Historical background

[SigniferOne]

Primary sources:

Livy:
The very best source for 4th century BC (and a generally crucial source for Roman history all throughout, i.e. the Etruscans). In books 6-10 he covers all of the important events such as the the Samnite Wars (books VIII-X); invasion of Alexander of Epirus (book VIII, 3, 17, 24); and other important events:
- link (Perseus Project On-Line),
- link (B. J. Butterfield's Ancient History site),
- Books 1-5, 6-10, 21-25, 26-32, 33-39, 40-45 (Virginia University E-Text Library)


Dionysius of Halicarnassus:
Detailed information about early Roman history and such people as the Etruscans (called by Greeks the Tyrrhenians):
- link (Lacus Curtius).


Appian:
- The Samnite Wars (www.livius.org)


Strabo:
- Geography (Lacus Curtius) of:

Latium and Samnium,
Tyrrhenia and Umbria,
Northern Italy,
Cisalpine Gaul,
Picenum and Campania (Part II),
Sicily,
Iapygia (Southern Italy).


Justinus:
- Book XII, 2 of Epitomes for Alexander I of Epirus and his invasion of Italy (www.forumromanum.org)


Plutarch:
- Life of Pyrrhus of Epirus (Lacus Curtius)
- Life of Pyrrhus of Epirus (MIT Internet Classics Archive)


Aulus Gellius:
- Book XVII, 21 of Noctes Atticae, on Alexander I of Epirus (cached Google page)


More primary sources will be added later, along with articles from archeological and scholarly publications.

[SigniferOne]

Here is a preliminary version of the faction list:

Latins
-Rome
-Sabines
-Samnites
-Umbrians

Etruscans
-Etruria Meridionalis
-Etruria Septentrionalis
-Etruria Tiberina

Greeks/South Italians
-Syracuse
-Tarentum
-Brutii
-Lucani
-Apuli

Barbarians
-Senones
-Boii
-Insubres
-Cenomani
-Ligurii
-Venetii

Poenician
-Poeni
-Siculi

Some factions are still being decided on, such as the possible number of Etruscan factions, and their capital cities. Since we cannnot represent each Etruscan city as its own faction, but yet still want to portray the regional divisions and the un-unified nature of the Etruscan factions, we decided to group the 11 cities into bigger regional groupings, but still keep the groupings small. For example: Vulci, Tarquinii, and Caere have been grouped into a single faction, with Tarquinii, being the most important of the three, as the capital. The precise groupings of the Etruscan factions, and the capital cities to be chosen, are still under consideration.

[SigniferOne]

In this mod we are aiming to portray Italy in the late fourth century BC. For over a hundred years since the founding of the Republic, Rome's remained a small, almost provincial town, with only two notable events to its name: the successful taking in 396 B.C. of Veii, a major Etruscan city, and its own sacking by Gauls just a few years later. Now, in the last half/quarter of 4th century BC, Rome has grown considerably in power. It has dissolved the Latin League in 338 B.C. and has taken up the leadership among the Latin states. To the south-east are the great numbers of hardy Samnite mountain warriors. In the north are still eleven of the old twelve powerful Etruscan strongholds. Even further to the north are teeming hordes of Celts, who have just 50 years ago invaded across the Alps into the Po Valley, and entirely obliterated the old twelve Etruscan powerful cities there. And to the south, of course, are the Greeks. News has arrived that Alexander of Epirus, uncle of Alexander the Great, has just landed in Campania, with ambitions for the whole peninsula.

The scene is set.

[SigniferOne]

Official site:

http://www.freeforumzone.it/viewforum.aspx?f=72672

(If you can read Italian, or have access to Google translator...)

[Shaun]

So will The Roman family system be used in this mod to represent Roman supremacy over neighbouring cities?

[SigniferOne]

Can you rephrase the question? It's rather unclear what you're asking about. What Roman family system?

[SigniferOne]

Resources from modern authors:

Samnium and the Samnites (excerpts -- Samnite army)
by Steven Salmon

Samnium and the Samnites (excerpts -- Samnite government)
by Steven Salmon

The Social Structure [of the Etruscans] and the Serf Question
by Francoise-Helene Massa-Pairault

Etruscan Religion
by Mario Torelli

[SigniferOne]

Samnium and the Samnites (excerpts -- Samnite army)
by Steven Salmon

------

According to Frontinus (Strat. 2.1. 8) and Livy (10.28.3) the shock of the Samnites' initial charge was very difficult to withstand.

Livy's linen tunics are much more normal. Pliny (N.H. 34.43) and Festus (p. 102 L.) join him in recording the tradition that one at least one occasion the Samnites fielded a legio linteata. Linen tunics, either plain or particoloured (tunicae versicolores 9.40.3, 22.46.6) are authentic Samnite equipment. They actually appear as soldiers' apparel in Sabellian tomb- and vase-paintings.

For the Samnite combat weapons we must turn elsewhere than to Livy. There was a tradition that the Samnites used both the pilum and the scutum and that it was in fact from them that the Romans obtained these weapons. The most explicit version of this tale occurs in the so-called Ineditum Vaticanum. The way the story of the Romans' borrowing military notions from the enemy appears in this document should make us wary. [ Listing of the excerpt ] This passage is pure rhetoric of the sort that finds its pithiest expression in the oft-repeated commonplace fas est et ab hoste doceri. Roman willingness to learn from the enemy was a traditional article of Roman pride, and the way that it is set forth in Ineditum Vaticanum is too neatly symmetrical and schematic to be at all plausible.
In any case the matter is put beyond doubt by the archaeological evidence, which reveals that the scutum was in general, even though not exclusive, use among the various Italic peoples well before ever Romans and Samnites came to blows about the middle of the fourth century. It has been used in some parts of Italy from prehistoric times.

