Rome and the Western Greeks, 350 BC - AD 200

Conquest and Acculturation in Southern Italy

Kathryn Lomas, Dr Kathryn Lomas

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134943005
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

The history of the Greek cities of Italy during the period of Roman conquest and under Roman rule form a fascinating case study of the processes of Roman expansion and assimilation and of Greek reactions to the presence of Rome. This book reassesses the role of Magna Graecia in Roman Italy and illuminates the mechanisms of Roman control and the process of acculturation. Specifically it explores the role of the Greek cities of Italy as cultural mediators between the Greek and Roman worlds. It is the first full length treatment of the region as a whole in English for over thirty years.

1

The Geography and Early Settlement of Magna Graecia

The importance of the physical geography of Italy in moulding the development and political integration of the peninsula cannot be overestimated. Its central position in the Mediterranean facilitates communications and trade with both West and East, and its shape, being much longer than wide, ensures that peninsular Italy covers a broad spectrum of climatic and geological conditions. All of these factors have significant bearing on the economic and political development of communities and also on the ways in which they interact.¹ Even within the area of this study, the coastal region from the Bay of Naples to Taranto, there is a wide range of climate, vegetation and physical landforms which had a major impact on the siting and development of cities, their interaction, and their wider network of communications. However, it must be stressed that although an appreciation of the geography of southern Italy is vital to our understanding of its historical development, it is not an unchanging factor. Climatic fluctuations affect local economies and habitation patterns, and land-forms can change significantly over a relatively short period of time, due to the effects of erosion and siltation. Survey work in Apulia using geological core sampling techniques has revealed that the ancient coastline was considerably further inland than the modern one in many places, and that a number of rivers have changed course.² Extensive coastal erosion or deposition of this type can potentially have a drastic effect on local economies of coastal cities such as those of Magna Graecia.³

The Greek cities were essentially maritime settlements, occupying areas of coastal plain. These plains are not continuous, however, but are broken, particularly in Calabria, by mountainous terrain. Many settlements are restricted to a fairly narrow strip of low-lying ground separating the mountains of the hinterland from the sea. In this respect, the Greek cities of Italy experienced similar restrictions on territorial growth, communications and transport to those of mainland Greece. A further consequence of the mountainous nature of the region is that local conditions of soil, climate and vegetation can vary considerably from one area to another, giving rise to a wide spectrum of conditions within Magna Graecia.⁴

Modern Campania is an economically depressed area, but in Antiquity it was regarded as being one of the most important regions of Italy, noted for its wealth, the diversity of its agricultural produce and the number and importance of its urban centres.⁵ The major determining features of the topography are the intense volcanic activity of the area and its poor drainage, with numerous waterways and lagoons. Drainage schemes and canal-building were pursued both by the Romans and more recently,⁶ while siltation was a problem from a very early date. Volcanic activity was also a problem. Vesuvius is situated close to Naples and although there is no certain evidence for the number and dates of its eruptions, other than that of AD 79 which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, it was active on several occasions.⁷ The frequency of earthquakes is attested both in literary sources and by an inscription found at Naples which records repairs to buildings damaged by earthquakes.⁸ On the northern side of the Bay of Naples, the area known as the Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields), which lies between Naples and Misenum, is characterised by hot springs, seismic activity and bradyseism, that is, the rapid rising and falling of localised areas of land in response to movements of the earth’s crust. This has been most pronounced at Puteoli, but seismic activity is common over all of the Campi Flegrei.⁹ The volcanic hot springs at Baiae and Bauli formed the basis of their prosperity as spa towns in the Roman period, and volcanic activity around Lake Acherusia, which lies a short distance inland from Cumae, led to the belief that it was an entrance to Hades.¹⁰ As well as these regular fluctuations, the whole of southern Italy was, and still is, prone to earthquakes.

