Colonization in the Roman Republic (Classics)

Introduction

During the conquest of Italy and later the provinces, the Roman state acquired a great amount of land. In the Republican period, land was often confiscated from defeated enemies and made into ager publicus: land owned by the Roman state. One way the Roman state could use this land was by founding colonies on it. In short, this meant that a group of settlers were sent to the land and lived there as an independent community. Sometimes a new city was built on conquered territory; in other cases a captured city was inhabited by the settlers. Each settler received a piece of land in private ownership. It is likely that some land was granted as common land to the colony, to be used by all its inhabitants. These colonies had a great impact on Italy in the Republican period. They made it possible for Rome to keep control over its defeated enemies and consolidate its hegemony, created urban settlements in areas where cities did not always exist, and influenced the cultural integration of Italy, sometimes called “Romanization.” Many long-held ideas about colonization have recently been questioned, as part of the greater revisions in the socioeconomic history of the Republic in general. For example, it was often assumed that the settlement of a colony was a strictly regulated project, in which everything was arranged by the foundation committee, usually a board of three men: the selection of the colonists, the measurement and allotment of the land, the building of a city, the establishment of boundaries, and the creation of roads. However, there is actually very little evidence for the intensive involvement of the state with colonization during the Republican era. It may be that the colonists were assigned some land without the creation of any of the other traditionally postulated elements of a colonial landscape. Another long-held idea—namely, that colonies were already created in the early Republic as part of a centrally coordinated plan by the Roman state—has also been rejected; more-varied ways of expanding Rome’s hold over central Italy should be envisaged (see Origins of Roman Colonization). A diachronic approach to colonization is necessary, instead of assuming that colonization appeared as a fully developed concept and remained unchanged throughout the Republic. Furthermore, the exact extent of the influence of colonies on the Italian landscape and culture has been debated. The concept of “Romanization” in general is no longer considered a valid model to describe cultural changes in Republican Italy, which means that the role of colonies as “Romanizing” elements has also been discarded. Therefore, the idea of colonies, especially colonies with Latin rights, as archetypical towns spreading Roman urban culture to the rural areas of Italy has been rejected (see Colonies and “Romanization”). More attention is also needed for the religious aspects of colonization, both within the colonies themselves and for the religious importance of colonization for the Roman state in general. Still, it seems that the Roman state had specific considerations in mind when founding colonies. The most important was the stabilization of newly conquered territory in order to discourage hostile peoples from warring against the Romans and to serve as bridgeheads for further conquests. Apart from military purposes, colonies also served to reduce the pressure on Roman arable land by providing additional territory for Rome’s ever-growing population. Colonies, whatever they looked like exactly, had been an important way in which the poor could gain access to land. When colonization ceased in the 2nd century BCE, economic and social problems occurred only a few decades later, culminating in the events of the Gracchan reform (see Oxford Bibliographies in Classics article “The Gracchi Brothers”).

General Overviews

Most works in this section cover both the Republican and the Imperial periods, although in many cases the emphasis is on the Imperial era. This is the case for Moatti 1993, for example, although it offers an introduction on the Republican period as well. On Republican colonization, Edward Salmon’s works are especially influential: Salmon 1969 is still the only monograph on Republican colonization, although it is now outdated on many specific issues. He had already written shorter overviews in Salmon 1936 and Salmon 1955. There is unfortunately not a more recent English-language monograph on Republican colonization, but the subject has received frequent attention in other languages, and the works here are a good start. Broadhead 2007 is a clear and short English-language introduction. Stek and Pelgrom 2014 offers a good overview of the many debates currently taking place in the field of Republican colonization (e.g., whether Rome was a cultural model for the colonies, the strategic functions of colonization, the role of private initiatives in colonial foundation (as opposed to state initiatives), the colonial landscapes, and religious life in colonies). Bertrand 2015 is a valuable collection of papers on an important aspect of the colonization process: the confiscation of land from the defeated people. This aspect, often neglected, was in need of updated scholarly attention, and Audrey Bertrand’s volume is an important contribution.

Bertrand, Audrey, ed. 2015. Special issue: Expropriations et confiscations en Italie et dans les provinces: La colonisation sous la République et l’Empire. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Antiquité 127.2.
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This is a collection of conference papers focusing on one aspect of colonization: the confiscation of land from the defeated peoples. It discusses the status of the land of colonists and indigenous peoples and relationships between locals and colonists. This volume is not a basic introduction into the topic, and some issues are not discussed, but the papers individually represent the latest insights into their respective subjects.
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Broadhead, William. 2007. Colonization, land distribution, and veteran settlement. In A companion to the Roman army. Edited by Paul Erdkamp, 148–163. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
DOI: 10.1002/9780470996577.ch10Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article offers a clear overview of the general history of colonization in the Roman period after 338 BCE. It discusses recent debates (e.g., whether colonies were modeled on Rome and the legal position of Latin colonists). Broadhead also discusses the way colonization was used in politics: promises to colonize new land could be used by the Senate or individual politicians to gain the support of the landless poor.
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Cornell, Timothy J. 1995. The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 BC). Routledge History of the Ancient World. London and New York: Routledge.
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This is a general overview of the history of Rome from 1000–264 BCE. It offers a clear overview of scholarly debates into the most-important questions regarding Roman history, including the role of colonization in the conquest of Italy. Obviously it does not incorporate the most recent insights, but it is a good starting point for this crucial period in Roman history.
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Moatti, Claude. 1993. Archives et partage de la terre dans le monde romain (IIe siècle avant–Ier siècle après J.-C.). Collection de l’ École Française de Rome 173. Rome: École Française de Rome.
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Moatti describes the process of colonization in detail, from the conquest and measurement of the land to the recruitment of settlers and their deduction into the colony. He then focuses on the way in which the colonial landscape and the local laws were documented and archived. Most of the evidence dates from the Imperial period, so it cannot be assumed that his reconstructions are reliable for the Republican period.
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Salmon, Edward T. 1936. Roman colonisation from the Second Punic War to the Gracchi. Journal of Roman Studies 26.1: 47–67.
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Salmon discusses the source material for all post-200 BCE colonies and the reasons for their establishment. He then discusses the complex issues of ius migrandi and ius duodecim coloniarum (without offering convincing explanations for either), and the reason why Latin colonies were no longer founded after 177 BCE; he argues that the decline of the census figures made the Senate reluctant to further reduce the number of citizens.
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Salmon, Edward T. 1955. Roman expansion and Roman colonization in Italy. Phoenix 9.2: 63–75.
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Salmon emphasizes the military and strategic role of the colonies: Latin-rights colonies were intended to deter enemy attacks, while Roman-rights colonies served as coastguards. The primary goal of colonization was, therefore, not to supply the poor with land, but to serve the military needs of the Roman state. After the Second Punic War this changed, when Italy was dominated by Rome and there was less need for strongholds in strategic locations.
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Salmon, Edward T. 1969. Roman colonization under the Republic. Aspects of Greek and Roman Life. London: Thames and Hudson.
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This book was once the standard work on Republican colonization and is still the only English-language monograph on the subject. It gives a good overview of the (limited) historical facts about the colonies and the process of founding a colony. However, it established many ideas about colonization that have now been discarded, such as the idea that colonies resembled Rome and that a general strategy lay behind Rome’s colonization policy.
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Stek, Tesse D., and Jeremia Pelgrom, eds. 2014. Roman Republican colonization: New perspectives from archaeology and ancient history. Papers of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome 2014.62. Rome: Palombi Editori.
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This book is an important contribution outlining the new directions in Republican colonization studies. It offers various thematic studies, including articles on the question of whether Rome was a model for the colonies, the strategic functions of colonies, private initiatives in colonial foundations, colonial landscapes, and religious life in colonies. All contributions offer excellent, up-to-date reinterpretations of Republican colonization.
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Sources