The evidence for the pilum is more shadowy, and the old argument as to where the Romans got this weapon, and when, is still unsettled, although it seems fairly certain that they did not get it from the Samnites. On a priori grounds the rhetoric that brings the pilum to Rome from Samnium is no more likely to be accurate than that which similarly attributes the scutum to the Samnites. In fact pilum and scutum, and manipular tactics, too, for that matter, seem to hang together. They are all aspects of the same military reform: manipular tactics postulate the use of pilum and scutum, and vice versa. Hence it is probable that the Romans adopted all of them simultaneously, at the beginning of the fourth century and, as Livy and Plutarch suggest, possibly at the instigation of Camillus. (Note: the disasters to the Fabii at the Cremera and to the Romans in general at the Allia had demonstrated the advisability of their exchanging phalanx tactics for manipular which required pilum and scutum. Note that the modification of the pilum in Marian times was accompanied by some change in the shield and in tactics (Plut. Marius, 25.1; Festus, p274 L., 149 L., 238 L.).

The archaeological evidence makes it certain that in the days of their true independence the Samnites were typically Italic in their military equipment as in so much else.

On the other hand, sculptured representations of Sabellian warriors haver survived. Sabellian tomb-paintings and South Italian vases also depict fighting men, some of them indubitably Samnites.

Description of a Samnite warrior
His close-fitting helmet was often adorned with crest or horns (horned helmets are by no means exclusively Celtic (Q.F.Maule-H.R.W.Smith, Votive Religion at Caere, p. 48). The horns indicated that the Sabellian soldier was fighting under the emblem of Mamers (with whom the bull was closely related). The helm might also have sockets on either side, in which one, two and sometimes more eagle feathers were set upright (an Italic helmet in the Louvre has holes for five feathers). These holes were a widespread Italic practice, known to Romans as well as Samnites, and they are frequently represented in paintings, on coins and in sculpture (Polyb 6. 23. 12f; cf. Prop 4. 10. 20. The Sabines did not use them according to Sil. Ital. 8. 419. They were usually white, but sometimes black). A bronze helmet from Larinum labelled Samnite tapers toward the crown and is surounded by a boss, but has no provision for feathers. It may be that they were officers' insignia: certainly M. Fannius, the Samnite commaner in the fresco from the Esquiline of c. 200, wears them, whereas some of his men do not.

The Samnite soldier's tunic, of linen or possibly leather, was short-sleeved and abbreviated, barely reaching to the loins, where it ends sometimes in a kind of apron. Around his waist he wore a broad leather belt covered with bronze and furnished with elaborate clasps. These belts were sometimes of fine worksmanship and were evidently greatly valued. The prominence with which they are paraded as trophies in the tomb- and vase-paintings suggests that they had symbolic significance as well as practical usefulness. (Archaeological evidence reveals that young boys had such belts and this supports the theory that they were more than mere military equipment.)

To protect the torso, and especially the heart, the Samnites used a circular disk about 7.5 inches in diameter, and sometimes decorated with an animal. The Warrior of Capestrano shows that originally a single disk was worn on the breast with another to match it on the back. Later, additional protection was given by placing a second disk alongside it (a specimen of this type is in the Louvre); and by the fourth century if not earlier a third disk had been added below the other two. The three disks could be combined into a single piece of protective armor roughly triangular in shape, and when two such trefoils were hinged together at the shoulders and under the armpits a cuirass was formed. (The cheek-pieces of some helmets in the museum at Ancona, said to be Gallic, are miniature replicas of the trefoil cuirass). Probably not every Samnite soldier had one: many had to be content with the single disk and the inadequate protection it afforded.

In the paintings the Samnite shield is deeply convex, usually round, but sometimes oval. But there is evidence that, like other Italic peoples, the Samnites also used the long elliptical scutum (This is not well attested archaelogically, but Dion. Hal. 20. 1. 5 has no doubts whatever on the matter, and the Samnite commander of the Esquiline fresco has one).

The Samnite soldier covered his legs with greaves, not one but two, reaching to the knees. The evidence for this is abundant: the Louvre statuette, Sabellian tomb-paintings, the Esquiline fresco (But he may not always have covered his feet. Many Sabellian soldiers are depicted with bare feet, whether as an artistic convention or because they often were in fact without footwear).

For the offensive weapons the Samnite had lances (normally for thrusting), a species of small javelin, long daggers with hilts ending in a knob, and less frequently short, two-edged stabbing swords. A few maces have also been found.

[SicilianVespers]

Here is a preliminary version of the faction list:

Poenician
-Poeni
-Siculi

.

Why are the Siculi in the Phoenician culture?

We were Hellenized Italics. Shouldn't they be in the Greeks/South Italian culture?

[Luciano B]

You are right, Sicilian Vesper.

The Siculi will be among the factions with the "greek" (hellenized italic) culture;

However, we are re-defining the factions to fit in a better way with the new features introduced with BI.

[Maethius]

I like your choice of factions!

[Graccus]

How many of these factions will be able to be played?

Once again I eagerly await the mods. release
Graccus

[Shaun]

Can you rephrase the question? It's rather unclear what you're asking about. What Roman family system?

the Scipii-brutii-julii family system in RTW.

[SigniferOne]

Oh, that Roman family system will not even be in PI at all. The mod will be designed for BI, and we will have our own custom-made cultures.

[Obi Wan Asterix]

If no other help is available in a couple of weeks I would love to help with the Faction descriptions.

[Luciano B]

Thanks Asterix.
Your help will be very useful for the "grand-preview" that we are assembling right now.

[Sparton Matticus]

Will cathage be making an apperance in this mod?

[Alessandro Magno]

Any estimated release? I can't wait!!!
However,very compliments for yours good work!!!!

W Italia!!!!!

[SigniferOne]

Samnium and the Samnites (excerpts -- Samnite government)
by Steven Salmon

Provides lots of ideas about implementing the political aspect of Samnites within the constraints of RTW's engine. It's a fascinating read, I highly recommend it.

