From the founding of the Eternal City on April 21st, 753 B.C., the Romans were in almost constant struggle with their fellow Italic people and the Etruscans, both natives of the peninsula. They, in addition to the Greek colonies of the southern coast and the invading Celts of the north, stood in the way of a united and Roman ltaly.
With the defeat of the invading Greek King Pyrrhus and his mercenary army in 275 B.C., the Greeks were driven out and the fate of southern Italy was sealed. Rome now reigned supreme in three-quarters of Italy. It had established an interlocking network of alliances in her dealings with the various Italic peoples that inhabited southern Italy. A small number, like some of the Latin tribes and the Sabines who inhabited the region of Latium around Rome, were granted full Roman citizenship. Others in central and south Italy, including the Samnites, Aequi, Volsci and Umbrians, were given a sort of half-citizenship without the right to vote or hold office in Rome. The submissive cities of the south became allied states.
Collectively, all of the additions to the Roman confederacy became known as “Italian allies” or “socii Italici”. They initially formed an outer orbit around the more fully privileged Latin tribes.
Rome very wisely allowed the vast majority of the Italic people the right to keep their own constitutions and elect their own magistrates. They were permitted to worship their own gods and could enter into contracts and even marry Roman citizens. They were not required to pay any tribute to Rome. They were, however, obligated to supply men to the Roman army and had the duty of serving in Roman wars. It was an arrangement that was astonishingly enlightened for the ancient world. The Italian allies proved to be crucial to the continued survival and growth of Rome, sharing in the common dangers and victories and playing an ever increasing role in Rome's military campaigns. The loyal and heroic participation of these Italian allies in the defensive wars against Hannibal, Greeks, Celts, and Germans in the years before Christ was critical to Rome's victories and Italy's survival.
For years the Italian allies had strived to achieve equal treatment and full Roman citizenship as a reward for their loyalty. Roman reformers such as Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus and Lucius Sacurninus had held out hope for this prospect, however, each time promises of reform and eager expectations ended in bitter disappointment.
“The beasts of the field and the birds of the air have their holes and hiding places; but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy only the light and the air. ... You are called masters of the world, but there is not a foot of ground that you can call your own.”Cruelly, the Roman aristocracy refused to give serious consideration to any proposal involving the expansion of full citizenship. Tensions increased in 126 B.C. with the passage of a law which forbade the inhabitants of the Italian towns to migrate to Rome. A decree of 95 B.C. even expelled all residents of the capital whose citizenship was merely Italian but not Roman. The just claims of Rome's allies could not be denied much longer without the threat of an explosive conflict.
- Tiberius Gracchus, 133 B.C.
Events reached a climax in 91 B.C during the tribuneship of Marcus Livius Drusus who gallantly took up the cause of reform. He proposed to divide additional stare lands among the poor, to restore exclusive jury rights to the Senate, to add 300 equites, or knights, to the Senate, and most importantly, to confer full Roman citizenship upon all the freemen of Italy. Before Drusus could achieve the passage of his reform program, he was stabbed to death by an unknown assassin. His murder convinced the Italians that the Roman aristocracy would never peacefully consent to share its privileges and was the proximate cause for the outbreak of hostilities. The Italian people would gain their rights of equal treatment as full citizens only through war.
The rugged people of the highland of central and southern Italy rose up in revolt, among them the Marsi, the Paeligri, the Samnites and the Lucanians. The Latin colonies of Etruria and Umbria, however, refused to join. An Italian Confederacy was formed with its capital at Corfinium, proudly renamed ltalica, in the modern Abruzzo. A constitution was drafted similar to Rome's with a Senate of five hundred, an Assembly and a magistracy under which all Italians were to be citizens. A delegation was promptly sent to Rome to present their demands; however, the Senate refused to grant a hearing. A bloody and desperate civil war soon followed. In Latin, it was called Bellum Sociale, which meant War of the Allies (Eng. “associates”) but it has been translated rather too literally as the Social War. The term preferred in Latin speeches, and probably in everyday conversation, was Bellum Italicum, meaning Italic War or Italian War.
