Family structures

To turn to the third theme, we are told by Aulus Gellius that the enfranchisement of all Latin communities after the Social War meant the disappearance there of actionable sponsalia, legally enforceable engage­ments to marry;⁵⁵ and the Tabula Siarensis, a copy of part of the measures honouring Germanicus after his death, now provides dramatic confir­mation that some rules for sponsalia were indeed different for Romans and Latins.⁵⁶ We may also suppose that after the Social War the serf population of Etruria, insofar as it still existed, became free. Otherwise, we are lamentably ignorant of the private law of the different Italian communities, even in the case of Larinum, for which we have the information in the pro Cluentio;⁵¹ and it is not at all clear that the statement of Cato, 'If an Arpinate dies, the sacra do not follow his heir' (Orig. fr. 61 P = n.3i Chassignet), even refers to the law of persons in Arpinum,⁵⁸ rather than to the sacred law. But it is probably legitimate to suppose that a faint reflection of original diversity is to be found in patterns of nomenclature different from the Roman.

To take three examples, a traditional Etruscan practice was to give the mother's name; this practice of metronymy is still attested on some bilingual inscriptions or texts in Latin only of the late Republic and then dies out.⁵⁹ Oscan practice was to give the father's praenomen in the

M. Torelli, RAL 8, 24, 1969,9-48, 'Contributi al Supplemento del CIL ix', at 39—48; Torelli 1983 (e 131); 1984 (e i 3 3); a cippus from Frigento, published byC. Grella, Economia lrpina 1976,1, pi. 9, is alas probably a mere boundary stone, not a cippus from a similar auguraculum, contra (n. 3), 136.

See also Rawson i978(e 106), citing Philodemus on Stoicism in'what was once Etruria'(not to be taken as a way of referring to Rome).

Gell. NA iv.4.1-4; for the probable position at Rome, see Watson 1967 (f 700) 11-18: the arguments from Plautus are not very safe. ⁵⁶ Roman Statutes 1993 (f 684) no. 37.

Moreau 1983 (e 85) 117-18.

As held by Humbert 1978 (e 61) 305 n. 71a, whom 1 originally followed (n. 3), 155.

ILLRP 790 (Montepulciano), 570, 904 (Clusium), 638, 814 (Perusia).

genitive, after the cognomen, but without the equivalent of'f(ilius)'; again, the practice is still attested on a few Latin inscriptions and then disappears.[567] In this case, it is particularly striking that the Romanization of Oscan nomenclature, which occurred in Italy after the Social War, took place among Oscan speakers on Delos before the Social War.[568]Notoriously, the experiences and interaction of Romans and Italians as men of business abroad was a major factor in the assimilation of the two. Umbrian practice was to give the father's praenomen in the genitive, between the praenomen and the cognomen-, a group of funerary inscriptions from Tuder, of a single family, illustrates the process of transition (Vetter 232): the male of the first generation adopts Umbrian practice, as well as still writing from right to left; his daughter and her husband write from left to right; their son adopts Roman practice, though his language is still Umbrian, even if written from left to right.

On one level, the explanation of the changes we have just been considering is to hand. With the enfranchisement of Italy, the Roman civil law was the only system which a magistrate could apply; and when a man was listed in the Roman census, he was naturally obliged to use the Roman system of nomenclature. But we have already seen that the first complete census of Italy was that of Augustus in 28 B.C. and there is in any case no a priori reason to suppose that a man would describe himself in the same way to a Roman censor (whether via a local magistrate or not) and on his own tomb; and one should not overestimate the effectiveness of enfranchisement in spreading the Roman civil law.[569]Rather, much deeper convulsions in Italian society are to be invoked, as we shall see.

4. Disposal of the dead

Here, if anywhere, we should expect conservatism of practice. Yet it is precisely here that the late first century B.C. and the early first century a.d. see the disappearance of dozens of local styles of funerary monu­ment and the abandonment of cemeteries with centuries of use behind them.

The phenomenon was originally identified by M.W. Frederiksen, publishing a group of funerary monuments characteristic of Capua and the immediate vicinity, which cease to be produced with the coming of the Principate.[570] A few kilometres away, the area between Pompeii and Nuceria Alfaterna had a quite different type of monument, equally characteristic of the locality and equally doomed to disappear. In Latium, a type of monument characteristic of the Volsci has a similar chronology. North of Rome, the great Etruscan cemeteries go out of use in the age of Augustus or shortly afterwards (for documentation of some examples see Appendix VI, p. 987). In one particular case, we can link the abandonment of a family tomb with Romanization in its most complete form: the tomb of the Salvii at Ferentis was abandoned in 23 в.с. as the family transferred to Rome.[571] We shall see in a moment what came after.

It is time to return to Cicero. 'Hinc enim', he observed of Arpinum, 'orti stirpe antiquissima sumus, hie sacra, hie genus, hie maiorum multa vestigia', referring surely to the cults, the long family history, the tombs of his ancestors.[572] His characterization of what was to him distinctive of Arpinum coincides precisely with those aspects of local culture, omitting language, in which traditional local practices were abandoned during the late Republic and the early Empire.

The evidence of material culture, when not embedded in religious or funerary practice, naturally needs to be handled with caution. Yet surely, in the light of what we have seen so far, it is legitimate to point also to the uniformity of building styles in early imperial Italy as further evidence of cultural assimilation.[573] Further striking evidence of integration is provided by an altogether humbler artefact, the red-gloss table-ware that graced the tables of the middle classes of Augustan Italy. Whereas the black-gloss table-ware of the Republic had been produced in dozens of kilns the length and breadth of Italy, the age of revolution witnessed concentration of production at a relatively small number of centres, of which the best known is that of Arretium. Diffused from these centres throughout Italy, the pottery in question is clear evidence of a consider­able degree of economic integration and the counterpart of the process of cultural assimilation discussed above.[574]

It seems likely then that Augustan (and early imperial) Italy was more homogeneous than at any time before or since. Her unity was expressed in the creation by Augustus of a single system of administrative regions, seven in peninsular Italy and four in the Po valley, whose boundaries regularly cut across earlier ethnic and cultural boundaries, placing Ligurian Luna in Etruria, Campanian or Samnite Caudium in Apulia, Latin Tibur in Samnium.[575]

This reladve unity of Augustan Italy, however, remains to be explained. In part the answer must lie in the nature of military service in the years after the Social War.[576] The legions consisted of men from all over Italy, probably without wives or families until after their period of service, removed from their homes, insofar as they had them, for long periods, further mixed by the drafting of reinforcements to existing legions, all with Latin as their only common language. We have already seen that the use of ethnic contingents came to an end with the Social War. The unity of Augustan Italy was surely in part forged on the battlefields of the late Republic.

Yet that is not all. The late Republic and the age of revolution are periods when on a quite unparalleled scale men were removed from their homes not simply for long periods, but for ever, and resettled as individuals or in colonies at the other end of Italy.[577] The process begins with Sulla, accelerates with the lex agraria of Caesar in 5 9 в.с. and reaches massive proportions in the triumviral period and the early years of Augustus. It is this mixing process which explains the origins of the culture of Augustan Italy.[578]

Nor were soldiers the only people affected. Generally speaking, we have no idea of what happened to those who were dispossessed to make way for the veterans settled after 42 B.C. For it is a mistake to suppose that the Eclogues have any value as evidence for the biography of an individual known as Virgil; there remains naturally a faint possibility that one or two of the dispossessed were poets who commended themselves to the imperial authorities. But there seem to have been some refugees from Mantua who were settled near Bononia;[579] others from Cremona turned up in Concordia in the age of revolution.[580] There must have been thousands who found somewhere new in Italy to live, even allowing for those who died or emigrated.