To the south of the Bay of Naples, the terrain is similar: coastal plain with poor natural drainage but with enough layers of volcanic soil to render the land fertile, limited by the mountains of the interior. The Greek cities of northern Lucania, Paestum and Velia, both have severely restricted territories.¹¹ Further south, the coastal plain narrows considerably and is broken by points where the mountains descend to the sea. Unlike Campania and Apulia, Calabria is almost entirely mountainous, forming a major barrier to overland trade and communications. In Antiquity it was heavily wooded and was a source of timber and pitch, but it has since been subject to extensive deforestation.¹² Most of this region was unsuitable for agriculture and could only be used for forestry and pasturage, although there is evidence of both Italic settlement and Roman colonisation in the Tanagro valley. A number of small Greek cities were founded on the west coast of Calabria but only Rhegium and Vibo survived in any significant form into the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the rest having succumbed to the inhospitable terrain and to encroachment by native Italians. Rhegium and Vibo occupied a narrow strip of flat ground on the ‘toe’ of Italy and both relied on the sea for their economic survival. Of the two, Vibo had more cultivable land, sufficient to support a group of Roman colonists who were added to the Greek city in 194 BC.¹³ Rhegium is more restricted, occupying a very steep site which commands the shortest sea crossing to Sicily.

The Greek settlements on the south coast were among the most famous in the ancient world, and were noted for their fabulous wealth.¹⁴ All had ample room for expansion, occupying fertile plains, and all had access to the sea. The combination of these two factors led to the development of cities with large territories and strong agricultural economies. Tarentum, the only Greek city in Apulia, occupied a strategic site dominating an excellent natural harbour, but was situated on a flat coastal plain with few natural defences on the landward side. It possessed considerable territory but much of the city’s wealth came from commerce, fishing and textile production.¹⁵ In point of fact, the size of many of the Greek colonies in the West, both in Italy and in Sicily, was larger than most others in the ancient world. Ampolo estimates city areas of 510 ha for Tarentum, 141 ha for Metapontum and 281 ha for Croton.¹⁶ While these represent the entire walled area of the city, which was not necessarily the same as the populated area, such enclosures argue that the Italiote cities housed large populations.

PRE-COLONIAL CONTACTS

Although Tarentum was the only fully fledged Greek colony in southeast Italy, there is an increasing amount of evidence for Greek contacts with other parts of Apulia and the Adriatic coast. As already mentioned, there is a high concentration of Mycenaean material in the Sallentine peninsula, and excavations recently undertaken in this region have unearthed substantial quantities of later Greek material. In particular, there are signs of a Greek presence at Otranto (ancient Hydruntum), and at Gallipoli (ancient Callipolis). There is also a tradition in ancient literature which attributes Greek origins to many settlements in the Sallentine peninsula. Although it seems unlikely that any of these were Greek colonies, since the Messapian elements are dominant, the whole area was Hellenised and recent research has revealed the extent to which south-east Italy was an important point of contact between Greece, Illyria and Italy.¹⁷ The high density of Messapian settlements may have limited the opportunities for Greek colonisation but the coastal cities of the Sallentine peninsula were situated on trade routes whose importance has only recently been recognised.

The earliest Greek colonies in the West were founded in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Their appearance raises a number of questions about the nature of earlier Greek contacts with the West and the factors which prompted the transition from sporadic contact to the establishment of permanent settlements in Italy and Sicily. There is a tradition in ancient literature which dates the majority of the colonial foundations to the late eighth or early seventh centuries BC, and much recent research has been devoted to attempts to correlate this tradition with the ever-increasing archaeological data for the pre-colonial and colonial phases of Ischia, Cumae and some of the Sicilian colonies. In general terms, the archaeological and literary evidence agree remarkably well, with evidence on many sites for settlement during the late eighth century BC, but the exact nature of early contact and the processes of colonisation remain uncertain.