Our source material for colonization in the Republic is mostly literary. The most important sources are Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as well as writers such as Appian, Plutarch, Velleius Paterculus, Festus, and Diodorus Siculus. Unfortunately, no scholarly work has comprehensively discussed the way in which colonization was treated by these writers. Epigraphic materials can also be of use (see Stek 2009, cited under Colonial Territories in the Republican Period), and archaeological material is also, obviously, important (see Pelgrom 2012, cited under Colonial Territories in the Republican Period). Important sources also include surviving land measurement grids of the Roman period. The colonial landscape was measured into square centuriae, which measured about 700 by 700 meters. This land was distributed to colonists, with some land left over for the general use of the colony as common land. A detailed map of the colonial territory was made, including the names of each colonist and the land he held. At least this was the case with the surviving maps from the 1st century BCE and later, such as the map of Arausio (Orange) in France. Information from the Republican period is very scarce, so that it is not clear whether a uniform practice was applied to every colony. An important collection of sources on land distribution in the Roman world is the works of the “Roman land surveyors” or Agrimensores. This is a collection of works from the Imperial period, dealing with the surveying and distribution of land. The works contained in this collection are of a technical nature; most likely their main goal was to give practical information about the measurement and administration of land and the legal status of various categories of terrain. One of the works contained in the collection is the so-called Liber coloniarum or Book of Colonies. This work gives a list of Italian cities and states, among other items, as well as how and by whom the land in each of them was measured. Its limitations are many: the text probably dates from the later 4th century CE, although it was based on a survey made under Augustus and Tiberius, and the entries in the Liber have become corrupted over the centuries. Still, when used carefully, some information about the Republican period can be deducted from these works. The most recent English edition of all the works of the Agrimensores, including the Liber coloniarum, is Campbell 2000, a very detailed and useful work. Before this, the standard edition was by Adolf August Friedrich Rudorff and Karl Lachmann in the mid-19th century, a work that is unfortunately still often cited despite the availability of newer editions. A team of French scholars are currently working on a new edition of the Agrimensores; their ongoing work (Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum) is published on the website of the Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l’Antiquité (ISTA). The most useful outcome of this project with regard to Republican colonization is the French translation and commentary of the Agrimensores in Brunet 2008, as well as the conference proceedings published in Gonzales and Guillaumin 2006.

Brunet, Claude, ed. and trans. 2008. Libri coloniarum (Livres des colonies). Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum 7. Besançon, France: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté.
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This edition includes an introduction to the Liber coloniarum and its significance to surveying, a Latin text with facing French translation, and explanatory notes. Appendixes include a list of agrarian laws, their presumed date of passage, and textual sources that mention them; a table of the legal status of various cities; and an essay on the style of the text itself.
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Campbell, Brian. 2000. The writings of the Roman land surveyors: Introduction, text, translation and commentary. Journal of Roman Studies Monographs 9. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.
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This excellent edition includes a critical edition, translation, commentary, and extensive bibliography of all the works of the Agrimensores, including the Liber coloniarum. It should be considered the definitive English-language edition for some time to come, replacing earlier editions.
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Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum. Besançon, France: Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l’Antiquité, Université de Franche-Comté.
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The ISTA is currently working on new editions and French translations of the works of the Agrimensores, which are published both on paper and online. This is a very valuable resource, collecting in one location the latest, very good, edition of these complex works. The website also contains several useful databases of ancient territories, of ancient mines, and of ancient centuriation grids.
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Gonzales, Antonio, and Jean-Yves Guillaumin, eds. 2006. Autour des Libri coloniarum: Colonisation et colonies dans le monde romain; Actes du colloque international (Besançon, 16–18 octobre 2003). Besançon, France: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté.
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This is an essential work on the Liber coloniarum. It starts with four papers on the history of the Liber and the corruption it suffered over time, followed by papers on specific localities, in which the theory of the Liber is connected to practical situations: on the centuriation grid Orange B, on Orange in general (a very important revisionist paper by L. R. Decramer and colleagues), on Arles, and on Philippi.
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Origins of Roman Colonization

According to the written sources—of which the most useful are Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus—the Roman state had already founded colonies in the regal and archaic periods. However, it is entirely uncertain what colonization in this period entailed, nor do we know on what sources these authors based their statements. Most of the reliable information we have about these early settlements comes from archaeological fieldwork, as shown in de Haas 2011. In this period, Greek cities also founded colonies, many of them in Italy; it may be that the processes used by the Roman state were similar. Attema 2004 is a good introduction to the topic of urbanization and colonization in this period, and interaction between Greek and Roman colonization. With regard to the early Roman Republic, the colonies founded from the establishment of the Republic in 509 BCE until the Latin War (341–338 BCE) have often been termed priscae Latinae coloniae, although this term is not attested in the ancient sources. A traditional list of thirteen priscae Latinae coloniae exists, although other colonization events may have taken place that did not become part of this list; see Northwood 2008. It has long been thought that these colonies were founded by Rome and the Latin League together. The aim would have been to defend Rome and the Latin towns against outside aggression, as well as to distribute spoils, mostly land, equally among the victorious partners; see Hermon 1999. Chiabà 2011, the most recent work on these colonies, sees them as part of the struggle of the orders between patricians and plebeians; the author thus diminishes the role of the Latin League. The image of what these early colonies looked like was often based on later colonies (i.e., a fortified center with an organized territory). As Crawford 1995 suggests, it is quite likely that no clear definition existed of what a colony actually was, at least not in the early Republican period. Perhaps the concept of a colony was retrospectively defined at some point in the 2nd century BCE. Writers in this period would not have known what an archaic colony looked like, and they would have created an image of what they thought had happened in the earlier period. Therefore, not all colonies looked the same, as Termeer 2010 points out. Furthermore, not all colonies seem to have had the same function, considering their very different locations on the landscape—Norba, for example, seems to have been a central market place and fortified center, while the colonies in the Pontine plain served as agricultural settlements, as de Haas 2011 shows.

Attema, Peter, ed. 2004. Centralization, early urbanization and colonization in first millennium B.C. Italy and Greece. Bulletin Antieke Beschaving Supplement 9. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters.
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This volume brings together six case studies in landscape archaeology—not all directly connected to colonization—in southern and central Italy. It gives welcome attention to the interaction between Greek and Roman colonization and the way in which colonies affected the surrounding landscape. The most relevant study for Roman colonization is Attema and Martijn van Leusen’s contribution on early Roman colonization in Southern Latium and the different development of colonies and other towns in the archaic and Republican periods (pp. 157–195).
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Chiabà, Monica. 2011. Roma e le priscae Latinae coloniae: Ricerche sulla colonizzazione del Lazio dalla costituzione della repubblica alla guerra latina. Trieste, Italy: Edizioni Università di Trieste.
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This is the most recent and complete work on the priscae Latinae coloniae. Chiabà believes that the literary sources should be trusted, and she sees Latin colonies as part of the struggle between a landowning elite and new plebeian groups looking for a fairer distribution of land. However, she does not convincingly argue that the sources are reliable, nor does she explain the exact role of the patricians and plebeians in these colonization processes.
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Crawford, Michael H. 1995. La storia della colonizzazione romana secondo i Romani. In L’incidenza dell’antico: Studi in memoria di Ettore Lepore; Atti del Convegno internazionale, Anacapri, 24–28 marzo 1991. Vol. 1. Edited by Alfredina Storchi Marino, 187–192. Naples, Italy: Luciano Editore.
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Crawford points to the confusion existing already in the ancient period concerning the number of colonies founded by Rome. He suggests that this was caused by the fact that a clear definition of what a colony actually was did not exist in the mid-Republican period. If a definition was formulated only in the 2nd century BCE, ancient writers might have struggled to fit previous colonization events into this specific definition.
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de Haas, Tymon C. A. 2011. Fields, farms and colonists: Intensive field survey and early Roman colonization in the Pontine region, central Italy. Vol. 1, Text. Groningen Archaeological Studies 15. Eelde, The Netherlands: Barkhuis.
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This book intends to provide an archaeological perspective on the colonization of the Pontine region, which is necessary since the literary sources on the period are mostly legendary. De Haas convincingly argues that general economic and settlement developments in the region should be taken into account, and that not all developments in the area should be seen as the result of the influence of the Roman colonies.
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Hermon, Ella. 1999. Les priscae Latinae coloniae et la politique colonisatrice à Rome. American Journal of Ancient History 14.2: 143–179.
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Much debate has focused on who founded colonies before the Latin War of 338 BCE: Rome or the Latin League, of which Rome was a part. Hermon argues for the latter; this would also mean that both Romans and Latins settled in these early colonies. In the 4th century BCE, Rome’s power grew and it decided on colonization on its own. Hermon also points out the importance of pasture land for colonists; many colonies were located near land suitable for pasturing.
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Northwood, Simon J. 2008. Asconius’ fifty-three Roman colonies: A regal solution. Classical Quarterly 58.1: 353–356.
DOI: 10.1017/S0009838808000372Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Asconius states that the Placentia was the fifty-third colony founded by Rome. However, this does not match any known list of colonial foundations. Northwood argues that the colonies mentioned for the regal period should be included in Asconius’s calculations, so that they add up to fifty-three. However, what Asconius’s sources considered to be a colony remains unclear.
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Termeer, Marleen K. 2010. Early colonies in Latium (ca 534–338 BC): A reconsideration of current images and the archaeological evidence. Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 85:43–58.
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By focusing on the archaeological evidence, Termeer makes an important contribution to scholarship on colonies founded before the Latin War. The appearance of colonies in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE does not match the traditional image of a colony; that is, a fortified center with an organized territory. Throughout the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, urban development in colonies followed general developments in Latium, and they are therefore difficult to recognize archaeologically.
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Latin Colonization in the Middle Republic