Archaeological evidence allows us a gUmpse of men who clung to some of their ancestral traditions in their new homes. Within the general uniformity of the grave monuments of early imperial Italy, stelae or altars, there are for instance traces in Gallia Cisalpina of the funerary practices of the central Apennines; or of those of Rome in Umbria or Sabinum (for some examples see Appendix VII, p. 989). It is also important to remember that the convulsions just described must have affected equally the elites of the communities of Italy; in large numbers, their members joined the armies of the late Republic, to serve as junior officers. It is these men who, survivors of and enriched by the murderous battles of the civil wars, diffused in central Italy the habit, limited to the early Julio-Claudian period, of erecdng lavish monumental graves decorated with 'fregi d'armi', friezes portraying weapons and armour.[581]They also no doubt played a large part in the diffusion of grave monuments with Doric friezes;[582] it should come as no surprise to observe that such monuments are unknown in Magna Graecia, but it is interesting that they are equally unknown in much of Etruria. Relatively little veteran settlement - only Luca and Pisa are certainly later than Caesar — and a certain Etruscan cultural cohesiveness will explain the pattern.[583] Someone who may stand as a symbol of the age, geographi­cally and socially mobile, a pillar of a new society, is P. Otacilius Arranes, the son of a Spanish horseman enfranchised by Cn. Pompeius Strabo at Asculum, who ended up as a municipal magistrate at Casinum.[584]

With these convulsions in mind, let us return to problems of family structure and religious practice. The total abandonment at Ateste, at the turn of the eras, of traditional Venetic practice over nomenclature, at the same time as traditional funerary customs, was not simply the result of enfranchisement and the passage of time. Rather it must have been largely the result of the brutal injecdon into the community of the veterans of the Fifth and Eleventh Legions, along with some others, after the Battle of Actium. We should be surprised, not that there was some change, but that the worship of the Venedc Dea Raetia continued at all.[585]

As far as religious practice is concerned, we should surely, in considering the abandonment of rural sanctuaries which had attracted worshippers for centuries, attach great importance to the way in which the period between Sulla and the reign of Augustus saw Italian community after Italian community lose its own young men for ever, rich and poor like, often to suffer in addition the enforced settlement of total strangers.⁷⁹ This is the process which created the reladve unity of Augustan Italy. We have for the Roman world no documents compar­able to those available to the modern historian. But it is not hard to project back into the Roman world the situation of the villages of France in our own century:⁸⁰

The war of 1914-18 was different. As Father Garneret described it for the Franche-Comte, it was 'the bloody break that struck our villages such a blow: 20 dead for 300 inhabitants and all the customs shattered'.

" Compare Coarelli 1981 (e 18) 242-4, for the disappearance between Republic and Empire of a group of families installed there earlier in the republican period. ⁸⁰ Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (above, n. 14) 476.

CHAPTER \ЪЬ SICILY, SARDINIA AND CORSICA

R. J. A. WILSON

Shortly before his death in 44 в.с. Iulius Caesar granted Latin rights (JLatinitas) to all free-born Sicilians. Cicero, to whom we owe this information, clearly did not approve of the grant, still less of Antony's conversion of it into full citizenship in March or April 44, on the dubious pretext that such had been Caesar's intention;¹ for, despite being a Roman province for close on two hundred years ('the first to teach our ancestors what a fine thing it is to rule over foreign nations', as Cicero put it),² Sicily remained at the time of the late Republic a fundamentally Greek island. Italians had of course been involved there as landowners or negotiatores in considerable numbers from at least the second century B.C., forming themselves in 'conventus civium Romanorum' outside the administrative jurisdiction of the Sicilian towns. Very few Sicilians had been granted Roman citizenship, the evidence of Cicero yielding only some fourteen names, and of two possible novi homines in the Senate who came from Sicily neither are likely to have been Sicilian Greeks by birth.³ Latin in the province was still a foreign language spoken and understood by a tiny minority: Cicero has to remind his audience that the Syracusans call their curia the bouleuterion, expound in detail the Greek calendar system still in use throughout Sicily, and explain Sicilian usage of Greek words in the documents read out in court.⁴ Latin inscriptions of republican date are rare (and in any case set up either by Italian immigrants or by the provincial administration),⁵ and the city constitu­tions were still those of the hellenistic Greek world, with decrees issued by 'the council and the people' (77 jSouAiĵ кал о Srjfios), and with magistrates bearing such titles as prostates, strategos and agoranomos. It was, therefore, on a considerably un-Romanized Sicily that Caesar decided to confer the ius Latii in 44 b.c.

The Sicilian communities duly celebrated their new status in a number of coins and inscriptions recording duoviri or the title municipium\

¹ Cic. Att. xiv.12.1. 2 Ci_c. л Vcrr. 2.1.2.

³ Wiseman 1971 (d 81) 22-3, 190; Sherwin-White 1973 (a 87) 306-7. Cf. also Fraschetti 1981 (e 159). ⁴ Cic. 11 Vcrr. 2.21.50; 2.52.129; 5.57.148.

⁵ E.g. ILS 864; AE 1963, 131; Manganaro 1972 (e 169) 453.

434

significantly, with the exception of the occasional coin legend, the language used was still Greek (8vo avSpes, то fiovviKintov).[586] The documents belong to the period between 44 and 36, for the Sicilians retained their privileges throughout this period: the Senate's decision late in 44 or early in 43 to rescind all Antony's acta was ignored, for late in 43 the island was seized by Sextus Pompeius, and for the next seven years she lay outside the direct political and military control of Rome.

How disastrous this period and its aftermath were for Sicily is uncertain, but although the surviving sources, which depict Sextus Pompeius as a ruthless freebooter determined to exploit the island to further his own ends, are undoubtedly biased, it is hard to paint a rosy picture of life in Sicily under Sextus Pompeius.[587] The sudden blockade of the corn supply to Italy from 43 until the Misenum accord with Octavian in 39,[588] with the resultant slump in demand and, presumably, in income, together with the enlistment of Sicilian farmers in Sextus Pompeius' legions, can hardly have been good news for Sicilian agriculture; nor can the cities, for all their tacit acceptance of Pompeian control (with the notable exceptions of Messana and Centuripae) have fared much better, pressed to supply money and men for Sextus Pompeius' army and fleet. Yet more upheaval was caused by the arrival of thousands of fugitive slaves and the victims of triumviral proscriptions and confiscations in Italy, who found a haven in Pompeius' Sicily. When the final showdown came in 3 6 it was a bitter encounter, causing further devastation. Lepidus landed in the west and stormed several cities, although Lilybaeum, protected by her newly strengthened defences, resisted him; he then marched across Sicily to meet up with Octavian, who had narrowly escaped with his life when Sextus Pompeius surprised him at sea off Tauromenium.[589] Octavian's final crushing victory came off Naulochus, and culminated in the capitulation of Pompeius' land forces; in its aftermath Messana was looted and burned. In the autumn of 36 Octavian at last found himself master of Sicily, but of a province in disarray.

Octavian was in no mood to be forgiving. A massive indemnity of

Map 4. Sicily.

i,600 talents was levied on cities which had actively supported Sextus Pompeius, and his leading supporters were rounded up and executed. Land was confiscated and some given as a reward for loyal service, such as Agrippa's Sicilian holdings managed by Horace's friend Iccius; the remainder formed the nucleus of what was later to become the huge imperial estates in the island. The unfortunate inhabitants of Taurome- nium, who had championed Pompeius' cause and vigorously supported him in the fighting of 36, were summarily deported.¹⁰ But Octavian's feelings towards the Sicilians were expressed in most telling fashion by his decision to strip the Sicilians of the Latin right (ius Latii) granted them by Caesar. Octavian himself soon left the island, and the initial steps to restore order to a chaotic province were entrusted to his lieutenants. The Sicilians were left to count the costs of being on the losing side in a bitter struggle, and to begin the slow and painful road to recovery.

No ancient testimony specifically tells us that Sicily lost the Latin right in 36, but it is implicit in the changes that were made fifteen years later in 21 B.C., when Augustus (as he now was) returned to Sicily (which in the reorganization of 27 had become one of the provinces of the Roman people, governed by a proconsul) at the beginning of a provincial tour. Whether these changes involved the abolition of the tithe system (1iecumana), which had operated throughout the Republic, and its replacement by a fixed levy (stipendium), possibly but not certainly to be paid henceforth in cash rather than in corn (as is sometimes argued), is far from certain: the evidence for a change at this period is slight, and the quota system certainly operated in other provinces during the early Empire.¹¹ Six veteran colonies were founded, at Syracusae (Syracuse), Catina (Catania), Tauromenium (Taormina), Tyndaris, Thermae Himer- aeae (Termini Imerese) and Panormus (Palermo), perhaps all in 21 B.C., although Dio only specifies that Syracuse 'and the others' were settled in that year.¹² Pliny also adds that Messana and Lipara were 'oppida civium Romanorum', a term of uncertain significance, and that Segesta, Netum (Noto) and Centuripae were 'Latinae condicionis', i.e. possessing the Latin right. All other communities were listed as stipendiary and so non- privileged. Since Pliny's source for the status of these communities was

Indemnity: App. BCiv. v. 129. Execution of Pompeians: Dio xlix.12.4- Iccius: Hor. Epist. 1.12.1. Tauromenium: Diod. xvi.7.1 (presumably only the leading men if no colonia was founded there until 21: see n. 12}

Cf. P. Garnsey in Garnsey, Hopkins and Whittaker 198 3 (d 130) 120-1, and P. A. Brunt, JRS 71 (1981) 162 (on lack of evidence for change); contra, Rickman 1980 (e 109) 60, 64-j.

