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Tam Firmum Municipium: The Romanization of Volaterrae and its Cultural Implications*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2012

Nicola Terrenato
Affiliation:
University of Durham

Extract

The aim of the present paper is to reassess the events connected with the Romanization of the Etruscan metropolis of Volaterrae in the light of recent archaeological findings. The results of the Cecina Valley survey and of other related fieldwork have prompted a full reconsideration of the issue: indeed, they show a very different picture when compared with some of the recent mainstream reconstructions of the making of central Roman Italy; in particular, they are in sharp contrast with what was found in other Tyrrhenian regions, such as Southern Etruria or Campania. In line with these developments, recent local work in various parts of Italy now strongly suggests the need to consider each area, almost each civitas, individually, leaving aside for the moment overarching models based on insufficient data. This appears to resonate with a wider and growing realization that the process of Romanization, all over the Empire, exhibits a very heterogeneous and dialectic character, so much so that the appropriateness of the very term has often been put in question. For this reason, Romanization will be used here only in its weakest sense, simply as a convenient term covering the events involved in the creation of a new and unified political entity, disclaiming any assumptions concerning the acculturation of non-Roman ethnic groups. What is clearly emerging is a need for a new generation of regional studies, with the aim of carefully charting the trajectory of each community towards incorporation in the Roman state and working towards the creation of far more robust and informed syntheses. The present paper strives to make a contribution in this direction.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright ©Nicola Terrenato 1998. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 For Etruria: Carandini, A. (ed.), La romanizzazion dell'Etruria: il territorio di Vulci (1985)Google Scholar. For Campania: Frederiksen, M., ‘I cambiamenti delle strutture agrarie nella tarda repubblica: la Campania’, in SRPS I, 265–87Google Scholar, more clearly than in idem, Campania (1984); diversity within Etruria was already suggested in Vallat, J. P., ‘Les structures agraires de l'ltalie républicaine’, AnnESC 42 (1987), 181218Google Scholar; see also P. Van Dommelen, ‘Roman peasants and rural organization in Central Italy: an archaeological perspective’, in Scott, E. (ed.), Theoretical Roman Archaeology (1993), 167–86.Google Scholar

2 For an analogous terminological position, see Curti, 188. Recent literature on the issue, as far as the provinces are concerned, includes: Mattingly, D. J., Dialogues in Roman Imperialism (1997), esp. 5164Google ScholarWoolf, G., ‘Beyond Romans and natives’, WA 28.3 (1997) 339–50Google Scholar; J. Webster and N. Cooper (eds), Roman Imperialism: Post-Colonial Perspectives (1996). For a fuller discussion of my views of this issue with reference to Italy, Terrenato, N., ‘The Romanization of Italy: global acculturation or cultural bricolage?’, in Forcey, C., Hawthorne, J. and Witcher, R. (eds), TRAC 97 (1998), 20–7Google Scholar.

3 For Volaterrae, see G. Cateni and A. Maggiani, ‘Volaterra dalla prima età del Ferro al V secolo a.c.’, in Aspetti della cultura di Volterra Etrusca (1997), 43–92. In general on the process of urbanization in archaic Central Italy, see Pacciarelli, M., ‘Ricerche topografiche a Vulci’, Studi Etruschi 56 (19891990), 1148Google Scholar; M. Rendeli, Città aperte (1993).

4 Liv. 10.12.

5 For the history and sources on Volaterrae, Harris, passim; Hohti, P., ‘Aulus Caecina the Volaterran’, in Studies in the Romanization of Etruria, AIRF 5 (1975), 405–33Google Scholar.

6 The Cecina Valley Survey, scheduled to be completed in 1999, is aimed at covering a representative sample of the Cecina basin. This is an area of about 800 sq. km, which represents more than a third of the entire territory of Volaterrae. For a full description of the methodology used, see Terrenato, N., ‘La ricognizione della Val di Cecina’, in M. Bernardi (ed.), Archeologia del Paesaggio (1992), 561–96Google Scholar. Particula attention has been paid to the recording of the factors influencing the quality of the recovered data; Terrenato, N. and Ammerman, A. J., ‘Visibility and site recovery in the Cecina Valley Survey, Italy’, JFA 23 (1996), 91109Google Scholar. For a preliminary report, Terrenato, N. and Saggin, A., ‘Ricognizioni archeologiche nel territorio di Volterra’, Archeologia Classica 46 (1994), 465–82Google Scholar.

