debt) was resumed and hope was so far abandoned of relieving the burden of existing debts, that new debts were contracted by reason of the taxation levied for the wall in squared blocks put out to contract by the censors (VI, 32, 1).
3 map of roman showing area enclosed by walls of 378
The wall is the so-called ‘Servian’ wall of which extensive tracts still survive; this massive construction shows the structures of the Roman state intact and functioning and able to deploy substantial resources for a communal undertaking. The area enclosed (Fig 3) is already large, and, as if to symbolize the conviction that the Gallic sack changed nothing, the wall is built with tufa from the territory of conquered Veii.
The Roman sphere of interest was also extending steadily southwards. A Roman treaty with the Samnites in 354 was followed by the first war of Rome against the Samnites. In 348 Rome made a treaty with Carthage, renewing the one made after the fall of the monarchy:
There is to be friendship on these conditions between the Romans and their allies and the Carthaginians and Uticans and their allies … And if the Carthaginians take any city in Latium which is not subject to the Romans, they may keep the property and the captives, but must surrender the city. And if a Carthaginian captures anyone (in the course of piracy, presumably) who is a member of a community with a written agreement with Rome, but not subject, he may not bring him into any Roman harbour; if he does, a Roman may touch him and free him … (Polybius III, 24, 3)
Rome emerges as possessing a subject zone, which by implication the Carthaginians may not touch, as having an interest in the whole of Latium and as having a wider protective rôle. This nascent empire was joined by Capua in 343.
An attempt by the Latin cities to throw off the growing de facto hegemony of Rome failed with their defeat in 338; despite the fact that the Volsci and Aurunci and some Campanians fought with the Latins, Rome was able momentarily to secure Samnite help and thereby keep at least the Sidicini occupied and the rest of the hostile coalition preoccupied.
The settlement of 338 is crucial in the development of the forms in which Rome came to express her relationship to the rest of Italy (see here); in the present context it is one more step on the road to hegemony.
In 328 Rome founded a colony at Fregellae; she thereby embroiled herself irrevocably with the Samnites and in the following year became involved even more closely than hitherto with the affairs of Campania. Neapolis (Naples) appealed to Rome in 327 (see here) and a treaty was concluded in 326. An attempt to win a decisive victory over the Samnites in 321 led to the disastrous defeat of the Caudine Forks. The scale of the disaster is again indicated by the patriotic fictions reported for the subsequent years in the Roman tradition; again the check was momentary, with the Via Appia linking Rome and Campania being built in 312 (it eventually reached Brundisium (Brindisi) where the pillars marking its end may be seen a few yards from the modern steamer terminal). When peace was made with the Samnites in 304, that was for them effectively the end. Roman control of Samnium was followed in due course by the foundation of colonies at Beneventum (268) and Aesernia (263). At the same time, the establishment of Roman control over Italy opened the way for the long-distance transhumance agriculture of the second century (see here).
A last attempt was made to resist the rise of Rome by a coalition of Samnites, Gauls, Etruscans and Umbrians, destroyed when the Samnites and Gauls were defeated at Sentinum in 295 (an event noticed by the Greek historian Duris of Samos); thereafter it was simply a question of mopping-up. The only wars Rome fought on Italian soil south of the Po valley down to the great Italian rebellion of 91 were wars against the invaders Pyrrhus and Hannibal and very minor wars, in response to the appeal of the governing class of Volsinii in 264, and to suppress the isolated revolts of Falerii and Fregellae in 241 and 125.
The reasons for Rome’s success in conquering and holding Italy are manifold. Supposed factors such as the absence of an attack on Italy by Alexander the Great are a red herring, nor does Rome’s geographical position provide much help in explaining anything after the very early stages. Clearly in some cases, such as that of Neapolis, the fact that Rome was a tolerably civilized power helped and in other cases, such as that of Volsinii, the fact of her being aristocratically governed opened the way for her to intervene (see here). Rome’s eventual neutralization of the Gallic invaders was also important, but the crucial factor is to be found in the generosity and flexibility of the ways in which she gradually bound the rest of Italy to herself and the manpower upon which she could call as a result. Furthermore, the gradual incorporation of Italy by Rome helps to explain the nature and logic of Roman imperialism. It is thereafter the success with which Rome expanded and her willingness to share the fruits of expansion which underpin her strength; this was built upon the consensus, both of the Roman political system and of the Italian confederacy, from the late fourth to the early second century.
The group of communities with which Rome was most intimately involved was, as we have seen, that composed of the Latin cities; she and each of them were in principle equal, possessed of certain reciprocal rights, commercium, or the right to conclude valid contracts, conubium, or the right to contract marriages of which the offspring were legitimate, migratio, or the right to change domicile and acquire the citizenship of the new domicile, and (after 471, see here) the right to vote in one regional voting unit chosen by lot in a community of temporary domicile.2 These rights were no doubt mostly traditional, regulated by the foedus Cassianum of 493 (see here).
Rome and the Latin cities divided up the booty and the land which they acquired as a result of joint military enterprises. Although there is no evidence for the Latin communities, we may presume that they like Rome assigned land so acquired individually, viritim, to members of their own citizen bodies. What also happened was that the Latin League as a body founded colonies which were additional Latin communities, self-governing and possessed of the same reciprocal rights as the old Latin cities.
With the end of the war against the Latins in 338, Rome incorporated many of the disaffected communities into her own citizen body; there remained separate, however, some of the original Latin cities and some colonies. In addition the status of civitas sine suffragio, citizenship without the vote, was conferred on the Campanians, and on the cities of Fundi and Formiae (Livy viii, 14, 10).
The Roman incorporation of some of the Latin communities into her own citizen body was an act which had precedents. Part of the process by which Rome achieved hegemony over Italy was the actual extension of Roman territory, ager Romanus, and some extension had already taken place before 338; there were two ways in which this happened and they help to explain the relative superiority of Rome over the Latins in 338.
Rome had fought the war against Veii largely on her own account, as she was later to fight her wars against the rest of Etruria and to become involved in Campania, although the Latins lay between; the consequent access of land, booty or mere influence accrued to Rome alone. Such land, distributed to Roman citizens, led to an increase in those possessed of enough land to equip themselves as heavily-armed soldiers (and to an increase in the number of regional voting units, tribus, tribes, into which the Roman people was divided).
Rome had also increased her territory already before 338 by the incorporation (in circumstances the details of which escape us) of other communities, perhaps Crustumeria during the monarchy (for extension of Roman territory during the monarchy, see here), Tusculum perhaps early in the fourth century.
Civitas sine suffragio, citizenship without the vote, on the other hand, is an innovation of the settlement