Book Description

"This book uses all the available evidence to create a site biography of Larinum from 400 BCE to 100 CE, with a focus on the urban transformation that occurs there during the Roman conquest. Larinum, a pre-Roman town in the modern region of Molise, undergoes a unique transition from independence to municipal status when it receives Roman citizenship in the 80s BCE shortly after the Social War. Its trajectory illuminates complex processes of cultural, social and political change associated with the Roman conquest throughout the Italian peninsula in the first millennium BCE. This work highlights the importance of local isolated variability in studies of the Roman conquest, and provides a narrative that supplements larger works on this theme. Through a focus on local-level agency, it demonstrates strong local continuity in Larinum and its surrounding territory. This continuity is the key to Larinum's transition into the Roman state, which is spearheaded by the local elites. They participate in the broader cultural choices of the Hellenistic koiné and strive to be part of a Mediterranean-wide dialog that, over time, will come to be dominated by Rome. The case is made for advancing the field of Roman conquest studies under a new paradigm of social transformation that focuses on a history of gradual change, continuity, connectivity and local isolated variability that is contingent on highly specific issues rather than global movements"--