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Cover: Inscription from Aquileia mentioning the triumvir lucius Manlius, 2nd c. B.C. (courtesy of the Museo Archeologico Nazionaledi Aquileia, inv. no. 1).

Page 8-9: B. Rhenanus, P. Vellei Paterculi Historiae Romanae, 1520 (Basel), 9.

Page 42-43: the ager Cosanus from the air (after Castagnoli, f. 1956. “la centuriazione di Cosa”, MAAR 24, tav. 24).

Page 122-123: A view of the landscape across the liri Valley (G. R. Bellini, A. launaro and M. Millett).

Page 276-277: Black glazed pottery with Herculean stamps (M. Vitale, SAA).

Page 332-333: Relief commemorating the founding ceremony of the Augustan colony of Aquileia with the representation of thesulcus primigenius (courtesy of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Aquileia, inv. n. 49100).

ISBN 978-88-6060-662-4

Roman Republican Colonization New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ancient History

edited by

tesse D. Stek and Jeremia Pelgrom

PAPeRS Of tHe ROyAl NetHeRlANDS INStItute IN ROMe - VOluMe 62 - 2014

Contents

PRefACe 7

INtRODuCtION

Roman Colonization under the Republic: historiographical contextualisation of a paradigm 10Jeremia Pelgrom and Tesse D. Stek

PARt ICONtextuAlIzING ROMAN RePuBlICAN COlONIzAtION. BACKGROuNDS,DefINItIONS AND COMPARANDA

Private Vis, Public Virtus. family agendas during the early Roman expansion 45Nicola Terrenato

the nature of Roman strategy in Mid-Republican colonization and road building 60Guy Bradley

Roman colonization and the city-state model 73Jeremia Pelgrom

the city-state model and Roman Republican colonization: sacred landscapes as a proxy for colonial socio-political organization 87Tesse D. Stek

livy 27.38 and the vacatio militiae of the maritime colonies 106Luuk de Ligt

PARt IICOlONIAl lANDSCAPeS. COlONIStS AND NAtIVeS SHAPING tHe uRBAN, NAtuRAlAND SOCIAl eNVIRONMeNt

Gellius, Philip II and a proposed end to the ‘model-replica’ debate 125Jamie Sewell

Republican colonization and early urbanization in Central Adriatic Italy: the valley of the River Flosis 141Frank Vermeulen

Strangers in Paradise.latins (and some other non-Romans) in colonial context: a short story of territorial complexity 160Michel Tarpin

Colonisation romaine et ‘espaces ripariens’ dans les Civitates Campaniae de Sylla aux triumvirs 193Ella Hermon

early colonization in the Pontine region (Central Italy) 211Peter Attema, Tymon de Haas and Marleen Termeer

le colonie di luceria e Venusia. Dinamiche insediative, urbanizzazione e assetti agrari 233Maria Luisa Marchi

Roman colonial landscapes: Interamna lirenas and its territory through antiquity 255Giovanna R. Bellini, Alessandro Launaro and Martin Millett

PARt IIItHe RelIGIOuS DIMeNSION Of ROMAN COlONIzAtION

tutelary deities in Roman citizen colonies 279Marion Bolder-Boos

Il culto di Apollo nella colonizzazione romana 295Andrea Carini

Il santuario di ercole ad Alba fucens: nuovi dati per lo studio delle fasi più antiche della colonialatina 309Daniela Liberatore

PARt IVtHe CReAtION Of ROMAN CeNtRAlIty

Effigies parvae simulacraque Romae.la fortuna di un modello teorico repubblicano: leptis Magna colonia romana 335Mario Torelli

Qua aratrum ductum est. la colonizzazione romana come chiave interpretativa della Roma delle origini 357Simone Sisani

Publications of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome 405

1 Well summarized for instance in Woolf 1993.2 e.g. Hingley 2005; Mattingly 1997.

3 Such as eckstein 2006.

Private Vis, Public Virtus.

Family agendas during the early Roman expansion

Nicola terrenato

IntroductionA renewed and more sophisticated interest in the colonization process in peninsular Italy is a welcome

recent trend in Roman Republican studies. Many of the contributors to this volume are responsible forimportant advances in this area, often with the result of turning accepted ideas, such as the militarycharacter of the colonies or their architectural or ritual imitation of Rome, on their heads (e.g. in thecontributions of Jamie Sewell, Guy Bradley, Mario torelli). In the context of this debate, it might be usefulto zoom out from the specifics of colonial foundations to look at the broader historical picture offered bythe first couple of centuries of Roman expansion, to see whether the revisionist approach to colonieswhich is so well represented here finds echoes in new ideas about the imperialism of Rome in general.More specifically, now that colonies, especially latin ones, are seen more as hybrid spaces where Romanand non-Romans interacted in complex ways, it is appropriate to ask whether similar phenomena thatblurred the basic ethnic boundaries were also present in the expansion process as a whole.

this is of course not the place to review the debate on Roman imperialism in general. It can be noted,however, that the classic interpretation and explanations1 have come under a fair amount of deconstructionand criticism from a wide variety of different quarters (cf. Bradley in this volume).2 While it is impossibleto generalize, it is clear that there are a number of scholars today who are attempting to redefine thecausative chain that leads to the emergence of the Roman empire. Many, for instance, do keep the focuson Roman agency but attempt to explain it in new ways. At a recent Roman Archaeology Conference, forinstance, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Roman rage and selective female infant exposure were allseriously considered as possible contributing factors to the expansionist behavior in three different papersby leading Roman historians. While perhaps surprising in their choices, these contributions clearly showthat Roman imperialism is no longer simply seen as an obvious response to the opportunities, challengesor threats Rome faced. Instead, an underlying prime mover needs to be postulated to explain an otherwiseperplexing behaviour. A similar tack is taken in those studies which emphasize the political instabilityaround Rome,3 except that in them the hidden cause is sought, perhaps more convincingly, not in theinternal workings of the expanding state, but rather on the wider Mediterranean scene.