------

The Samnite tribal states developed out of peasant societies. Fera quaedam sodalitas et plane pastoricia atque agrestis...quorum coitio illa silvestris ante est instituta quam humanitas atque leges. (Cic. pro Caelio, 26: Cicero is talking about the germani Luperci, whose name however is identical with Hirpini.) The transition from barbarism to civilization could have occurred in the manner envisaged by Plato for primitive mountaneer societies (Laws, 3.679-81). But all we know concerning the way the Samnites organized themselves derives from casual allusions in the literary sources and Oscan documents. The literary sources, however, are Roman or Roman-inspired, while the Oscan documents with one or two exceptions date from the period when the Sabellians were already under Roman domination; and as we have been recently reminded, 'Rome was the great centre of political innovation in Italy' (A.D.Momigliano in J.R.S. LIII, 1963, 114). Consequently it is by no means easy to decide what institutuion is genuinely Samnite and what is merely imitation of something Roman.

The city-state as a unit of government did not exist among the Samnites. The political and administrative unit of the Sabellians generally and of the Samnites especially was not the municipium, but the touto. This word is said to have the same meaning as Latin populus, but probably has no exact equivalent. The touto was the unit that possessed corporate existence and was evidently larger than the average civitas. Of the civitas itself, with its distinctive individuality and civil constitution, there is no sign amongst the Samnites (Livy 8.23.6 uses the expression civitas Samnitium; but by this he clearly means the nomen Sabelicum.) The Samnites did not think in terms of a city-state with its territorium included, so to speak, within the urban centre. Their conception was of a territorial area in which urban agglomerations were more or less incidental, although they might be used as centres from which to conduct the business of the tribe. The Samnites had certainly passed beyond the stage of mere rudimentary village organization; but there is no trace of any true municipal oranization of an elaborate communal kind amongst them. The Samnites were in that pre-urban stage in which the tribal community formed the basis of political organization. Right down to the days of the Social War they do not appear to ahve had any genuine boroughs at all.

Their sub-tribal entity was the immemorial Italic institution, the pagus. [...] Each touto contained a number of pagi. The pagus was an administrative sub-unit, the smallest such amongst the italic peoples, but it was not a town: it was a district of variable size usually larger than a fundus, but smaller than a territorium, and might itself contain one or more settlements, either unwalled but stockaded villages (vici) where the country was flat (Livy 9.13.6; 10.17.2; cf. App. B.C. 1.51.222; Samn .4), or walled citadels of refuge (oppida, castella) where the country was mountainous (Livy 10.18.8). Neither vici nor oppida seem to have had any political life of their own: they were not the administrative sub-units. The pagi were.

The pagus was a semi-independent country district, concerned with social, agricultural and especially religious matters, and it may also have been through it that military levies were raised. When a number of pagi aagreed to cooperate closely a touto was born. And once it came into being it could evidently command the fierce loyalty of those who professed allegiance to it. In their native mountain habitats the Samnites had a strong sense of tribal solidarity (in other words, loyalty to their touto), and they gave expression to this in resounding feats of arms.

Livy refers to the populi Samnitium (9.22.2). Presumably each of these populi was a touto. Their number probably varied at different times. During the recorded history of the Samnites we hear of the four to which allusion has already been made: the Caraceni, Caudini, Hirpini and Pentri. It seems safe to infer that each of these four tribes made up a touto. Strabo implies that each of these tribes was a political entity in itself (6.1.2) and Livty confirms this for the last three (he never mentions the Caraceni separately). Note: Generally speaking it is only after the Pyrrhic War and the dissolution of the Samnite League that the tribes are separately named.

Presumably each had a locality which, while itself a submunicipal unit, served as a 'capital' (the caput gentis, so to speak), the centre of administration for the whole touto. Oscan inscriptions mentioning a meddix titius, the highest official in a Samnite state, indicate that Bovianum was the capital for the Pentri, and Livy confirms this (Vetter, numbers 159 and 160, Livy 9.31.4).

The capitals of the other three Samnite tribes are largely a matter of guesswork. Its name suggests that at one time Aequum Tuticum of the Hirpini served as some sort of political meeting-place, but it never seems to have been a place of much consequence. Malventum, on the other hand, must always have been important and it is oncnceivable that it was not the Hirpinian capital in its pre-Roman days. [...]

For the Caudini it is surely as certain as anything can be that eponymous Caudium must have served as capital in the pre-Roman days.

The Caraceni presumably used Aufidena as their chief centre. The smallness of the tribe makes it probable that this was the only settlement they had bigger than a village, and it is significant that once it was annexed by Rome c.260 the Caraceni seem to have disappeared as a separate tribe. An inscription from Aufidena, Vetter number 141, has been emended to read m.t., i.e. meddiss toutiks. If the emendation is right, it presumably means that the office of meddix tuticus was allowed to continue even after Rome annexed Aufidena c. 268.

The word meddix occurs in Oscan inscriptions in the form meddiss. It does not occur in Latin inscriptions, where the Latin title praetor is regularly substituted for it. Ancient authors also usually refer to a meddix as praetor or strategos; but they do sometimes use the word meddix itself.

Meddix was an old Italic title used by all the other Sabellian and Sabellic peoples and by the related Volsci as well. It is generally agreed that it is cognate with Latin iudex. According to Festus, meddix was a generic term equivalent in meaning to Latin magistratus. It could, however, be made specific by the addition of a qualifying adjective. The chief meddix, the head of the state, was called meddix tuticus (meddiss toutiks), the adjective clearly being formed from touto.

Ennius' and Livy's definition of the title as summus is confirmed by the Oscan inscriptions. Ennius' evidence is particularly valuable since he himself spoke Oscan. His words are: summus ibi capitur meddix, occiditur alter. The meddix tuticus had full unfettered authority in his touto. Unlike other officials he is not described as aacting only on the authority of a council, although he was expected consult one; and it was made clear that the other officials were subordinate to him. In addition to supervising the workings of the law he was the military leader of the state (Livy 8.39.13; 23.7.8; 24.47.7; Diod. 22.13.2, 5), and had a role, originally no doubt the chief role, in its official religion (Livy 23.35.13). He summoned and presided over meetings of council and assembly and supervised state finances. As an eponymous magistrate his office was an annual one (Vetter, numbers 14, 71, 149). He seemed, however, to have been eligible for immediate re-election: this was certainly the case af Capua and amongst the Sabellian insurgents in the Social War (Livy 23.2.3; 24.19.2; 26.6.13).

