Parnassos Press – Fonte Aretusa
Chapter Title: Agōn Sikelia: The Hannibalic War and the (Re)Organization of Roman Sicily
Chapter Author(s): John Serrati
Book Title: Conflict and Competition: Agon in Western Greece
Book Subtitle: Selected Essays from the 2019 Symposium on the Heritage of Western
Greece
Book Editor(s): Heather L. Reid, John Serrati, Tim Sorg
Published by: Parnassos Press – Fonte Aretusa. (2020)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv15tt78p.9
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John Serrati1
Agōn Sikelia:
The Hannibalic War and the (Re)Organization of Roman Sicily
The Second Punic War had a profound effect upon Sicily. The
kingdom of Hieron II was destroyed and Syracuse, the island’s
largest urban center, was sacked after a bitter Roman siege. In the
third century BCE, the Romans did not have any means or
processes by which they could simply setup an overseas province.
Indeed, a provincia at this time very much remained primarily a
zone of military responsibility rather than a defined territory
outside of Italy administered by an imperium-holding magistrate.
After the first conflict with Carthage, the Romans appear to have
treated Sicily as an extension of Italy, with cities bound to Rome
by treaty and contributing men or, more often, ships as socii to a
communal military. The Hannibalic War, however, changed all of
this. After the final reconquest of the island in 210 BCE, Roman
bureaucracy and control profoundly increased in Sicily as the
Romans sought greater exploitation of the Sicilian grain tithe, the
so-called lex Hieronica. Along with this exploitation came a number
of Romans and Italians, men who sought to augment their fortunes
by participating in the collection of the tithe. Some acquired land
on Sicily via a number of estates whose former owners were
accused of disloyalty by the Romans and whose lands had
therefore been seized.
The arrival of these men introduced a brand-new element into
Rome’s western Mediterranean hegemony, since these newcomers
viewed the Sicilians as an “other.” No longer were the conquered
to be incorporated into Rome’s alliance system, as they previously
had been within the Italian peninsula; instead, they were treated
as subject peoples whose natural resources existed for the benefit
1
John Serrati is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious
Studies at the University of Ottawa. He has published extensively on
Hellenistic and Roman Sicily, as well as warfare and ancient economies. His
current research examines the role of gender in ancient warfare.
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John Serrati
of the Romans. This relationship was so novel that some scholars
have even argued the term “empire” can only be employed to
describe Rome’s polity from this time onwards.2 The place of Italy
within the “empire” is to an extent still influenced by the ideas put
forth by Mommsen, who saw the issue through the lens of
nineteenth century German unification, whereby the Roman
alliance system was fundamentally unequal, and thus the Italians
always had a long-term goal to join Rome’s imperial project as
equals.3 And while the idea of a long-term desire by the allies to
unify Italy no longer holds currency, the view that the “empire”
only began with the conquest of non-Italian peoples remains
dominant.4 In Sicily, this process began because of the Roman
Michael P. Fronda and François Gauthier, “Italy and Sicily in the Second Punic
War: Multipolarity, Minor Powers, and Local Military Entrepreneurialism,”
in War, Warlords, and Interstate Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean, eds
Toni Ñaco del Hoyo and Fernando López Sánchez (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 30825.
3 Theodor Mommsen, Römische Geschichte (Leipzig: Reimer and Hirzel), 2.218-21;
see Henrik Mouritsen, Italian Unification: A Study in Ancient and Modern
Historiography (London: Institute for Classical Studies, 1998), 23-37; Nicola
Terrenato, The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family
Agendas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 121-3. Ancient
authors did not concern themselves with when exactly the Roman “empire”
had its genesis, and certainly the very loose definition of empire put forward
by Strabo (17.839) could very well include all territories which recognized
any form of Roman authority (see William V. Harris, Roman Power: A
Thousand Years of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016),
36). Polybios (2.23.11-3) says that the Italian allies served alongside Rome
not out of subservience, but self-interest, while Appian (Civil Wars 1.39)
claims that the Italians viewed themselves as co-creators of Rome’s
Mediterranean imperium; see William V. Harris, “The Italians and the
Empire,” in The Imperialism of mid-Republican Rome: The Proceedings of a
Conference Held at the American Academy in Rome, November 5-6, 1982 (Rome:
American Academy in Rome, 1984), 89-109; Arthur Keaveney, Rome and the
Unification of Italy, second edn (Exeter: Bristol Phoenix, 2005), 21-5, 33, 63,
106-7, 121-6, 167, 197-200.
4 Cf. Jean-Michel David, The Roman Conquest of Italy, trans. Antonia Nevill
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 22-30; Michael Fronda, Between Rome and
Carthage: Southern Italy during the Second Punic War (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 24-8; Emilio Gabba, Republican Rome: The Army and
2
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Agōn Sikelia
decision to permanently occupy the island for the dual purposes
of security and supply. Roman administration in Sicily appears to
have grown out of Roman military need; the legions, which were
now operating around the Mediterranean, required increasing
amounts of Sicilian grain and therefore the Romans gradually
instituted more government to facilitate the harvesting,
transportation, and distribution of the yearly agricultural yield to
forces operating around the Mediterranean. Put more simply,
“State structure appeared chiefly as a by-product of rulers’ efforts
to acquire the means of war.”5
Sicily in the Second Punic War
Much of Sicily was captured by the Romans in 241 BCE at the
conclusion of the first war with Carthage. Hieron II had retained
control of Syracuse and its environs. He used his alliance with
Rome to augment his personal power, and founded a Hellenistic
style monarchy, complete with monumental architecture and a
5
the Allies, trans. Peter J. Cuff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976),
70-96; Keaveney, Unification of Italy, 14-5, 121-6; Ray Laurence, “Territory,
Ethnonyms and Geography: The Construction of Identity in Roman Italy,”
in Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire, eds Ray Laurence and Joanne Berry
(London: Routledge, 1998), 95-110; Mouritsen, Italian Unification, 2, 43-7, 68,
74, 141; Claude Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome, trans.
Paul S. Falla (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 23-40. For the
archeological perspective see Nicola Terrenato, “The Clans and the
Peasants: Reflections on Social Structure and Change in Hellenistic Central
Italy,” in Articulating Local Cultures: Power and Identity Under the Expanding
Roman Republic, eds. Peter van Dommelen and Nicola Terrenato
(Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2007), 13-22. However, the
narrative does appear to be shifting, as Rafael Scopacasa (“Rome’s
Encroachment on Italy,” in A Companion to Roman Italy, ed. Alison Cooley
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2016), 52, see also 45-7) implies that the conquest and
integration of Italy may have created the Roman “empire,” while Terrenato
(Early Roman Expansion, xvi-xviii, 71-2, 107-8, 112-9) is more overt in viewing
the of the conquest of Veii in 396 as the beginning of Rome’s empirebuilding.
Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990, (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1990), 14.