7 The scarcity of diagnostic pottery present in rural contexts before the Hellenistic period makes it very difficult to assess precisely the scale of the phenomenon: human occupation before the third century B.C. is very likely to be strongly under-represented in the results of most surveys in the region. A similar situation is described in G. Barker (ed.), A Mediterranean Valley (1995), 181 ff.

8 Settlements with high residential status will be conventionally termed villas, without entering into the complex debate on the definition of Roman rural site types; cf. Van Dommelen, op. cit. (n. 1), 171; Vallat, J. P., ‘De la prospection à la synthése d'histoire rural’, in Pailler, J. M. (ed.), Actualité de l'Antiquité (1989), 101–27Google Scholar. At Cecina, there are only a very few doubtful cases in this admittedly rough differentiation between villas and villages. For villages in Italy, Frederiksen, M., ‘Changes in the pattern of settlement’, in Zanker, P. (ed.), Hellenismus in Mittelitaliens (1975), 341–55Google Scholar; J. R. Patterson, ‘Village settlement in Italy’, RAC 2, forthcoming.

9 The most perceptible discontinuity in this rather uneventful landscape history is datable between the second half of the first century B.C. and the first decades of the first century A.D., when a significant number of new sites make their appearance, Munzi, esp. the graph on fig. 3; for the very slow decline in late Roman times, Terrenato and Saggin, op. cit. (n. 6),475 ff.

10 It is enough to compare the distribution maps produced by two main survey projects, the South Etruria and the Ager Cosanus; Potter, T. W., The Changing Landscape of South Etruria (1979)Google Scholar; I. Attolini et al., ‘Political geography and productive geography between the valleys of the Albegna and the Fiora in northern Etruria’, in G. Barker and J. Lloyd (eds), Roman Landscapes (1991), 142–52, with bibl.

11 cf. Dyson, S. L., ‘Settlement patterns in the Ager Cosanus’, JFA 5 (1978), 257Google Scholar. It must also be considered that the few sites which have a size compatible with that of a villa (and which have been interpreted as villages because of the absence of quality artefacts) often occupy strong defensible positions on steep hilltops, a locational choice hardly compatible with residential settlements; it seems in other words highly unlikely that the absence of villas could simply be put down to a hypothetical local scarcity of decorative elements. This interpretation has been confirmed by recent geophysical work carried out on several large sites in the middle Cecina Valley by S. Kay: the results show non-rectangular structures which are incompatible with villa architecture.

12 Carandini, A., ‘Sviluppo e crisi delle manifatture rurali e urbane’, in SRPS I, 253Google Scholar; idem, Schiavi in Italia (1988), 121–9, discussed in Van Dommelen, op. cit. (n. 1). The general validity of this simple economic model is being reassessed (cf. Section VII). In the 1980s it was often assumed to be dominant in most of arable peninsular Italy, but it had really been tested only in limited areas (mainly within Latium, Campania, and South Etruria). The areas not conforming to this model (such as some districts covered by the South Etruria Survey or parts of northern Etruria) were generally described as ‘residual modes of production’; Torelli, M., ‘Osservazioni conclusive su Lazio, Umbria ed Etruria’, in SRPS I, 426Google Scholar; contrast the recent works cited at n. 13.

13 Rieti appears as a clear instance of strong continuity, Coccia, S. and Mattingly, D., ‘Settlement history, environment and human exploitation of an intermontane basin in the central Apennines: the Rieti survey 1988–1991, Part I’, PBSR 60 (1992), 271–4Google Scholar; eidem, Settlement history, environment and human exploitation of an intermontane basin in the central Apennines: the Rieti survey 1988–1991, Part II’, PBSR 63 (1995), 115 ffGoogle Scholar. In the Biferno Valley, Romanization is seen as ‘disastrous’, but only ‘in the long run’, since, by the middle Empire, it results in the creation of latifundia and depopulation, Barker, op. cit. (n. 7), 217 ff.