In wielding supreme authority the meddix tuticus obviously resembled the Roman consul (See Festus, p. 404 L., who also likens the meddix to the Carthaginian sufes). Unlike the latter, however, he does not appear to have had a colleague on equal terms with himself. It has been convincingly argued that the native meddix tuticus was originally a single official. In Samnium, so far as we know, this was the case at all times. The earliest occurrence of the word meddix, on a helmet from Lucania, refers to a single official. At Capua, before Rome suppressed its local government in 211, there was one meddix tuticus Campanus (meddis toutiks Kapuans, Vetter number 88, cf number 86. Comparable are meddix Pompeianus, meddix Nolanus.).

Unquestionably pairs of meddices existed. The typically Oscan adjective tuticus, however, is not used with any of these pairs, and the influence of the Roman collegial system could explain them all. The pair at Messana are the result of close Mamertine relations with Rome after 265. The proximity of Velitrae to Rome made Roman influence there inescapable: indeed by the third century, the date of the inscription concerned, it was quite marked (by then it was part of the Roman state). An inscription that alludes to one of the pair at Nola contains the Latin neologsms senatus and quaestor (Vetter, number 1). The two at Corfinium are named in a document which uses the Latin script and includes a Latin verb superficially oscanized.

Besides its chief magistrate a Sabellian state also had lower officials. At Iovila inscription from the pre-211 self-governing Capua seems to mention a meddix minor and another may contain the Oscan equivlanet of cum meddix quisquis minor est aderit. Ennius and Livy also reveal the existence of magistrates below the meddix tuticus (Ennius has summus meddix, alter meddix, which implies that there were at least three.)

Every pagus in a touto may well have had its own meddix: he would be subordinate to the meddix tuticus. Meddices who are not tutici are also securely documented: there were meddices decentarii (mediss degetasios) at Campanian Nola and meddices atici (medix aticus [sic]) at Paelignian Corfinium. The Nolan meddix decentarius was the exact equivalent of the quaestor at Abella, who in his turn strikingly resembles the quaestor at Pompeii and at Bantia: in neither of these two places was he the chief official. The quaestor apparently could act only on the authority fo the council; unlike meddix tuticus, he could not use his own discretion. Moreover the quaestor -- and the same is true of the meddix decentarius -- was not a single official; contrary to a common belief, he and his fellows persumably formed a college. The meddices decentarii at Nola were evidently financial officers. The functions of the meddix aticus at Corfinium strongly resemble those of the meddix decentarius at Nola, so that he too perhaps is to be equated with the questor. The title at Nola may mean that the official there was chiefly concerned with funds derived from tithing: he certainly controlled what appears to be equivalent of the Roman pecunia multaticia which was managed at Rome by the quaestor. The title of the meddix aticus seems vaguer: perhaps he supervised all types of public revenue.

The neames of all other lesser Sabellian officials, where known, seem to be with one possible exception clearly Roman (the one possible exception is the kenzstur, and he too might well be of Roman origin). This however is no proof of Rudolph's theory that Rome was responsible for practically all the magistracies in Italy. A Roman title does not prove Roman origin. The Tsars of the Slavs hardly descended from the Caesars of the Romans [N.B. no?] The Sabellians adopted Roman names for some of their native institutions simply because Roman nomenclature was better adapted to spcialization of function than Oscan (A legal document such as the Cippus Abellanus, Vetter number 1, shows that the Sabellians found it convenient to use Latin technical expressions). In some instances the institution as well as the name was derived from Rome: the aidil, for instance, does not look like the native officer of tha touto. But this is not inevitably or invariably true for all the other minor official.

All Sabellian titles are listed (with the Oscan inscriptions in parentheses):

aidilis (Oscan aidil)
censor (Oscan kenzstur)
legatus (Oscan ligat)
praefectus (Oscan praefucus)
praetor (Oscan praetur)
promagistratus (Oscan prumeddix)
quaestor (Oscan kvaisstur)
tribunus plebis (Oscan tr. pl.)
triumvir (Oscan trium nerum)

These obviously Roman titles, in some instances at least, may have been applied to genuinely native offices: the kvaisstur and the ligat, for instance, seem to have functions for which Roman influence is not responsible. On the other hand some of the offices, as well as the titles, seem to be direct imitation of Rome: the Oscan tr. pl., for instance, does not look very Sabellian. More controversial is the kenzstur. [...] It seems more likely that the Sabellians got the name from the Romans, and perhaps the office as well, since all ancient sources regard the censorship as a distinctively Roman magistracy).

Presumably the Samnites elected their officials: their close kinsmen, the Lucani, certainly elected their praetor (Livy, 25.16.6) and Sabellian communities which were municipally organized, for example the Campanian towns, or Bantia, had both a council and an assembly which exercised elective functions. The unurbanized, tribally organized touto of the Sabellic Marrucini also had an assembly. In Samnium there exists at Trebula Balliensis an area that probably served as a meeting-place for the assembly of the Caudini; and amongst the Hirpini the name of the town Aequum Tuticum obviously means Forum Publicum. That the topography of Samnium was no obstacle to gatherings is seen during the Social War when the Italici held meetings of a council and also apparently of an assembly, at Corfinium and elsewhere. It can then be surmised that each Samnite tribe had both a council and an assembly, which met periodically at some centre, presumably at the summons and under the presidency of the meddix tuticus. Livy took it for granted that there were such gatherings (Livy 8.39.10; 10.12.2; 23.2, 14, 15, 16, 39, 43; 24.13.8; cf. Dio 15, fr. 57, 30 and 34; Zon. 9.2.11). It is not easy, however, to discover the Oscan names for the two bodies, such words as senatus and comono being Latin neologisms.

