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Chapter 1 opens with a survey of the foreign divinities admitted to Rome in the fifth and fourth centuries, including those imported both from Italian cities and from Greece or other overseas territories. Although foreign cults from around the Mediterranean have attracted more scholarly attention, many cities in Italy were also considered foreign, as the evocatio of Juno Regina from Veii in 396 attests. The Roman action in regard to Juno Sospita at the conclusion of the Latin Revolt in 338 is especially noteworthy, as the Romans set out to remake their relationship with Latium at this time. Roman behavior shows them either incorporating foreign divinities into their system or involving themselves in communal sanctuaries outside Rome, both of which aimed at strengthening connections between themselves and their neighbors in central Italy.

Many Aspects of Different Cultures can help to throw light on their differing identities—language, architecture, religion, and many other things, such as the ‘range of landscapes, ways of thought, racial groups, roof-tops and cheeses’. In fact, almost anything. A particular category is provided by the institutions people observe, a category which might embrace an enormous range of different things, from burial practices to legal systems, or from different calendars to different systems of weights and measures. The link between coins, weights, and measures was clear to the Greeks and Romans, and that coins could be regarded as an expression of some at least of the values characteristic of a particular society is evident from an anecdote reported by Pliny as taking place in the reign of Claudius. He relates how a Roman was forced by a storm to Sri Lanka (ancient Taprobane), and how he told the local king about Rome: A freedman of Annius Plocamus, who had brought the tax collection for the Red Sea from the Treasury, was sailing round Arabia. He was carried along by winds from the north past Carmania and, on the fifteenth day, made harbour at Hippuros in the island; and in consequence of the kind hospitality of the king he learned the local language thoroughly over a period of six months, and afterwards in reply to his questions described the Romans and Caesar. In what he heard the king got a remarkably good idea of their honesty, because among the captured money there were denarii which were of equal weight, even though their various types indicated that they were issued by several persons. I want to apply this approach to the Roman world, and use coins in a way that may throw light on some of the ways that Romans regarded themselves, having a special look at the differences between the western and eastern parts of the empire. I want to suggest that we can use this sort of approach to help explain the fundamental change that took place in the currency of the Iberian peninsula, Gaul, Italy, Sicily, and Africa in the first century AD—how people there stopped using locally made coins and started to use coins imported from Rome, coins which might otherwise have been regarded in some sense as almost ‘foreign’.

Rome had a crucial time merely surviving in its original environment, even though it was the largest of the polities of Latium. The militarism and bellicosity of Rome's competitors place Roman expansion within the long-term context of a series of war-prone interstate systems. Rome grew up within a world of rather similar city-states—“Tyrrhenian Italy”—that stretched in western Italy from Arretium in northern Etruria, at the foot of the Apennine Mountains, down to Capua in Compania, far south of Rome. There were no permanent ambassadorial missions to foreign states—to exchange information, lessen mutual opacity, and express early concerns about policies so as to head off possible crises as in Classical and Hellenistic Greece. Rome was not simply an ordinary city-state in terms of its institutions, but also a not very successful city-state in terms of the achievement of even local security. Therefore, the Roman historical experience was one both of facing intense threat and of an increasing habit of command.

This chapter notes that Tivoli enjoyed a strategic position on the route between the upper and lower Anio basin, a situation which made it the key to Latium Vetus for those traveling from the area corresponding to present-day Abruzzo. It explains that the foundation of Tivoli is attributed to Tiburnus, one of the three sons of the Argive hero Amphiaraos. The chapter shows that the Tiburtines were among the Latins who fought the Romans at Lake Regillus at the beginning of the fifth century bc, immediately after which Tivoli became part of the league dominated by Rome. It also discusses the streets and structures in the Tiburtine territory. When Tivoli became a municipium after the Social War, the praetors were replaced as magistrates by the quattuorviri, who assumed the function of censors every five years (quinquennales). The most important cult, that of Hercules Victor, gave rise to a collegium of Herculanei.

This chapter presents a description of the cultural-historical background of Italy. Greek colonization in the West is covered. The primary purpose behind Greek colonization was to provide new economic opportunities for people of the Greek homeland. One principal factor contributing to the rise of the Etruscan civilization was the land's wealth in copper, iron, and, to a smaller degree, silver. Though of great importance, mineral resources alone did not account for the formation of Etruscan civilization. The growth and decline of Etruscan civilization are reviewed. The archaeological data concerning early Latium is also summarized. Latium's lack of mineral resources relative to Etruria meant that in general its communities were not as fully integrated into the commercial activities of the western Mediterranean.

This chapter addresses Livy's first book in treating the period of the early kings. The earliest Roman graves show that the people who lived at the site of Rome during the tenth and ninth centuries B.C. partook of the same Latial culture. The ancients believed that the Palatine was the initial site of Romulus' settlement, and it was thought to sustain the most venerable cults of the Roman people. The ancient literary tradition is also discussed. Archaeology can be enlisted to test in some degree the claims of the ancient literary tradition concerning two alleged public works carried out during the late regal period. Rome's growth and expanding horizons are dealt. It is stated that various indications, including modern demographic estimates and ancient historical data, seem to converge in showing that by the end of the sixth century B.C. Rome had emerged as the single most important state in Latium.

This chapter demonstrates the applicability of C. Lévi-Strauss’s “House Society” model for considering the role of kinship in the early moments of state formation and urbanization in Iron Age Latium and Etruria. After a brief theoretical overview of the model, the discussion focuses on two main axioms which are often overlooked in the model’s application to the ancient world: (1) a physical house does not make a social House, and (2) a single House does not make a Society. This is followed by an overview of how material evidence from sites ranging from Vetulonia to Osteria dell’Osa and textual evidence from the Twelves Tables can be interpreted through the lens of a “House Society” to create new models for the development of complex social systems in central Italy.

This chapter analyses the cults of Fortuna through Italy up to the first century BC. Although the evidence for the cults is mostly fragmentary, contextual information shows that diverse meanings were attached to Fortuna by a variety of agents. Latium and Campania are the regions where most of the cults are attested, and the diffusion of the deity seems to have followed that of the Latin language. There are certain recurring features common to many local cults and sanctuaries, e.g. a tendency to worship Fortuna near liminal places, with sanctuaries attested at the border of different territories and near city walls.

In his reconstruction of daily life in Italy in the era of Aeneas’ arrival, Virgil offers us an inexact poetic image, based on the Homeric heroic world but, at the same time, on antiquarian Roman tradition. This paper offers a rereading of Virgil’s text in the hope of extracting various as yet unidentified remains of the indigenous erudite tradition on Italic constitutional antiquities.