14 Mills, N., ‘Luni: settlement and landscape in the Ager Lunensis’, in Barker, G. and Hodges, R. (eds), Archaeology and Italian Society (1981), 261–8Google Scholar.

15 These sites are not particularly abundant and they probably represent only a small fraction of the complete human landscape, and one that is biased towards large, monumental and particularly visible sites. The eight sites considered here are: Atlante, 178, 211, 218, 219, 277, 278, 280, 281 (Sites 112.29.1, 113.111, 113.169, 113.177.2, 119.4, 119.7, 119.26, 119.40).

16 Donati, F., Luschi, L., Paoletti, M. and Parra, M. C., ‘Lo scavo della villa romana di San Vincenzino presso Cecina (Livorno)’, Rassegna di Archeologia 8 (1989), 263399Google Scholar; Ciampoltrini, G., ‘Mosaici d'eta giulio claudia nell'Etruria settentrionale’, Prospettiva 69 (1993), 5265Google Scholar; E. Fiumi, Volterra Etrusca e Romana (1976), 52.

17 There seems to be an interesting connection between the decline of private munificence in urban centres and a trend toward élite expenditure on villa improvements between the late second and the third century A.D.; Terrenato and Saggin, op. cit. (n. 6), 479.

18 A strong economic function common to most villas is implicit in many analyses of this settlement type, e.g. Carandini, A., ‘La villa romana’, in Storia di Roma 4 (1989), 101–30Google Scholar; X. Lafon, ‘Les villas de l'ltalie imperiale’, in L'ltalie de Auguste à Dioclétien (1994), 219–26; Curti, 175–6.

19 A. Carandini, ‘I paesaggi agrari dell'Italia romana visti a partire dall'Etruria’, in L'ltalie, op. cit. (n. 18), 167–74, where the Ager Volaterranus is ascribed to a category characterized by the ‘ville periferiche’. The latter would be those situated in the ‘longinqua regio Italiae’.

20 The term colonus has a wide range of meanings and presents some ambiguities: Neeve, P. W. De, Colonus (1984)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 4; Garnsey, P. D. A., ‘Non-slave labour in the Roman world’, in Garnsey, P. D. A. (ed.), Non-slave Labour in the Graeco-Roman World (1980), 3447Google Scholar.

21 Customary ethnic law could occasionally survive in rural areas, and be de facto enforced, long after the official imposition of Roman right; C. R. Whittaker,‘Rural labour in three Roman provinces’, in Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 20), 73–99; with specific reference to Etruria, Mazzarino, S., ‘Sociologia del mondo etrusco e problemi della tarda etruscità’, Historia 6 (1957), 98122Google Scholar.

22 The sudden increase in the frequency of élite rural burials should probably be seen in connection with the shift in the centre of gravity of the aristocracies from the city to the countryside, described above (n. 17). Also, there might have been a degree of conscious revival of pre-Roman traits in the Middle Empire, similar to what happened in some Western provincial contexts.

23 Pack, E., ‘M’ Anaenius Pharianus’, ZPE 43 (1981), 249–70Google Scholar, Van Dommelen, op. cit. (n. 1), 181 ff.

24 Atlante, 218 (Site 113.169); Casini, N., ‘Il sarcofago di Apricula’, Archeologia Classica 9 (1957), 7687Google Scholar. The burial of Pestinia is not clearly associated with a villa structure, but is probably to be interpreted as such. For the termination -na see Kaimio, J., ‘The ousting of Etruscan by Latin in Etruria’, in Studies in the Romanization of Etruria, AIRF 5 (1975), 146ffGoogle Scholar.

25 H. Rix, Etruskische Texte (1991), Cl.1.1407; idem, Das Etruskische Cognomen (1961), 96, 157, 186 for the relationship between terminations -u and -na.

26 The best example is represented by the tomb at Cassia; G. De Marinis, Topografia storica della Val d'Elsa in periodo etrusco (1977), 64; Atlante, 219 (Site 113.177.2). Moreover, the presence of an iron hatchet among the grave-goods at this site would deserve fuller consideration.