After the Latin War (341–338 BCE), two types of colonies were regularly founded: colonies with Latin rights and colonies with Roman rights. In Roman colonies the inhabitants retained Roman citizenship. They were entitled to all rights that citizens living in Rome itself had, including suffrage and the right to hold magistracies at Rome. Most colonies founded after the Latin War were Latin colonies. The inhabitants of these colonies probably had certain privileges in their contacts with Rome (see Legal Status of Colonists). It is usually assumed that in Latin colonies, the amount of land received was greater than in Roman colonies. Unfortunately, for the Latin colonies founded prior to the Second Punic War we have no information on the amount of land allotted; it has been suggested that in Cosa 8 or 16 iugera were assigned, but this is not certain. After the Second Punic War the allotments were extremely large, ranging from 15 iugera to as much as 140; however, this seems to be a reflection of the availability of land in this period, and it is unlikely that this was the case before the war. In Latin colonies the number of settlers, when attested, was quite large: from 2,500 to 6,000. In total, twenty-three Latin colonies were established between 338 BCE and the Second Punic War, according to the traditional list. Four Latin colonies were established after the Second Punic War. These colonies fulfilled both military and economic functions. After 177 BCE, Latin colonization stopped altogether; the question why is discussed in Salmon 1933. This section collects the most-important works on Latin colonization, although some works have been cited in other sections (e.g., Salmon 1969, cited under General Overviews). General works on the Latin colonies include Coarelli 1992 and Special issue: La colonizzazione romana tra la guerra latina e la guerra annibalica. The process of the foundation of Latin colonies is sometimes seen as very formalized (e.g., in Coarelli 1992 and Gargola 1995), but this is questionable (see Crawford 1995 and Northwood 2008, both cited under Origins of Roman Colonization). Capogrossi Colognesi 2004 also emphasizes the flexibility of the process of founding colonies, focusing on the confiscation of land from the defeated population; the amount of land taken and the treatment of the defeated varied according to the circumstances. The colonies were founded by a committee of Roman senators, usually three in number. Weigel 1985 examines who these men were and why they were chosen for this duty. Colonies were independent of the city of Rome, which meant that they needed public buildings that allowed the settlers to perform political duties, such as public assemblies. The nature of these public buildings is debated, since not all colonies have yielded archaeological evidence for such structures, nor were they all the same in every colony. In the early 21st century, much debate has focused on the forum, the central square of each town, where public meetings took place. On the basis of the presence of potholes attested in some fora, but not others, Mouritsen 2004 argues that the architectural layout of each colony differed, rather than following a standard pattern. Coarelli 2005, on the other hand, postulates a religious function for these potholes. The connection between the conquest of land as ager publicus and the role of colonization in the economic and social developments of the 2nd century BCE is discussed in detail in Roselaar 2010.

Capogrossi Colognesi, Luigi. 2004. Le statut des terres dans l’Italie républicaine: Un aspect de la romanisation des campagnes (IVe–Ier siècle avant J.–C.). Histoire et Sociétés Rurales 22:9–28.
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The status of Roman land can roughly be divided into two categories: private and state-owned (i.e., public). However, various categories of private and public existed in the Republican period, according to the legal rights applying to the land and its actual use. The Social War and municipal reorganization in Italy caused a restructuring of the status of land, but the multiplicity of legal and practical situations remained.
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Coarelli, Filippo. 1992. Colonizzazione e municipalizzazione: Tempi e modi. Dialoghi di Archeologia 10:21–30.
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Coarelli gives an overview of the history of Republican colonization, arguing in favor of an early definition of the legal status and institutions of coloniae and municipia. He assumes a clear Roman strategy behind the colonization process, as well as a strongly Romanizing function for the colonies. This paper has been very influential, although its individual arguments have now been mostly called into question.
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Coarelli, Filippo. 2005. Pits and fora: A reply to Henrik Mouritsen. Papers of the British School at Rome 73:23–30.
DOI: 10.1017/S0068246200002968Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Coarelli responds to Mouritsen’s suggestion that the potholes found in colonial fora were used to divide the forum into sections for political purposes. Coarelli defends his earlier suggestion that these pits were used to mark the boundaries of the inaugurated area, as they did in Rome.
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Gargola, Daniel J. 1995. Lands, laws, & gods: Magistrates and ceremony in the regulation of public lands in Republican Rome. Studies in the History of Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.
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Gargola gives a very detailed reconstruction of the process of colonization, from the measurement of the land and the senatorial decision to establish a colony, to the recruitment of settlers, their deduction into the colony, and the ceremonies that accompanied the foundation. Unfortunately, the evidence mostly dates from the Imperial period, so that it is not clear how reliable this reconstruction is for the Republic; reality was far more flexible than Gargola suggests.
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Mouritsen, Henrik. 2004. Pits and politics: Interpreting colonial fora in Republican Italy. Papers of the British School at Rome 72:37–67.
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Mouritsen investigates the finds of pits found in several fora in Republican colonies. He considers them not as boundaries marking the inaugurated area, as Coarelli and Torelli argue, but as potholes that divided the fora into sections for political meetings. The fact that not all colonies have them suggests that colonies were not strictly modeled on Rome but shared a certain “Latin” political and cultural identity with Rome and with each other.
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Roselaar, Saskia T. 2010. Public land in the Roman Republic: A social and economic history of ager publicus in Italy, 396–89 BC. Oxford Studies in Roman Society and Law. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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This work reevaluates the economic developments in the 2nd century BCE, arguing that the picture of the rich occupying the land was valid only for central Italy, where demand for land was high. Roselaar then examines the legal status of ager publicus and the technical details and effects of the Gracchan land reform. Overall, this book gives the most recent analysis of the socioeconomic developments of the 2nd century BCE.
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Salmon, Edward T. 1933. The last Latin colony. Classical Quarterly 27.1: 30–35.
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In this short article, Salmon investigates the thorny problem of whether Luna or Luca was the last Latin colony. Some sources mention Luna as a colony, but others mention only Luca, both apparently founded in 177 BCE. He discusses the reliability of the sources, Livy and Velleius, and the strategic value of a colony in either place, concluding that it was likely Luna that received the colony.
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Special issue: La colonizzazione romana tra la guerra latina e la guerra annibalica. Dialoghi di Archeologia, 3d ser. 6.2 (1988).
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This special edition of Dialoghi di Archeologia was one of the first works questioning many aspects of the preexisting standard view of Roman colonization, especially as a result of the great upsurge in archaeological research in the previous decade. Eminent scholars such as Filippo Càssola, Emilio Gabba, Jean–Paul Morel, Coarelli, and Marina Torelli revised many aspects of colonization, such as colonial institutions, their military role, the local economy, and the ideology behind their foundation.
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Weigel, Richard D. 1985. Roman colonial commissioners and prior service. Hermes 113.2: 224–231.
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This article discusses all known colonial commissioners from the 5th to the 2nd centuries BCE. They had often carried out military duties in the area in which the colony was founded; being elected commissioner was a reward for a general’s conquests in the area of concern, as well as a way to make use of his knowledge of and the ties he had formed with the pro-Roman nobility there.
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Colonial Territories in the Republican Period