Dio Liv.7.1. Foundation dates at Panormus and Tauromenium are uncertain: for the latter, modern scholarly opinion is equally divided between 36 and 21 B.C. (Diod. xvi.7.1 and App. BCiv. v. 129 appear to be contradictory). Panormus is an Augustan colonia in Strab. vi.2.j (272c) and CILx 7279 but not designated as such by Pliny (HN 111.90), probably in error. For the case that both were also founded in 21 b.c., Wilson 1990 (e 197) 33-4 (Tauromenium) and 37 (Panormus).

almost certainly based on an Augustan census, the unavoidable conclu­sion is that the wholesale grant of Latin rights had been revoked, presumably in 36,[590] and only later, in the settlement of 21, was it restored to certain chosen communities. Four further cities (Halaesa, Haluntium, Lilybaeum and Agrigentum) are known from coins and inscriptions to have gained municipal status before a.d. 14,[591] presumably at a date later than that of Pliny's source.

The availability of Sicilian land confiscated from supporters of Sextus Pompeius and the island's proximity to Italy made her an obvious and no doubt popular choice for veteran settlement, and the influx of settlers further swelled the Italian element of the population, an element already proportionately larger than in any comparable area of the Greek- speaking world. The foundation of coloniae may indeed have been consciously intended to act as a spur to the further Romanization of Sicily, and the decree allowing senators to travel to the province without specific permission from the emperor[592] can be interpreted as further evidence of an attitude which regarded Sicily almost as an additional regio of Italy. The fact that other communities sought and won municipal status later in Augustus' reign suggests that the ius Latii was something the Sicilians reckoned as worth having. Certainly it was only from Augustan times onwards that the cultural Romanization of Sicily began in earnest. Latin had come to stay. It was adopted almost universally on official inscriptions and coin issues; and it now came into widespread use for the first time in private dedications such as tombstones.

The coloniae also acted as a spur to economic growth. Strabo reckoned that the arrival of colonists always acted as a springboard for pros­perity,[593] and in 21 в.с. Sicily was certainly ripe for redevelopment, for it was no part of Augustus' long-term policy to let the province languish in a permanent state of economic decay. An active building programme may well have been a tangible sign of economic stimulation, and Strabo specifically says that Augustus restored Syracusae and Catina as well as Centuripae, without giving details.[594] Nevertheless the list of public buildings of probable Augustan or Julio-Claudian date in the Sicilian coloniae is not inconsiderable: it includes, for example, at Syracusae, the amphitheatre, a monumental arch, the piazza and surrounding porticoes laid out on the west side of the Altar of Hieron, alterations in the theatre, and a repair of the walls (under Caligula), as well as waterworks and a possible bath-house (the last under Claudius); reorganization of the forum at Tauromenium and possibly the aqueduct and extensive rebuilding of the theatre there; possibly the aqueduct and a version of the theatre at Catina; and the aqueduct and major buildings in the forum at Thermae Himeraeae. All this, together with the evidence of domestic rebuilding at Tyndaris around the middle of the first century and the suggestion of continued intensive occupation of the excavated residen­tial quarter at the heart of Agrigentum, indicates economic vitality rather than stagnation in the early Empire, and points to a relatively rapid recovery and revitalization of these urban centres after the uncertain period of the 40s and 30s.[595]

The choice of places for colonial settlement is also significant. Most possessed excellent harbours and extensive fertile territoria\ all were on the north and east coasts where they were well situated to take maximum advantage of exports to the Italian mainland. By contrast no inland town was selected for colonial settlement, Augustan advisers correctly assess­ing that long-term chances of survival were not good. Many may well have been in an advanced state of decay, such as Morgantina which finally petered out in the Tiberian period. Others, such as Ietas (Monte Iato), were beginning to decline around the same time; by the middle of the first century, for example, the theatre there, last altered under Augustus, had ceased to function, a fine peristyle house had collapsed never to be rebuilt, the bouleuterion was walled up and disused, and rubbish was gathering in the agora. Helorus and Soluntum at least, possibly Acrae, and no doubt many others, were also in decline in the early Empire. Even those inland towns that were favoured in the Augustan settlement with municipal status did not enjoy long-term prosperity: Halaesa, for example, where the hellenistic city centre was never rebuilt under the Empire, went into decline, and the same is possibly true at Segesta (where, however, less excavation has been carried out).[596] The famous sanctuary of Venus at Eryx in Segesta's territorium had fallen into disrepair by a.d. 25, and although its restoration was completed by Claudius the cult never regained the popularity it enjoyed under the Republic.[597] Centuripae alone of the inland towns granted Latin rights by Augustus can be shown to be still thriving at the time of the middle Empire, a prosperity no doubt won from the famed fertility of her surrounding territory.

Little was done, therefore, by either Augustus or his successors, to foster urbanization in the interior of Sicily. The decay of the old hill- towns is hardly surprising, for life on a lofty and often waterless mountain top (Ietas, for example, is 8 5 2m high) was neither comfortable nor convenient, and made no sense once security ceased to be a factor in determining the location of nucleated settlement. Urban decay in the interior, however, did not represent depopulation in real terms, for it is likely to have been matched by a corresponding growth in the prosperity and importance of the sprawling agricultural settlements and market centres, which had began to be established in the well-watered valleys and along the trunk roads from the end of the third century в.с. onwards. Sicily under the Empire was dotted with such settlements, the fully fledged towns being far apart and mainly on or near the coast. This was a land fully geared to maximum agricultural production. Africa and Egypt were now more important producers and exporters in terms of quantity, but that grain condnued to be produced in Sicily on a huge scale in the early Empire is not in doubt.²¹ Local and imperial coinage advertises the symbol of Sicily (a Medusa head with triskeles) with wheat ears attached, and the potential political importance of the Sicilian corn supply, highlighted by Sextus Pompeius' manoeuvrings, was further echoed by the pretender in Afria, Clodius Macer, in 68, who also featured the symbol of Sicily with wheat-ears on his coin issues; similarly Sicily takes her place beside Africa, Egypt and Spain on a mosaic of the middle of the first century at Ostia symbolizing grain (and, in the case of Spain, oil) producers.²² Sicilian wine was also famous. Mamertine from the north east was the most respected, 'the rival of the best Italian wine' according to Strabo, and widely exported, to Rome, Africa and else­where. Tauromenium wine, which was sometimes passed off for Mamertine, is known at Pompeii, and vinum Mesopotamium from the south coast is attested at Carthage (in 21 в.с.) as well as at Pompeii and as far north as Vindonissa in Switzerland.²³ Animal husbandry, especially sheep, also made an important contribution to the agricultural economy, wool being mendoned as a Sicilian export commodity by Strabo. Among other exports were timber, especially from Mount Etna, black basalt corn-mills from the same region, found in Italy and Africa as well

Gabba's case for a considerable reduction in Sicilian grain production is not persuasive (Gabba 1986 (e 160) 79-80).

Coins: Sutherland and Kraay 197; (в 359) no. 1088 (Panormus); RIC i² (1984), 195 (Macer). Mosaic: G. Becatti, Scavi di Ostia IV, Rome, 1961, no. 68.

Mamertine: Strab. vi.2.3 (268-9C), cf. Pliny, HNxiv.66and 97; Vitr. De Arch, vin.3.12; Man. хш.117; Athenaeus, i.27d; Oioscorides, v.6.11. Africa: CIL viii 22640.60. Tauromenium wine: Pliny, HN xiv.66. Mesopotamian: CIL iv 2602-3 (Pompeii); M.H. Callender, Roman Amphorae (Oxford, 1965) 37 (Vindonissa); AE 1893, 111 (Carthage). Other Sicilian vintages: Gal. X, 834—5; Strab. vi.2.3 (268-9C), 6.7; xni.4.11 (628c); Pliny, HATxiv-35 and 80; Poll. Onom. vi.16; Ath. 1.31b; Ael. KHxn.31. On Sicilian wine production in general, Wilson 1990 (к 197) 22- 3,191—2 and 263—4.

as all over Sicily, and sulphur from the Agrigentum hinterland, the Roman world's only major supplier.²⁴

About the pattern of land use and the farming economy we are largely ignorant, in the absence of detailed archaeological investigation. That Sicily continued to be an island where large estates were commonplace is not in doubt: its fertility, its relative accessibility from Rome, and the concession which enabled senators to travel there without special permission, all combined to make the province an attractive area for land investment. The interest of Italian privati in Sicilian land, and the scale of it (even allowing for literary hyperbole) is indicated by Ovid's quip that Sextus Pompeius (the senator of the first century a.d.) could claim Sicily as his, so extensive were his properties there, and by the fictional Trimalchio's joke that a holding in Sicilian land would allow him to travel to Africa via Sicily without leaving his own estates.²⁵ The sweeping generalizations of ancient commentators must, however, be treated with reserve. A famous passage of Strabo, for example, describ­ing how the whole of northern and western Sicily except Agrigentum and Lilybaeum were 'deserted' - 'the rest, as well as most of the interior, has come into the possession of shepherds'²⁶ — has been taken as an indication of a depressed rural Sicily with huge latifundia dominated by slave labour encompassing vast tracts of countryside. Yet there is increasing evidence from western and south-western Sicily for a well- populated countryside dotted with farms, villas and villages in early imperial times,²⁷ and the true pattern of land-use, here as elsewhere, is likely to have been complex, with a variety of different-sized holdings in any one area. Archaeology, of course, cannot tell us about the ownership of such holdings, nor distinguish between tenant farmer and owner- occupier, so that even a string of smallholdings might in theory be under single rather than multiple ownership; but Strabo's picture of a depopu­lated rural Sicily is likely to be grossly exaggerated. Ranching alone was in any case not a profitable way of using extensive tracts of land, and even on large estates mixed farming was no doubt widely practised. More archaeological documentation, however, is needed.