27 See Section v.

28 A very similar situation, supported by crystal clear epigraphic evidence, in Fontana, S., ‘Romanization and Punic persistencies in Tripolitania: the funerary evidence’, in Keay, S. and Terrenato, N. (eds), Italy and the West. Comparative Issues in Romanization, forthcoming.Google Scholar

29 Ciampoltrini, G., ‘Le stele funerarie d'età imperiale dell'Etruria settentrionale’, Prospettiva 30 (1982), 212Google Scholar; a re-examination of the problem has recently been carried out by L. Camin.

30 The excavation at San Mario took place between 1992 and 1996 under the direction of Laura Motta and has been funded by Earthwatch Institute. L. Motta, L. Camin and N. Terrenato, ‘Un sito rurale nel territorio di Volterra’, Bollettino di Archeologia 22–4, forthcoming.

31 As shown by the example at Giardino, in the Ager Cosanus, M. G. Celuzza, ‘Un insediamento di contadini: la fattoria di Giardino’, in Carandini, op. cit. (n. 1), 106–7, or that of Monte Forco, in the Ager Veientanus, Jones, G. B. D., ‘Capena and the Ager Capenas’, PBSR 31 (1963), 147–58Google Scholar; such sites are seen as ‘too grand’ for the poorest peasants in Foxhall, L., ‘The dependent tenant: landholding and labour in Italy and Greece’, JRS 80 (1990), 97114Google Scholar, but their difference with San Mario may perhaps be explained also in cultural terms. An analysis of the settlement type in J. P. Vallat, ‘Survey archaeology and rural history—a difficult but productive relationship’, in Barker and Lloyd, op. cit. (n. 10), 11–12. See also Garnsey, P. D. A., ‘Where did Italian peasants live?’, PCPhS 205 (1979), 125Google Scholar.

32 N. Terrenato, ‘A tale of three cities. The Romanization of northern coastal Etruria’, in Keay and Terrenato, op. cit. (n. 28).

33 Munzi, 34.

34 Cateni, G. (ed.), Il teatro romano di Volterra (1993)Google Scholar. Recent excavations within the area of the porticus pone scaenam have revealed that space for the grand complex was made by means of a massive land reclamation project involving the levelling of a deep and otherwise uninhabitable ravine on the periphery of the city; Regoli, E. and Terrenato, N. (eds), Il Museo Civico Archeohgico di Rosignano Marittimo (1998), V.4.Google Scholar

35 Munzi, 35–6; A. Furiesi, L'acqua a Volterra (forthcoming).

36 M. Cristofani, ‘Volterra’, NS 1973, Suppl. 1; Fiumi, op. cit. (n. 16); Regoli and Terrenato, op. cit. (n. 34).

37 Atlante, 189, 194 (Sites n. 12.2, 12.3, 41); E. Fiumi, ‘Volterra’, NS (1955), 114.

38 Munzi, 40; E. Benelli, Le iscrizioni bilingui etrusco-latine (1994). A massacre of Volaterran aristocrats after 80 B.C. is suggested on the basis of very questionable calculations by F. Coarelli and O. Luchi, in M. Cristofani (ed.), Caratteri dell'Ellenismo nelle urne etrusche (1977), 142–4; but cf. the much more convincing position of M. Cristofani, ibid., 80, 144, and the recent critique in C. Smith, ‘Etruria and the Romans: cultural and material transformations in the Republican period’, RAC 2, forthcoming. The use of urns at Volaterrae is attested at least until the first century A.D.; Nielsen, M., ‘The lid sculptures of Volaterran cinerary urns’, in Studies in the Romanization of Etruria, AIRF 5 (1975), 387–9Google Scholar.

39 Cateni, op. cit. (n. 34), with the new interpretation in M. Munzi, ‘Due boll dei Caecinae dal teatro di Volterra’, in Epigrafia della produzione e della distribuzione. Actes de la VIIe rencontre sur l'ipigraphie (1994). 385–95 ( =AE 1994, 610).