At Rome it was the various ways of organizing the people in groups for voting purposes that was responsible for a plurality of assemblies, whereas Sabellian communities do not seem to have been organized in this way. There is no trace of voting by groups at Bantia, and if that heavily romanized community did not have the practice, it is unlikely that other Sabellian states had it either. Assuming that a Sabellian state had only one assembly and that it was to it that the word komparakio- as well as the word kombennio- referred, we must conclude that the Oscan word for 'council' has not survived. (One would have expected a word derived from casnar (= 'old' in Oscan; perhaps it was something resembling Marsic casontonia). We can either imitate Livy and the Sabellians themselves and call it by the latin name senatus, or we can use whatever the name is for the institution in our native tongue.

The functions of the council must have been advisory and probouletic; but, in addtiion, it may have wielded very considerable powers, like the Roman senate, greater powers perhaps than in theory it was supposed to possess (Livy 8.39.10-14 obviously thought that it could sit in a judicial capacity, exercise complete control over a Samnite's person and property and subordinate the meddix to itself). A Sabellian senate undoubtedly had the right to appoint legati (Livy 41.8.6 describes a legatio which had probably been sent out by a Samnite senate): it did so at Nola and at Abella after deciding where a temple should be built; and presumably it did so in Samnium after deciding to protest to Rome about the way Samnites were being permitted and perhaps even encouraged to leave Samnium.

Something is also known about the function of a Sabellian assembly. Besides the right to eelect officials and possibly council members, it must also have had legislative powers, like those of the touto of the Marrucini in the third century, and judicial powers, like those of the assembly at Bantia in the second and first.

The Sabellians also had a political and/or military organization called the vere(h)ia. It existed amongst the Sabellians of Campania and the Frentani, and so probably amongst the Samnites as well. It may have been a youth organization, the youths being the 'gate-wardens' (Oscan vero = Latin porta). This organization played an important part in the military life of the state and, like the iuventus at Rome, was almost certainly an aristocratic institution (for the youth organization amongst the Aurunci, see Livy 9.25). At Sabellian Pompeii the so-called Small Palaestra, an elegant gymnasium in which ephebi could train and take exercise, was clearly intended for the jeunesse doree; and amongst the probably related Aurunci there was a youth organization drawn from the classes and not from the masses.

The constitution of a Sabellian state could be described as 'mixed', the meddix tuticus supplying the monarchical element, the council the aristocratic, and the kombennio- (or komparakio-) the democratic. It is perhaps not being unduly fanciful to suggest that their constitutional arrangements may have helped foster the tale that the Sabellians were of Lacedaemonian descent, since the Spartans were the people with a mixed constitution par excellence.

Down to the third century, the four tribes of Samnium were joined together in an association called civitas Samnium by Livy (8.23.6). The term Samnite League seems justified, on the analogy of the Latin League about whose organization in the fourth century Cincius, an antiquarian of Augustus' day, supplies a little information.

It is usually assumed that the ties binding the Samnite League were quite loose, the chief basis for this opinion being the Sabellian lack of cohesiveness in general (note how in 180 Cumae dissociated itself from the Oscan-speaking districts of Campania by requesting permission to make Latin its official language, Livy 40.42.13.). The Frentani, for instance, more usually threw in their lot with the Sabellic than with their Sabellian neighbours, the Samnites. The Lucani only made common cause with the Samnites occasionally and were often at daggers drawn with them. The Bruttii broke away from the Lucani and the Larinates away from the Frentani. And there was fierce hostility between the Sabellians of Samnium and those of Campania. Moreover what we know of other leagues in early Italy, such as the Etruscan and the Latin, suggests that individual league-members could go to war with one another. The Samnite tribes may often have quarrelled among themselves, and it would be strange indeed if agrucultural communities did not come to blows with pastoral. Such internal disagreements between the Samnite confederates encouraged the Romans to attempt to split the Hirpini from the Pentri and the Caudini from both and even from one another.


If Samnites, Lucani and Bruttii failed to form a political union, it may have been due in large part to differing racial strains. The non-Sabellian element in the ethnic make-up of Lucani and Bruttii was larger than in that of any tribe in Samnium. This disunifying factor would reinforce the instinct for particularism that prevailed in early Italy, and that is exemplified by the Frentani and Campanians, who are not markedly different from the inhabitants of Samnium in their racial stock, yet rarely act in unison with them. The lowland Campanians, if not the Frentani, had diverged from their backward highland origin to a more advanced form of culture and this made them reject their rustic kinsmen.

Nevertheless the Samnites were imbued with national consciousness, and Roman attempts to balkanize them were never fully successful. When convinced that they were threatened from without or that some enterprise undertaken in common would benefit them all, the Samnites sank their internal differences and presented a united front to the outside world. It is significant that, as late as the first century when the Social War broke out to test the sentiments of the peoples in Italy, the Hirpini range themselves unhesitatingly by the side of the Pentri against Rome, despite the very intensive romanization to which they had been exposed during the preceding century and a half.

In the fourth and early third centuries, when the Samnites were truly independent, the Samnite League did have unmistakably a strong sense of union. It was not held together merely by one tribe dominating all the others. The tribes are represented as united in their determination to oppose Rome to the desperate end, one indication of this being the almost total failure of the ancient athors to distinguish one tribe from another, or even to name them individually, in the accounts of the Samnite Wars. Furthermore there is no record of Rome being able to play off one tribe against another. She was able to win (Sabellian) Campani, Frentani, Apuli and even Lucani to her side; but there is no known instance of a member of the Samnite League making common cause with her against the other Samnites.

The association of Samnite tribes at the very least took the form of a permanent military alliance, what the Greeks called a symmachy, although unlike some Greek symmachies it does not seem to have had a hegemon to dragoon the other members. Essentially it was an everlasting league for the purpose of making war on outsiders and promoting other common objects, the first of which was the winning of divine favor: Livy is obviously right in suggesting that sacral as well as military ties kept the Samnites together (10. 38; Dion. Hal. 17/18.2.3).