In the countryside the Romanizing influence detectable at the towns in the early Empire hardly made itself felt. Buildings were still erected in traditional Greek fashion, with mud-brick walls on stone foundations.²⁸ The Sicilian Greek calendar remained in use, as indicated by an inscription of a.d. j 5 from the rustic sanctuary of Anna and the Nymphs

²⁴ Wool: Strab. vi.2.3 (268-90); 2.7 (224-50). Timber: Strab. vi.2.8 (275-40); cf. Diod. xiv.42.4, and G. Manganaro, Cronacbe di Arcbeologia e Storia t?Arte 5 (1964) 45-4, col. II, lines 25-6, 51-2 (export of wood from Tauromenium). Basalt: Strab. vi.2.3 (268-90). Sulphur: E. De Miro, Kokalos 28-29 (1982—}) 320-5; Wilson 1990 (e 197) 258-9. ^и Ov. Pont iv. 15.15; Petron. Sat. 48.

²⁶ Strab. vi.2.6 (272-50). ²⁷ Bejor 1975 (e 147); Bejor 1985 (e 148) 565-72.

^и Wilson 1985 (e 195).

at Buscemi in south-east Sicily;²⁹ and Greek remained the spoken language, Latin inscriptions being rare. In the far west Punic influence may have lingered on, as Apuleius in the second century described the Sicilians as trilingues, the third language presumably being Punic; but there are no neo-Punic inscriptions as there are in Sardinia and north Africa at this period, and even in a Carthaginian foundation such as Lilybaeum Greek was already deep-rooted by the time of the late Republic (even if, as Cicero implies, it was not of the purest strain).³⁰ Greek and Latin bilingualism was widespread in the towns, but even there Greek roots died hard. Before the end of the second century, for example, an honorific inscription was set up, in Greek, by the 'council and people of the glorious city of the Tauromenitans', showing that by then a colonia could set up an official dedication in Greek using terminology which ignored the existence of a Roman charter.³¹ For all its proximity to Italy, for all the influx of veteran colonists under Augustus, for all the interest of Italians in land speculation there, Sicily retained a pronounced Greek flavour down to the end of antiquity.

Sardinia and Corsica were culturally very distinct from Sicily. Greek influence in both islands was negligible, but in Sardinia there was a considerable legacy of Carthaginian culture in the principal cities of the west coast, which had started life as Phoenician foundations. Both islands received a generally bad press from Roman writers. Corsica (Latin Cyrnus) was a wild land, its inhabitants wilder than animals claimed Strabo; much more rugged than Sardinia, its only decent plains are near the east coast. Although Diodorus mentions Corsican honey, milk and meat, her sole significant asset was timber, Corsican pine and box being especially prized.³² Sardinia was far more fertile, though less so (and more mountainous) than Sicily, and was likewise a major corn supplier of Italy at the time of the late Republic; herein lay her sole political importance.³³ Yet her inhabitants were not to be trusted, banditry was rife, and the climate notoriously unhealthy. Strabo in particular paints a gloomy picture of a land 'plague-ridden in summer, especially in the most fertile regions, which are continually laid waste by mountain peoples'.³⁴

» Notice degli Scavi 1920, 327-9. 30 Apul. Met. xi.j; Cic. Dip. Caec. 12.39.

IG xiv 1091.

Inhabitants: Strab. v.2.7 (224-jc), contrast Diod. v.14.1. Produce: ibid, and v.13.4-5; cf. also Livy, xl.34.12; xlii.7.2 and Pliny, HN xvi.71 (honey). Box: Pliny, ibid. Pine: Theophr. Hist.Pl. v.8.1. Corsican red mullet was also highly rated: Juv. v.92.

Cic. De Imp. Cn. Pomp. 12.34: 'tria frumentaria subsidia reipublicae', the third being Africa. Sardinian fertility: Polyb. 1.79.6; Varro, Rtut. 11 Introd. 3; Strab. v.2.7 (224-5C); Luc. 111.65; Val. Max. vii.6. i ('Siciliamque et Sardiniam, benignissimas urbis nostrae nutrices').

Strab. v.2.7 (224—jc), cf. Livy, xxiii.34.11, Pompon. 11.123; Paus. x. 17.11; Tac. Ann. 11.85.4. Sardinian malaria: Brown 1984 (e i 53) 225-30. Untrustworthiness: Festus, Gloss.Lat. 428L ('Sardi venales'), cf. Cic. Scaur. 38ff. Banditry: Varro, Rust. 1.16.2.

The importance of Sardinian grain to Italy is highlighted by the events of 40-58 в.с. The cutting off of the Sicilian supply since 43 was bad enough, but when both Corsica and Sardinia were occupied in Sextus Pompeius' name in 40 by his lieutenant Menas[598] and Sardinian corn also blockaded, the starvation of Rome loomed, a political weapon that could not be ignored. Hence the Misenum accord of 39 with Octavian, by which Sextus Pompeius' control of the three islands was duly recog­nized, and Sicilian and Sardinian grain shipments to Rome resumed. Early the next year, however, on the defection of Menas, Sardinia and Corsica passed firmly under Octavian's control.[599]

In the provincial reorganization of 27 в.с. Sardinia and Corsica were reckoned peaceful enough to be made, like Sicily, a province of the Roman people, administered as a single unit under a proconsular governor. It proved a miscalculation. In a.d. 6 we hear of serious restlessness among the peoples of the Sardinian interior and of piracy in the Tyrrhenian sea.[600] Troops were sent to the island, and both Sardinia and Corsica passed to the emperor's control; the organization of the islands as two separate provinces, each probably administered by an equestrian praefectus, almost certainly dates from now.[601] Despite military rule trouble in Sardinia rumbled on. There was no concerted military push to tame the province once and for all, and Strabo even suggests that the malarial climate was a major factor in the failure to pursue a policy of total conquest. The sending of 4,000 Jewish dissidents to Sardinia in a.d. 19, as raw recruits to help quell the still rebellious interior, with a clear hint that they were expendable in case of disease, suggests continuing problems in establishing a firm military stranglehold.[602] To Rome this was the hostile territory of Barbaria, and although its collective peoples (civitates Barbariae) are recorded as paying homage on an inscription of either Augustan or Tiberian date,[603] a military garrison of auxiliary units was needed to keep a watchful eye on the interior for much of the first century.

By 67 Nero thought Sardinia quiet enough to be handed back to

Map j. Sardinia and Corsica.

senatorial control, the province being given to the Senate as a consola­tion prize when the cities of Achaea were granted freedom and immunity from taxation.[604] Corsica, however, remained separately administered, since the Decimus Pinarius, procurator Corsicae, who tried unsuccessfully to win that island over to Vitellius' cause during the upheavals of 69 (he was murdered in his bath for his efforts), was clearly the governor, the title praefectus having by a.d. 56 given way to that of procurator, as elsewhere.[605] Once again the inclusion of Sardinia among the provinces of the Roman people proved premature. A revealing insight into one aspect of the continuing unrest is provided by a bronze tablet of a.d. 69 from Esterzili in central Sardinia, which documents not only the long­standing problem of mountain tribes (here the Galillenses) trespassing on richer plains further south (in this case those of the Patulcenses Campani, presumably descendants of Italian immigrants whose boun­daries, the document tells us, had been fixed by Metellus some 180 years before), but also the failure of successive proconsuls of Sardinia to grasp the nettle and resolve the problem in decisive fashion; and the references in the inscription to 'rebellion' (seditio) and to occupation by force (quos per vim occupaverunf) suggest that the recent trouble was not minor but a sudden and violent uprising.[606] By 73 Vespasian had lost patience. The troops returned, and the province came under imperial control once more, the governor being now styled a procurator et praefectus (a title which combined old- and new-style designations). Corsica remained separate, under a procuratorial governor.[607]