40 The huge connected reclamation of uninhabited land is clearly meant to make room for the theatre complex with no destruction of existing buildings, see n. 34.

41 A convincing refutation of the false dichotomy Roman/native in Woolf, op. cit. (n. 2); also idem, ‘The formation of Roman provincial cultures’, in J. Metzler, M. Millett, N. Roymans and J. Slofstra (eds), Integration in the Early Roman West (1995), 9–18; for the composite and highly heterogeneous character of the resulting cultural set, Terrenato, op. cit. (n. 2).

42 For the archaic burials in the countryside, Carafa, P., ‘Organizzazione territoriale e sfruttamento delle risorse economiche nell'agro volterrano tra l'Orientalizzante e l'età ellenistica’, Studi Etruschi 59 (1994), 109–21Google Scholar. Some of those very well known later, such as the Caecinae (Latinization of the Etruscan ceicna), are sometimes attested in early inscriptions elsewhere, Hohti, op. cit. (n. 5), 414 ff.

43 The anecdote is quoted in Rawson, E., ‘Caesar, Etruria and the Disciplina Etrusca’, JRS 68 (1978), 132–52Google Scholar. The known families are attested as knights only from the late first century B.C. and as senators in the Augustan period, Torelli, 295–8, 331–2; idem, ‘Ascesa al Senato e rapporti con i territori d'origine. Italia: Regio VII (Etruria)’, Tituli 5 (1982), 283–4, 290.

44 The attitude of the Etruscans during the Social War is analysed in Gabba, E., ‘Le origini della Guerra Sociale e la vita politica romana dopo l'89 a.C.’, Athenaeum 32 (1954), 46 ff.Google Scholar; their position appears mostly conservative from the times of the Gracchan reforms and was even more clearly shown when Etruscans and Umbrians came to Rome to oppose Drusus’ reform; Torelli 313 ff.; Harris, 212 ff.; Rawson, op. cit. (n. 43).

45 e.g. in Harris, 266; Luchi, O., ‘I territori di Volterra e di Chiusi’, in SRPS I, 413–20Google Scholar. Torelli, op. cit. (n. 12), 424.

46 Harris, 264.

47 ‘omni periculo’, Cic., Fam. 13.4.2.

48 Munzi ( =AE 1994, 612).

49 Slofstra, J., ‘An anthropological approach to the study of Romanization processes’, in Brandt, R. and Slofstra, J. (eds), Roman and Native in the Low Countries (1983), 71104Google Scholar; Millett, M., The Romanization of Britain (1990), 66 ff.Google Scholar

50 The wider historical value of this document has hardly ever been considered, on the strong assumption that the reorganization of the territory of Volaterrae could not be stopped. Consequently, the letter has mainly been seen simply as an example of rhetorical ability; e.g. Deniaux, E., ‘Les recommandations de Ciceron et la colonisation césarienne: le terres de Volterra’, Cahiers du Centre G. Glotz 2 (1991), 215–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, eadem, Clientèles et pouvoir à l'époque de Cicéron (1993), 333–58. The acquaintance between Cicero and Orca is attested by earlier correspondence (Fam. 13.6A-B).

51 The mention of immortal gods will be discussed in Section VI, while the transparent reference to Caesar is probably connected with guidelines about land distribution to veterans emanating from the dictator himself (App., BC 2.13.94; Suet., Jul. 38); Brunt, P. A., Italian Manpower (1971), 320Google Scholar; De Neeve, op. cit. (n. 20), 131.

52 Which took place around 69 B.C., Harris, 281; it is interesting to note the celebrated oration includes a general political statement on the legitimacy of the punishment suffered by the Volaterrans in terms of civil rights; Hohti, op. cit. (n. 5), 421–7. On its wider political significance, Frier, B. W., The Rise of the Roman Jurists (1985), 97104Google Scholar.

53 The material survival of some aristocratic families is a well-known phenomenon, already in Torelli or Harris, 114 ff.; what has not been explored enough is its connection with other aspects of social continuity.