The Samnite League was no full-fledged Bundestaat, or federal union: it was a Staatenbund, or confederation. Its four constituent members were virtually independent states, whose range of agreed common activities was probably narrow. Perhaps there was some kind of sympolity, and, although we do not hear of a popular assembly for the whole League, it is significant that the federal-type alliance of Italic states in the Social War does not seem to have had an assembly. The Samnite League undoubtedly had a council or Diet, to which ancient authors often allude and the purpose of whcih was to direct common policy. Livy suggests that the meddices were expected to consult it (7.13.11; 8.39.10f; 10.12.2. In 9.3.9 he very similarly represents Gavius Pontius in 321 as havinga council to consult), and both he and Dionysius of Halicarnassus mention the representatives (magistratus, probouloi) sent to it by the Samnite communities (Livy 7.13.11; 8.23.2; Dion. Hal. 15.7.4; 15.8.1; 17.1.4). But the number from each tribe, the method of their selection, and the tenure of the office are alike unknown. It would be indeed surprising if they were not the principes Samnitium. Presumably the Diet of the Samnite League, as of the Latin, met once a year, and more often if need be, possibly in a circus, to use Livy's word (The council of the Hernici met in the Circus Maritimus, Livy 9.42.12, a large, elliptical, man-made hollow some 2.5 miles south of Anagnia. The meeting of the Latini was an agora according to Dion. Hal. 5.61.1.). It may, however, have met in various places, coming together wherever it was most convenient for the immediate purpose.

The exact functions of the Diet are a matter of specuation. As a diplomatic body with real powers in time of war, it must have helped to frame the foreign policy of the League as a whole and decided strategy. Certainly in view of what Livy tells us and of what took place later at Corfinium in the Social War, it seems likely that, once hostilities broke out, the Diet directed the war effort. [...] It is more than likely that the League really came to life only at times of immediate common danger. But in the Italy of the fourth and early third centuries such occasions were very frequent, and when they occurred the Samnite tribes were prepared mutually to make concessions for their common good.

When war threatened, the League appointed a commander-in-chief (Livy 9.1.2). In this it was behaving like other Sabellian leagues. The Lucani, for instance, adopted unity of military command whenever it was urgently needed and appointed a former meddix as commander-in-chief: they had been doing this, says Strabo, from very early times (6.1.3; cf Livy 25.16.6). The title borne by this commander is uncertain. Beloch argued that it was meddix tuticus, but this view seems to run counter to the documentary, literary, and etymological evidence. The literary authors may not have known what the generalissimo's title was, but they evidently knew what it was not. It was not meddix or meddix tuticus. If it had been, they would have said so. Livy sometimes calls him dux, sometimes imperator; Strabo calls him basileus; Festus uses the word princeps.

It emerges from Strabo that the commander-in-chief was appointed for one campaign. Livy's language is more ambiguous and could mean that he was appointed for one year. He did not share the office with a colleague but was in sole command, and for this reason he seems to some scholars to resemble the dictator of the Latins. Also he was eligible for reappointment: at any rate, Papius Mutilus was appointed more than once in the Social War.

Although the Samnite League lacked well-organized centralization, the importance it assumed in time of war proves that it was not simply a lifeless aggregate of parts. Within it it contained the seeds of federalism. Greek example suggests that federal unions were more likely to emerge among peoples who were politically backward and who had no established flourishing, self-governing, municipal commonwealths. The Sabellians in general, and particularly the Samnites, were not living in a state of advanced political development: their political organisms were seldom urban. But even amongst the most advanced of the Sabellians there is an example of what appears to be a full-fledged federal union. Capua, Atella, Calatia, and 'Velecha' are shown by the identity of their coins to have enjoyed full 'sympolity' during a few years of the Second Punic War when they were in revolt from Rome. Mention should also be made of the insurgents in the Social War, all of whom were either Sabellian or Sabellic (i.e. near-Sabellian).

Evidently the political outlook of the speakers of Oscan differed from that of the speakers of Latin (this has recently been splendidly emphasized by A.J. Toynbee, Hannibal's Legacy, I, 84-280, who sees the Samnite Wars largely in terms of a struggle between the municipal idea represented by Rome and the tribal concept represented by Samnium). It is worth emphasizing that when the Romans organized Italy it was not on a federal pattern: the Roman practice was to make a separate, bilateral alliance with each state individually. The political instincts of the speakers of Oscan, on the other hand, were federative: Sabellians, Samnites, Sabellic tribes were all prone to form leagues.

Thus, there seems to have been a fundamental difference of viewpoint between Romans and Samnites. Possibly Sabellian statecraft would never have been capable of devising a system for linking a number of separate communities into a union that was cohesive, tightly close and truly indivisible. Or possibly the Sabellian temperament would never have been able to submit to the discipline required of political innovators. In the event the Sabellians did not get the chance to impose their ideas. It was the people with strong central organization, not the people with a federal outlook, that won the great struggle for the hegemony of Italy.

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The Social Structure [of the Etruscans] and the Serf Question
by Francoise-Helene Massa-Pairault

From The Etruscans, edited by Mario Torelli

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The originality of the Etruscans with regard to the other people of antiquity was first perceived -- and carefully analyzed -- by the Greek historians and philosophers. They stressed the existence of an evident dichotomy in their soiety between those they called lords (despotai) and those they generally caleld "serfs" (oiketai) or domestics (therapontes), describing the dominance of the former and the subservience of the latter to the family group (oikos). Most of the information we have about Etruscan society --mainly gleaned from the work of Athenaeus of Naucratis (third century A.D.) The Learned Banquet -- quotes Aristotle (I, 23), Theopompus (XII, 517 ff.), Heraclides Ponticus or Timaeus of Tauromenium (IV, 153r. ff. and XI, 517r.), etc. Other Greeks provide a different point of view: in the work of the Stoic Posidonius of Apamea, summarized by the historian Diodorus (V, 40 ff.), it may be noted that the reason for the Etruscan dominion over Italy prior to that of the Romans was seen in relation to their economic resources and social equilibria. Thus, in some cases, starting from a reflection on customs, an explnaation was given for the peculiarity of the religious practices, laws, and constitutions. Seen from this point of view, the anomalous status of the serfs with regard to Greek customs could almost appear to be the hidden key to the wealth and productive capacity, allowing us to view the Etruscan opulence in a more positive light. Thus Posidonius informs us about the prosperity of the serfs, who were well dressed, "better than is becoming for subodinate people", and possessed, if not land, at least buildings of every type -- workshops, and town and country houses.