With both islands so unsettled it is hardly surprising that the progress of Romanization was slow. Corsica in particular remained largely un­developed throughout antiquity, and we can sympathize with Seneca's gloom about what he saw as a dismal place of exile.[608] Coloniae had been founded at Mariana by Marius and at Aleria by Sulla, but there was no later attempt to foster urbanization, and Pliny mentions only these two settlements by name in his account of the island. At Mariana excavations have revealed only late Roman structures, apart from some first- and second-century burials, but at Aleria more extensive work has unco­vered the forum and several adjacent houses.[609] The forum with its surrounding porticoes is of the double-enclosure type with a Capitolium in the centre and a temple of Rome and Augustus at the east end; in its developed form such a layout is hardly likely to be pre-Flavian, but reticulate masonry in a monumental arch and in shops on the forum's north side may indicate an earlier (Augustan or Julio-Claudian) phase of building. The amphitheatre, a modest structure on a tiny scale for a provincial capital (its long axis measures only 29.60m), reflects the undeveloped nature of Roman urbanization in Corsica.⁴⁷ The interior of the island remained largely untamed. There was a permanent garrison at Praesidium, and piracy was suppressed by a detachment of the Misenum fleet in the lagoon at Portus Dianae, just north of Aleria. In the mountains Ptolemy lists fourteen oppida, but these are unlikely to have been developed cities of classical Mediterranean type: excavation on Cap Corse at Castellu de Luri, surely Ptolemy's Lurinum in the territory of the Vanacini, has revealed stout stone fortifications and simple rectangu­lar structures within them, recalling the type of Gaulish oppidum well known from examples such as Ambrussum and Les Castels de Nages near Nimes.⁴⁸ Occupation at Castellu de Luri, which started in the third century b.c., continued throughout the first century a.d. Yet for all the apparent lack of sophistication in at least one of their oppida, the Vanacini, who had received unspecified beneficia from Augustus, pos­sessed the trappings of the imperial cult with sacerdotes Augusti (Lasemo son of Leucanus, and Eunus son of Tomasus, men clearly lacking the Roman citizenship): this we know from a rescript of a.d. 72 addressed by Vespasian to the 'magistrates and senators' of the Vanacini, concerning a border squabble with their neighbour, Mariana, to the south.⁴⁹

Sardinia in time became more developed. Many of the cities on the western seaboard retained a distinctly Punic flavour down to the late Republic, with neo-Punic inscriptions and suffetes as magistrates. The first Roman colonia was Turris Libysonis (Porto Torres), founded for proletarians, probably c. 42—40 B.C., on a virgin site in north-west Sardinia, and by Augustus' time Carales (Cagliari) possessed municipal rank: so at least implies Pliny, who was drawing on an Augustan source, but Uselis too must have had municipal rights early on, as 'Iulia Augusta' were among her titles when she was promoted to colonial status by the middle of the second century.⁵⁰ When Carales became a municipium is not known for certain, but it is just possible that it may have been shortly before 44 b.c., for she had remained loyal to Caesar when the rest of Sardinia embraced the Pompeian cause, and her magistrates were

" Gallia 34 (1976) 503-5; 36 (>978) 463; 40 (1982) 430-3.

⁴⁸ Ptolemy (Geog. 111.2) and Corsica: Jehasse 1976 (e 164). Luri: Gallia 34 (1976) 507; 36 (1978) 468. Ambrussum: Fiches 1982 (e 351), 1986 (e 353). Castels: Py (e 466) 1978.

« CIL x 8038. so рцпу HN 111.85; cf. Brunt 1971 (a 9) 597, 605.

quattuorviri, not the duoviri customary in Augustan municipia.[610] In any case Augustus showed little interest in fostering urban development in Sardinia; unlike Sicily the island was passed over as a candidate for veteran settlement.[611] Slowly Latin rights were extended to other communities, including Nora, Sulcis and Cornus, probably before the end of the first century a.d.; interestingly their consdtutions were modelled on that of Carales and so had quattuorviri rather than duoviri,[612]But there is scant evidence, epigraphic or archaeological, for major public building programmes in either Augustan or Julio-Claudian Sardinia,[613] and it was only in the second century that the towns of the province began to display more tangible signs of material prosperity, constructing aqueducts, bath-buildings and the like. During the first century, however, the communications network was upgraded and improved, especially the main north-south artery between Turris Libysonis and Carales; milestones document activity in a.d. 15/14, 46, 67/8, 69 and 74.[614]

Sardinia's economic importance lay of course, as already noted, in grain. Always less productive than Sicily, she too declined in importance as a wheat exporter when Africa and Egypt took over in the early Empire as central Italy's most important suppliers; but as in Sicily there is no hint of a decline in Sardinian agriculture, or any suggestion that cereal production-levels did not remain high. About the details of the agricul­tural economy of the early Empire we are ignorant, as in Sicily, in the absence of excavated villas of the right date or of reliable field-survey evidence; the notion of ubiquitous latifundia, often repeated by modern commentators, is doubtless as over-simplistic for Sardinia as it is for Sicily. Metals too were not ignored. The mining district of the Iglesiente, centred at Metalla ('Mines'), produced lead, iron and copper; a stamped lead ingot documents Augustan production.[615]

Away from the coastal regions and the main towns, Romanizadon made little impact under Augustus or the Julio-Claudians. Sard remained the everyday language of the mountainous interior, and although it was something for the dedicators of a building near Zeppara to have erected in a.d. 62 a tablet inscribed in Latin, their names (Mislius, Benets, Bacoru, Sabdaga) are wholly un-Roman.[616] A significant propor­tion of the nuraghic village settlements continued to be inhabited down into imperial times. Religion, not surprisingly, remained conservative, and Punic cults in particular continued to flourish, often with the thinnest of Roman veneers. The cult centre at Antas of the deity Latinized as Sardus Pater (formerly worshipped as Sid Baby) enjoyed a long and faithful following throughout the Republic and early Empire, but it was only in the early third century that his temple took on recognizably Roman form (tetrastyle and prostyle, raised on a podium) in the Ionic order; while shrines elsewhere, including Mulciberus (Vulcan) at Nora, Tanit disguised as Demeter-Ceres at Tharros and Narcao, and Bes-Eshmun at Bitia, all show survival well into the imperial period.[617] The municipia, of course, adopted the outward form of a Roman constitution, but elsewhere both Punic language and Punic nomenclature continued in use. Striking confirmation of this is provided by a second-century a.d. neo-Punic inscription from Bitia, which demonstrates that in a non-chartered community in Sardinia the old Punic administrative system of local government remained intact well into imperial times, with suffetes as chief magistrates.[618]

CHAPTER 13c SPAIN

G. ALFOLDY

i. conquest, provincial administration and military organization

The Iberian peninsula, the first overseas country in which Roman rule had been established (in 218 B.C.), became one of the most important areas of the empire at the beginning of the imperial period.¹ This was due above all to the fact that the wars of conquest gave it an increasingly important military and political role. At the end of the Republic and during the triumviral period, when nearly two centuries of almost constant warfare had passed, and Roman civilization had struck root particularly along the eastern coast and in the south of the peninsula, north-western Spain, with its hardly accessible mountainous regions, still resisted Roman rule. From 39 B.C., there was a single proconsul with consular rank for both Hispanic provinces, Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior (the 'consular era' of Hispania Citerior was later reckoned from 38 B.C.); he held the army command and was responsible for the civil administration under the mandate of Octavian/Augustus. Until the time of the last proconsul, Sextus Appuleius in 28/27 ^BC-> these governors were constantly occupied with war — in the Fasti Triumphales six triumphs are recorded for proconsuls of this period. But it was the first princeps who completed the task of subduing the rest of the peninsula, with the aim of seizing the chance to demonstrate his care for his provincia, to win laurels, and at the same time to be absent from Rome

* This chapter was written in 1987 and revised in 1988. In 1991 the author requested some supplements and changes. It was unfortunately not possible to include these and the editors bear the responsibility for the fact that this does not reflect the current state of research. It can be noted, at least, that two parts of CIL и² were published in 1995: CIL n²/i4, part 1 (southern part of the Conventus Tarraconensis) and ii²/7 (Conventus Cordubensis), edited by A. Alfoldy, A. U. Stylow et a/. For local mints see Burnett et at. 1992 (в 512). For the history and archaeology of the Iberian peninsula, see particularly L. A. Churchin, Roman Spain. Conquest and Assimilation (London-New York, 1991), W. Trillmich a a!., Hispania antiqua. Denkmaler der Romir^rit (Mainz am Rhein, 1995).