In all this, what has not yet changed much is our view of how the actual process took place. Scholarshave tended to focus on the motivations of Roman aggression or on the conditions that made it successful.But it has so far remained a given that the Romans went out from their city and forced everybody elseinto submission in one way or another. In short, without coercion and threat there would have been noRoman empire. this means that the non-Romans involved in the process of empire-building are assumedto have had a really limited set of options in the face of Rome’s onslaught. they could give in early in thegame or fight on to the bitter end, but their decisions would not have a significant effect on the finaloutcome of the process. even post-colonial thought, which has in many ways revolutionized our

4 e.g. Van Dommelen 1998; Webster and Cooper 1996.5 terrenato 2005.6 Bénabou 1976, but the notion of Rome as a Räuber-

staat had already appeared in Schwegler 1853, which

in turn was based on Salvian.7 Keay and terrenato 2001; terrenato 1998.8 Here and later the word empire is used to refer to the do-

minion of Republican Rome and not to its political form.

9 Already in Münzer 1920, although the idea has been

strongly denied by others, e.g. Develin 1985.10 e.g. Blanton and fargher 2008.11 e.g. yoffee 2005.12 Motta and terrenato 2006; terrenato 2011.13 for instance emberling 2012; Small 2009.14 Rawlings 1999.

understanding of modern empires, has had only a limited impact in this specific historical instance ofcolonialism. the few scholars who have applied it in recent works4 have not got much further thanhighlighting the possibility that the conquered communities might have deployed forms of overt or covertresistance against Rome.5 this has, perhaps importantly, cast Roman expansion in a negative ethical light,downplaying the ‘civilizing mission’ and presenting the process in stark terms of exploitation and culturalgenocide.6 In any case, the actual evidence for Italian resistance to Rome is on the whole very limited, sothese attempts have definitely not resulted in a redefinition of the early stages of the Roman conquest. Itis only very recently that greater attention has been paid to the impact of decision-making by non-Romans.7 these works suggest that the Roman empire would have been very different (or perhaps wouldhave failed altogether), if the peoples who were absorbed into it had made radically different choicesthan they did. If this is indeed true, then it follows that any explanation of Roman expansion must alsoaccount for the agency of the non-Romans involved in the process. there should be, in other words,more to the phenomenon than just Roman military and political interventionism, whatever its cause mighthave been.

this paper aims at pushing the deconstruction even a little further, attacking the traditional view ofthe very process of military expansion. the provocative argument advanced here is that, at least in somecases, the annual consular campaigns of the Mid-Republic were geared to serve interests which wereother than those of the political abstraction called Rome. It is argued that private groups could temporarilyhijack the imperial machinery and use it to further their own goals, rather than those of the empire as awhole (cf. on such a model for early colonization also Attema et al. in this volume).8 the existence offactions and even actual political parties has, of course, been contemplated in a number of discussionsof Roman politics,9 so the concept of conflicting agendas within the empire is certainly not new. It hasgenerally been agreed, however, that these groups might have temporarily influenced the foreign policiesof Rome in one direction or the other, but that they did not substantially alter the nature of the expansion.Moreover, the factions have typically been conceptualized as completely internal to the political scene inRome, with little role played in them by other Italians. Is it possible instead to question even what hasalways been taken for granted: namely, that the conquest was indeed Roman, by suggesting instead thatinter-ethnic factions could, at least occasionally, rig the process and divert its rewards away from theactual sovereignty of Rome as a state?

It goes without saying that such an approach is informed by the body of recent political thinkingwhich looks at the agency of individuals and small groups within broader polities.10 this is a bottom-upperspective which has been successfully adopted to look at other early states and empires,11 but onlyrarely to the Romans, perhaps as a result of an entrenched perception of them as a near-perfect instanceof devotion to common goods and public virtues. Interestingly, comparable ideas are being tentativelyapplied to the period of state formation in Rome12 and elsewhere.13 these studies argue that, from thebeginning, elite groups did not entirely relinquish the power and prerogatives that they had held beforethe city was born. they always kept open the option of operating outside state rules and ideology, forinstance, waging private wars or suddenly switching their civic loyalty.14 long considered a dying vestige

of a vanished era, these phenomena might instead have been an integral and functional part of statedialectics in central Italy. In this case, the sorts of behavior reconstructed below could perhaps be seenas an adaptation of deeply rooted archaic mentalities to the brave new world of the Mid-Republic.

