ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

this. 143 Some of the reasons why the commissioners and other magistrates might exertreligious control over their enemies were that appropriating the sacred object of an enemyfor Rome defeated the enemy permanently and added the power of enemy gods to Romeas well as undermining local loyalties, shattering the established religion of the localpotentates, and weakening the pretence of independence. 144The situation in the colonieswas not quite as inimical as these reasons suggest, however, because the colonists, whowere left behind after the commissioners completed their duties, had to live with whatremained of the defeated local population. Thus, the commissioners probably saw thevalue of incorporating or retaining local cults into the religious space of the new colony inorder to facilitate the relations between the colonists and the original inhabitants of thearea, especially in colonies not founded ex novo.In theory, appropriating the cult for the colony would still have reinforced thedefeat of the locals, but ideally it also would have transferred local loyalties to the colony,established a new authoritative religion, and allowed the locals not their ownindependence, but a place within the new polity. For example, Bispham has identified thenative Italic deity, Hercules, as a common feature in the divine landscape of the coloniesin preference to the purely Roman Capitoline Triad. 1 sSuch a theoretical picture ofde Cazanove (2000), p. 74. Livy 39.14.7; 17.4; 18.7-8. De Cazanove sees this only as an apparentexception to Roman non-intervention in their allies' religious life before municipalisation: coloniessubsequently established in the territories effected by the SC included: Sipontum, Buxentum (194,abandoned by 186) and Vibo Valentia (192), on which the ager Teuranus probably depended.144 Alcock (1993), p. 179. Alcock also notes that appropriating monuments, like Aemilius Paullus and thepillar of Perseus at Delphi, was not an economizing move, but 'harnesses the power of the past to purposesof the present.' (pp. 196-198)145 Bispham (2006), p. 113-122.142