¹ The literary sources for Roman Spain are edited by A. Schulten eta/., Pontes Hispaniae Antiquae i-ix (Barcelona, 1922-47). The number of Roman inscriptions known from the Iberian peninsula has increased during the last hundred years from some 6,000, published in volume 11 of the Corpus lnscriptionum Latinarum by E. Hŭbner, to some 20,000. These include important new documents, such as the Tabula Siarensis, a new version of the Tabula Hebana (AE 1984, (o8, sec, above all,

449

new Corpus containing all inscriptions (CIL ii²) is being prepared under the direction of G. Alfoldy, M. Mayer and A.U. Stylow. For local mints, the standard work is presently A. Vives у Escudero, La moneda bispanica, i-iv, (Madrid, 1924—6) repr. (in two vols.) Madrid, 1980. The abundant archaeological sources, considerably augmented by intensiĥed excavation throughout Spain and Portugal during the last two decades, are too numerous to survey here. For the archaeological and historical topography, cf. Tovar 1974-6 (e 243), Keay 1988 (e 227). A new synthesis of the history of Roman Spain (somewhat antiquarian in concept and not free of error) is provided by J.M. Blazquez et a!. 1982 (e 210).

CONQUEST

where his presence, after the provisional settlement of the new regime, might raise political problems.

In the spring or the summer of 27 в.с. Augustus went to Gaul and thence to Spain. At Tarraco (Tarragona), the new capital of Hispania Citerior, which had replaced the republican capital of Carthago Nova (Cartagena), he entered his eighth and ninth consulships on 1 January 26 and 25 B.C., respectively, and received embassies. Tarraco was thus for a short period the scene of political decisions of the highest importance and thus the centre of power. The attention of the Roman world turned to Spain, where in 26 B.C. the princeps personally led the campaign against the Cantabri in the mountains between Burgos and Santander. During the second campaign in 25 B.C., in Asturia and Callaecia, west of Cantabria, he lay ill at Tarraco. In the last months of 25 B.C., after he had left Spain for Rome, his legates completed the conquest, subduing the last insurrections. Resistance was definitively broken by Agrippa in 19 B.C.

The successful wars which made it necessary to concentrate six or more legions and numerous auxiliary units here, and, above all the presence of Augustus for two years and the administrative work which brought him there again for a period between 16 and 13 B.C., clearly emphasized the importance of Spain in the Roman empire. It is symptomatic of its importance that during the early Principate a large number of Spanish communities enjoyed the patronage of leading senators at Rome and even of members of the imperial family.² In continuation of a republican tradition, social and political contact with Spain was a highly esteemed source of presdge and influence.

Augustus established in the Iberian peninsula, as elsewhere, a system of provincial administration which was to undergo only a few modifica­tions during the following three centuries.³ From 27 B.C., the representa­tives of the princeps in the governance of Spain and particularly in command of the armies were the legati Augusti pro praetore, one in Hispania Citerior and another in Hispania Ulterior. The first legates were Gaius Antisdus Vetus (27-25/24 B.C.) in the former and Publius Carisius (27-c. 22 в.с.) in the latter province. Definitive form was given to the new system about 13 B.C., but not by any single reform. Not only were provincial boundaries changed, but Hispania Ulterior was divided into two provinces, and Roman Spain consisted, for the next three centuries and more, of the Hispaniae tres, that is, of the provinces of Baetica, Lusitania and Hispania Citerior.

The province of Baetica, formerly a part of Hispania Ulterior and also known as Hispania Ulterior Baetica until the early second century,

Cf. M. Koch, Chiron 9 (1979) 205-14, on M. Agrippa.

451

See Albertini 1923 (e 198) 25-42; Alfoldy 1969 (e 201) above all 285-96.

comprised Andalusia, minus the eastern part of the region which belonged to Hispania Citerior. While both other provinces remained under imperial control, Baetica, with Corduba (Cordoba) as its capital, was a public province. The governor was a proconsul with the rank of a senior ex-praetor, appointed to his office annually by the procedure of sortitio by the Senate. In carrying out his administrative tasks he was supported by the legatus pro praetore, who was a junior ex-praetor or younger senator chosen by the proconsul, and by the quaestor responsible for dealing with the taxes paid by the provincial communities. Lusitania, that is Portugal minus the northern sector of the country, but including the Spanish Estremadura and the region of Salamanca in the western part of Castilla la Vieja, had Emerita Augusta (Merida) as its capital, and was under the control of a legatus Augusti pro praetore, a senior ex-praetor. The recently occupied region of Asturia et Callaecia (including northern Portugal), hitherto a part of Hispania Ulterior, was separated from the demilitarized Lusitania and joined to Hispania Citerior, which remained the only province in the Iberian peninsula which had a legionary garrison. This province, the largest one in the empire, comprised the eastern coast of Spain down to Almeria, the eastern sector of Andalusia and most of the interior of Spain together with the northern and north­western areas of the peninsula. The governor of this highly important province, residing at Tarraco, was a senior ex-consul, normally dis­tinguished both by birth and by a successful public career: at any rate, unlike the governors of Baetica and Lusitania, he was a person from the top stratum of the aristocracy of the imperial period. In the dispensation of justice he was supported by a praetorian senator (who, in the first century a.d., was called legatus Augusti, later also iuridicus). The governor also had under him as office-holders of senatorial rank the legates of the legions of his province. In the later years of Augustus and at the beginning of the reign of Tiberius, as we can deduce from Strabo's account of the administrative system in Spain and from an inscription,⁴ two of the three legions, certainly brigaded together in one fortress, were subordinated to a single legate.

A further new element of the provincial administration was the subdivision of the provinces into conventus iuridici for the purpose of jurisdiction, as well as for the administration of the imperial cult. In Hispania Citerior there were seven conventus, those of Tarraco, Carthago Nova, Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza), Clunia (Penalba de Castro), Asturica Augusta (Astorga), Lucus Augusti (Lugo) and Bracara Augusta (Braga); in Baetica, four — Corduba, Astigi (Ecija), Hispalis (Sevilla) and Gades (Cadiz); in Lusitania, three - Emerita Augusta, Pax lulia (Beja) and

⁴ Strab. 111.4.20(166c); CIL 1x41}} = ILS 2644. On Strabo's account of Spain, cf.J.M. Blazquez, Hispania Antique 1 (1971) ' 1-94-

Scallabis (Santarĉm). While some scholars assign the establishment of these conventus to Vespasian, the system described certainly goes back to Augustus at least in an earlier form and is attested by a tabula patronatus from the year a.d. i .[619] Lack of evidence is not necessarily a sign of lack of organization. Whereas imperial procurators for the financial administ­ration of Hispania Citerior and of Lusitania, who would hold the rank of a ducenarius under the system as it was later consolidated, are already attested in the reign of Augustus, the first known procurator of Baetica (who, it is true, was responsible only for the imperial revenues from this senatorial province, not for the taxes of the communities) belongs to the reign of Vespasian; but this does not mean that the foundation of this post may not go back to an earlier period, the reign of Augustus being the most obvious possibility.

According to Strabo, the main task of the procurators in Spain was to supply the army.[620] At the beginning of the Principate Spain was one of the most important military areas of the empire. In the wars of the conquest of north-western Spain at least six legions participated, namely the legiones I, II (Augusta), IV (Macedonica), V(Alaudae), VI (Victrix) and X (Gemina), all clearly attested by epigraphic and numismatic sources. Thus, for example, we know that veterans were settled at Emerita Augusta, in 25 B.C., from the legiones V and X; at Caesaraugusta, probably between 16 and 13 B.C., from the legiones IV, VI and X; and at Acci (Guadix), clearly at the beginning of the Principate, from the legiones I and II. But there is some evidence which allows us to conclude that in the early years of the Augustan Principate legio IX(Hispana) and legio XX (Valeria Victrix) also formed part of the Spanish armies.