Necessarily, in what follows, elites, both Roman and non-Roman, will receive the lion’s share in thenarrative. this emphatically does not mean a return to the 19th-century idealist focus on great men andgreat deeds. It is primarily a question of historical visibility and of who was leading the groups whichcan be seen operating on the political scene. It should be noted in passing, however, that in thosevertically integrated social formations the actions at the top were more tightly connected with theconsensus of the whole group than in horizontally layered citizenships. furthermore, what is presentedhere is only a small part of a much larger and more complex argument about Mid-Republican imperialism,so necessarily the broader context of a comprehensive reconstruction is missing. It must be made clearthat no one is arguing that the processes illustrated here are representative of the whole early expansion,and even less of the entire span of the Roman conquest. they are a contribution to an embryology ofimperialism which can perhaps provide deeper insights into the true nature of the phenomenon than thesenile phase on which many interpreters, especially in the english-speaking literature, have tended toconcentrate on as a paradigm of the expansion process. there could have been, and there was for quitea while, a Roman empire without the conquest of Dacia or Britain, but there could be no empire beforehaving successfully dealt with the main city-states of western Central Italy.

The Plautii in the Fourth century B.C.to illustrate the ideas advanced above, the specific example of an elite Mid-Republican clan is taken

into consideration. the Plautii provide an extremely interesting instance, in which it is virtuallyunavoidable to attribute ulterior motives to them in their actions on behalf of the Roman state: namely,to see private agendas lurking under their official senatorial writ. they are, however, not at all noted forthis reason in any of the surviving literary accounts.15 Indeed, their actions are considered highly

fIG. 1A. Inscription on the cista ficoroni (courtesy of the

Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed

etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della Città di Roma).

fIG. 1B. Drawing of the cista ficoroni (after ficoroni 1745,

73).

15 As is the case of other contemporary figures, like

Manlius Capitolinus to name just one.

16 Ross taylor 1956.17 esp. CIL xIV 3212-15.18 Mommsen 1845, 72.19 Massa-Pairault 1992.

20 Wallace 1990, 283-84.21 Blanck and Proietti 1986.

unremarkable and in line with the prevailing ethos. While this does of course not imply that what theydid was entirely representative of an entire social group in Rome, it should at the very least alert us tothe possibility that behaviors of this kind could have shaped the early part of the conquest. there is alsoa kind of poetic justice in choosing the Plautii to investigate the workings of Roman imperialism, whenone considers that Aulus Plautius figured so prominently in the Claudian invasion of Britain, an eventwhich in turn has played such a big role in the modern historiography and in the popular perception ofthe Roman conquest.

the Plautii suddenly leap into our historical field of vision early in the 4th c. B.C. they were certainlyan extended family with connections to the main latin centres of tibur and Praeneste, as well as theneighboring, less well-known center of trebula Suffenas,16 variously ascribed to the Sabine or Aequianethnic groups. this is largely based on Mid- to late Republican inscriptions and dedications,17 whichnevertheless do seem to present a fairly consistent picture. One contemporary piece of evidence whichis clearly important, if difficult to interpret, is provided by the 4th c. B.C. ficoroni Cista, which notoriouslydeclares in its inscription that Novios Plautios med Romai fecid (Novius Plautius made me in Rome) (figs.1a and b). the prevailing opinion of scholarship is that Novius Plautius was the craftsman who made theobject, but his status is less clear. Because Novius is a Campanian name (and not a known praenomenamong the Plautii), theodor Mommsen first advanced the hypothesis that Novius might have been a slaveor a freedman of the Plautii,18 although he later changed his mind. A different, and perhaps less likely,interpretation of the inscription is that a Novios Plautios commissioned the piece.19 the connection withRome (where there were certainly Plautii by the 340s B.C., around the time when to which the cista isdated) is intriguing but far from clear, since the object was found in Praeneste and cista manufacture isotherwise unattested in Rome.20 It seems safe, in any case, to derive proof of the connection of the Plautiiwith other Praenestine aristocrats from this piece of evidence.

to the early 4th c. B.C. dates another important written testimony, the name plavti carved in one ofthe niches of the splendid tomb of the Reliefs at Caere (fig. 2). this is generally accepted to be a femalePlautia who had married into the prominent Caeretan clan of the Matuna, to whom the tomb belonged.21

A match of this kind confirms that the Plautii moved in the most exalted central Italian circles and wereinvolved in aristocratic alliances which effortlessly crossed political and ethnic lines. Such wide-ranging

fIG. 2. Inscription from the tomb of the Reliefs (after Cristofani 1966, 227).

22 Ampolo 1976-77.23 As befitted a member of a family which had a lifelong

connection with etruria; Ogilvie 1976, 115.24 Specifically to tangle with the Privernates, it would

seem from liv. 8.15.11; it should, however, be remem-

bered that Privernum was Volscian according to Vergil

(Verg., Aen. 7.685).

25 Syme 1939, 422.26 Massa-Pairault 2001.27 thus RE 21 (1951) 2-25, s.v. “C. Plautius Proculus” (M.

Hofmann).28 Ibid.29 Münzer 1920, 38.

horizontal elite mobility had characterized Italy (and more widely the central Mediterranean) at least sincethe Archaic period,22 although its political significance has still not been fully recognized, perhaps becauseit goes against the grain of the ethnocentric framework which lies at the core of most narratives aboutthe conquest. It is essential to remember that, in sharp contrast to what happened during the europeanconquest of the Americas or of Africa, when Rome began its expansion its leaders had known, interactedand intermarried with their peers in the conquered communities for centuries and this cannot have failedto influence the process in a number of ways.