54 Cic., , Phil. 8.23.Google Scholar

55 App., , BC 3.6.42Google Scholar.

56 Lib. Col. 214.10 L.

57 Cic., , Att. 16.8.2Google Scholar.

58 Torelli, 336 ff.

59 Munzi; for the brick stamps : Munzi, op. cit. (n. 39); for an hypothesis on the location of the house of the Caecinae on the Palatine and the millionaire prices paid for it, Carandini, op. cit. (n. 12, 1988), 363, 369 ff.; E. Papi in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, s.v. Domus: L. Licinius Crassus.

60 Torelli, 297.

61 Nam., Rut., de red. 1.452 ff.Google Scholar; on their political role, Jones, A. H. M, The Later Roman Empire (1964), 229Google Scholar. For the attractive conjecture that these families were still protecting dependent small farmers in late Roman times, Motta, L., ‘I paesaggi di Volterra nel tardoantico’, Archeologia Medievale 25 (1997), 245–68Google Scholar.

62 This is a possibility which has occasionally been suggested in the literature, but never explored in any depth; e.g. P. D. A. Garnsey, ‘Introduction’, in Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 20); Rathbone, D. W., ‘The slave mode of production in Italy’, JRS 73 (1983), 160–8Google Scholar; Garnsey, P. D. A. and Woolf, G., ‘Patronage of the rural poor in the Roman world’, in Wallace-Hadrill, A. (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Society (1989), 153–70Google Scholar.

63 Harris, 114–29; Torelli, M., La società etrusca (1987)Google Scholar; in some reconstructions, the status of the dependent class is thought to have improved between the archaic period, when they were little more than serfs, and the Hellenistic one, when they acquired some rights. The massive spread of farms characterizing the third to second century B.C. in Etruria has been connected with this emancipation, which would have been brought about by a period of unrest and riots; Torelli, M., Storia degli Etruschi (1984), 257–8Google Scholar. They have been assimilated to the Thessalian penestai, whose condition (also debated) was however much closer to serfdom; Heurgon, J., ‘Les pénestes étrusques chez Denys d'Halicarnasse (IX, 5, 4)’, Latomus 18 (1959), 713–23Google Scholar. A full reconsideration now in Benelli, E., ‘Sui cosiddetti penesti etruschi’, Par. Pass. 51 (1996)Google Scholar, forthcoming, where, within a comprehensive critique of the current wisdom, the existence of strong social dependence in Etruscan society is still maintained.

64 Harris, 202 ff.; their position could perhaps be seen as similar to the clients in archaic Rome, cf. A. Drummond, ‘Early Roman clientes’, in Wallace-Hadrill, op. cit. (n. 62), 89–115; De Neeve, op. cit. (n. 20), 187–92; Cornell, T. J., The Beginnings of Rome (1995), 289–92.Google Scholar

65 S. Alcock, ‘Greece: a landscape of resistance?’, in Mattingly, op. cit. (n. 2), 103–15. The fact that the Roman Empire could accommodate strongly conservative communities with little apparent friction should probably be seen as an indication of its flexible and heterogeneous nature.

66 M. Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (1948), 154–62; the slow-moving character of Volatérran society (which would be labelled ‘cold’ in structuralist terminology) should not, however, be exaggerated into complete ‘timelessness’.

67 Lachmann, 348–50; Harris 31–40, with bibl.; for its north Etruscan context, Colonna, G., ‘Società e cultura a Volsinii’, Ann. Fond. Museo Faina 2 (1985), 101–31Google Scholar. See also Valvo, A., La Profezia di Vegoia (1988)Google Scholar.

68 Harris, 119 ff., rightly points out that servi is simply the closest Latin term. On a different position Benelli, op. cit. (n. 63). See also Colonna, op. cit. (n. 67), where their presence is used to date the origin of the text before the Hellenistic reforms.

69 The emphasis placed on the avoidance of the moving of boundaries by the text should be interpreted in a wider sense than just a reminder against illegal, stealthy tampering with markers, which was a crime in Roman eyes as well (cf. RE, s. v. termini moti). The text was clearly meant to resist major land reorganization, such as would have been caused by agrarian reforms, Harris, 39 ff.

