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Roman influence in Italy was the result of her entrenched position of power after the expulsion of Hannibal and defeat of Carthage. This chapter examines the impact on Latins and Italian socii. The Bacchanalian crisis, how non-Romans may have been affected by the agrarian legislation of 111 bc, citizenship, the character of Roman hegemony, and pre-Social War-leges are discussed.

The conclusion summarizes the material and arguments presented in the book. It closes with the writing of Symeon of Thessaloniki, who, on the eve of the Italian Renaissance, criticized the Latins for their excessive interest in the created world, redolent of the paganism of the ancient Greeks, even as he celebrated nature as religious metaphor.

This chapter focuses on the western Christians who would prove to be something of an enemy within and inflicted on Byzantium a catastrophe far greater than those which it had weathered in the past. These Christians hailed from all over Europe, from Scandinavia, Normandy, England and Flanders in the north to the city states of Italy in the south. In the palace of Blachernae they made up most of the emperor's personal Varangian guard and constituted a significant proportion of his army. The Byzantines would eventually lose their capital city through an attack that had not come from infidels but from those who, as one of them put it, “bore the cross of Christ upon their shoulders,” people whom they regarded as somehow part of their world. It was the Christian Latins who had struck the blow that, up to now, the Byzantines had always been able to parry.

This chapter discusses events following the Latin takeover of Constantinople. Topics covered include the coronation of Emperor Baldwin on 16 May 1204, who came from the Low Countries where he had been count of Flanders and Hainaut before setting out on the Fourth Crusade; revolts against Latin rule; Michael VIII's restoration of Constantinople to the rule of an emperor and his claim that he was a new Constantine; the threat posed by the pope in Rome; the Byzantine recovery during the reign of Michael VIII; the changing mentality of the Byzantines, particularly their narrowed sense of identity in opposition to the Latins; and Michael's successor, Andronicus II Palaiologos (1282–1328).

This chapter discusses the Greeks and Latins' reaction to William Harvey's evaluation of the structural condition of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The two groups conducted their own evaluation and their experts refuted Harvey's diagnosis. Consultant architect Luigi Marangoni, brought in by the Custody of the Holy Land, also refuted Harvey's assessment. In May 1936, the Latins finally recognized the true state of the church and a temporary consolidation was made to protect the structure. This chapter discusses the estimated cost of permanent restoration and the funding options considered.

The great age of crusading in the Middle East, from 1095 to 1291, witnessed a collision between peoples inspired by rival religions, each of which had its own conception of Holy War. Crusading was the sole reason the Latins had arrived in the East. For the Muslims, Jihad was a sacred duty which their alien elite used to bond the diverse peoples of the area to their rule. Contemporaries correctly noted that there was a special asperity in such warfare. In the great contest in the Middle East from 1095 to 1291 terrible things happened, but they happened in all wars, and even in the crusades surrender and capitulation were possible, albeit beset with difficulties. This was because neither side had the means to conduct unremitting warfare. Moreover members of the ruling classes on both sides wanted to be spared in the event of defeat or capture.

This chapter reconstructs the legal possibilities for marriage between Romans and non-citizens in the Republic, especially the idea that conubium with Roman citizens was an important privilege granted to the Latins. It investigates the evidence for the occurrence of marriage between Romans and peregrini, and discusses whether a grant of rights to marry Romans was necessary for this. Thus, the relations between the legal framework and the practical side of marriage will become clear. There is no evidence for a widespread grant of conubium to Latin and/or Italian allies; however, the inhabitants of Latin colonies did enjoy this right, because it was important to maintain the strategic function of these colonies. The cives sine suffragio also shared in this right as a function of their participation in the Roman ius civile.

This chapter uses the evidence from west-central Italy, home to two of the peninsula's strongest regional groups before the rise of Rome — the Etruscans and the Latins — to demonstrate that the regional groups of the first millennium bce may be traced from earlier than previously thought, and were the outcome of intra-regional social networks in place by the Final Bronze Age or earlier. It proposes that these networks are visible archaeologically in the distribution of certain categories of easily traceable foreign objects, which will have circulated along the paths of the hypothesized networks, moving between sites (nodes). It begins by suggesting that social networks may be a better way to identify incipient regional groups than expressive actions of identity. It then discusses the methods for detecting these social networks through artefact distributions, and concludes with the west-central Italy case study.

Chapter 9 addresses a group of nomocanons produced in the Salento peninsula between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. These manuscripts stand out from the others in the book, as they were not produced for monasteries, bishops, or lay judges, but for the secular clergy and parish priests of the Salento. The chapter explores their distinctive aesthetic style and material characteristics, which are highly consistent across the group but noticeably different from those of other Italo-Greek nomocanons. It also discusses their textual content, pointing out that the manuscripts contain lengthy appendices consisting of texts that would have been of particular interest to Salentine Greek clergy of the late Middle Ages, covering subjects like clerical marriage and Lenten fasting. These were all topics on which the Greek church diverged from the Latin, and it seems that the texts were included as a way to defend the Greeks’ distinctive religious practices. The chapter also highlights a fascinating marginal abbreviation that occurs in multiple Salentine nomocanons, ‘Against the Latins’, which was used by scribes and readers to highlight canons that were felt to be especially useful in this effort.