Whatever the case, sometime before 358 B.C. at least a branch of the Plautii must have relocated toRome and acquired full Roman citizenship, since this is when their first magistrature is recorded. In thisyear, C. Plautius Proculus was consul, not having held any prior recorded office, together with C. fabiusAmbustus, while C. Sulpicius Peticus was made dictator to deal with a Gaulish threat. the consulararmies were sent to avenge raids by the tarquinians and by the Privernates. Although livy says that lotswere drawn (evenere; liv. 8.12.6), fabius ‘happened’ to receive the etruscan provincia23 whilst the latinPlautius received the Hernican mandate.24 While fabius suffered one of several fabian defeats in etruria(and an egregious one, resulting in hundreds of Roman prisoners being sacrificed), Plautius obtained avictory over an ethnic group which was located close to the area of provenance of his gens. Privernumalso suffered a defeat in the following year and would appear to have entered in an alliance with Romeat this time.

It is, of course, remarkable for a member of a group which had only recently entered the politicalfray in Rome to have risen all the way to the top of his adopted state, but it was not at all a uniqueoccurrence. Many other prominent families from Central Italy attained memberships of the senatorial classbetween the 4th and the 3rd c. B.C. they represent a substantial part of the growing plebeian elite inRome, to the point that it is debatable whether the evident broadening of the power structure whichhappened after the licinian-Sextian laws (367 B.C.) was more the result of vertical mobility inside Romeor of horizontal mobility in Central Italy. Once again, the latter kind of mobility, both as individuals andas whole family groups, was a long-term characteristic in this region. the narrative about Claudii fromSabina being admitted not only in the Roman nobility, but even in the patriciate places the event only alittle more than a century earlier than the similar promotion of the Plautii. As it happens, the primaryallegiance of the Plautii seems to have been precisely with the Claudii,25 who, like the Plautii, favoredexpansion to the south of Rome.26

In 356 B.C., the same C. Plautius was appointed magister equitum to the first plebeian dictator, C.Marcius Rutulus. this was a politically charged event, vehemently opposed by the patriciate, and signalsclearly that the Plautii were at the forefront of the plebeian push for more power. Rutulus himself hadbeen consul the previous year, during elections held by Plautius, so it is not hard to see a politicalpartnership between the two.27 the next member of the family to be consul was C. Plautius Venox in 347B.C., who was involved in cutting interest rates, another key plebeian priority. It has in fact beenhypothesized28 that he had previously been involved in the institution of the quinqueviri mensarii in 352B.C., based on the fact that most of the commissioners were known friends of his.29 they acted as sort ofpublic mediators and bankers who were trying to compose debt issues.

30 At least according to Broughton 1952, 602.31 Münzer 1920, 39-47.

32 Oakley 1997.

C. Plautius Venox was consul again, together with l. Aemilius Mamercinus, in 341.30 In that year, newsreached Rome that Privernum had broken the alliance and attacked the neighboring colonies of Norbaand Setia. Again, a blind sors (liv. 8.1.3) assigned the war to Plautius, as well as a mandate to deal witha rampaging Volscian army. He made a beeline for Privernum, took it, gave it back to its inhabitants afterhaving installed a garrison and confiscated two-thirds of the territory. About a decade later, the Plautiipulled off a rare hat-trick, providing three consuls in a row in 330-28 B.C., a feat which was not easyeven for the most distinguished and well-connected of the autochthonous patrician families.31 Once more,these years were clearly characterized by Roman activism in the area of Privernum (fig. 3). In 330 B.C.,the Privernates, joined by the inhabitants of nearby fundi, were on the warpath, again laying waste toNorba and Setia, this time also attacking Cora. Both consuls, l. Plautius Venox and l. Papirius Crassus,were sent to sort things out and apparently caught the rebellious army in a pincer maneuver, forcing itto retreat into Privernum, but could not take the city. elections were hastily conducted and one of thenew consuls, C. Plautius, was sent to take over operations with the army raised by his clansman, whilehis colleague, l. Aemilius Mamercinus, scraped together a ragtag army to repel a Gaulish raid. However,when the latter failed to materialize, he too descended upon Privernum. the city was finally taken, eitherby storm or by betrayal, without a fight.32

fIG. 3. Map with Rome, tibur, trebula, Praeneste, Privernum, fregellae (B. Brouwenstijn).

33 Deniaux, Morstein-Marx and Martz 2006.34 He is in fact the earliest private resident of the hill

known to us, unless one counts Romulus; Carandini

and Papi 2005; Royo 1987.