As already mentioned, a colony not only consisted of an urban settlement but was also assigned a territory. Its size depended partly on the number of colonists and the size of the plots they received in private ownership. In many cases the colony was also assigned common lands, which were free for use by all colonists. Our evidence for this stems mostly from the Imperial period, but there are some indications that common lands also existed in the Republic. It has long been recognized that most colonies were too small to contain the thousands of colonists who were sent there according to the literary sources. It is therefore usually assumed that the colonists lived in isolated farms throughout the colonial territory, each tending their own plot of land. Another common assumption is that Republican land distribution grids, also known as centuriations, which are still visible on the landscape, indicate the extent of the land assigned to the settlers. The local people are assumed to have been expelled from the centuriated land to the marginal areas of the territory. This picture emerges from Bussi 1984, for example. As discussed in Legal Status of Colonists, however, the role of indigenous people in colonies may have been much larger than previously thought. The colonial territory is best studied through archaeological fieldwork, especially the examination of centuriation patterns surrounding the colonial towns. However, these are sometimes difficult to interpret: Chouquer, et al. 1987 suggest that centuriation grids are easily dated by the size of the squares (e.g., a centuriation using squares of 20 by 20 actus is Augustan, while squares of 16 by 16 actus were earlier). These ideas have now been rejected, most recently in Dall’Aglio and Rosada 2010–2011, which points out the close connection between centuriation and land use—centuriation was used to facilitate drainage or irrigation, not just to distribute land to colonists. It was not even necessarily a Roman practice, since many land measurement grids turn out to predate the foundation of colonies. Furthermore, Pelgrom 2008 and Pelgrom 2012 emphasize the variation that could occur in the settlement patterns in colonies; colonists did not necessarily live in isolated farms but could also live in villages. Stek 2009 draws attention to the importance of epigraphic material, which can also be used to reconstruct local borders and power relations between local elites. The author also points to the strong correlation between boundaries and religion, which so far has been an underexplored topic for the Republican period.

Bussi, Rolando, ed. 1984. Misurare la terra: Centuriazione e coloni nel mondo romano. Modena, Italy: Panini.
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The several volumes of the Misurare la Terra series discuss some case studies (Mantua, Mutina, the Venetian area) as well as many general aspects of colonization in the Republic. Most studies are focused on the colonial landscape, such as centuriation and settlement patterns and the boundaries of colonial territory. They also discuss confiscations of land from local inhabitants and the continuing role of these people in the colony.
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Chouquer, Gérard, Monique Clavel-Lévêque, François Favory, and Jean-Pierre Vallat. 1987. Structures agraires en Italie centro-méridionale: Cadastres et paysages ruraux. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 100. Rome: École Française de Rome.
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This book has been very influential in the study of Roman colonial landscapes. It describes in detail land measurement grids, centuriation, and otherwise that are visible in central Italy. Its conclusions are, however, controversial, especially the idea that measurement grids of a certain style or size must be dated to specific periods (e.g., 20 by 20 actus is Augustan), which has since been refuted by many scholars.
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Dall’Aglio, Pier Luigi, and Guido Rosada, eds. 2010–2011. Sistemi centuriali e opere di assetto agrario tra età romana e primo medioevo: Atti del convegno, Borgoricco (Padova)–Lugo (Ravenna), 10–12 settembre 2009. 2 vols. Agri Centuriati 6–7. Pisa, Italy: Fabrizio Serra Editore.
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The greatest value of these volumes is that they show many long-held conceptions about centuriation to be incorrect. For example, it turns out to be impossible to date centuriations by grid size and orientation, as Chouquer and colleagues thought. An important point is that measurement systems were always closely related to the geography of the landscape (e.g., drainage), so that their size and layout were intended to facilitate land use.
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Pelgrom, Jeremia. 2008. Settlement organization and land distribution in Latin colonies before the Second Punic War. In People, land, and politics: Demographic developments and the transformation of Roman Italy 300 BC–AD 14. Edited by Luuk de Ligt and Simon Northwood, 333–372. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
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In this article, Pelgrom expands one part of his PhD dissertation (Pelgrom 2012): he argues that, contrary to widely held assumptions, colonists did not each live on their own plot in the centuriated landscape. The number of sites recovered from colonial landscapes is very small, so he suggests that the settlers lived in nucleated settlements instead. Only from the late 3rd century BCE onward did colonies start to approach the traditional city-state model.
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Pelgrom, Jeremia. 2012. Colonial landscapes: Demography, settlement organization and impact of colonies founded by Rome (4th–2nd centuries BC). PhD diss., Univ. of Leiden.
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This important PhD dissertation opposes the idea that colonies were strong models of Romanization in the way they formatted the urban and rural landscape. Pelgrom argues that the centuriation of the territory was not exclusively connected to colonization but served other purposes, such as drainage, and that settlers lived in the colony or villages rather than being spread out in the territory.
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Stek, Tesse D. 2009. Cult places and cultural change in Republican Italy: A contextual approach to religious aspects of rural society after the Roman conquest. Amsterdam Archaeological Studies 14. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press.
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This work is not about colonization, as such, but offers interesting new insights into the boundaries of colonies, especially Alba Fucens, and their religious protection. This creates new insights into the way that colonial territories were created: inscriptions mentioning local magistrates and deities can show where the boundaries of the colonial territory lay, and inscriptions with indigenous names can point to the continued important position of the defeated local population.
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Colonies and “Romanization”

Early studies of the cultural changes that took place in Italy after the conquest considered Roman culture and Latin language more “civilized” than the various Italic languages and cultures. Therefore, “Romanization” of languages and cultures was the inevitable consequence of military conquest. Since the late 20th century, this idea has been widely debated and has been largely abandoned in the early 21st century. The role of colonies with Latin status in the period after the Latin War (341–338 BCE) has been the subject of intense debate. Basically, two opposing views exist: the older one, as represented in the works of Edward Salmon, is ultimately based on the literary sources. It sees colonies as small representations of Rome, and the colonial social structure and culture as the mirror image of that of Rome. It assumes that the local inhabitants were expelled from the town and its territory, and that the land was distributed to the colonists through large-scale centuriation projects. Thus, the colonies provided a model of “civilization” and “Romanization” that the surrounding towns were eager to follow, thus accelerating nearby urbanization developments and cultural change (e.g., Brown 1980). Scholarship since the end of the 20th century has placed doubt on this reconstruction, since the archaeological evidence does not match this reconstruction, as Fentress 2000 explains. The impact of Roman culture or socioeconomic structures on the colonial towns now seems to have been very small; many precolonial cults, for example, continued. The first scholars to question the traditional picture were the authors in a late 1980s special issue of Dialoghi di Archeologia (Special issue: La colonizzazione romana tra la guerra latina e la guerra annibalica, cited under Latin Colonization in the Middle Republic) and Michael Crawford (see Crawford 1995, cited under Origins of Roman Colonization); the first accessible work in English asking fundamental questions about the traditional, rigid picture of colonization was Bradley and Wilson 2006. Individual parts of the traditional picture have also been challenged. For example, it was thought that all colonies had a Capitolium, a triple temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. However, as Lackner 2013 shows, Capitolia do not appear in most colonies until the 2nd century BCE. The importance of influence from the Greek world has also been acknowledged: as Sewell 2010 shows, Greek examples were adapted to local needs, in each colony in a different way. Therefore, colonies were not mirrors of Rome at all but instead show a mix of cultural influences: Greek, local, and Roman. The landscape around the colonies does not show any evidence for a great influx of colonists; instead, they were largely invisible until the 2nd century BCE, while the date of many surviving centuriation grids is unclear (Pelgrom 2008, cited under Colonial Territories in the Republican Period). Most changes in the urban landscape of the towns, such as monumental public building, also seem to date to the 2nd century BCE. Therefore, the question has been asked how “Roman” colonization actually was in the Republican period. The current view is that there was no single model that applied to all colonies; instead, there was enormous variation in the treatment of the local population, the cultural and economic impact of the town on the surrounding population, the settlement pattern, the towns’ developments, and virtually all other aspects of local life.