70 Much ink has been spilt on the chronology of the text, Heurgon, J., ‘The date of Vegoia's prophecy’, JRS 49 (1959), 41–5Google Scholar; Torelli, 335; Harris, 35–40; R. Turcan, ‘Encore la prophetie de Végoia’, in Mélanges offerts à J. Heurgon (1976), 1009–19.

71 Torelli, 335, and on prodigies esp. n. 183.

72 The bold suggestion that in the imperial period land systems were still influenced by Etruscan traditions in several areas of central and northern Italy was advanced by Santo Mazzarino, op. cit. (n. 21). Analysing the documents concerning the pagus Arusnatium (a village in the Venetiae) he argued that the coexistence of fixed boundaries of divine origin and communal land (mainly pasture; pascua pro indiviso) was a signature feature of Etruscan culture, brought so far north at the time of Etruscan expansion into the Po plain.

73 In contrast, a radical extinction of pre-Roman cultures is envisaged in Curti, 185.

74 cf. n. 13. A general overview in Curti. Cf. also the papers on Italy in Keay and Terrenato, op. cit. (n. 28).

75 The great heterogeneity of Italy was already pointed out, when discussing the second century A.D., by Patterson, J. R., ‘Crisis: what crisis?’, PBSR 55 (1987), 115–46Google Scholar; this makes syntheses more difficult, but not altogether impossible, T. Potter, Roman Italy (2nd edn, 1992), 98; Terrenato, op. cit. (n. 2).

76 A very clear synthesis of the debate on Roman imperialism in G. Woolf, ‘European social development and Roman imperialism’, in Frontiéres d'empire (1993), 13–20, with bibl. The wide variety of views held on the subject is perhaps best exemplified by the papers and discussion in W. V. Harris (ed.), The Imperialism of Mid- Republican Rome (1984). My own position is spelled out in N. Terrenato, ‘Introduction’, in Keay and Terrenato, op. cit. (n. 28).

77 For instance that of Camerinum, Harris, passim.

78 As in the complex case of Capua, for instance; Frederiksen, Campania, op. cit. (n. 1), but see Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 31). In contrast, massive disruption as a result of Romanization is maintained in Curti, 186.

79 For Hellenization within the sphere of élite fashions, Zanker, op. cit. (n. 8); Morel, J.-P., ‘The transformation of Italy, 300–133 B.C. : the evidence of archaeology’, CAH 8 (1989), 477516Google Scholar; Curti, 181–5. For archaic horizontal social mobility, Ampolo, C., ‘Demarato. Osservazioni sulla mobilita sociale arcaica’, DdA 9–10 (19761977), 333–45Google Scholar.

80 As already argued in Schiavone, A., ‘La struttura nascosta. Una grammatica dell'economia romana’, in Storia di Roma 4 (1989), 769Google Scholar (esp. 28–32); also Vallat, op. cit. (n. 31), 14–15.

81 For attempts at avoiding the dichotomy (but centred on gradualism rather than heterogeneity), Rathbone, D. W., ‘The development of agriculture in the Ager Cosanus during the Roman Republic’, JRS 71 (1981), 1023Google Scholar; Vallat, op. cit. (n. 1). New perspectives in Woolf, G., ‘Imperialism, empire and the integration of the Roman economy’, WA 23.3 (1992), 283–93Google Scholar.

82 For a summary of the debate, with bibl., Patterson, op. cit. (n. 75), Carandini, op. cit. (n. 12, 1981); new perspectives in D. Foraboschi, ‘Economie plurali e interdipendenze’, in L'ltalie, op. cit. (n. 8), 215–18.

83 See above, n. 18; in an innovative perspective for the Western provinces, Millett, op. cit. (n. 49), 91–9; cf. the Conclusions in Carandini, A., Ricci, G., D'Alessio, M. T., De Davide, C. and Terrenato, N., ‘La villa dell' Auditorium dall'età arcaica all'eta imperiale’, Römische Mitteilungen, 104 (1997), 117–48Google Scholar.

84 As already in Foxhall, op. cit. (n. 31); for the conventional view, Garnsey, P. D. A. and Saller, R., The Roman Empire (1987), 4363.Google Scholar

85 Terrenato, op. cit. (n. 32).