35 LTUR 2 (1995) 215, s.v. “domus: Vitruvius Vaccus” (e.

Papi).36 Coarelli 2007.37 Wiseman 1971.

the evidence reviewed above seems to show that between 358 and 329 B.C., in four of the five yearsin which there was a Plautian consul, Rome was tangling with Privernum and the Senate randomlyhappened to assign the problem to the latin Plautius, rather than to his ‘old Roman’, patrician colleague.Such an impossible coincidence is hard to explain within the traditional interpretive frameworks for Romanimperialism. either the very election of a Plautius in Rome was enough to make tempers run high in 100-km distant Privernum, or there must have been a ‘Plautian’ agenda at work which had to do with thatregion (and had inflammatory effects there), rather than a generic and randomized defensive mandatefrom the Senate. Obviously, the Plautii had a specific and overriding interest in controlling the city, whichsignificantly lay right outside their area of origin, under the guise of Roman expansion. As suggested bylater events, their aim must have been the addition of the city to the power base of their clan, throughthe links of patronage which always tied surrendering communities to their captors.33 Needless to say,clans in Rome fought the political game primarily by maintaining complex networks of long-term tieswith their political constituencies in the city and around the empire.

It is quite possible that the involvement of the Plautii with Privernum dated to before the events inquestion, but the new mechanism of Roman expansion gave them (and other groups like them) anunprecedented opportunity to achieve their goals. they must have been able to stir things up in theregion to the point of precipitating war and rebellion, perhaps giving us an important clue to the manytimes in which alliances in Mid-Republican Italy were allegedly reneged by the partners of Rome withoutapparent reason and with disastrous consequences for the treaty-breakers. It is hard to escape theconclusion that, at least on this occasion, the Plautii were able to harness the power of the Roman allianceto expedite their power play over Privernum.

Before exploring this fascinating story any further, however, it is worthwhile to make a short digressionto look at the adversary of the Plautii in the events of 330-29 B.C. the rebellion of Privernum wasinstigated by a Vitruvius Vaccus, who also commanded the army. far from being a freedom fighter steepedin a traditional highland society (as the stock image of the highlanders from Southern latium would leadus to believe), he was a well-connected, rich, urban politician. He was a prominent figure in his nativefundi (another nearby city), and very notoriously had a luxurious house on the Palatine hill.34 later, afterhis disgrace, the house was razed, and the vacant site became known as the Prata Vacci,35 analogously towhat had happened to the houses of other famous Republican agitators, like Sp. Cassius, Sp. Melius orManlius Capitolinus.36 the only reason a latin aristocrat would have had a highly visible house on thePalatine is that he wanted, just as the Plautii, to become a part of the Roman political game. But howcould this possibly be reconciled with his becoming an enemy of Rome in the end? Clearly, if the strugglesattending the early Roman conquest are understood in terms of clashes between self-exclusive ethnicgroups and/or citizen bodies, the behavior of Vitruvius is inexplicable (but so, incidentally, is that ofCoriolanus). However, if he indeed had a rival political agenda to that of the Plautii, which the latterproceeded to disrupt as soon as they came to power, on the global Central Italian scene, things suddenlybecome a little more understandable.

What Vitruvius’ plan might have been is very difficult to imagine, given that the reasons of the losingside are hardly ever preserved fairly and adequately. It is on the whole unlikely that he originallyintended to break fundi and Privernum from the Roman alliance, after the latin war of 338 B.C. hadmade it very clear that independence in southern latium was no longer an option. Why would he haveinvested in an atrium house near the Roman forum if that was the case?37 He must instead have been

38 for very similar dynamics in Apulian communities:

Gallone 2007.

trying to parley his influence in a strategic region of Italy for some kind of political or diplomaticadvancement in Rome. It is fairly clear that, as it might have been expected, there was a pro-Vitruviusand an anti-Vitruvius faction in both fundi and Privernum. When Plautius descended on the former, thesenate of the fundani was quick to disavow Vitruvius, claiming that his real base of operations wasPrivernum, where he was holed up at that point. And if Privernum was indeed delivered to Plautius bytreason, as one source claims, it would suggest that there was an anti-Vitruvius (and presumably pro-Plautius) group in that city too.38

In light of this reconstruction, it would not be presumptuous to propose that there was much moreto the ‘conquest’ of Privernum than simply the abstractions called Rome and Privernum clashing oversubmission or independence, as most modern narratives would have it. Beneath the surface, it is not hardto see the struggle between two factional aristocratic networks, with tentacles in various cities around thealliance as well as in Rome. It is highly doubtful that anyone was fighting for the chimeric freedom andindependence of Privernum; rather, at issue was the way in which this particular community was to beintegrated in the emerging new political entity. Most probably, the real bone of contention was thevaluable privilege of being the patron clan of two important communities in the southern expansion ofRome. Both competing factions easily spanned ethnic lines, Roman, latin, Hernican, and neither appearsto have been more culturally ‘Roman’ than the other. Had Vitruvius prevailed, it is highly unlikely that thecultural trajectory of Privernum would have been significantly different. the city would have simplybelonged to a different faction within the emerging empire and would have had a different power brokerin Rome. In short, at least at this particular juncture, the factional boundary between the Plautii andVitruvius was far more meaningful in shaping the expansion process than the political one between Romeand Privernum, or the ethnic one between Romans and Hernicans.