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John Serrati
ruler-cult.6 Under Rome’s protection, Syracuse became one of the
wealthiest cities in the entire Mediterranean, and Hieron was able
to participate in the competitive philanthropy which characterized
Hellenistic kingship, making large gifts to Rhodes and Ptolemaic
Egypt. He also patronized the careers of Theokritos and
Archimedes.7 For the Romans, Sicily was especially important for
security and supply. Concerning the former, the island
represented a bridge between Italy and North Africa; as such,
should war between Rome and Carthage break out again, Sicily
would be an obvious target for Punic invasion as it provided direct
access to Italy and could easily be used as a supply base. The same
was true for the Romans themselves; should a war necessitate an
invasion of Africa, Sicily would be the logical embarkation point
as well as a logistical hub. Nonetheless, at the conclusion of the
First Punic War in 241 BCE, the Romans appear to have looked at
Sicily as an extension of Italy, as they made alliances with
individual cities who were to supply troops, or more often ships,
to a communal military.8 However, the island’s potential to
John Serrati, “A Syracusan Private Altar and the Development of Ruler-Cult in
Hellenistic Sicily,” Historia 57 (2008): 80-91.
7 Paul J. Burton, Friendship and Empire: Roman Diplomacy and Imperialism in the
Middle Republic (353-146 BC) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 164-73; Caroline Lehmler, Syrakus unter Agathokles und Hieron II: Die
Verbindung von Kultur und Macht in einer Hellenistischen Metropole (Frankfurt:
Antike, 2005), 84-95, 132-49, 192, 197, 210-32; Serrati, “Syracusan Private
Altar,” 80-91.
8 Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 30.1120 (with Carmine Ampolo, Da
un’antica città di Sicilia: i decreti di Entella e Nakone (Pisa: Scuola Normale
Superiore di Pisa, 2001), B1), 37.760; Cicero, Verrines 2.4.26, 5.43, 49-60, 87-8,
99, 124, 133, 160-70; Diodorus Siculus 4.83.1, 4-7, 23.5, 18.5; Livy 21.49.7-9,
23.25.10, 27.8.14-16, 35.2.7-9, 23.3-9, 43.12.9; Ernst Badian, Foreign Clientelae
(264-70 BC) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1958), 28-30; Peter A. Brunt, Italian
Manpower: 225 BC-AD 14 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 65, 666-70; Mauro
Corsaro, “La presenza romana a Entella: una nota su Tiberio Claudio di
Anzio,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa ser. 3, 12 (1982): 9931032; Michael H. Crawford, “Origini e sviluppo del Sistema provinciale
romano,” in Storia di Roma, eds Guido Clemente, Filippo Coarelli, and
Emilio Gabba (Turin: Einaudi, 1990), 2.1.91-121; Laurent Dubois, Inscriptions
6
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Agōn Sikelia
produce grain was unmistakable, and the Romans adopted the
agricultural tithe which already existed on the island and
modelled it after the grain collection scheme in Syracuse, with the
system eventually being called the lex Hieronica (“method” rather
than “law” of Hieron). To administer the island, the senate
installed a praetor beginning in 227 BCE. This move highlights
Sicily’s important role in security and supply, and provided the
Romans not only with a greater level of control, but also with the
continuity and predictability necessary to exploit the main natural
resources of the island.9
The Hannibalic War at first played out predictably for Sicily.
In 218 BCE, the Romans strengthened their forces in Sicily in
anticipation of a possible Punic invasion to support Hannibal.10
grecques dialectales de Sicile (Rome: École Français, 1989), 207; Andrew
Lintott, Imperium Romanum: Politics and Administration (London: Routledge,
1993), 94; Jonathan R.W. Prag, “Auxilia and Gymnasia: A Sicilian Model of
Roman Imperialism,” Journal of Roman Studies 97 (2007): 69; Jonthan R.W.
Prag, “Provincia Sicilia: Between Roman and Local in the Third Century BC,”
in De fronteras a provincias: interacción e integración en Occidente (ss. III-I aC),
ed. Enrique García Riaza (Palma: Edicions Universitat de les Illes Balears,
2011), 84-7, 91-2; Jonathan R.W. Prag, “Cities and Civic Life in Late
Hellenistic Roman Sicily,” Cahiers du Centre Gustave-Glotz 25 (2014), 197-8;
Vincenzo M. Scramuzza, “Roman Sicily,” in An Economic Survey of Ancient
Rome, ed. Tenney Frank (Paterson: Pageant, 1959), 3.288; Johannes H. Thiel,
A History of Roman Sea-Power Before the Second Punic War (Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1954), 77.
9 Livy, Periochae 20; Solinos 5.1; see T. Corey Brennan, The Praetorship of the Roman
Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1.87-95; Guido Clemente,
“Sicily and Rome: The Impact of Empire on a Roman Province,” in Forms of
Control and Subjugation in Antiquity, eds Tōru Yuge and Masaoki Doi
(Leiden: Brill, 1988), 105-14; Ralph J. Covino, “Stasis in Roman Sicily,”
Electryone 1 (2013): 18-28. Cf Donald W. Baronowski, “Roman Military
Forces in 225 BC (Polybius 2.23-4),” Historia 42 (1993): 181-202; Harris,
Roman Power, 44-5; Prag, “Auxilia and Gymnasia,” 68-100; John Serrati,
“Garrisons and Grain: Sicily Between the Punic Wars,” in Sicily from Aeneas
to Augustus: New Approaches in History and Archaeology, eds Christopher J.
Smith and John Serrati (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 11533.
10 Livy 21.49-51.5, 22.56.6-8, 23.21.1-5; Polybios 3.41.2-4; Valerius Maximus 7.6.1;
Zonaras 8.24.
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John Serrati
This, combined with the continued loyalty of Hieron, appears to
have dissuaded the Punic government from using Sicily to open a
second Italian front in the south. But the situation changed
dramatically with the death of Hieron in 215 BCE. At this point,
Rome was reeling from the disaster at Cannae the year before, and
combined with the succession of Hieron’s seventeen-year-old
grandson Hieronymus to the throne of Syracuse, Carthage now
had an opportunity to reestablish its influence in Sicily and to coax
Syracuse away from Rome. In the end, Hieronymos never
emerged as the strong leader required either to break away from
Rome or, in contrast, to face down Carthage, and he was
assassinated on campaign in 214 BCE after a reign of just thirteen
months.11
At this point, two Carthaginian agents, Hippokrates and
Epikydes, seized command of Syracuse. Although born in
Carthage, the brothers had familial ties in Syracuse, and were part
of the negotiating team sent to Hieronymos by Hannibal. Upon the
death of Hieronymos, they were still in Syracuse; there, not only
did they dissuade the people from rekindling the alliance with
Rome, but managed to get themselves elected strategoi. From this
position they led an army which captured Leontini, declared the
city independent, and began mounting attacks on farms and towns
in the Roman province.12 In narratives of the second Punic War,
the defection of Syracuse is often overshadowed by Rome’s
simultaneous loss of Capua and other major areas in the southern
Italian peninsula, as well as by Philip V of Macedonia entering the
war on the side of Hannibal. Yet for the Romans, not only was the
defection of Syracuse a major logistical blow, but judging from the
forces deployed in the coming Sicilian campaign, the brutality of
the war, and violence which followed the eventual victory, was
also viewed as a significant betrayal. Syracuse had proverbially
kicked the Romans while they were down, and this served to
further the process whereby the Sicilians came to be seen as
11
12
Livy 23.30.18, 24.4-7.7, 21.2-24.4; Polybios 7.2-7.
