This chapter is about Greek culture, but there is a political aspect too: Hannibal promised freedom to Italian Greeks, but not all welcomed him, nor were his promises kept. Scipio at Syracuse enjoyed Greek lifestyle, including attending the gymnasium, an institution suspect among Romans for perceived immorality; but it had a paramilitary function, especially in Sicily. Scipio’s promotion of south Italian Greeks is illustrated by the career of Sextus Digitius from Paestum. Hannibal’s command of Greek is discussed (also in Appendix 13.1, on Greek ‘letters’, taught him by Spartan Sosylus). After enduring an Athenian philosopher lecturing at Ephesus on generalship he expressed impatience in frank if inelegant Greek. Religious and cultural hellenism at Rome and Carthage is explored, with special attention to Livius Andronicus’ invention of a Latin literature, and the Carthaginian philosopher Hasdrubal, self-reinvented as ‘Clitomachus’. Barcid Iberian city foundations are assessed, Hannibal’s in Asia Minor postponed to Chapter 17.

This chapter examines the ways in which the sovereign, monocultural, and monist state that was dominant in Latin America starting in the nineteenth century has mutated over the last thirty-six years. It begins by offering a description of the initially dominant model and then introduces the multicultural liberal and radical intercultural models that replaced it by politically and legally recognizing the cultural diversity that characterizes Latin American societies. The chapter then explores the discursive and practical challenges generated by illegal normative systems (such as those managed by guerilla or paramilitary groups, or criminal organizations), and by extralegal normative system (such as the regulation of private property in peripheral urban neighborhoods) which compete with the sovereignty of states and official law. The constitutional bloc, the Inter-American Human Rights System, and bilateral or multilateral treaties signed by Latin American states further pluralize legal creation and weaken the concept of absolute state sovereignty. This chapter characterizes these developments as instances of either weak or strong legal pluralism.