Roman Italy, 4th Century bce to 3rd Century ce

Abstract

The history of Roman Italy is a vast subject, so the topics highlighted and the bibliography presented here are inevitably highly selective. The geographical scope is limited to Italy south of the river Po (Sicily and Sardinia, as provinces in antiquity, are excluded); the notional starting point chosen is the late 4th century bce (when Rome reorganized its alliances to create a structure which, in less than a hundred years, subjugated most of the peninsula); the (equally notional) conclusion is the reign of Diocletian, when Italy was subjected to taxation and subdivided into provinces. While the history of Roman Italy under the Republic can be seen as a narrative punctuated by episodes of warfare (the Samnite Wars, the conquest of Sicily, Hannibal’s invasion of Italy, the Social War, the Civil Wars), and the first sections of the article, after General Overviews and Key Background Works are roughly structured in this way, material on the history of Italy under the Empire can more appropriately be organized in thematic form. After an introduction to Rome and Italy under the Principate, much of the remainder of the article is thus divided between The Cities of Imperial Italy and The Italian Countryside. Under the first heading is gathered material on city administration, on local elites and sub-elites, and on civic buildings, as well as some key individual urban sites. The second heading covers material on rural Italy under the Republic (by way of background), on issues of population and migration, on the rural properties of the senatorial elite and the emperors, on agriculture and land division, on the archaeological techniques used to reconstruct settlement in the ancient landscape, on sanctuaries, and on the alimenta of the early 2nd century ce. The article concludes with a selection of studies of particular regions (underlining the significant degree of regional variation to be found across Italy). Publications in English are particularly highlighted where available, but (not surprisingly) many fundamental books and articles on Roman Italy have been published in Italian (or other European languages), and these too are included, so far as possible. There is some intersection between some of the topics covered here and other articles in the Oxford Bibliographies collection; in these cases, the relevant Oxford Bibliographies articles have been cited and the reader is referred to them for more bibliographical detail, while a limited number of key pieces of scholarship is cited here.