Diodorus Siculus 26.15.2; Livy 24.23-29; Plutarch, Marcellus 13.1, 14.1; Silius
Italicus, Puninca 14.110-11.
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Agōn Sikelia
subjects who needed to be controlled rather than as allies who
served alongside the Romans.
When Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the new Roman
commander, arrived on the scene, he easily captured Leontini, at
which point Hippokrates and Epikydes escaped, took command
of a force of eight thousand soldiers sent from Syracuse to relieve
Leontini, and proceeded to march on Syracuse, taking the city by
force and installing themselves as its leaders.13 In the spring of 213
BCE, Marcellus began a full-scale siege of Syracuse. Both Polybios
and Livy describe how the Roman assaults were beaten back via
the ingenuity of a series of machines invented by Archimedes.14
While these may or may not have played a role, a siege by assault
against a well-defended city at Syracuse—which featured typical
third century walls capable of withstanding large stone-throwing
catapults, interior defenses so that the site had to be taken
piecemeal, and the significant if not impregnable Euryalos fortress
at the western end of the Epipolai plateau—was always going to
be difficult. Unable to penetrate the city, by the winter of 213 BCE,
the Romans settled into a blockade. During this period, Marcellus
used part of his forces to recapture other parts of Sicily which had
rebelled with the support of Punic forces. Unlike with Hannibal in
Italy, the Carthaginians made a genuine attempt to support their
Syracusan allies by sending a substantial force to Sicily which
captured Agrigentum, where they were joined by Hippokrates.15
Meanwhile at Syracuse, in the spring of 212 BCE, Marcellus
assaulted the city on the night of a religious festival and managed
to capture three of the five districts. Surrounded, the defenders of
the Eurylaos surrendered the fortress in exchange for safe passage
Livy 24.29.10-33.8; Plutarch, Marcellus 14.1-2; Polybios 8.3.1; Silius Italicus,
Punica 14.125.
14 Diodorus Siculus 26.18; Livy 24.33.9-34.16; Plutarch, Marcellus 14.3, 15-17.3;
Polybios 8.3-7.10; Tzetzes, Chiliades 2.103-49; Zonaras 9.4.
15 Livy 24.10.5, 35-36.1, 44.4, 25.3.6, 23.10, 26.4; Plutarch, Marcellus 18.1; Polybios
8.7.11-12; Silius Italicus, Punica 14.192-257; Zonaras 9.4.
13
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John Serrati
to the as yet uncaptured parts of the city.16 In July, the Carthaginian
force from Agrigentum arrived by land and sea and assaulted the
city at the same time as Epikydes attacked from the inside. The
Romans managed to maintain their position, and the three forces
settled into a standoff.17 In November of 212 BCE, however, just as
happened to the Athenian besiegers in 413 BCE and a Punic army
in 396 BCE, the Carthaginian army, encamped on the marshy
grounds below the city, was struck by a plague. Although the
disease affected the Roman forces as well, it devastated the
Carthaginians, killing Hippokrates, and the Punic relief army
melted away. Epikydes then fled to Agrigentum.18 Seeing that all
was lost, in the spring of 211 BCE a group of Spanish mercenaries
contacted Marcellus and agreed to open a sea gate in return for
their lives. Once inside, bitter fighting ensued, but eventually the
Romans captured and then proceeded to loot the remainder of the
city. The haul was extraordinary: precious statuary, paintings, fine
and rare fabrics, silverware, bronzeware, weapons, the siege
machines of Archimedes, gold in abundance, a tremendous load
of coins, and about forty thousand slaves. Nothing was inviolate;
temples, public building, and private houses were all plundered,
sometimes being left bare. Archimedes himself was killed during
the chaos.19
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 1².608; Frontinus, Strategemata 3.3.2; Livy
24.36.2-39.9-13, 25.23.2-24.7; Plutarch, Marcellus 18.2-4; Polyainos,
Strategemata 8.11; Polybios 8.37.1-13; Velleius Paterculus 2.38.2; Zonaras 9.5;
H.W. Parke, “A Note on the Topography of Syracuse,” Journal of Hellenic
Studies 64 (1944): 100-2.
17 Diodorus Siculus 26.20.1-2; Livy 25.24.14-26.6; Plutarch, Marcellus 19.1-2; Silius
Italicus, Punica 14.665-75; Zonaras 9.5
18 Livy 25.26.7-27.12.
19 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 1².609, 6.3735; Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et
Malorum 5.50, De Natura Deorum 2.61, De Re Publica 1.21, Verrines 2.2.4, 4.1203; Livy 25.28-29.10, 30, 31.2, 40.1-3, 26.21.7-8, 30.6, 27.16.8, 34.4.4; Pliny,
Naturalis Historia 7.125; Plutarch, Marcellus 19.3-6, 21-33; Polybios 9.10; Silius
Italicus, Punica 14.675-8; Tzetzes, Chiliades 2.136-49; Valerius Maximus 1.1.8,
5.1.4, 8.7.7; Velleius Paterculus 2.38.2; Zon. 9.9. For the temple begun by
Marcellus to store his plunder from Syracuse, dedicated posthumously by
his son in 205, see Eric M. Orlin, Temples, Religion, and Politics in the Roman
16
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Agōn Sikelia
Marcellus began to receive delegations from cities all over
Sicily. Livy tells us that he dealt with each case individually; those
cities who had remained faithful to the Roman alliance throughout
the siege were given the status of allies, and this was also granted
to those cities that had returned to the Roman alliance prior to the
fall of Syracuse.20 Meanwhile, more Carthaginian forces arrived at
Agrigentum; under Epikydes, these marched to Heraklea Minoa,
determined to face Marcellus in battle. The Romans readily
accepted, and their more experienced forces scored a major victory
in the only pitched battle of the entire Sicilian campaign.21 After
complaints from a Syracusan delegation over his treatment of
Syracuse, Marcellus was replaced in 210 BCE by the consul Marcus
Valerius Laevinus, who had served as the island’s first praetor in
227 BCE.22 In the meantime, Carthage had landed another force at
Agrigentum and several towns rebelled against the Romans; most
of these were retaken over the summer.23 At this point, the
Numidian cavalry within the Punic army made an agreement with
Laevinus; they rode up to Agrigentum and were allowed inside, at
which point they seized a gate and permitted the Roman army to
enter. The Punic forces inside were soon defeated, though
Epikydes and a number of others did manage to escape for
Carthage. The Romans sacked Agrigentum and then retook a
number of Sicilian towns which had yet to surrender.24 With this,
after nearly four years, the Sicilian campaign drew to a close. The
way was now clear for an invasion of Africa; considering the
difficulties the Romans were experiencing in Spain and their
Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 131-2, 136; Adam Ziółkowski, The Temples of
Mid-Republican Rome and Their Historical and Topographical Context (Rome:
Bretschneider, 1992), 58-60, 252-5.