Bradley, Guy, and John-Paul Wilson, eds. 2006. Greek and Roman colonization: Origins, ideologies and interactions. Swansea, UK: Classical Press of Wales.
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This volume offers essential reinterpretations of colonization in the Republican period. Crawford discusses cultural developments in Poseidonia-Paestum, pointing out continuity between Greek and Roman periods. Edward Bispham’s article, as well as Bradley’s, raises fundamental doubts about colonies as “models of Romanization” and emphasizes the importance of local people in the colonies. John Patterson, finally, focuses on the historiography of Republican colonization, especially in the works of Livy.
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Brown, Frank E. 1980. Cosa: The making of a Roman town. Jerome Lectures. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
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Brown presents a rather traditional picture of the colonization process in the Republic—for example, regarding the selection of the colonists, the centuriation of the landscape, and the distribution of plots to the settlers. Cosa has long been seen as the archetypical Latin colony; this idea became enormously influential and made a great impact on later colonization studies, and it is only in the early 21st century that it is gradually starting to be abandoned.
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Fentress, Elizabeth. 2000. Introduction: Frank Brown, Cosa, and the idea of a Roman city. In Romanization and the city: Creation, transformations, and failures; Proceedings of a conference held at the American Academy in Rome to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the excavations at Cosa, 14–16 May 1998. Edited by Elizabeth Fentress, 11–24. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary 38. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Fentress explains how Brown created the image of Cosa as the “archetypical Roman colony,” which made sense in the light of archaeological research carried out after the Second World War. She then explains why this image is wrong and how late-20th-century work modified Brown’s ideas. Still, his emphasis on the importance of religious buildings was accurate, as was his contribution to the archaeology of Roman urbanism in general.
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Lackner, Eva-Maria. 2013. Arx und Capitolinischer Kult in den Latinischen und Bürgerkolonien Italiens als Spiegel römischer Religionspolitik. In Religiöse Vielfalt und soziale Integration: Die Bedeutung der Religion für di kulturelle Identität und politische Stabilität im Republikanischen Italien. Edited by Martin Jehne, Bernhard Linke, and Jörg Rüpke, 163–201. Studien zur Alten Geschichte 17. Heidelberg, Germany: Verlag Antike.
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A long-held assumption surrounds the Capitolian cult (i.e., the cults of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva). These were seen as essential to Roman religious identity and therefore were assumed to have been built in all colonies. Lackner argues that temples securely identified as Capitolia cannot be attested in the foundation period of most colonies but date instead from the early 2nd century BCE, perhaps supporting political stabilization after the Second Punic War.
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Sewell, Jamie. 2010. The formation of Roman urbanism, 338–200 B.C.: Between contemporary foreign influence and Roman tradition. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary 79. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
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Sewell’s topic is urbanism in the Roman Republic; since colonies are often considered the most-important motors behind the urbanization of Italy, they receive much attention. He emphasizes the importance of Greek influence on the layout and public buildings in Latin colonies, but also the way in which these influences were adapted to local and Roman needs. He rightly rejects, therefore, a simple model-replica analogy, as some scholars propose.
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Colonies with Roman Citizen Rights

In contrast to colonies with Latin rights, in Roman colonies the inhabitants retained Roman citizenship. They were entitled to all rights held by citizens living in Rome itself, including suffrage and the right to hold magistracies at Rome. The standard picture of Roman colonies is presented in Salmon 1963, although many of the author’s conclusions are now in doubt. It is generally assumed that in Roman colonies, each settler received only two iugera of land. However, the sources do not often mention plots of this size. In any case, as Mason 1992 points out, the small private plots do not exclude the possibility that the colonists lived from farming, since common land could also have been assigned to the colonies. The number of people sent out to Roman colonies was small; when we know a number, this is always three hundred. However, this is reported only for a few cases. Since the main function of these colonies was to function as coastguard garrisons, they are also known as “maritime colonies.” Since the colonists fulfilled a military duty, they were granted a vacatio militiae, an exemption from service in the normal army (see Roselaar 2009). Some Roman colonies founded just after the Second Punic War proved unsuccessful and needed new settlers within a few years. For example, the Senate discovered by accident that two of them, Sipontum and Buxentum, had been abandoned in 186 BCE, only eight years after their foundation. The unpopularity of the small Roman colonies led to the establishment of a new kind of colony from 184 BCE onward. These were Roman colonies in the sense that the settlers retained their Roman citizenship, but they were much larger. It is assumed that not three hundred but two thousand colonists were settled in each Roman colony from now on. The allotments distributed here were much smaller than in contemporaneous Latin colonies, but this was compensated by the fact that the settlers retained their Roman citizenship. Unfortunately, this “new” type of Roman colony has not been the subject of systematic study; most scholars focus on the small maritime colonies instead. Confusion about colonial status, as discussed in Crawford 1995 (cited under Origins of Roman Colonization), still existed in this period; this is exemplified by the confusion between Luna and Luca, both apparently Roman colonies founded in the 180s BCE. Coarelli 1985–1987 offers a solution, but this is just as hypothetical as many others. In total, nineteen Roman colonies were founded between 338 and 194 BCE of the “small” type with three hundred settlers, according to the traditional list. After the Second Punic War, ten colonies were founded of the larger type. Not many studies have focused on individual Roman colonies; good examples are Guidobaldi 1989 and more recently De Venuto, et al. 2015. See also some of the papers in Special issue: La colonizzazione romana tra la guerra latina e la guerra annibalica (cited under Latin Colonization in the Middle Republic).

Coarelli, Filippo. 1985–1987. La fondazione di Luni: Problemi storici ed archeologici. Quaderni di Studi Lunensi 10–12:17–36.
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There has been much confusion between the colonies at Luna and Luca: some sources mention Luna, but others only Luca, both apparently founded in 177 BCE. Coarelli concludes that both were colonies, with Luca founded in 180 and Luna in 177. The amount of land that settlers in Luna received is reported by the sources as the unusual 6,5 iugera. Coarelli proposes an emendation to 51.5 iugera, but this is equally unusual.
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De Venuto, Giovanni, Roberto Goffredo, Darian Marie Totten, Marcello Ciminale, Carlo De Mitri, and Vincenzo Valenzano. 2015. Salapia: Storia e archeologia di una città tra mare e laguna. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Antiquité 127.1.
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This article presents the preliminary results of the field and geophysical surveys at the colony Salapia. Many literary sources state that Salapia was an important port and regional center in the Roman period, but this site has not yet been the object of systematic research. This research project aims to elucidate the development of the city and the role it played in connections across the Adriatic and Mediterranean.
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Guidobaldi, Maria Pia. 1989. La colonia civium Romanorum. In Minturnae. Edited by Filippo Coarelli, 35–66. Studi e Ricerche sul Lazio Antico. Rome: Nuova Editrice Romana.
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Guidobaldi describes the history of Minturnae after its foundation as a colony in 296 BCE. Especially in the 2nd century BCE, the town expanded greatly, probably because of its role as a harbor. In this respect it differed from many other citizen colonies, which remained quite small. Guidobaldi also discusses the history of the town into the early Imperial period, as well as the most important epigraphic evidence from Minturnae.
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Mason, G. Graham. 1992. The agrarian role of coloniae maritimae: 338–241 B.C. Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 41.1: 75–87.
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Mason points out the importance of the vacatio militiae that the inhabitants of the maritime colonies enjoyed. But, against Salmon 1955 (cited under General Overviews), he argues that agriculture played an important role in these colonies: although the plots of land that the colonists received were small, they were sufficient to support a family, especially when supplemented with animal husbandry on common lands.
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Roselaar, Saskia T. 2009. Assidui or proletarii? Property in Roman citizen colonies and the vacatio militiae. Mnemosyne, 4th ser. 62.4: 609–623.
DOI: 10.1163/156852509X384266Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article argues that colonists in 4th- and 3rd-century BCE colonies with Roman citizen status remained proletarii; they did not become assidui. Roselaar argues that the vacatio militiae that they were granted served to ensure that all colonists remained exempt from military service. This ensured that such colonies maintained an adequate manpower supply and thus continued to fulfil their role in the defensive strategy of the Roman Republic.
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Salmon, Edward T. 1963. The coloniae maritimae. Athenaeum, n.s. 41.1–2: 3–38.
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Salmon presents the standard picture of maritime colonies (e.g., regarding the recruitment process of colonists and the colonies’ functions as coastguard garrisons). He also investigates how the economy of these towns worked, considering that the settlers received only a small amount of land. For some towns it is unclear whether they were colonies or not, but Salmon is generally (too) ready to assume that they were.
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Legal Status of Colonists