From a legal point of view, although the Roman clients abandoned their domestic cults in order to embrace those of their patrons -- renouncing a considerable part of their legal rights in exchange for the protection of the more powerful individual -- they did not, as a result, lose their citizenship or right to vote. It is a situation that our sources do not seem to associate with the Etruscan serfs, whose subjection seems, in fact, to be reflected by the internal layout of the house with an atrium. Indeed, the oldest form of the atrium, the testudinate (vaulted) space in whic hthe roof was supported by columns (as in the Tomb of the Capitals or that of the Shields and Chairs at Cerveteri), appeared between the last quarter of the seventh and the begining of the sixth centuries B.C., just as public spaces in the city were being given a moumental character, almost as if this were a sign for the introduction of a social order that relegated the serfs and not the citizens to the only public space in which they have function, the hall of state and government in their masters' houses. There, seated on a throne, the pater familias and mater familias received their serfs according to a ritual that we must imagine as being similar to the one described by Macrobius (Saturnalia, I, 16, 32) and other authors with regard to the "Etruscan kings" who, every nine days (the day on which the markets were held), received their peasants, who brought them the produce of their land, explained the reasons for quarrels, and renewed their pledges of loyalty. Another illustration of the condition of the serfs, from the same period (ca. 630 B.C.) is provided by the scenes carved on the back of the wooden throne found in Tomb 89 at Verucchio: these depict the most prestigious domestic activity, associated with the rites of matrimony and triumph of a gens, the production of textiles and woolen clothes. Numerous serfs take part, grazing the flocks of sheep, taking the shorn wool to be carded, then bringing it to the mistress, who before the large pedimented house, dies and spins it with her daughters and maids. A number of armed men (the master and his relatives) protect these domestic activities, heralding the triumph.

The Etruscan aristocracy emerged by exploiting the new legal system of the city and its territory in order to bring the poorest memebers of the community (Latin tenuiores) into its services. The instititution of the patronage system (linked to the heredium, the minimum area of land that could be inherited) that Romulus had created in Rome at about the same time attempted to address the problems of social organization resulting from the extension of and changes to the forms of property. The Etruscans seem to have found other solutions to these problems: the level of wealth reached by a number of lords -- frequently thanks to the practice of piracy -- allowing them to have immence political power and military prestige, and the fact that they could turn the last migratory movements in the direction of Campania to their advantege (as in the case of Veio), resulted in even more drastic appropriation of land, men, and implements by individuals and more marked forms of subjection, leading, in some cases, to the poorest people being deprived of their citizenship.

The southern coastal cities responded to the economic stimuli, therefore, with a marked and extensively diffused social structure comprising various levels of wealth, with the possibility of progressing from one elvel to another (vertical social mobility) and a larger variety of obligations and social types, not all based on the gentilitial model of servitude: crafts or commercial guilds and societies with religious, military, nautical, and trading objectives were able to express themselves with greater freedom. The phenomenon of the painted tombs of Tarquinia in the last quarter of the sixth and the first quarter of the fifth centuries B.C. may be regarded as reflecting this social development. Relationships within the societies seemed to be stressed, in particular, by the frescoes in the Tomb of the Inscriptions at Tarquinia; in a huge building, perhaps the seat of a Collegium Mercatorum (corporation of merchants), a festival is being celebrated with joyous freedom -- and games -- bringing together the serfs (oiketai) Tetiie and Pumpu (both of Sabellian origin) and members, all male, of various families, such as the Matue, the Recieniie, and the Vinacna, whose names were not found, so it seems, among those of the subsequent, more limited, oligarchy of the city in the fourth century.

With just a few variations, this socal structure was to be found in the large large Etruscan ports, such as Populonia on the Tyrrhenian, which served the mining district. In Campania the multiplicity and complexity of the social models relating to each geopolitical area hinders a unified vision of this large region that then became Etruscan. At Capua the system of semi-servile tenancy of land, mainly on the part of Italic peoples called Opici ("those who work"), must have been in effect until the pressure, towards the middle of the fifth century, of a new Italic state that had formed on the eastern border of Caputan territory in the Matese massif, obliged the small group of Etruscan landowners ot divide the ownership of the land (and also of the Opici) and the government of the city with the leaders of those who were known henceforth as Campanians; in fact, a term in the treaty betweeen the Etruscans of Capua and the Italic peoplse who had settled in the city and its territory specified, in the Latin translation, societas urbis agrorumque. However, although this ended in 421 B.C. with the liquidation of the Etruscan oligarchy, this outcome to the contradictory situation was preceded, from ca. 530 to 490 B.C., by a notable development of trade and industry in the city, and the growth of the middle and lower classes parallel with the establishment of Aristodemos' tyranny in Cumae.