20 Appian, Sicula 5; Livy 25.40.4.
21 Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 45.183; Livy 25.40.5-41.7; Polybios 9.22.4;
see Frank W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1957-79), 2.150.
22 Livy 26.23.6, 26.6-7; praetorship of 227: supra n. 9.
23 Eutropius 4.14.3-4; Livy 26.21.14-17; Zonaras 9.6.
24 Livy 26.40.1-13
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John Serrati
inability to defeat Hannibal in Italy, the timeliness and the
importance of their victory in Sicily should not be underestimated.
Laevinus and the Roman Settlement of Sicily
The battle over Sicily had been won, but the Second Punic War
would require another eight years before Rome would emerge as
the victor. As the legions had to be fed in Italy, Greece, Spain, and
Sardinia, the need to transition Sicily from a wartime military
economy to a peacetime agricultural economy was particularly
acute. After military victories, the Romans usually left the process
of recovery to the defeated peoples, but since Sicily and its grain
tithe were now intended to act as the breadbasket for the Roman
military, the transition here was calculated and intentional.
Laevinus began the process of returning the farms around the
island to full production. The senate attempted to give Sicily a
stable government by renewing the authority of Laevinus three
times down to the end of 207 BCE. Lucius Cincius Alimentus, the
future Roman historian, had his propraetorian imperium
prorogued for 209 in Hieron’s former kingdom.25
One of the biggest changes in Sicily brought on by the fall of
Syracuse was the transferal of the Roman administrative center for
the island. It is possible that during this three-year period of
Laevinus’s proconsulship, when the praetor of Sicily only had
power in Hieron’s old domain, the residence of the Sicilian praetor
was formally moved from Lilybaion to Syracuse, where it would
remain.26 If the center of administration did shift at this time, it
appears that a quaestor was kept on at Lilybaion, most likely to
serve Laevinus and to administer the tithe on the western half of
the island. Cincius Alimentus would have also had his own
quaestor at Syracuse, and the dual quaestorship of Cicero’s time
Laevinus: Livy 27.7.12-13, 16, 28.4.5, 10.16; Cincius Alimentus: Livy 27.7.12,
8.17. On the importance of continuity within Roman provincial government
see Covino, “Stasis in Roman Sicily,” 18-28.
26 Diodorus Siculus, (36.3.3) is the first to mention a praetor residing at Syracuse
in 104. The city’s status as a provincial capital is not confirmed until Cicero
(Verrines 2.4.118, 5.30, 80).
25
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Agōn Sikelia
may have its origins in these years and the division of the island
between proconsular and praetorian areas.27
Laevinus enlisted as his personal bodyguard the Numidian
cavalry who had aided in the Roman capture of Agrigentum.
Along with them he toured the countryside, visiting farms and
estates so as to ensure full and efficient production. He rewarded
owners who were doing well and admonished those who were
not, and he tried to have every piece of arable land brought under
cultivation. Through this type of diligence, he was able to send a
large crop of grain to Italy in 209 BCE and again in 207 BCE. In the
intervening year, the senate sent Lucius Manlius Acidinus as a
legate to the Olympic games to invite back all Greek exiles from
Sicily, promising that the Romans would restore their former
lands.28 This move was probably designed to further increase
production, to gain popularity among locals, and to appear
benevolent in front of the peoples of Greece.
Even before the end of the Hannibalic conflict, Italians had
settled in Sicily with the goal of exploiting the island’s agricultural
resources. The Roman authorities within the provincia often sided
with and even aided the Italians in these endeavors. In 205 BCE,
the senate removed proconsular authority from Sicily, as Laevinus
was ordered to return to Rome. In the following year the new
consul, Scipio, was given Sicily as his provincia with the authority
to invade Africa. While in Sicily, Scipio visited Syracuse, as the city
was unhappy about the land reassessments undertaken by
Laevinus in 210 BCE. The locals were embittered at how Italians
(Italici) resident at Syracuse were holding on to lands they claimed
as their own.29 The Italians claimed that these lands had been
declared ager publicus. Land that was designated as ager publicus
was, in theory, leased by censors at Rome, but at times conquering
generals doled out the land as they saw fit, and Marcellus in 211
Cicero, Pro Plancio 65, Verrines 2.2.11, 22.
Tour of Laevinus and shipment of 209: Livy 27.8.18-9.7; shipment of 207: Livy
28.4.7; embassy to Olympia: Livy 27.35.3-4.
29 Livy 29.1.16.
27
28
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John Serrati
BCE may have already apportioned some Syracusan land before
the original reassessments of Laevinus took place.30 Prior to the
restoration of Sicilian exiles in 208 BCE, the lands meted by
Marcellus most likely went to Italians who had come to Sicily as
carpetbaggers, seeking a profit off of the war.31 Scipio therefore
held a series of hearings into the cases and made judgements.
Livy claims that the majority of litigants were satisfied, thus
increasing Scipio’s reputation.32 However, evidence may show the
opposite; in 206 BCE, before Scipio’s hearings, Italians on the
peninsula were becoming embittered as their government was
concentrating on Sicilian agriculture while so many Italian farms
had yet to recover from the depredations of a dozen years of
warfare.33 Furthermore, a dedicatory inscription of 193 BCE
illustrates that the Italians of southeastern Sicily considered Lucius
Cornelius Scipio Asiagenes to have been their benefactor,
protecting their interests against the native Sicilians.34 Scipio
Asiagenes, the brother of Africanus, was the governor in 193, but
was also present in 205 as a legatus. That Italians in Syracuse saw
him as a protector may lead to the conclusion that he played a role
in his brother’s land reassessments.35 The presence of Italian
landowners in Sicily would only increase during the second
In 210 Quintus Fulvius Flaccus leased out the lands of Capua, the city he had
recently conquered (Livy 27.3.1). For the original reassessments of
Laevinus, see Livy 26.40.1.
31 Crawford, “Sistema provinciale romano,” 2.1.91-121; Elizabeth Fentress,
“Strangers in the City: Élite Communication in the Hellenistic Central
Mediterranean,” in The Hellenistic West: Rethinking the Ancient Mediterranean,
eds Jonathan R.W. Prag and Josephine Crawley Quinn (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), 165; Claude Nicolet, L’ordre équestre a
l'époque républicaine (312-43 av. J.-C.) (Paris: Boccard, 1966-74), 2.294; Antonio
Pinzone, Provincia Sicilia: ricerche di storia della Sicilia romana da Gaio Flaminio
a Gregorio Magno (Catania: Prisma, 1999), 82-9; Prag, “Auxilia and Gymnasia”,
97; Gerald P. Verbrugghe, “Sicily 210-70 BC: Livy, Cicero, and Diodorus,”
Transactions of the American Philological Association 103 (1972): 542. For the
restoration of the exiles, see Livy 27.35.3-4.
