ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

military men and magistrates. Analysis of the literary evidence and of the commissionersthemselves demonstrates that there was no single, regulated method for founding Romanand Latin colonies in this period. The Roman senate delegated the task of electingcommissioners to a magistrate, who held elections for the sometimes pre-formed boardsof three men; it was these men who used their experience as generals, magistrates, andpriests to lead the colonists to their new home, organize the space, and define theinstitutions with the assistance of the newly-appointed colonial magistrates and priests.Through the differences of intention and colonial strategy held by the commissioners, thecolonies did not espouse a unified Roman settlement pattern, but instead the political andcultural principles of their founders and early settlers.Literary accounts of colonial foundation present an exclusively elite depiction ofthe colonies. Archaeological evidence, however, illustrates how the religious life of eachsettlement developed beyond its initial foundation by means of the interactions of thecolonists and local populations. Thus, in Chapter 4,1 demonstrate that the religiouslandscape of the colonies does not mirror that of Rome, but reflects the religious andspatial needs of the colonists. For example, the Fregellan religious spaces acted to defineFregellan control over the Via Latina and the Liris River and, ultimately, to integrate theSamnite and Latin populations within the city. In Paestum, the focus of the religiouslandscape was likewise to integrate with the Greek and Lucanian locals, but also defineda distinctly Latin space within the colony.Finally, in Chapter 5,1 compile the evidence for various cults throughoutSamnium, Campania, and Northern Italy to illustrate the way in which colonists adopt oradapt deities to build communal coherence. The overall colonial religious pattern is one51