“The Italian cause was very just: for they were seeking citizenship in that state whose empire they had protected by force of arms. Through all the years and in every war they had provided double the number of infantrymen and cavalrymen, but they had not received the same rights in that country which they had brought to such a point that it could despise men of the same ethnic origin and blood as though they were complete foreigners.”
- Marcus Velleius Paterculus, 30 A.D.The Romans now faced a formidable coalition of kindred peoples who had fought side by side with them in many past wars and were a match for them in training, structure and discipline. Ironically, the main challenge was to come from an area which had been the most difficult for Rome to subjugate centuries earlier; namely; the mountainous central region, whose inhabitants were the most tenacious fighters in the whole peninsula. The Italians were commanded by seasoned officers who had received their training under Gaius Marius during the war against the Germanic Cimbri and Teutones. In the face of this extreme danger, the Romans acted with characteristic vigor. Both consuls (Republican Rome's dual presidents) took the field with five legates (generals) each, among them the renowned Gaius Marius and Cornelius Sulla.
Nonetheless, the first year's campaigns began disastrously, with the Romans suffering defeats in central Italy at the hands of the Sabellians and Samnites. Unfortunately for the ltalian confederacy, although it was very strong in fighting spirit, it was short on resources. By the end of the year, the Romans succeeded in stabilizing the military situation with victories in the north, in Campania and especially against the Marsi. The ltalians' strength remained unbroken, however, and with rumblings of discontent among the loyal allies and a depleted treasury, the Romans decided that it would be wise to pursue a policy of compromise in order to check the spread of the rebellion and to divide their enemies.
Towards the end of the year 90 B.C., the Roman Senate passed the Julian Law (Lex Julia), by which full citizenship was granted to the Etruscans, Umbrians and any other ltalians who had remained loyal. Citizenship was then offered to all Italian communities which had participated in the war against Rome and agreed to lay down their arms. This was supplemented by the Lex Plautia Papiria which extended Roman citizenship to all individual Italians who abandoned the revolt and presented themselves to a Roman praetor within sixty days. Finally, the Lex Calpurnia gave Roman magistrates in the field the power to confer citizenship upon all willing Italian recipients.
It was this series of concessions, rather than military might, which turned the tide against the Italian allies. This sudden offer of full citizenship and the franchise granted the Italians their chief war aims. It proved to be an extremely successful policy which greatly diminished the vigor of the rebellion. In fact, by the end of 89 B.C., the Samnites and Lucanians stood alone in their continued hostility towards Rome. Brilliant campaigns by Sulla in Samnium succeeded in containing this threat and forcing the insurgents to assume an entirely defensive strategy. In the end, only the Samnites, under the leadership of the brave Pontius Telesinus (probably an ancestor of Pontius Pilate) fought on until their defeat in 88 B.C.
“Though we call this war a war against allies, in order to lessen the odium of it, yet, if we are to tell the truth, it was a war against brothers [a civil war]. For since the Roman people united in itself the Etruscans, the Latins and the Sabines, who all share the same blood and ancestry, it has formed a body made up of various members and is a single people composed of all these elements.”
- Florus, 2nd century A.D.In the three years of bitter civil war, there were three hundred thousand casualties, and much of central Italy was devestated. Roman citizenship had been justly extended to the Italians at a terrible and unnecessary price. Rome had won the war, but Italy had won the peace.
Italy had become a single body politic which by the end of the first century B.C., was distinct from the rest of the world.
The nation-state of Italy was forged, which proved by its valor, patriotism and morale to be a force superior to any other scare in the world. The natural result of this was the continued and dramatic expansion of the Roman Empire and the defeat of all its enemies over the next three centuries.
For the Italic people, in unity there was truly strength.