32 Livy 29.1.15-8.
33 Livy 28.11.8.
34 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 1².612.
30
35
205: Livy 29.7.2; 193: Livy 34.55.6.
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Agōn Sikelia
century BCE, and so it is probable that the Syracusan land question
was never resolved to the satisfaction of the locals. Although in
general our sources often highlight acts of Roman magnanimity
towards conquered peoples, this example illustrates that
provincials were largely at the mercy of Italians, who could exploit
them almost as they pleased, safe in the knowledge that they were
supported by the ruling power.
The scale with which Italians came to exploit Sicily signaled a
new direction for the relationship between Rome as the dominant
power and the peoples under its authority, as this went from the
Italian model of unequal alliance to what might be termed the
provincial model of ruler and subject. Romans and Italians had
been present on Sicily as merchants for centuries, and may even
have had small communities in certain Sicilian cities. Indeed, these
may have aided any newcomers from Italy to establish themselves.
All the same, the movement of Italians to Sicily to exploit land for
profit in the years after the fall of Syracuse was unprecedented
within Rome’s territorial hegemony. Until this point, peoples
defeated by the Romans became allies and were by and large left
alone provided they sent the Romans a contingent of troops on an
annual basis. Evidence strongly suggests that the Romans saw the
Sicilians as these types of allies during and after the First Punic
War.36 Following the Hannibalic conflict, however, literary and
36
Badian, Foreign Clientelae, 35-9; Crawford, “Sistema provinciale romano,”
2.1.91-121; Jean-Louis Ferrary, “Traites et domination romaine dans le
monde hellénique,” in I trattati nel mondo antico: forma, ideologia, funzione, eds
Luciano Canfora, Mario Liverani, and Carlo Zaccagnini (Rome:
Bretschneider, 1990), 218-21; John Ma, “Fighting Poleis of the Hellenistic
World,” in War and Violence in Ancient Greece, ed. Hans van Wees (London:
Duckworth, 2000), 338, 358-9; Prag, “Auxilia and Gymnasia,” 69; Prag,
“Provincia Sicilia,” 84-5, 91; Prag, “Cities and Civic Life,” 197-8; John W. Rich,
“Treaties, Allies and the Roman Conquest of Italy,” in War and Peace in
Ancient and Medieval History, eds Philip de Souza and John France
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008), 51-75. Claudio Vacanti,
Guerra per la Sicilia e guerra della Sicilia: il ruolo delle città siciliane nel primo
conflitto romano-punico (Naples: Jovene, 2012), 14-53, points out that during
the First Punic War, the numerous Sicilians who fought alongside the
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John Serrati
epigraphic evidence clearly speaks of Sicilians not only as distinct
from Italians, but also as a conquered people who were inferior in
status.37 The extent to which the term Italici included Romans is a
matter of debate, and the form seems to vary by inscription; at
times Romani and Italici are mentioned separately, at times the
latter term clearly includes Romans, but more often the word is
ambiguous.38 All the same, from the mid-second century BCE at
the latest, Italians, though not necessarily Romans, were a
substantial presence on the island.39 And by the first century BCE
Italians made up a small but significant percentage of the business
and landowning classes.40 Most of these appear to have been the
Romans would have been seen as socii equivalent to those in Italy; cf Bill
Gladhill, Rethinking Roman Alliance: A Study in Poetics and Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 188-90; Verbrugghe “Sicily
210-70 BC,” 542.
37 Supra n. 29-30, 33-5.
38 See esp. Alejandro Diaz Fernández, “A Survey of the Roman Provincial
Command from Republican Epigraphy: The Cases of Sicily and Sardinia,”
in Insularity, Identity and Epigraphy in the Roman World, ed. Javier Velaza
(Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2017), 73-5, 81-4; Augusto Fraschetti, “Per
una prosopografia dello sfruttamento: Romani e Italici in Sicilia (212-44
a.C.),” in Società romana e produzione schiavistica I. L’Italia: insediamenti e forme
economiche, eds Andrea Giardina and Aldo Schiavone (Bari: Laterza, 1981),
51-78; Olga Tribulato, “Siculi Bilingues? Latin in the Inscriptions of Early
Roman Sicily,” in Language and Linguistic Contact in Ancient Sicily, ed. Olga
Tribulato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 291-2, 304-9, 324.
See also Michael H. Crawford, “The Mamertini, Alfius and Festus,” in La
Sicile de Cicéron: lectures des Verrines, eds Julien Dubouloz et Sylvie Pittia
(Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2007), 273-9; Mario
Torelli, “Un italic nel regno di Ierone II: Cn. Modius e il suo balneum di
Megara Iblea,” Sicilia Antiqua 4 (2008): 99-104; Jonathan R.W. Prag,
“Ciceronian Sicily: The Epigraphic Dimension,” in La Sicile de Cicéron:
lectures des Verrines, eds Julien Dubouloz et Sylvie Pittia (Besançon: Presses
universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2007), 254-7.
39 For references to individual and groups of Italians living and owning land in
Sicily, see Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 1².638; Diodorus Siculus 35.2.3, 27,
32, 36.4.1; Livy 29.1.15-18. For bibliography, see supra n. 36, 38.
40 Cicero, Verrines 2.1.123, 2. 31, 71, 3.36, 55, 60-5, 93, 97, 185, 4.37, 46, 5.10-16, 147.
Those Italian equites who testified against Verres would most likely have
been residents of Sicily, see Cicero, Verrines 2.1.128, 2.119, 5.73, 156, 163;
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Agōn Sikelia
owners of large estates likely obtained by profiteering from the
economic chaos in Sicily that followed the Second Punic War.41
After the War, a substantial portion of lands from Hieron’s former
domain, excluding Syracuse, became ager publicus, and as has
already been noted, may have been apportioned to Italians on the
spot by Marcellus himself, as was a conquering general’s
prerogative. Nothing was done to rectify this situation until 208
BCE, when the Romans restored refugees and exiles to their former
lands; into this breech stepped the Italians.42 Livy is explicit in
telling us that, even before the war in Sicily was over, Italians had
migrated there with the specific purpose of acquiring land, much
to the detriment of the Sicilian Greeks.43 Much of the land in the
former kingdom of Hieron would have been stripped bare by the
Roman, Sicilian, and Punic armies that operated there between 215
and 211 BCE. Furthermore, the epigraphic evidence mentioned
above suggests that this presence only grew stronger in the years
following the war, and Italians made dedications to powerful
Roman political figures who protected their interests against the
protests of the native population.44 Simultaneously, the power of
the transplanted Italians would also expand, as it was not long
before they were exerting their influence with the courts and with
Fentress, “Strangers in the City,” 165; Fraschetti, “Romani e Italici in Sicilia,”
51-78; Tenney Frank, “On the Migration of the Romans to Sicily,” American
Journal of Philology 4 (1935): 61-4. For those Italians who had business
interests in Sicily, see Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares 13.33, Verrines 2.2.69,
3.148, 4.42, 63, 5.161, 168. See also Verbrugghe “Sicily 210-70 BC,” 543.
