ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

Chapter 6: ConclusionsI. Summary of ArgumentsFor the Roman state, the benefits of founding a colony were military and defensive innature, but the colonial commissioners aspired to found colonies for their own reasonsand to their own benefits. This individual impetus to colonize sometimes arose from amilitary or personal connection with the location to be colonized combined with theperquisites obtained from leading out the colonists. The advantages that accompanied thedifficult task of establishing a colony included an increased clientele, political favor orassistance with a later political career, and even economic resources. Colonies were alsoan arena in which the commissioners could express political and personal rivalries oreven differing opinions on foreign policy. Not all of these reasons or benefits pertained toeach individual commissioner. Rather, the commissioners each had their own reason orcombination of reasons to assume this time-consuming magistracy. We may never knowwhat the reasons for colonizing were for some of the commissioners since the primarysources for this period are fragmentary in places or disinterested in others.The connections between the triumviri on several boards strongly suggest that thecommissioners had the option of arranging their own college and submitting their namesas a unit to the magistrate who presided over the election. In that case, the comitia tributawould vote for their choice of boards, or merely confirm the one board whose names werepresented. The diversity among the provisions of the leges coloniae implies thatfounding a colony, from its initial suggestion on the senate floor to the foundation itself,was an ad hoc process. Thus, the commissioners might well have exerted a considerable241