The inhabitants of Latin colonies held a specific civic status. Roman citizens who moved to Latin colonies lost their Roman citizenship and instead received Latin rights. Probably they had certain privileges in their contacts with Rome, including the ius commercii (the right to acquire property in Roman territory and conduct trade with Romans), the ius conubii (the right to marry Roman citizens), and the ius migrationis (the right to move to Rome and receive Roman citizenship there), as argued in Roselaar 2012 and Roselaar 2013. However, the legal rights assigned to the colonists in Latin colonies have been debated. Broadhead 2001 is an important revisionist article on the ius migrationis; the author contends that this right did not exist and that Latin colonists did not have the right to gain citizenship upon moving to Rome. Coşkun 2009 is an important contribution to studies on the legal position of colonists, discussing not only commercium, conubium, and ius migrationis, but also the mysterious ius XII coloniarum (also called ius Ariminense). According to Kremer 2006, the various rights were grouped together in the ius Latinum (“Latin right”), although there is not much evidence for the existence of such all-encompassing right. It is usually assumed that the colonists in Latin colonies were both Roman citizens and people from Latium or other Latin colonies. Others (i.e., Italians without the Latin status) were most likely excluded because the Roman state was reluctant to share its citizenship with outsiders. Sometimes Latins and allies could also receive land in Colonies with Roman Citizen Rights, but this happened only in the colonies founded after the Second Punic War. Whether allies admitted into these colonies gained the Roman citizenship is debated; Smith 1954 argues they did, but Piper 1987 disagrees. On average it seems more likely that allies and Latins were not admitted in Roman colonies, and only Latin could take part in Latin colonies, as Roselaar 2011 contends. Erdkamp 2011 focuses on the way in which citizenship as a legal instrument was controlled by the Roman state and whether this led to limitations on mobility within Italy, including on the admission of Latins and allies in colonies.

Broadhead, William. 2001. Rome’s migration policy and the so-called ius migrandi. Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 12:69–89.
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Broadhead argues against the idea that Latin colonists automatically gained citizenship upon moving to Rome. He proposes instead that the colonists were expected to remain in the colonies and could emigrate only if they left a son behind. Thus the Roman state kept the manpower of the Latin colonies stable, fitting their military function.
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Coşkun, Altay. 2009. Bürgerrechtsentzug oder Fremdenausweisung? Studien zu den Rechten von Latinern und weiteren Fremden sowie zum Bürgerrechtswechsel in der Römischen Republik (5. bis frühes 1. Jh. v. Chr.). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
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Coşkun argues convincingly that the ius migrationis applied only to Romans who had moved to Latin colonies, and served to maintain the colonies’ manpower. Other Latins did not have any right to become Romans when moving to Rome. He also argues for the existence of a ius Ariminense, which granted the citizens of twelve colonies access to commercium and conubium and was created in the 2nd century BCE.
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Erdkamp, Paul. 2011. Soldiers, Roman citizens, and Latin colonists in mid-Republican Italy. Ancient Society 41:109–146.
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Erdkamp argues that citizenship was not as yet very important for the Roman authorities in the mid-Republican period. This meant that mobility was not controlled and people could move where they wanted, including to and from colonies. He then investigates whether this ideology led to the inclusion of Latins and allies in colonies, and he argues that Latins were included from the Latin War onward, as were allies from the mid-3rd century BCE onward.
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Kremer, David. 2006. Ius latinum: Le concept de droit latin sous la République et l’Empire. Romanité et Modernité du Droit. Paris: De Boccard.
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Kremer discusses the legal concept of “Latin rights” both in the Republican and Imperial periods. He demonstrates that Latium was a flexible legal construction, which could serve the interests of the Roman state, but gradually evolved into a kind of constitution that could be adopted by individual towns throughout Italy. Thus it functioned as a useful instrument of integration from the early Republic onward.
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Piper, Deryck J. 1987. Latins and the Roman citizenship in Roman colonies: Livy 34, 42,5–6; revisited. Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 36.1: 38–50.
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This article focuses on a difficult passage in Livy, in which the people from Ferentinum claim to be Roman citizens because they have applied to become colonists. Piper analyzes colonization in the late 2nd century BCE in general, the process of settling a colony, and the language of Livy, arguing, against Smith 1954, that Latins and allies did not receive citizenship by joining a Roman colony.
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Roselaar, Saskia T. 2011. Colonies and processes of integration in the Roman Republic. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Antiquité 123.2: 527–555.
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This article investigates the status of settlers in Latin and Roman colonies. Combining literary, epigraphic, and archaeological materials, Roselaar argues that Latins were usually admitted as official settlers in Latin colonies, but that Roman colonies admitted Roman citizens only as settlers. However, immigration to colonies was not forbidden, so that people of varying status lived in colonial towns.
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Roselaar, Saskia T. 2012. The concept of commercium in the Roman Republic. Phoenix 66.3–4: 381–413.
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Roselaar suggests that the Latins of all colonies were in possession of commercium, conubium, and ius migrationis. This would ensure that the manpower of the colonies remained up to strength, and at the same time make joining a colony more attractive because family ties with Rome were not sundered by the change of status from Roman to Latin.
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Roselaar, Saskia T. 2013. The concept of conubium in the Roman Republic. In New frontiers: Law and society in the Roman world. Edited by Paul J. Du Plessis, 102–122. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668175.003.0006Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The possession of a right to participate in inheritances was closely connected to commercium: Latins and allies could not inherit from Romans without being awarded this right. Therefore, Roselaar contends, if Latin colonists received commercium, it would make sense that they also received conubium. This would enable them to maintain relations with their families in Rome and other Latin colonies, who could inherit from and bequeath to them.
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Smith, R. E. 1954. Latins and the Roman citizenship in Roman colonies: Livy, 34, 42,5–6. Journal of Roman Studies 44.1–2: 18–20.
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This rather old and very short article is still relevant for the questions related to the status of settlers in Roman colonies. Smith assumes that at least in some colonies founded shortly after the Second Punic War, Latins were admitted, indicating that Rome became more lenient toward the Latins. The Latins themselves, in fact, protested the departure of people from their towns in the same period.
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Religious Aspects

Religion was an important part of life in colonies. As seen in the debate about whether Latin colonies resembled Rome, for example, one of the debated issues is whether colonies had temples for the Capitoline triad—if so, this would be a sign that their religious practices closely followed Rome. As contended in Bradley and Wilson 2006 and Lackner 2013 (both cited under Colonies and “Romanization”), there is not much evidence for colonies building Capitolia from their foundation, which argues against their closely following Rome. Other aspects of the colonies’ religious activities have also been debated. An important issue is the so-called “Latin” votive deposit, which, as Comella 1981 argues, consisted of terra-cotta anatomical votives, swaddled babies, and female or male veiled heads. The presence of such votives in an Italian town would then indicate “Romanization.” This idea has now been questioned, for example in Cazanove 2000 and Glinister 2006. Glinister 2015 emphasizes the role of religion for the integration between colonists and locals in colonies, since shared temples could create mutual understanding and cultural exchange. As with other aspects of colonization, the variety in local religious practice was great, as is pointed out in Boos 2011 and Bertrand 2015. No active attempts were made by the Roman state to impose one local pantheon in all colonies. Eckstein 1979 likewise points out that each colony had its own local identity of colonies, which was strengthened by the yearly celebration of their birthday. The date was determined by the religious ceremony of the plowing of the first furrow.