There is an increasing amount of evidence that contacts between Greece and Italy pre-dated the colonisation phase, and that the colonial foundations of the eighth century BC were not an entirely new phenomenon, but took place against a background of long-standing Greek contact with southern Italy, possibly with a break in continuity between the Mycenaean contacts and the pre-colonial phase of the ninth century. Mycenaean goods have come to light at a number of prehistoric sites, principally in Apulia and Calabria—at Porto Cesareo, Coppa Nevigata, Torre Castellucia and others—although there are more sporadic finds in Campania and central Italy as well.¹⁸ All of these sites are on or near the coast and not surprisingly there is little sign of any Mycenaean presence further inland. The majority of Mycenaean goods can be dated to Late Helladic IIIB and IIIC although earlier material (IIIA) has been found at Scoglio del Tonno on the Bay of Naples, one of the best documented of this group of sites.¹⁹ At most sites, Mycenaean finds are associated with Italic material of the Late Bronze Age—pottery and fibulae of Protovillanovan and Subapennine types or with pottery of Iapygian protogeometric style. Pottery forms the largest proportion of the Greek material, but some weapons and metal goods have been found. My- cenaean objects are generally only found in small quantities, a fact which, together with the restricted distribution of finds, the small number of types of object and the co-existence of Mycenaean finds with Italic assemblages, suggests that the relationship was one of contacts based on trade or gift exchange rather than on Mycenaean settlement on any substantial scale.²⁰ It is worth noting that some of the foundation myths of colonies in the West imply earlier contacts, which are in some cases consistent with archaeological evidence of Mycenaean contacts.²¹ The immediate pre-colonisation phase, and the dates of the earliest colonies, however, are obscured by dating problems associated with the Middle Geometric II pottery found in the earliest levels at Cumae and Naxos.²²

The reasons for the Greek colonisation which took place in the Mediterranean during the eighth century BC have been widely debated, and there are still no conclusive answers to this problem. One explanation centres on land shortages and demographic growth in Greece which, it is suggested, led smaller and less prosperous cities to offload their surplus population by establishing colonies elsewhere.²³ This model has been challenged on the basis of detailed archaeological exploration of sites with a strong Greek presence, notably Pithecusae in the West and Al Mina in Syria.²⁴ The presence of earlier Greek material at many colonial sites has also contributed to the development of a model in which trade was the determining factor and in which trading contacts both preceded and dictated the site of colonial foundations. However, there are problems with this model. Pithecusae, where the economic activity seems to have been metalworking using ores imported from Etruria, failed to develop into a colony of significant size, and Al Mina is now recognised as a Phoenician city rather than a Greek colony.

Indeed, it is unlikely that all colonial foundations can be attributed to a single cause. Given the disparity in the circumstances of the colonies and of their founding cities, it is more plausible to regard colonisation as the product of a number of factors. Herring has argued persuasively that conceptualisation of early colonisation in terms of the structures of the city-state is incorrect, projecting the decision-making processes of the fifth century on to a proto-urban society. Instead, he suggests that it should be seen as part of the evolution of the polis, involving some degree of fission as the population expands and socio-political organisation becomes more complex, and that emphasis on land or trade were the results of a particular choice of location rather than a cause of foundation.²⁵

The chronological span of colonisation in the West must also be borne in mind. The colonisation phase in the eighth century during which Aegean cities founded colonies in the West was on...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Geography and Early Settlement of Magna Graecia
• 2 Roman Conquest: Magna Graecia 350–270 BC
• 3 The Punic Wars
• 4 Treaties and Diplomacy: The Formalities of Relations with Rome 270–89 BC
• 5 Decline and Recovery: Magna Graecia 200 79 BC—AD 14
• 6 East/West Relations: Contacts Between Magna Graecia and the Eastern Mediterranean
• 7 Economic Developments and Agrarian Problems 200 BC—AD 200
• 8 Ritual and Society: Cults and Cultural Transition
• 9 Administrative Structures and the Transformation of Political Life
• 10 Urban Society in Magna Graecia: Acculturation and Civic Identity
• Epilogue: Magna Graecia in AD 200
• Appendix: Italiote Greeks in the East
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index