ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

locals, or Rome are given. 6Moreover, the analysis of the colonial commissioners (andtheir motivations and strategies) that follows this colonization history is not intended toreplace the military significance these colonies held for the Roman senate and people as awhole. Rather, I add the individual and factional intentions which help explain whycolonization in the middle Republic does not follow a single, unified policy nor producedozens of indistinguishable colonies, identical in composition, placement, and size.The following history of colonization is divided into two sections: South-CentralItaly, including the territory south of Latium, and Northern Italy, including thenorthernmost parts of Etruria. I have broken the colonization efforts from 334 to 177 intothese two halves not because they are temporally distinct, but because of their respectivelocal populations. Later chapters will deal with the religious influences of the Samnites,Etruscans, and Greeks on the colonies in South-Central Italy and of the Etruscans, Gauls,and Ligurians on the colonies in Northern Italy. For the purpose of continuity, thedivision between these regions begins with this history.More importantly, these regional distinctions are critical for analyzing thecommissioners' possible motives and the factional divisions among them. I have leftaside the colonies founded in Latium and most of those established in Southern Etruriafor the simple reason that we have no record of the colonial commissioners. By the samelogic, I have included the colonies established in Calabria, Saturnia, Graviscae, andcertain colonial supplements in this chapter because we do know the names of their6 In general, see Frayn (1993), which covers the importance of markets and fairs from the second centuryBCE through the third century CE.56