Bertrand, Audrey. 2015. La religion publique des colonies dans l’Italie républicaine et impériale. Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 365. Rome: École Française de Rome.
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This book investigates the archaeological and epigraphic source material for public religion in colonies. The “Roman model” was flexible and could be adapted to local circumstances, so that each town knew a variety of local gods, next to the official religions introduced by the founders of the colony or the state.
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Boos, Marion. 2011. Heiligtümer römischer Bürgerkolonien: Archäologische Untersuchungen zur sakralen Ausstattung republikanischer coloniae civium Romanorum. Internationale Archäologie 119. Rahden, Germany: Verlag Marie Leidorf.
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This work emphasizes the local variety of religious practice in Roman colonies. In colonies with Roman citizen rights, a temple for the Capitoline triad was usually present from the foundation. In Latin colonies, local gods were still venerated after the foundation of the colony, although usually without a strong local identity. Only from the Social War onward were new gods actively introduced to replace the local ones.
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Cazanove, Olivier de. 2000. Some thoughts on the “religious Romanisation” of Italy before the Social War. In Religion in archaic and Republican Rome and Italy: Evidence and experience. Edited by Edward Bispham and Christopher Smith, 71–76. New Perspectives on the Ancient World 2. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press.
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Cazanove argues that colonization was an important mechanism through which Roman religion spread throughout the Italian peninsula. This is shown by the appearance in Latin colonies of votive deposits with a distinctive type of offering: stamped terra-cotta ex-votos, which often represent parts of the human body. However, these “Latin” votive types were descended from Etruscan examples, so that Roman practice in turn was influenced by Italian communities.
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Comella, Annamaria. 1981. Tipologia e diffusione dei complessi votivi in Italia in epoca medio- e tardo-repubblicana: Contributo alla storia dell’artigianato antico. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Antiquité 93.2: 717–803.
DOI: 10.3406/mefr.1981.1297Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This work is the source of the idea that an Etrusco-Latial-Campanian group of votive gifts existed, consisting anatomical terra-cottas, statuettes representing donors and swaddled infants, bare or veiled heads, and models of animals. Comella suggests that this type of votive was distributed throughout Italy, especially within the Latin colonies. This idea has now been modified (e.g., in Glinister 2006).
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Eckstein, Arthur M. 1979. The foundation day of Roman coloniae. California Studies in Classical Antiquity 12:85–97.
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Many colonies celebrated their birthday, but it is unclear what event in the foundation process was commemorated exactly. Eckstein argues that the date chosen as the colony’s birthday was the one on which the founding committee plowed the symbolic first furrow around the proposed site of the town, before the town was actually built.
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Glinister, Fay. 2006. Reconsidering “religious Romanization.” In Religion in Republican Italy. Edited by Celia E. Schultz and Paul B. Harvey Jr., 10–33. Yale Classical Studies 33. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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As in other papers, Glinister argues that anatomical votive gifts were not typically Roman. The spread of anatomical terra-cotta votives occurred because Romans and Italians both adopted a new mode of devotion, forming part of a wider Mediterranean koine. Thus, Italian peoples were not simply passive recipients of elements from “superior” Roman and Greek culture, but active participants in a dynamic Mediterranean koine.
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Glinister, Fay. 2015. Colonies and religious dynamism in mid-Republican Italy. In The impact of Rome on cult places and religious practices in ancient Italy. Edited by Tesse D. Stek and Gert-Jan Burgers, 145–156. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 132. London: Institute of Classical Studies, Univ. of London.
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The foundation and civic life of colonies were strongly connected to religion. However, Glinister contends that the colonists themselves took the initiative in selecting which deities they worshiped, not the founding committee. These cults were also accessible to the indigenous population, who often had venerated these deities since before the colony was founded. These collective cults stimulated integration between Roman colonists and local people.
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Northern Italy

An enormous amount of studies about individual colonies in Italy exist. This section will mention only the most important studies from the late 20th century onward, which are of relevance to the debate about colonization in the Republic more generally. Advances in survey archaeology since the late 20th century have done much to improve our knowledge of the colonial territory, as shown by the many volumes in the Forma Italiae series, although many colonies have not received any attention from scholars recently. A good example of the benefits of early-21st-century archaeological methodology is Vermeulen, et al. 2006. Many works in this section discuss both the Republican and later history of the colonies; after several centuries, there was not much in their history that indicated that they had ever held colonial status, and they developed as many other towns did. A well-researched colony is Aquileia, founded in 181 BCE; among the great number of works by Gino Bandelli, the one cited here (Bandelli 1988) gives a good introduction to the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul and the role of Aquileia in securing the newly conquered territory. Càssola 1991 is another fundamental article on the role of colonization in securing and consolidating the territory of Cisalpina. Purcell 1990 takes Cisalpine Gaul as an example of the way in which the Romans incorporated new terrain, by changing not only the landscape but also the minds of its inhabitants. Another colony that has received much attention from scholars is Ariminum, founded in 268 BCE. Good studies from the early 21st century include Braccesi 2006 (mostly archaeological) and Lenzi 2006. Oebel 1993 focuses on the different types of colonization in Ager Gallicus, not only Ariminum, but especially the viritane distributions in 232 BCE. Cosa, often hailed as the “archetypical Latin colony” (e.g., Brown 1980, cited under Colonies and “Romanization”, but see the entire section), has most recently been studied in Celuzza 2002. Some colonies with Roman rights were mentioned in other sections (e.g., Guidobaldi 1989 and De Venuto, et al. 2015, both cited under Colonies with Roman Citizen Rights). The studies mentioned in this section focus less on the Roman status of these towns and more on their general development. As Campagnoli 1999 shows for Pisaurum and Percossi Serenelli 2001 demonstrates for Potentia, there was little in the economic and political development of these towns that indicated their specific political status.

Bandelli, Gino. 1988. Ricerche sulla colonizzazione romana della Gallia Cisalpina: Le fasi iniziali e il caso aquileiese. Studi e Ricerche sulla Gallia Cisalpina 1. Rome: Quasar.
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In this volume, Bandelli focuses on the early colonization of Cisalpine Gaul, and especially on Aquileia, founded in 181 BCE. This is a useful monograph summarizing much of his earlier research on Aquileia, although of course it does not incorporate his more recent prolific writings on this colony. Most of the later colonizing activity in Cisalpine Gaul, which took place especially in the 1st century BCE, is unfortunately not covered.
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Braccesi, Lorenzo, ed. 2006. Ariminum: Storia e archeologia. Papers presented at a conference held 5 December 2004 in Rimini, Italy. Adrías 2. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider.
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This volume offers mostly archaeological studies about Ariminum, containing papers on the lamps, coinage, amphorae, pocola deorum, inscriptions, and the bridge of San Vito. It also discusses the town in the late Roman and Byzantine periods. Especially important is the article by Luca Antonelli, who offers a new interpretation of the ius duodecim coloniarum: it was created by Sulla’s reforms and was not a right that had existed since the mid-Republican period.
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Campagnoli, Paolo. 1999. La bassa valle del Foglia e il territorio di Pisaurum in età romana. Studi e Scavi 7. Bologna, Italy: Università degli Studi di Bologna.
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In contrast to most colonies discussed in this section, Pisaurum was a colony with Roman citizen rights and was founded quite late, in the early 2nd century BCE. Campagnoli starts his account before the official foundation of the colony, discussing the diachronic development of the town in the whole Roman period. He expertly discusses the standard items of colonial history, such as the town’s layout and public buildings, magistrates, and local economic developments.
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Càssola, Filippo. 1991. La colonizzazione romana della Transpadana. Paper presented at a colloquium organized by the Univ. of Cologne and held 18–20 May 1989 in Cologne. In Die Stadt in Oberitalien und in den nordwestlichen Provinzen des Römischen Reiches. Edited by Werner Eck and Hartmut Galsterer, 17–44. Kölner Forschungen 4. Mainz am Rhein, Germany: Von Zabern.
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This article investigates the colonization of Cisalpine Gaul from the foundation of Cremona in 218 BCE until the creation of the provincia of Cisalpina after 143 BCE. Càssola connects the colonization attempts to Roman efforts of consolidation of the area, especially after the invasions of the Cimbri and Teutones in the late 2nd century BCE.
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Celuzza, Mariagrazia. 2002. Le prefetture e le colonie: Territori e centuriazioni. In Paesaggi d’Etruria: Valle dell’Albegna, Valle d’Oro, Valle del Chiarone, Valle del Tafone; Progetto di ricerca italo-britannico seguito allo scavo di Settefinestre. Edited by Andrea Carandini and Francesco Cambi, 113–123. Florence: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
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Cosa, founded 273 BCE, is often considered the archetypical colony, established as a mirror image of Rome, in which the local population had no political or cultural influence, but this image has been questioned in the early 21st century. Celuzza does not go into this debate but gives a concise overview of the building phases of the town—most public buildings were erected a century after the foundation—and the settlement patterns in the territory.
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Lenzi, Fiamma, ed. 2006. Rimini e l’Adriatico nell’età delle guerre puniche: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Rimini, Musei comunali, 25–27 marzo 2004. Archeologia dell’Adriatico 2. Bologna, Italy: Ante Quem.
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This is another great example of an early-21st-century collective volume on an individual colony. This focuses especially on the 3rd century BCE, offering articles on varied issues such as local coinage distribution, pottery production, and religious activities. It also gives much attention to the precolonial period (e.g., the important center of Verrucchio) and to the relationships between the colonists and the Etruscans and Celts living in the area (e.g., in Spina).
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Oebel, Lothar. 1993. C. Flaminius und die Anfänge der römischen Kolonisation im ager Gallicus. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
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Oebel describes the several colonies and individual distributions of land that took place in the 3rd century BCE in the Ager Gallicus, a part of Picenum. For each colony, but also for the other towns in the region, he discusses the size and number of settlers, and the impact on the local economic and culture. He then focuses on the viritane distributions carried out, against heavy opposition, by Gaius Flaminius in 232 BCE.
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Percossi Serenelli, Edvige, ed. 2001. Potentia: Quando poi scese il silenzio; Rito e società in una colonia romana del Piceno fra Repubblica e tardo Impero. Milan: Motta.
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This is a good example of a local study, displaying the town’s history from the foundation in the early 3rd century BCE until Late Antiquity. For the Republican period, several papers discuss in detail the economic developments in the countryside, as illustrated by archaeological evidence, and the cultural changes that occurred in the town as a result of the influx of settlers and in the later periods throughout the Republic.
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Purcell, Nicholas. 1990. The creation of provincial landscape: The Roman impact on Cisalpine Gaul. In The early Roman Empire in the West. Edited by Thomas Blagg and Martin Millett, 7–29. Oxford: Oxbow.
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This work is a classic for the impact of Roman colonization on indigenous landscapes and the local population. Purcell argues that by Rome’s foundation of colonies and the incorporation in the colonial communities, it created a new cognitive map. This caused the greatest, and most lasting, impact on the landscape of Cisalpine Gaul and its people.
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Vermeulen, Frank, Sophie Hay, and Geert Verhoeven. 2006. Potentia: An integrated survey of a Roman colony on the Adriatic coast. Papers of the British School at Rome 74:203–236.
DOI: 10.1017/S0068246200003263Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This paper is a good example of the usefulness of intensive archaeological field survey and geographic information systems (GIS) for the reconstruction of colonial landscapes. It shows that Potentia started out as a fairly small settlement, in the shape of a military camp, and developed into a fully urbanized town in the early 2nd century BCE. This development has been identified in many other earlier colonies as well.
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Southern Italy