41 For the hypothesis regarding the territorial ambitions of the Roman populace,
see William V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327-70 BC
(Oxford: Clarendon,1979), 64.
42 Distribution of land by a general: Livy 27.3.1; restoration of exiles: Livy 27.35.34. See Harris, Roman Power, 48-9; Nicolet, L’ordre équestre, 294.
43 Livy 29.1.16.
44 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 1².612 records the dedication of a statue by a
group of Italians in Sicily to Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiagenes, their
benefactor and the governor of 193.
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John Serrati
the governor.45 Even before this, complaints on behalf of the
Sicilians were not likely to be well received by the Romans, as the
senate was clearly shifting its focus to the recovery of Italian
agriculture in the wake of the Hannibalic War.
The majority of Italian estates in Sicily appear to have centered
on animal husbandry, conceivably because the grain growing
market was already cornered by the Sicilian Greeks.46 Of these,
some may have been Greeks from southern Italy who were now
operating in Sicily, and therefore would have possessed Greek
names. By the same token, Italic names do not necessarily denote
Italian origin. Many, like Sextus Clodius, a teacher of rhetoric,
were most likely freedmen.47 Others could easily have been of
Mamertine descent and would have borne Campanian names; that
the Mamertines have been found in other parts of Sicily besides
45
Diodorus Siculus 35.2.3 claims that in the mid-second century, the Roman
provincial government in Sicily was unable to prevent Roman landowners
using their slaves as highwaymen.
46 Despite the focus of our literary sources on these great estates, evidence
strongly points to the conclusion that the majority of farms that provided
the tithe were small holdings. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 30.428,
41.774 mention a number of small farmers at Akrai and Halaisa respectively.
See Cicero, Pro M. Aemilio Scauro 24, Verrines 2.3.27. See also Gianna Ayala
and Matthew Fitzjohn, “To be Seen or Not to be: Interpretations of Survey
Data and Questions of Archaeological Visibility in Upland Sicily,” in
Uplands of Ancient Sicily: The Archaeology of Landscape Revisited, ed. Matthew
Fitzjohn (London: Accordia Research Institute, 2007), 99-113; Nicola
Bonacasa, “Riflessioni e proposte sulla ricerca archeologica nella Sicilia del
II sec. a. C.,” in Nuove prospettive della ricerca sulla Sicilia del III sec. a. C.:
archeologia, numismatica, storia. Atti dell’ Incontro di Studio (Messina 4-5 luglio
2002), eds. Maria Caccamo Caltabiano, Lorenzo Campagna, and Antonino
Pinzone (Messina: Dipartimento di Scienze dell’ Antichità dell’ Università
di Messina, 2004), 35-48; Filippo Coarelli, “La Sicilia tra la fine della guerra
annibalica e Cicerone,” in Società romana e produzione schiavistica I. L’Italia:
insediamenti e forme economiche, eds. Andrea Giardina and Aldo Schiavone
(Bari: Laterza, 1981), 1-18; Sylvie Pittia, “Les données chiffrées dans le de
Frumento de Cicéron,” in Sicilia Nutrix Plebis Romanae: Rhetoric, Law, and
Taxation in Cicero’s Verrines, ed. Jonathan R.W. Prag (London: Institute of
Classical Studies, 2007), 65-74; Scramuzza, “Roman Sicily”, 318.
47 Cicero, Philippics 2.43; Suetonius, De Rhetoribus 5.
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Agōn Sikelia
Messana only confounds matters.48 Nonetheless, we must assume
Roman citizenship for most Italians in Sicily since the majority of
references in the Verrines refer specifically to equites. As this was
the class which made up the majority of the publicani, it seems
doubly strange that the tax farming companies of Rome would not
have used these connections to put in bids for the Sicilian tithe.
The presence of these Italians in the years after 210 BCE marks
a fundamental shift in Roman imperialism. The establishment of
the Roman hegemony in Italy, while economically beneficial to
Rome as well as to many Italian elites, nonetheless did not feature
any migration where significant numbers sought to displace locals.
Ager publicus of course existed in Italy, but as shown by Lex
Sempronia Agraria of 132, members of the senatorial class held the
bulk of these lands.49 Furthermore, local elites may have lost lands
due to disloyalty, but the majority appear to have remained in
place after a Roman defeat. In Sicily, on the other hand, the change
was unmistakable: a number of Italians appear to have journeyed
to the island after the conclusion of hostilities during the Second
48
49
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 30.1121 lines 27-8 (with Ampolo, Da
un’antica città di Sicilia, A1). See James Clackson, “Oscan in Sicily,” in
Language and Linguistic Contact in Ancient Sicily, ed. Olga Tribulato
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 140-5; Crawford, “The
Mamertini,” 273-9; Georges Daux, “Le dossier d’Entella (Sicile): sept
documents authentiques, plus un faux modern,” Bulletin de Correspondance
Hellénique 108 (1984): 391-405; Dubois, Inscriptions grecques, 208; Luigi Gallo,
“Polyanthropia, eremia e mescolanza etnica in Sicilia: il caso di Entella”,
Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa ser. 3, 12 (1982): 917-44; Vittorio
Giustolisi, Nakone ed Entella: alla luce degli antichi decreti recentemente apparsi
e di unnuovo decreto inedito, (Palermo: Centro di documentazione e ricerca
per la Sicilia antica Paolo Orsi, 1985), 12-25; B. Dexter Hoyos, “A New
Historical Puzzle: The Entella Documents,” Prudentia 20 (1988), 30-43;
William T. Loomis, “Entella Tablets VI (254-241 BC) and VII (20th cent.
AD?),” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 97 (1994): 127-60; Giuseppe
Nenci, Alla ricerca di Entella, (Pisa: Scuola normale superiore di Pisa
laboratorio di topografia storico archeologica del mondo antico, 1993), 42.
Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus 8.1-3; see Saskia Roselaar, Public Land in the Roman
Republic: A Social and Economic History of Ager Publicus in Italy, 396-89 BC
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 64-84, 180-91, 200-3, 221-30.
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John Serrati
Punic War with a specific goal of displacing locals and profiteering
from their former lands.
The Roman conquest of Sicily, therefore, introduced two key
elements into Roman imperialism: that conquered territories could
be exploited by the conquerors or even by their allies in order to
augment their financial capital, and that conquered peoples were
no longer seen as allies but instead as provincials who were
markedly lower on the Italo-Roman social and economic
hierarchy. This might also be seen as a first step in the process
whereby provinciae came to be viewed less as areas of military
activity assigned to an imperium-holding magistrate, and more as
overseas territories administered by the Romans.50 Other than for
the purposes of fighting an invader, no place in Italy remained a
provincia post-conquest, and thus with Sicily, we see for the first
time how a provincia might be defined as a place which contained
people who were of a visibly lower status, what we would today
called provincials, in comparison to those from Rome and Italy
who ruled over them.