the aftermath of these events is also very instructive. livy (8.20.6-21.10) gives a highly fictionalizedaccount featuring brave speeches about liberty and independence delivered in the Senate by envoysfrom Privernum. the consuls, touched, interceded for the rebellious, but proud, city, and punishmentwas not only waived, some citizenship rights (presumably civitas sine suffragio) were even granted. fullRoman citizenship followed soon after, in 318 B.C., when the Oufentina tribe was created. It should notcome as a surprise, by now, that a Plautius, l. Plautius Venox, was again consul in that year. this is asurprisingly benign treatment for a city which had rebelled twice in twelve years, but only if the eventis understood as a desperate attempt to break free from the empire; indeed, the later sources can onlyexplain such mildness by invoking a dubious Roman admiration for indomitability. If the latin Plautiidid not like Hernican Privernum, why did they reward it so generously? If, however, we leave aside theidea of Privernum as a defeated rebel, it is not hard to see that the city, once subtracted to the influenceof the rival Vitruvius faction, was very desirable for the Plautii and their allies as a client community.Granting Roman citizenship to it made perfect sense if the idea all along had been to increase thatgroup’s power in the alliance, and to add another group of voters to its power base, especially in theyearly elections.

the following year featured the third Plautius consulship in a row. Not much happened, with theexception of the foundation of the latin colony of fregellae, not far from Signia and only about 20 kmfrom Privernum. If the finger of the Plautii can be intuited in this pie too, it would have resulted in agreater expansion of their political footprint in southern latium, seeing that colonies, just as cities whichhad surrendered with their victors, were automatically entered into the patronage sphere of themagistrates that had been in charge of founding the colony. While we cannot be completely sure of this,the suspicion is strengthened when the patterns of tribal gerrymandering are taken into account.

39 Mouritsen 1998.40 Ross taylor 1960.41 Massa-Pairault 2001.42 Mouritsen 1998; incidentally, but this must be a real co-

incidence, Plautius’ consular colleague who helped take

Privernum in a pincer attack was another Papirius.43 Ross taylor 1956.44 Juv. 10.17; Manacorda 2007.

Privernum was attributed to the recently established Oufentina tribe as the fate of fregellae was to be.the question of when colonies of latin right would be attributed is a complex one, and revolves aroundthe issue of whether the magistrates in latin colonies received the full Roman citizenship or not.39 Ifthey did, then it is even possible that the attribution of fregellae to the Oufentina might have dated toits foundation during the consulship of a Plautius. In any case, it is evident that the Plautii were busystacking the Oufentina in their favor. In 318 B.C., Canusium in Apulia surrendered to yet another Plautiusconsul and was later placed in the Oufentina too. the political strategy was obvious and well-knownthroughout the Republic as a way of creating and maintaining political power. Concentrating clientgroups in new tribes guaranteed the control of that tribal vote, requiring far fewer votes than wouldhave been necessary in one of the old tribes, maximizing the amount of electoral clout that could beobtained through one’s patronage.40 the vote in the electoral college of the tribes which was acquiredin this way could be used to elect more family members, who in turn would expand the political reachof the clan to ever wider boundaries. even more often, these votes could represent extremely valuablebargaining chips within the larger factional syndicate which, in the Mid-Republic, revolved around theClaudii.41

The later life of the PlautiiAfter their meteoric rise during the 4th c. B.C., the Plautii coasted along in Rome as a senatorial, but

not particularly remarkable, plebeian family. there are no offices recorded for the 3rd c. B.C., but in the2nd the Plautii Hypsaei, who claimed descent from the original family were consuls, praetors, moneyersand senators. Other offices were held in the 1st c. B.C. A continuing link to Central Italian elites canperhaps been inferred from the lex Plautia Papiria of 89 B.C., which extended citizenship to thecommunities which had actively rebelled during the Social War. Sponsored by the tribune M. PlautiusSilvanus, in conjunction with the far more famous C. Papirius Carbo, it rewarded, as had happened in329 B.C., Italians who had recently revolted with the concession of important political rights.42 two anda half centuries might seem today like a long time for family roots and old connections to be still relevant,but we actually know for a fact that the late Republican and early Imperial Plautii were still putting theirpast to good use.

A coin type of the 50s B.C. celebrated the triumph over Privernum in 341 B.C. the choice ofrehashing such a long-forgotten event by the moneyer, l. Plautius Plancus, clearly indicates that theseconnections were still vital to a Roman politician of that time. even more importantly, in this sense, isthe construction, in the early 1st c. A.D., of a massive mausoleum of the Plautii in a prominent locationon the via tiburtina, near tibur (tivoli).43 these mausolea were important forms of familyaggrandizement and of self-promotion and the choice to build it in the ancestral homeland of the Plautiimakes it extremely probable that, even in the changed political environment of the early empire, theystill derived some measure of power and influence from the role they had played and continued to playin southern latium. At the same time, their center of gravity was in Rome and, as many contemporaryfamilies from elsewhere in Italy, they must have acted as mediators and brokers of their clients in thecapital.

In Rome, the Plautii had a fabled villa with horti on the lateran hill,44 from which the family branchof the Plautii laterani derived their cognomen, and which was probably torn down when the family

45 torelli 1999, 150-64.46 Webster 1980.