There were no essential differences between colonization in northern and southern Italy. One interesting point is that some colonies in the southern portion were founded in preexisting Greek colonies, which meant that some kind of accommodation had to be found between the local inhabitants and the colonists. The best-researched example is Paestum, founded in 273 BCE, which indeed showed much continuity with the pre-Roman period. Good introductions are Pedley 1990 and Torelli 1999. Luceria was one of the oldest Latin colonies, founded in 314 BCE as an outpost in Apulia. Antonacci Sanpaolo 1999 is a good introduction to this town. It was soon joined, in 291 BCE, by its neighbor Venusia, studied most comprehensively in Marchi and Sabbatini 1996. Brundisium quickly developed into the most important economic center of southern Italy; its history is excellently traced in Lombardo and Marangio 1998. These neighboring colonies in Apulia showed very different historical trajectories, however. Another colony that has been the subject of much research is Alba Fucens, founded in 304 BCE, and Liberatore 2004 is the most recent and complete work on this colony. Fregellae was established very early, in 328 BCE; Coarelli 1998 is the most recent work, although it is very short and is based on older research. Beneventum, founded in 268 BCE, is studied in great detail in Torelli 2002, unfortunately without illustrations. The only colony with Roman citizen status in southern Italy to have been the subject of intensive early-21st-century research is Buxentum. Among the many works that Maurizio Gualtieri has published on this colony, Gualtieri 2008 is the most accessible overview in English, with many references to his earlier works on Buxentum.

Antonacci Sanpaolo, Elena, ed. 1999. Lucera: Topografia storica, archeologia, arte. Bari, Italy: Mario Adda.
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This lavishly illustrated volume discusses the history of Luceria in much detail. It includes the standard themes of colonial history: the foundation, the urban layout and public architecture of the town, and the cults, especially the votive deposit at Belvedere. Separate papers focus on the sculptures found in the town’s temples, the epigraphic record, and late Roman and medieval history of the town.
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Coarelli, Filippo. 1998. La storia e lo scavo. In Fregellae I: Le fonti, la storia, il territorio. Edited by Filippo Coarelli and Pier Giorgio Monti, 29–70. Rome: Quasar.
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This little volume describes the history of Fregellae in the Republican period. It is somewhat old-fashioned in the interpretation of the material evidence but still gives a good overview of the history, topography, and geography of Fregellae; its public buildings and roads; the temples and statues found there; its strategic function; and the history of the excavations that have taken place.
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Gualtieri, Maurizio. 2008. Lucanian landscapes in the age of “Romanization” (third to first centuries BC): Two case studies. In People, land, and politics: Demographic developments and the transformation of Roman Italy 300 BC–AD 14. Edited by Luuk de Ligt and Simon Northwood, 387–413. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
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Gualtieri gives a short summary of his decades of archaeological fieldwork in the area around the Roman colony Buxentum. He describes the impact of the foundation in 194 BCE on the surrounding territory—settlement patterns in the hinterland changed significantly from the previous period. He also investigates further economic developments, such as the emergence of commercial villas in the 1st century BCE.
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Liberatore, Daniela. 2004. Alba Fucens: Studi di storia e di topografia. Insulae Diomedeae 3. Bari, Italy: Edipuglia.
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Liberatore’s work is very comprehensive and gives a good overview of the long history of excavations at Alba Fucens. She traces the history of the colony from the period before the foundation, the foundation itself, and the town’s history in the Republican and Imperial periods. Of the public buildings, she focuses on the best known—the walls and the monumental center of the town.
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Lombardo, Mario, and Cesare Marangio, eds. 1998. Il territorio brundisino: Dall’età messapica all’età romana; Atti del IV Convegno di studi sulla Puglia romana, Mesagne, Italia, 19–20 gennaio 1996. Historiē 1. Galatina, Italy: Congedo.
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The great merit of this book is that it offers a diachronic view of the colony of Brundisium, including the precolonial period. It provides a variety of perspectives, from local onomastic history and epigraphic habits to cultural change in the town and economic developments in the countryside. It not only focuses on the town itself but also discusses in detail the effect that the new settlement had on the local and regional economy.
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Marchi, Maria Luisa, and Giulio Sabbatini. 1996. Venusia (IGM 187 I NO/I NE). Forma Italiae 37. Florence: Leo S. Olschki.
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This is good example of a detailed study of one colony in the Forma Italiae series. Marchi and Sabbatini give a general overview of the history of the colony and a detailed archaeological map of finds in the territory. They discuss changes in the settlement pattern, especially the decline in the number of sites after the foundation, and the general economic development of the town and countryside, which focused on small-scale agriculture.
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Pedley, John Griffiths. 1990. Paestum: Greeks and Romans in southern Italy. New Aspects of Antiquity. London: Thames and Hudson.
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Pedley focuses on the cultural developments in Paestum before and after the colonization in 273 BCE. He points out the importance of cultural continuity, which involved Etruscan, Greek, Oscan, and Roman elements, of which many remained after the foundation. In this respect Paestum was in some ways different from other colonies. Nevertheless, the colony’s foundation also caused cultural change, as Pedley discusses.
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Torelli, Mario. 1999. Paestum romana. Edited by Marina Cipriani. Paestum, Italy: Ingegneria per la Cultura.
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In this beautifully illustrated book, Torelli starts by describing the “Lucanian” city (which was originally Greek) and then moves to the colony itself, founded in 273 BCE. He describes the city layout, the public buildings and private houses, necropoleis, territory, and social and political structures. He also discusses the administrative changes in the 1st century BCE, the foundation of the Flavian colony, and the town’s history in the late Imperial period.
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Torelli, Marina R. 2002. Benevento romana. Saggi di Storia Antica 18. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider.
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Torelli gives the (for now) standard history of Beneventum, from its foundation as a colony in 268 BCE until Late Antiquity. For the early period she discusses the number of settlers, the size of the colony’s territory, the urban layout, the administrative structure, the cults attested in the town, and the presence of local inhabitants in the colony—of which there were quite many, contrary to other colonies.
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