The Roman Province of Sicily (203-191 BCE)
The amount of grain produced every year on Sicily was an
invaluable asset to Scipio during his African campaign, and in the
final three years of the war the island’s main function was to serve
as a supply base and training ground for the army in Africa. In
turn, Sicily was used as the storage center for all the plunder taken
in Africa, receiving two boat loads in 204 BCE. In the same year,
Scipio received two shipments of supplies, including siege
engines, from Sicily. The governor, Pomponius Matho, had his
imperium prorogued and brought three thousand new recruits to
the island to train and to bolster the garrison. They supervised the
transport of large quantities of arms, food, and clothing to the
legions in Africa.51 This implies that an exchange system had been
Contra Harris, Roman Power, 44-5, who argues that the shift took place with the
imposition of a praetor on Sicily in 227. See supra n. 9.
51 Plunder to Sicily: Livy 29.29.3, 35.1; supplies to Africa: Livy 29.35.8, 36.1, 30.2.13, 3. 2.
50
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Agōn Sikelia
put in place, whereby ships would come to Africa with supplies,
unload, and then return to Sicily with plunder. Sicilian grain was
also sent in large quantities to Italy, as Livy tells us that in 202 BCE
the Italian markets became flooded, resulting in a drastic fall in
grain prices at Rome.52
In Africa, Hannibal met Scipio at Zama about one hundred
and thirty kilometers southwest of Carthage. There, Scipio
emerged victorious after a bitter struggle. After this point, there is
no attestation of the military dispositions in Sicily until Livy writes
of the island in the context of a possible invasion by Antiochos III
of Syria in 192 BCE.53 Unfortunately, Livy’s language is somewhat
obscure, for he says that Sicily already had a standing Roman army
(exercitus) at that time with which to defend itself. Therefore, it is
likely that the force in the province was greater than simply a
garrison. There is evidence to suggest that Roman troops were
installed in Sicily immediately after the First Punic War.
According to Polybios, when Italy was invaded by Gallic tribes in
225 BCE, the senate demanded lists of men ready for service from
their allied and subject towns and, at the same time, took stock of
their own forces.54 Later in the same book we learn that, “In Sicily
and Tarentum, two legions were held in reserve (στρατόπεδα δύο
παρεφήδρευεν), each consisting of about 4,200 infantry and two
hundred cavalry.”55 Sicily had now been at peace for more than a
decade, and there is no reason why the Romans would have put in
a garrison at this point; their military energies were now focussed
on northern Italy, while those of Carthage were concentrated in
Spain. The troops must have been positioned in Sicily at an earlier
time.
Put simply, the agricultural wealth of Sicily necessitated the
presence of Roman troops both to guard against external invasion
Livy 30.38.5; John Serrati, “The Financing of Conquest: Roman Interaction with
Hellenistic Tax Laws,” in Money and Power in the Roman Republic, eds. Hans
Beck, Martin Jehne, and John Serrati (Brussels: Latomus, 2016), 109-10.
53 Livy 35.23.6-8.
54 Polybios 2.23.9; see Donald Walter Baronowski, “Roman Military Forces in 225
BC (Polybius 2.23-4),” Historia 42 (1993): 181-202.
55 Polybios 2.24.13.
52
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John Serrati
and to keep the internal peace necessary to maintain the grain
tithe. Moreover, at this stage in Roman history, imperium-holding
magistrates were still largely field commanders, and thus the only
reason to assign one to the island would be to command troops.
Without actual legionaries on the ground, the praetor’s powers of
coercion would have been severely limited. A parallel process was
unfolding in Spain during the early second century, where Rome
maintained legions in order to ensure the continued exploitation
of the peninsula’s natural resources. Therefore, as with the end of
the First Punic War, due to Sicily’s importance and its proximity to
Carthage, it is likely that the two legions left behind by Scipio in
204 BCE were retained, though the actual legionaries from the
Second Punic War were retired and given land grants in 199 BCE.56
These troops could have acted as the governing praetor’s
bodyguard, a rudimentary police force, and as garrisons for the
larger cities.57 The presence of these forces also indicates that in the
years after the Second Punic War, the Romans understood the
importance of Sicily, and took steps to revitalize and repopulate
the areas of island that had been devastated by the war. In
particular, it is possible that the veterans were settled in various
underpopulated areas, such as Agrigentum, where the senate
56
Livy 32.1.6. For the legions left behind in 204 see Livy 29.26.8. See Brennan,
Praetorship, 1.138-9. Contra Prag, “Auxilia and Gymnasia”, 76-8, 90-6;
Jonathan R.W. Prag, “Provincial Governors and Auxiliary Soldiers”, in Les
gouverneurs et les provinciaux sous la république romaine eds. Nathalie
Barrandon et François Kirbihler (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes,
2011), 17-21, who argues that troops in Sicily were not legionaries but locally
trained Sicilians. While Sicilians did serve alongside Romans in the First
and Second Punic Wars, afterwards, they seemed to mostly be raised on
times of emergency (e.g. the Servile Wars). Outside of these emergencies,
there is little evidence that such local forces were ever particularly
numerous (as Prag admits: 92).
57 Contra Brunt, Italian Manpower, 219, who argues that the Sicily did not require
garrisons in times of peace, and that the prevalence of Greek culture makes
it doubtful that veterans were settled there. The former point is addressed
in the text; concerning the latter point, a settlement of two legions in an
existing Greek area would not alter the cultural or linguistic nature of the
district in any drastic fashion.
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Agōn Sikelia
ordered a number of Sicilians to be resettled in either 197 or 195
BCE.58 Furthermore, in 193 BCE, Gaius Flaminius, the praetor in
Hispania Citerior, was sent to Sicily in order to recruit at least one
legion, and in the following year the senate asked the Sicilian
praetor to raise a force of sixteen thousand militia to protect the
island.59 The ability to raise such large forces in a limited time
speaks to the idea that there was a strong presence of retired
veterans in addition to the aforementioned Italian landowners on
the island.
Both Punic wars had devastated the island of Sicily, and
looted it of some of its most precious material wealth.
Archaeological evidence has confirmed that the number of urban
centers in Sicily dropped by approximately thirty-five percent in
the third century. Some of these disappearances can be dated to
the depredations of Agathokles and his battles with Carthage;
others, most notably Gela, destroyed in 280 BCE by the
Agrigentine tyrant Phintias, were victims of wars fought amongst
the Greeks.60 Yet the majority cease to exist after the Roman
invasion of 264 BCE, leading to the conclusion that a significant
number of sites perished at the hands of the Romans or the
Carthaginians, never to be repopulated.61 This, however, does not
58
Cicero, Verrines 2.2.123. Concerning the exact year, Cicero names the praetor in
charge of the resettlement as Titus Manlius, yet no Sicilian praetor ever
existed with that name. The person in question must be either Lucius
Manlius Vulso (Sicilian praetor in 197) or his brother Gnaeus Manlius Vulso
(Sicilian praetor in 195). For discussion, see Brennan, Praetorship 1.145-6; T.
Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (New York:
American Philological Association, 1951-60), 1.333-5, n. 2; David R.
Shackleton-Bailey, Onomasticon to Cicero’s Speeches, second edn (Leipzig:
Teubner), 65.
59 Valerius Antias in Tim J. Cornell et al. eds., The Fragments of the Roman Historians
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 25 F 42; 192: Livy 32.1.6.
60 For the destruction of Phintias see Diodorus Siculus 22.2.2.
61 Vittorio Giustolisi, Parthenicum e le Aquae Segestanae, (Palermo: Centro di
documentazione e ricerca per la Sicilia antica “Paolo Orsi”, 1976), 61-2;
Roger J.A. Wilson, “Changes in the Pattern of Urban Settlement in Roman,
Byzantine and Arab Sicily,” in Papers in Italian Archaeology IV.1: The Human
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John Serrati
appear to be the explanation for the demise of many of the urban
centers, especially those situated upon hilltops.
Later studies have shown that the decline in hilltop cities
during the third, and continuing into the second centuries BCE
cannot be attributed to the violence of war, but merely represent a
shift in the demographics of settlement patterns. This is the
context in which we should see the aforementioned resettlements
of 197 or 195 BCE, as in the years after the Hannibalic conflict the
Romans took deliberate steps to depopulate a number of towns in
order to concentrate and stimulate the agriculture around certain
major urban centers.62 Here again, however, we are reminded of
the inferior status with which the Sicilians were viewed by the
ruling power, as stasis arose over the resettlement of Agrigentum
in 199 and again in either 197 or 195 BCE. Cicero does not explicitly
give any reason for the tensions, and the Romans solved the
problem in 193 BCE via the forced implementation of laws which
guaranteed the old and new citizens an equal share in the civic
government. This strongly implies that the new citizens of
Agrigentum—who were settled in 199 and again in either 197 or
195 BCE and who may very well have included Roman veterans—
had been using their position to deny political representation to
the older Sicilian inhabitants.63
Conclusion
In Sicily, for the first time in Roman history, we see an
interplay between Romans, Italians, and what we might now call
Landscape. BAR International Series, 243, eds. Caroline Malone and Simon
Stoddart (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1985), 316-9.
62 Prag, “Cities and Civic Life,” 166-8, 173-84; Wilson, “Urban Settlement,” 31421; Roger J.A. Wilson, “Ciceronian Sicily: An Archaeological Perspective,”
in Sicily from Aeneas to Augustus: New Approaches in History and Archaeology,
eds. Christopher J. Smith and John Serrati (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2000), 134-60; Roger J.A. Wilson, “Hellenistic Sicily: c. 270100 BC,” in The Hellenistic West: Rethinking the Ancient Mediterranean, eds.
Jonathan R.W. Prag and Josephine Crawley Quinn (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013), 79-119. For precedents of this practice within a
Syracusan context, see Sorg’s paper in this volume.
63 Cicero, Verrines 2.2.123-4; see Covino, “Stasis in Roman Sicily,” 22-4.
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Agōn Sikelia
provincials. Evidence shows that upon conquering the entire
island in 241 BCE, the Romans attempted to treat the Sicilians as
an extension of the Italians, making treaties with individual cities;
as with the Italians, the main provision of these treaties called for
the Sicilian socii to provide either troops or ships when called upon
by Rome. However, two factors served to alter the situation.
Firstly, Sicily produced grain in such abundance that the Romans
came to view this as the island’s greatest resource and significantly
more important than the ability of Sicilian cities to provide men or
ships for the Roman military. The existence of a tithe from
Hellenistic and Carthaginian times doubtlessly aided the process
whereby the Romans came to view the Sicilians not as allies who
could augment their military forces, but as farmers whose lands
could be exploited with the purpose of feeding existing Roman
armies. Such a process required the implementation of greater
control in comparison with Italy, and this necessitated the gradual
development of Roman bureaucracy on the island. In Italy, as long
as the socii produced their annual levy of troops for Rome, they
tended to be left alone as the Romans felt no need to develop any
sort of infrastructure to maintain a system which already worked
well for them. In Sicily, on the other hand, the exploitation of
agriculture necessitated a permanent Roman presence on the
island; the ruling power required officials to ensure that the tithe
could be gathered, quaestors to coordinate the system and to
ensure the designated amounts of grain were shipped to the
correct destinations, and a magistrate with imperium to command
troops and to oversee the Roman administration on the island. The
former were in place not just to guard against a renewed threat
from Carthage, something which was seen as legitimate in the
decades after the Hannibalic War, but also to ensure the efficient
maintenance of the lex Hieronica. Simply put, as with Hispania, the
successful exploitation of natural resources required boots on the
ground.
The presence of Italians on the island was the second factor
which caused Sicily, in marked difference to Italy, to be maintained
as a provincia. In the years after 210 BCE, these came to exploit
Sicilian agriculture and the accompanying tithe for their financial
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John Serrati
gain. While they never came in significant numbers—below the
level of quaestor, Sicilians themselves by and large ran the lex
Hieronica—their presence was nonetheless a new element in
Roman conquest, as never before had Romans or Italians sought to
displace some of the existing elite as a means of augmenting their
own capital. Certainly, Romans or Italians did not move in and
seek to exploit southern Italy when this area came fully into the
Roman sphere in the first decades of the third century. On the
contrary, evidence shows that Romans more normally cooperated
and even intermarried with local elites in Italy.64 Therefore, the
idea of incurring financial gain from a conquered territory began
with Sicily. Here, the purpose of local elites shifted from partners
(albeit, unequal ones) who played a role in the augmentation and
maintenance of Roman power, to conquered people who existed
merely to serve Roman and Italian interests. The way the ruling
power treated the Sicilians made their inferior status palpable, and
for the first time we can perceive differences between conquerors
and the conquered, between rulers and people who can henceforth
genuinely be called provincials.
The Second Punic War therefore not only made the conditions
which led to the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean, in Sicily,
it established a new social hierarchy in which Romans and Italians
were clearly a superior class. And make no mistake, the
aforementioned Roman legions on the island were not only there
to ensure the maintenance of the lex Hieronica, but equally to
safeguard and reinforce the power of Roman and Italian elites in
their quest for financial gain. In many ways, this process
culminated with the rapacious governorship of Gaius Verres, who
used his position as a Roman and a commander of troops to build
up the resources necessary to undertake a political career in first
century BCE Rome. Security, a necessity for agricultural resources,
and a desire by Roman and Italian elites to utilize these resources
for financial gain was a confluence of factors heretofore unseen in
Rome martial and political culture, and created the conditions
64
Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 13-34; Terrenato, Early Roman Expansion,
121-3.
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Agōn Sikelia
under which the Mediterranean itself would be governed and
exploited during the second and first centuries BCE.
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