After the conquest had been completed, Augustus decided to leave three legions to hold the Iberian peninsula, concentrating them in the reorganized Hispania Citerior. The disposition of these legions, which from the reign of Tiberius lay in a bow-shaped formadon in the north­western part of the high plain of Castilla la Vieja, facing the Cantabrian and Asturian mountains, clearly demonstrates that the main task of the army in the early Principate was to control the recently subjected areas. Legio IV Macedonica was stationed in the Pisuerga valley, which allows entry into the Cantabrian Cordillera from the direction of Palencia to the south; a long series of boundary-stones (termini Augustales) found in this area shows the boundaries between the prata leg(ionis) IIII on the one side and the ager of the towns of Iuliobriga (Retortillo) in the north and Segisamo (Sasamon) in the south, respectively. Legio VI Victrix and legio X Gemina, whose first common fortress has not been identified, lay in

Asturia; later VI Victrix may have had its headquarters at Legio (Leon), which was the fortress of the legio VII Gemina from the reign of Vespasian until late antiquity, while X Gemina can be located at Petavonium (Rosinos de Vidriales). In the same area the bulk of the auxilia of the exercitus Hispanicus also seems to have been stationed, including cohors IV Gallorum in a fort on the road between Asturica Augusta and Petavonium, near La Baneza, where we know of a series of the terminipratorum coh(ortis) IIII Gall(lorum), erected under Claudius.[621]

The concentration in north-western Spain of all these troops, particu­larly of the legions recruited in Italy and, in increasing measure, from the inhabitants of Spanish coloniae and municipia as well, prevented armed resistance on a large scale, although there was still some fighting under Nero against smaller .gangs of highland robbers who disrupted the country.[622] This concentration also contributed considerably to the Romanization of the tribes thus controlled. In approximately the third generadon after the conquest of north-eastern Spain, a reduction of the military forces could begin. In 39, or at the latest in 43, legio IV Macedonica left Spain for the Rhine frontier; in 63 legio X Gemina was ordered to the Pannonian frontier. Only legio VI Victrix remained in Spain, together with some auxiliary units. The number of the auxilia was of course also reduced after the reign of Augustus along with that of the legions.[623]

One of the tasks of the army was to engage in the construction of public works, primarily a road system. During his second stay in Spain, between 16 and 13 B.C., Augustus initiated the systematic establishment of a road network. The Via Augusta, which led from the Coll de Perthus in the Pyrenees along the eastern coast of Spain to Tarraco and Valentia (Valencia), and from here through the south of the peninsula, passing Corduba, to Gades, was constructed at least partially under Augustus, and was marked by milestones in the following years, in Baetica, for example, in 2 B.C. This road which, according to Strabo, was of cardinal importance, was still called via militaris in Domitian's time, as were some other main roads of the empire.[624] The road network in north-eastern Spain was certainly constructed with the participation of the army. The building-stones of the Roman bridge at Ad Fines (Martorell), near Barcino (Barcelona), built probably between 16 and 13 B.C., show the abbreviated names of the legions IV, VI and X, as do the milestones in the region of Caesaraugusta, set up in 9 and 5 в.с. respectively.[625] Several other roads, known from the Itineraria, milestones and archaeological discoveries, demonstrate clearly that the network of the viae publicae extended through the whole peninsula. There were, for example, two principal diagonal roads from the north west to the south east and from the south west to the north east which intersected exactly in the geographical centre of the peninsula, at Titulcia (in the area of the present Titulcia, formerly Bayona de Tajuna, south of Madrid). In the west, the main Roman road was that from Asturica Augusta to Emerita Augusta and from here to Hispalis, the so-called Camino de la Plata, where the earliest milestone belongs to the reign of Augustus.[626]

II. URBANIZATION

Conquest, pacification, reorganization of the provincial government and the road network were only a part of the Augustan achievement in Hispania. Because of its enormous impact on the political system, social order, economy and cultural development, urbanization, that is, the foundation of coloniae and the grant of municipal status to native communities, was one of the most effective elements in the policy of the first princeps towards Spain. Although urban life had a long tradition in the Iberian peninsula, with the existence of Phoenician and Greek colonies and the urban development of some native settlements, Roman urbanization did not reach a high level there until the last decades of the Republic. Until the 40s of the first century в.с., if we exclude communi­ties whose status is still debated, we have evidence of only some towns which either certainly or probably possessed the Latin right, such as Carteia (Cortijo El Rocadillo near Gibraltar, later a municipium) or Valentia, and for some towns such as Tarraco and Carthago Nova,which seem to have had the status of a conventus civium Komanorum.[627] The changes which occurred after the last years of Caesar and above all during the reign of Augustus, may be illustrated by the list of towns given by Pliny the Elder, who relied mainly on a source from the middle period of the Augustan Principate (before 12 B.C.). Besides a large number of communities without a privileged status, Pliny enumerates in

Baetica nine coloniae, ten municipia civium Komanorum and twenty-seven towns with the 'old' Latin right (by which he means Latin status granted before the general extension of the ius Latii in Spain by Vespasian); in Hispania Citerior (together with the Balearic Islands) twelve coloniae, fifteen municipia civium Komanorum and twenty communities which were apparently without exception Latini veteres, and in Lusitania five coloniae, one municipium civium Komanorum and three communities with the 'old' Latin status.[628] These numbers, however, do not at all represent the full extent of urbanization in Spain before the end of the Augustan Principate (not to mention the number of privileged towns from the Flavian period). Several towns received their urban charter in the last decades of the reign of Augustus, and are thus not registered in Pliny's lists, which are earlier in origin. Thus, for example, the inhabitants of Segobriga (near to Saelices, 100 km south east of Madrid), one of the most important centres of the Celtiberi, were according to Pliny stipendiarii, that is, they formed a peregrine community; from epigraphi- cal documentation, however, we can deduce that Segobriga had already obtained the status of a municipium, administered by IHIviri and aediles, by a.d. 12/14.[629]

Unfortunately, our sources, in particular Pliny's lists of cities, the inscriptions and the local coinage of several towns, do not allow us to establish an exact list of the coloniae and municipia founded by Augustus. The evidence is not clear enough. The communities whose citizens are enrolled in the Galeria tribus belong, it is true, to an earlier phase of urbanization than the towns with the Quirina tribus, founded by the Flavian emperors; but although the citizens of most towns which received their privileged status from Augustus were inscribed in the Galeria tribus, this tribal affiliation certainly does not always indicate an Augustan grant of urban autonomy, and by the same token at least some of the Augustan colonies did not have their citizens enrolled in this tribe. Nevertheless, the general trends and the enormous importance of the Augustan policy of urbanization in Spain are clear. First of all in Baetica, in the eastern parts of Hispania Citerior and in the southern half of Lusitania, the first princeps founded several Roman colonies and granted the status of a municipium with either Roman or Latin rights to numerous native communities. As is indicated by the case of Segobriga, but also, for example, by that of Ercavica (Castro de Santaver near to Canaverue- las, north of Segobriga) or Valeria (now Valeria, formerly Valera de Arriba, east of Segobriga), municipalization also began in the interior of the peninsula in the early Principate.

Of the nine coloniae of Baetica attested by Pliny (in his lists he actually mentions ten coloniae, but one of them, Munda, must have been completely destroyed in 45 B.C.), some received their status either directly from Caesar or - like Urso (Osuna) - immediately after the death of the dictator, but on his instructions. Under either Caesar or his heir Itucci (near to Baena) and Ucubi (Espejo), were founded. Augustus founded the colonies of Astigi (Ecija) and Tucci (Martos) and changed the status of Corduba and Asido (Medina Sidonia) into that of a Roman colonia. Of the five colonies of Lusitania, only Emerita Augusta is certainly an Augustan foundation; Metellinum (Medellin), Norba (Caceres), Pax Iulia and Scallabis were founded either under Caesar or during the period before 27 в.с. Among the colonies of Hispania Citerior, Carthago Nova seems to be a Caesarian colonia and Celsa (Velilla del Ebro) was a colonia of Lepidus (founded perhaps in 48/47 B.C.). Either in the last years of Caesar or in the subsequent period before 27 в.с. the new capital, whose full name was Colonia Iulia Urbs Triumphalis Tarraco, and Acci (Guadix) were founded. Colonies of Augustus founded after 27 B.C. were Barcino (Barcelona), Caesaraugusta, Ilici (Elche), Libisosa (Lezuza) and probably also Salaria (near to Ubeda).[630]

Considerably less clear is the number of the Augustan municipia. The earliest Spanish municipia with a certainly attested date are Caesarian foundations, such as Asido and Gades. Unfortunately, for only a few of the Spanish cities with this status can an Augustan origin be suggested with a sufficient basis of evidence, like the Municipium Augusta Bilbilis, for example, the native town of Martial. But there is no doubt that several of the Spanish municipia which received their privileged status before the death of the first princeps were Augustan foundations, as were a large number of other towns with the Galeria tribus which can be considered as municipia.[631]

The extent of this urbanizing programme in Spain at the end of the Republic and under Augustus can be contrasted with the fact that the Julio-Claudian emperors did not consider it necessary to extend colonial and municipal status to other communities of the Iberian peninsula on a large scale. One of the few municipia, or indeed the only municipium (unless it was simply a city with elevated status), founded during the period from Tiberius to Nero may have been Baelo (Bolonia) on the Atlantic coast of Baetica, attested as municipium Claudium.[632] Clunia, which was a municipium from the time of Augustus or Tiberius, obviously obtained the rank of a colonia from Galba, who was in this town when he received the news of his proclamation as emperor by the

Senate of Rome. It was the Flavian dynasty which took over the task of completing the urbanization of the peninsula.

III. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

The numerous municipal foundations at the end of the Republic and under Augustus changed the situation in Spain fundamentally. The juridical status of several communities was elevated. Apart from the existence of communities of Roman citizens in the older and the newly founded colonies, a high number of peregrine communities of the native population now received autonomous status. In contrast with their former status, which had allowed the local authorities self-government only to a limited extent, they achieved the status of municipia and with that, on the basis of a specifically defined relationship with the provincial governor or other Roman officials, the right of administering their own affairs through proper magistrates elected by the assembly of the citizens, and through the decisions of the local or do decurionum. This privilege was granted on the basis either of the Roman citizenship or at least of the ius Latii, which enabled rich fellow-citizens to obtain the civitas Komana by holding municipal bonores.[633] The communal organization of the cities with the ius Latii was regulated according to principles for the constitu­tions of Latin municipia laid down in town charters which may go back to a general Augustan law for the municipia of the provinces, as has been deduced from the Flavian Lex Irnitana, the recently discovered town charter for the municipium of Irni in Baetica.[634] The towns experienced considerable economic growth from the Principate of Augustus onwards. The urban territoria comprised the best areas for agriculture as, for example, in the valley of the river Baetis (Guadalquivir), which was, according to Strabo, full of farms improved with groves and gardens of various plants.[635] The towns became centres of industry and trade. The same author praises the export of corn, wine and oil from Baedca, emphasizing the importance of the Spanish trade for Italy and Rome; he also mendons several other products of the country, among them fish- sauces (garum), which are also clearly attested by archaeological evi­dence. He also emphasizes the wealth of the Iberian peninsula in minerals, noting that no other country furnishes gold, silver, copper and iron in the same quantity and quality as Spain. That mining was another of the sources of wealth in the towns, is clear from Strabo's remark that the silver mines in the neighbourhood of Carthago Nova, and also in other places, had passed from state into private ownership.

The degree to which the owners of mines and other economic resources could enrich themselves during the early Empire, can be demonstrated by the example of Sextus Marius, probably from Corduba, who was, according to Tacitus,²² the richest man of his time in Spain. After he had been put to death in a.d. 33, his enormous wealth, consisting particularly of gold-mines and other mines, was taken into the imperial patrimonium and was given a procuratorial administration, which still existed in the Flavian period. Not only was the road-station Mariana (now Nuestra Senora de Mairena) in the eastern Sierra Morena named after him, but so too was the whole Sierra Morena, a name derived, it seems, from the ancient name of the mountain range, Mons Marianus.

At the same time, it was due above all to the new local elites that towns received magnificent public buildings. Some of these were gifts from emperors and from members of the imperial family, such as the marvellous theatre at Emerita Augusta, given by Agrippa, or the amphitheatre of the same colony, a donation by Augustus; but public buildings were normally paid for by local magistrates or by other rich citizens; in the reign of Augustus, for example, the forum of Saguntum (Sagunto), was paid for from a legacy from one Cnaeus Baebius Geminus, a member of the most prestigious family of that municipium.²³

The accumulation of wealth entailed changes in the social structure. A local elite developed in each town, comprising the rich land-holders in the territorium, who were frequently also engaged in industry, trade and mining. This elite furnished the magistrates and constituted the ordo decurionum of the cities. In Roman colonies, which normally had a population of lower origin but at the same time offered highly favour­able conditions for making money by trade, and in the provincial capitals where there were also good opportunities for social advancement through service in the imperial administration, these elites constituted, as at Tarraco and Barcino, the uppermost group of a society which allowed social mobility on a relatively large scale and generally admitted into the political elite the sons of rich freedmen and immigrants. In at least some municipia such as Saguntum, however, the upper class, composed of a small group of old leading families, carefully guarded its privileges, building a 'closed' society, closing its ranks to people of humble origin and to newcomers, and holding in dependence the lower population both of town and countryside through the institutions of slavery and clientela. That social differentiation deepened can be deduced

Tac. Ann. vi. 19.

F. Beltran Lloris, Epigrafia latino de Saguntum j su territorium (Valencia, 1980) no. 64.

not only from the official distinction of ordo and plebs in the population of the towns, but also from the spread of slavery in the towns and their neighbourhoods. Above all, slaves were frequently manumitted in the urban centres but in the countryside, in particular on the estates of the interior, manumission seems to have been rarely practised.²⁴

The most emphatic sign of social differentiation in the context of the Roman social order was that the richest and most distinguished members of the urban elites could enter the equestrian and the senatorial orders. It may be symptomatic of the general level of Romanization in Spain and of its importance in the Roman empire, that the first Roman senator of non- Italian origin, Quintus Varius Severus, tribunusplebis in 90 b.c., from Sucro near Valencia, was a Spaniard, as was the first consul born outside Italy, Lucius Cornelius Balbus the Elder, from Gades, consul in 40 b.c.; and later, the first emperor with a patria outside the Italian peninsula, Trajan, was from Spain. Apart from the Cornelii Balbi at Gades, at the end of the Republic and under the early Principate, there were already some senatorial families in the towns of Baetica, such as the family of the Aelii at Italica who were the ancestors of Hadrian, and the Annaei, the family of Seneca, at Corduba. In the imperial period this province provided an extremely high number of senators for Rome. The social background for the ascent of such families may be revealed by the statement of Strabo that under Augustus there were no fewer than 500 knights at Gades, a figure matched only at Patavium (Padova) in northern Italy.²⁵ One or two generations later, about the middle of the first century a.d., we also find the first senators from the cities of the eastern coast of Hispania Citerior, such as the Pedanii from Barcino, Raecius Taurus from Tarraco and Marcus Aelius Gracilis from Dertosa (Tortosa). To the same generation as the two latter belongs Quintus Iulius Cordus, a praetorian senator under Nero, who seems to have come from Lusitania and who may have been the first of the few senators from this province.²⁶

The evolution of urban life, particularly the rise of the upper classes of the urban society, also created the conditions for cultural development. Over and above the spread of literacy, several towns offered good opportunities for education and stimulated intellectual ambitions — especially in Baetica with its high concentration of urban centres. As in northern Italy and southern Gaul, the elites of the urban society in

²⁴ Slavery in Roman Spain: See now V.M. Smirin, in: E.M. Staerman et a!.. Die Sklaverei in den westlicben Provin^en des romiseben Reicbei im t.-j. Jabrbundert (Stuttgart, 1987) 58-12; cf. G. Alfoldy, ZPE 67 (1987) 249-62. ²⁵ Strab. iii.j.5 (169c) and v.i.7 (215c).

²⁶ On Roman senators from Spain, including the persons mentioned here and below, see, above all, Le Roux 1982 (e 229) (Hispania Citerior); Castillo Garcia 1982 (e 214) (Baetica); Etienne 1982 (e 218) (Lusitania).

Baetica produced under Augustus and the Julio-Claudian emperors not only an increasing number of new equestrian and senatorial families, but also, from exactly the same social environment, men at the peak of contemporary intellectual life. The family of the Annaei from Corduba, with Seneca the Elder, the rhetor and historian of equestrian rank under Augustus, Seneca the Younger, who was not only one of the richest but also one of the most erudite senators in the reigns of Claudius and Nero, and Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, the poet and the nephew of the philoso­pher, furnishes the best example of intellectual interest and capacity in an ambitious leading family of this kind, which had risen from the provincial upper class of the capital of Baetica. But there were also other men of letters from this province, like the rhetor and senator Iunius Gallio, probably from Corduba, who adopted one of the brothers of Seneca the Younger, Pomponius Mela the geographer, from Tingentera near Algeciras, and Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella, the author of the Res Rusticae, a knight from Gades.²⁷

iv. the impact of romanization

The political, economic, social and cultural development of Spain in the period between the collapse of the Republic and the end of the Julio- Claudian dynasty was enormous. The Iberian peninsula, once a field of continuous resistance to Rome, became, in spite of its geographical situation on the periphery of the Mediterranean world, an area of central importance in the Roman empire. But it would be wrong to believe that all the changes which took place in the period covered in this volume produced a uniform picture in the Iberian peninsula by the end of the period. On the whole, it may be less important that some older trading centres of the Mediterranean coast did not participate in the general boom: Emporiae (Empuries), for example, an amalgamation of Greek colony, native settlement and Roman town, was not able to compete with the flourishing harbour cities of younger foundations, such as the colonies of Tarraco or Barcino.²⁸ There was an immense contrast between the intensively urbanized regions of Baetica, the eastern parts of Hispania Citerior and southern Lusitania on the one hand, and the backward areas in the interior and in the north west on the other. In the latter areas, where less favourable geographical conditions and, above

²¹ On the rise and importance of these 'colonial elites' from Roman Spain; cf. R. Syme, Colonial Elites. Rome, Spain and the Americas (Oxford, 19)8) 1-25.

²⁸ On Emporiae, cf. now J. Aquilue et al.. Elforum roma