The Early Roman Expansion into Italy Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas

This book presents a radical new interpretation of Roman expansion in Italy during the fourth and third centuries BCE. Nicola Terrenato argues that the process was accomplished by means of a grand bargain that was negotiated between the landed elites of central and southern Italy, while military conquest played a much smaller role than is usually envisaged. Deploying archaeological, epigraphic, and historical evidence, he paints a picture of the family interactions that tied together both Roman and non-Roman aristocrats and that resulted in their pooling power and resources for the creation of a new political entity. The book is written in accessible language, without technical terms or quotations in Latin, and is heavily illustrated.

List of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Views of Roman imperialism through time; 2. The long-term context of Roman expansion: central Italian society and politics in the early first Millennium BCE; 3. The global context of Roman expansion: the central Mediterranean between the late fifth and the early third centuries BCE; 4. A heterogeneous conquest I: a cross section of polity biographies and types of conflicts; 5. A heterogeneous conquest II: family biographies and agendas; 6. The consequences of the expansion; 7. Conclusions; Works cited; Index.

Nicola Terrenato is the Esther B. Van Deman Collegiate Professor of Roman Studies at the University of Michigan, where he specializes in first-millennium BCE Italy, with particular reference to northern Etruria, early Rome and the period of the Roman conquest. Since 2007, he has directed the Gabii Project. He is co-editor of Italy and the West: Comparative Issues in Romanization (2001), Articulating Local Cultures: Power and Identity under the Expanding Roman Republic (2007), State Formation in Greece and Rome (2011), Roman Republican Villas: Architecture, Context, and Ideology (2012) and A Mid-Republican House from Gabii (2016).