47 As somewhat wittily suggested in Syme 1939; Birley

2005, 19-20.

became entangled in an alleged anti-Neronian plot.A unique marble piece, the Corsini chair (fig. 4),was found nearby and it has been suggested thatit might have been among the debris of the villa.45

If this hypothesis is correct, there would be aninteresting connection attested between the Plautiiand the etruscan world even at this late stage. thechair appears to be a marble copy of an Archaicetruscan bronze throne. Probably a product of theclimate of nostalgia and etruscophilia of theAugustan and Julio-Claudian period, the piececertainly confirms that some aristocrats of thisperiod were interested in the etruscan prestigedisplay predating them by some seven centuries,presumably by means of heirlooms or depictionswhich were still circulating. In any case, the Plautiihad an undeniable contemporary etruscanconnection through Plautia urgulanilla, the firstwife of the etruscophile emperor, Claudius, whoalso manifestly descended from the prominentetruscan urgulanii, who included the urgulaniawho was livia’s best friend. It is nothing less thanstriking to find the Plautii and the Claudii stillpartnered up more than four hundred years after

their first Roman adventure together.the partnership, as it is well known, was also active on the military side. there are several Plautii in

the Julio-Claudian army, of whom the most famous is A. Plautius, to whom Claudius entrusts (togetherwith another Central Italian, destined to much greater fortune, the young Vespasian) his one expansionisticforay in Britain.46 While, of course, it would not make sense to speak of a Claudian faction at this point,it is hard not to wonder whether the careers of the early Imperial Plautii were not favoured by the distantremnants of a long-standing factional allegiance with a family which had become the ruling one.47 thepatronage tie between Plautius and Claudius in this period does not mean that Britain was conqueredonly for the benefit of one faction in the Roman government, but, besides their intrinsic interest, the oldways might provide some revealing background to the personalism which characterizes Roman imperialpolitics. the military commands of the Plautii neatly bookend the entire span of Roman imperialism andarguably illuminate an aspect of the process which has received less attention than it deserves and whichcan stimulate some unconventional reflections on the nature of the Roman empire.

Conclusionsthis brief review of the actions of one individual clan within the broader process of early Roman

expansion is only exceptional because of the richness and variety of the information preserved. It isimportant to reiterate that none of our sources, which are as a rule interested in stigmatizing illegal orunseemly political actions, finds anything scandalous or even worthy of remark in what the Plautii did

fIG. 4. the Corsini chair (courtesy of the Soprintendenza

Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed etnoantro-

pologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma).

with the authority and the decision-making power which came with their consulships. It is only the single-mindedness of the Plautii concerning one specific city, Privernum, which makes it visible for us, like dyeon a microscope slide, an intricate filigree of interconnections between public politics and private agendasand strategies. Many other threads could be followed, maybe less clearly and over shorter time spans, inthe historical tapestry of this period. their importance, overshadowed by later narratives and discoursespropounding a monolithic concept of the Roman state, is such that it is not unthinkable to surmise thatthey played a very considerable role in what we call Roman expansion.

It is a fact that clans which were not even strictly Roman in the first place could be allowed tocommandeer the Roman imperial machinery for purposes which have every appearance of being theirown. this does not, of course, mean that the Plautii or anyone else had tyrannical designs of any sort. Itwas well understood that, just as they were pursuing their vision in an area of latium, other clans wouldbe attempting to do the same elsewhere at other times, using the same equipment. the competitionbetween peer factions was fierce, but it was essential that none of them could control the systemcompletely, even for a brief period. At the end of the day, they all benefited in some form from the sumtotal of the expansionist moves which were centered on the imperial capital and on the political entitywhich they had in common.

the full import of processes of this kind remains to be evaluated, but it would appear that, when itcame to the urban communities of Central and Southern Italy, it is not always necessarily appropriate toconceptualize the expansion process as a conflict between Rome and other communities. Military anddiplomatic initiatives, peace treaties, surrenders, colonial deductions were all conducted by elites whichhad Roman citizenship but had come from disparate ethnic and cultural provenance, and they cannot allbe automatically assumed to have had only the public benefit at heart. they often had evident ties withthe communities which they were ‘conquering’48 and sometimes it is so evident that the process is remote-controlled by a network of syndicated aristocrats in Rome and elsewhere that even the bewildered laterhistorians cannot completely obfuscate it.

At least in these cases, we have to contemplate the possibility that the primary aim of the expansionistaction was not to assert the hegemony of the abstraction called Rome over other Italians, but instead toadvance the agenda of a specific, successful inter-city elite network. Such agendas included dominancein the local community, maintenance of the established social order, control of the political brokeragebetween the community and the center of power, piloting tribal formation and composition, all resultingin increased network clout in Rome. this last element was, of course, essential in enabling the faction tohijack the imperial military machinery again in the future. this positive feedback could have been apowerful force adding a motivator which was fundamentally different to the traditional explanations ofRoman imperialism. the Plautii do not fight to defend Rome, or to assail the Hernicans, or to acquiremeans of production or loot or simply to celebrate a triumph and boost their prestige in Rome. Somethingdifferent and potentially more important was at stake. Who would be able to count the city of Privernum,which was arguably falling into the orbit of Rome anyway, among their clients and take out their enemiesthere? Who could found a colony at fregellae and gain a permanent group of citizen supporters there?the answers to these questions would help determine the political balance in Rome for generations tocome. establishing patronage, stacking tribes and centuriae, eliminating local opposition had effects whichwould be felt centuries after the fact, and it is over these issues the struggle rages hardest. It is hard toescape the impression that, at least in some cases, the way in which the expansion happened was moreimportant than whether or not the expansion itself took place.