At the end of the Archaic perid (ca. 480 B.C.), Etruscan society overcame the most market inequality of the Orientalizing period between gentes of the upper class and the lower classes, or, at least, it managed to find room for new participants and models within the older, well-tried social organization. A series of events that had a disastrous outcome for the nation that had hitherto been hegemonic in Italy then followed: a naval defeat off Cumae at the hands of the Syracusans and Campanian Greeks in 474 B.C.; the end, due to the Italic peoples of Campania, of Etruscan domination of the cities in the region in 435 B.C.; the end, due to the attacks of the Gauls, of the Etruscan cities in the Po Valley at the beginning of the fourth century; and the conquest of Veio by the Romans in 396 B.C. However, aside from these setbacks, the social equilibrium achieved thus far could only have been maintained on two conditions. The failure, albeit spread out in time and space, to satisfy these caused a crisis to which Etruria proper (between the Tiber and the Arno) and -- as long as it was governed by Etruscan magistrates -- Capua gave a political response aiming at social conservation rather than innovation. This is the attitude that is to be found, for example, in the scenes on the sarcophagus from the Sperandio cemetary at Perugia, where the possessions (in Latin, familia, family property) of the deceased are paraded before us: flocks of sheep driven by a serf, and prisoners, possibly of war, or else nexi, debt-slaves. The restoration of the power of the oligarchy led to the revival of the system of domination over the countryside on which Etruscan society was based in the Orientalizing period, with the large estates being run on semi-servile basis.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus recalls the episode in his Roman Antiquities (II, 44, 7) mentioning the presence among the troops of Veio's allies, of numerous "Penests" (Penestai) under the command of the most powerful leaders (dunatotatoi). In Greece, the term Penests referred to a people that had been conquered by the Thessalians and worked the large estates of their masters, dividing -- on an unfair basis, no doubt -- the produce of the land with them; they were also required to do military service as foot-soldiers alongside the cavalry of the landowners. Their status, which was certainly not that of free citizens, did not prevent them, nevertheless, from enjoying a degree of affluence and having the right to own certain forms of property -- for instance, houses. According to classifications that date from the Hellenistic age and are repeated in Pollux's Onomasticon (III, 83), the condition of the Penests was in-between that of freedom and slavery. The apperance of the term "Penests" cannot, therefore, be considered to be a coincidence in the writings of Dionyisus; he had read Aristotle, who wrote a book on the customs of the Etruscans (Tyrrhenon Nomima), and also the works by Theophrastus, who, according to Cicero (De finibus, V, 4), not only described the customs, institutes, and learning of the barbarian peoples, but also collected their laws. Although very little of Theohrapstus' vast output has survived, there is perhaps an echo of these works in the writings of the Byzantine historian Johannes Zonaras where he stresses the equilibrium of the constitution of the Volsinii (polis eunomoumene) before it was overthrown by those he called "serfs". Dionysius' text also gives an extremely accurate picture of southern Etruria after 480 B.C. It is sufficient to mention the recent discovery at Vetulonia of the helmets of the gens Haspna (fifth century B.C.) who must have led their freemen and "Penests" to war in much the same way as the gentes allied with Veio described by Dionysius. Or else a comparison may be made with the information given by Dionysius with that provided by Livy (IX, 37, 12) with regard to a later period (late fourth century), when he describes the cohorts of peasants mobilized by their masters to defend the lands that the Roman troops had invaded from the Monti Cimini. This seems to suggest that, in the countryside, there was a network of large estates located near the owners' residences and cultivated by a subordinate peasant class.

Bearing in mind the evolution of what appears to be the state of affairs in Etruscan society on the eve of its Romanization, we are in a better position to assess the crises and conflicts that shoook the Etruscan world between the fourth and the beginning of the second centuries B.C. It is worthwhile focusing our attention on the events that affected two cities: Arretium (Arezzo) and Volsinii. The Latin inscriptions (elogia) of the Spurinna family adorning the forum of Tarquinia in the Julio-Claudian age (part of the Elogia Tarquiniensia) recalled a certain Aulus Spurinna who repressed a serf revolt in Arezzo. This serf revolt should probably not be confused with the one, recorded by Livy (X, 3, 2) in 302 B.C., of the urban plebeians of Arretium against the excessive power and enormous wealth of the family holding sway over the city, the Cilnii, for the pacification of which Roman mediation was necessary. The backbone of these uprisings was formed by artisans, especially those who wrought the bronze artifacts, and other subordinate classes who worked on the lands of the Cilnii, perhaps supported by the free social classes who aspired to more equitable access to property and to the government of the city, and for whom it was necessary to create a currency system that was absent here, as it was in most of Etruria., It must, however, be pointed out that, perhaps in order to avoid events like those in Arezzo, probably to meet the requirements of the middle and upper urban classes, and certainly to oppose the monetary expansion of Rome, Tarquinia put into circulation a new bronze coin at the end of the fourth century. At almost the same time, Volsinii issued the oval series. In the case of Volsinii it is possible to follow the development of a crisis lasting from the late fourth to the early third centuries (the wars against Rome from the late fourth century B.C. to the battle of Sentinum of 295 B.C. and the battle of Lake Vadimonis of 283 B.C. are the probably context for these events. The serfs were apparently then required by their masters to participate (perhaps when they became free citizens) in the government of the city (diokesiis poleos), perhaps with regard to the administration of the enormous riches of its sanctuaries, including those of the Fanum Voltumnae, the temple of Voltumna, where the general assemblies of the Etruscan Confederation were held. From then onwards there were more specifically political demands, such as the right to become members of the senate and hold government posts; this was, in fact, obtained in a violent manner by eliminating the majority of the members of the old ruling class and marrying their wives. This is the account of the Byzantine historian Johannes Zonaras (and of Johannes Antiochensis, fr. 50 Muller), which tallies with the Roman sources (especially Paulus Orosius, I, 5, 3, 5), in which reference is made to wills made under threat, and property taken by force from the natural heirs. Instigated by a number of Volsinian oligarchs who had survived the violence, Rome put an end to this situation in 264 B.C. by storming Volsinii after a difficult campaign, crushing the rebels, laying waste to the city, sacking it and resettling the survivors, masters and the serfs loyal to them alike -- on the site of what is now Bolsena. Other echoes of the events in Volsinii are to be found in the so-called prophecy of Vegoia (Gromatici Veteres). Moreover, Pseudo-Aristotle's De mirabilibus ascultationibus refer to a city in Etruria, isolated on the top of a hill surrounded by springs and forests, called Oinarea: this is, in other words, the city of Wine, Abundance, and Liberty, or Oina, resembling Vina (vineyard in Etruscan) o Velzna (Volsinii in Etruscan). The landowners of Oinarea, to avoid the excessive power of one of their number -- it appears that the lesson of the revolt at Arezzo against the Cilnii had been learnt -- entrusted the government of the city to their manumitted serfs who held office for a year. This throws further light on the events at Volsinii, and before their dramatic outcome no trace of which remained.