A symmetrical perspective can also be adopted in looking at the behavior of the elites in the

48 Illuminating in this sense are the cases of the fulvii

and tusculum; eckstein 2006, 255-56.

incorporated communities. Just as Roman expansion can be described as a patchwork of factional projects,opposition to it should not necessarily be construed as unified ethnic or political groups desperatelystruggling for independence. While, as a rule, defeated ideas do not preserve well in the historical record,enough survives to gain glimpses of them, and rarely do they point in the direction of city-stateindependence. far more often, these alternative designs involved different versions or configurations ofthe same basic idea of a territorial empire, only with different people at the top. the Roman conquestwas, in part, a violent and traumatic transformation, but one has to wonder how much of the conflict wasnot between those who wanted expansion and those who resisted it, but rather between different factionsvying for the control of a newborn entity whose emergence was unavoidable in the changed world ofthe late Hellenistic central Mediterranean.

Breaking down Roman expansion in Central Italy into its constituent elements makes room for amuch wider range of responses on the part of non-Romans. If, instead of a single-minded, implacableonslaught, we envisage a series of multi-lateral interactions, resulting in ad hoc solutions, it is easier toaccept that there were ways in which other Italians could have a say in how the process unfolded. Ratherthan being limited to the classic polar antithesis between acceptance and resistance (as it is oftenassumed in some provincial contexts), participants in the integration could deploy a wide variety ofpolitical behaviour which would have a measurable effect on its eventual outcomes. With the Plautii, wehave seen one possible option: an early move to Rome, usually facilitated by existing ties with the localnobility. Building on the tradition of Archaic horizontal mobility, non-Roman clans in the Mid-Republiccould resettle in Rome for good, with the transparent intent of claiming a larger share of the benefitsbeing generated by the expansionist project centered there. the geographic distribution of theirprovenances is indicative of the scope of the vast elite networks which were coming together at Rome.latium is, of course, very well represented, as are etruria and Campania. the thickly urbanized westernpart of Central Italy was clearly an essential part of the new alliance. But a smaller number of familieshailed from as far as Sabina, Samnium, umbria, and, slightly later, Picenum, Daunia and other places.there is practically no area of peninsular Italy which is not represented in this wave of early adopters.In Rome, they created complex and shifting clusters with the local nobility, who would much rather dealwith them than with the lower classes of Rome itself. the convergence of Central Italian elites on Romeundoubtedly was a key requisite for an expansion centered there to be successful. But it does notautomatically entail the marginalization of other civic communities. the centripetal elites were notimmigrants in the modern sense of the word. they did not seek social promotion and, in fact, often hadto accept a rank which was not as prominent as the one which they had held at home.49 they also kepta tight control over what happened in the ‘old country’ which was usually a central part of their politicalconstituency. In fact, as the case of the Plautii illustrates, they often used the newly acquired centralpower to settle local scores, among other goals. Branches of these clans, perhaps cadet ones, remainedlocally based and ensured the functionality of the new power connection. Indeed, the incorporation ofthese communities into the alliance was often effected precisely thanks to the mediation of these groupswhich had branches in Rome and at home. Rather than a ‘betrayal’ of their cities of origin, the actionsof these clans should be seen as an interested brokerage between the new capital and the communitieswhich were being absorbed into the alliance.

Making room for a variety of agency options open to Central Italian elites in the time of the conquestcan help in making better sense of some apparently peculiar aspects of the conquest. therefore, if weprovocatively describe Mid-Republican expansion as the result of a patchwork of private factional actionson the part of a few original Roman clans and scores of non-Roman ones, can we still speak of a Romanconquest? Or could we just as well speak of Rome as a vehicle for political clustering which was constantly

49 Cf. the royal Marcii or Cilnii.

50 Goldsmith 1985.

hijacked and appropriated by an ever-growing number of trans-ethnic factions? Was Rome a city-statewhich spread its power in all directions, or was Rome simply a tool used by everybody else to effecttheir purposes, and which alone completely lost its identity in the process? there is hardly any need tostress that any model of Roman expansion can at best account for only a part of the actual phenomenon.And yet, if there is any value in the reconstruction presented so far, there might well be an importantcomponent which has not received the attention it deserves.

In 1714, Bernard de Mandeville republished his allegorical poem about a beehive with the subtitlePrivate Vices, Public Benefits. A source of great scandal at the time, his proto-utilitarianist views revolvedaround the idea, later reworked by Adam Smith, that even the basest and most self-serving behaviorscan benefit society as a whole.50 the expression has become commonplace and has been used to deridehypocrisy (as in the 1976 film Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù, to which the title of this paper alludes) andadvocate pragmatism. In our case, it provides a sobering reminder that when historians underestimatethe global effect of private agendas and motivations, they run the risk of creating an unrealistic narrativepopulated by animated political abstractions instead of real people. It is quite possible that the aggregateeffect of a multitude of self-serving behaviors on the part of a wide array of Central Italian clans was thecreation of a unified territorial empire which was Roman primarily in the choice of its capital. theemergence of this new geopolitical structure, if it did not exactly benefit the public in our sense of theword, certainly favored the landed elite class as a whole, in spite of the acrimonious factionalism whichhad always affected it, catapulting it, probably beyond its wildest imagination, to global domination.

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