THE ROMAN NATION: RETHINKING ANCIENT NATIONALISM

The study of nations and nationalism is often restr icted to the examination of modern nations that appeared after the French Revol ution. This is because the dominant trend in academic discourse argues that na tions only came into existence as a result of modern technologies, mass printing and high levels of literacy. These features are deemed necessary because it has previo usly been assumed there was no way for individuals within earlier societies to ima gine they were part of a larger nation of people similar to themselves. However, Nations a re human communities with common cultural features, languages, myths, ancestr al homelands and the legal rights of a state; modern technology is not required for a nation to exist. If the study of nations is artificially restricted to this later mo dern period, then it also limits potential avenues of research into the behaviors of peoples a nd states in prior eras back to the ancient world. This study argues there were indeed ancient nations and that Rome represents one of the best examples. Roman citizens and allies exh ibited their national affiliation in a variety of ways, most notably via a willingness to die for the Roman national collective in the face of extreme duress during the Second Punic War. The national loyalty of Roman citizens and allies then proved a critical advantage in Rome's global wars, granting them a consistent pool of recruitmen t and access to resources that could not be matched by competing ancient states. Rome fo stered a common national identity via its more inclusive policies, which inc luded a lighter touch in handling allies, distribution of citizenship regardless of e thnicity and a general willingness to welcome foreigners, displayed in their acceptance f or ign cults. This caused a cultural hybridization within Italy, and by the first centur y BCE the entire peninsula's inhabitants had become culturally and linguisticall y similar. The end result was the existence of a smaller Roman nation, which then exp anded into an Italian nation with Rome at its core.

avenues of research into the behaviors of peoples and states in prior eras back to the ancient world.
This study argues there were indeed ancient nations and that Rome represents one of the best examples. Roman citizens and allies exhibited their national affiliation in a variety of ways, most notably via a willingness to die for the Roman national collective in the face of extreme duress during the Second Punic War. The national loyalty of Roman citizens and allies then proved a critical advantage in Rome's global wars, granting them a consistent pool of recruitment and access to resources that could not be matched by competing ancient states. Rome fostered a common national identity via its more inclusive policies, which included a lighter touch in handling allies, distribution of citizenship regardless of ethnicity and a general willingness to welcome foreigners, displayed in their acceptance foreign cults. This caused a cultural hybridization within Italy, and by the first century BCE the entire peninsula's inhabitants had become culturally and linguistically similar. The end result was the existence of a smaller Roman nation, which then expanded into an Italian nation with Rome at its core.
iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Foremost, I would like to thank my major advisor, Dr. Bridget Buxton, who offered critical guidance, advice and suggestions about this thesis over a two year timespan. Her assistance stretched back to before I officially entered graduate school, so I am eternally grateful for all her help. My sincere thanks also go out to Dr. Evelyn Sterne, the professor who oversaw my undergraduate thesis but most recently handled my many administrative issues with care. I would be remiss not to also thank Mr. Ronald Matteson, my high school history teacher, whose enthusiasm for history came through in every class he taught and inspired my love of the topic and thus my academic career. There are innumerable other teachers and professors to whom I owe thanks for inspiring my love of history, pushing me to do better or assisting me in a multitude of ways, far too many to list here. So instead I shall simply add a thank you to every teacher that ever took the extra time to help me along the way. 4 political and religious calendars known as Fasti. These Fasti synced Roman time with other cities in the wider Roman world, so that citizens or allies hundreds of miles from Rome knew that everyone was celebrating the same festivals, at the same times and featuring the same gods. The Roman nation also expanded over time and did not remain a static entity. It began as a territorially smaller nation, isolated mostly to central Italy around Rome. This is the Roman nation that first manifests clearly in the Second Punic War when the region remained loyal while other regions broke away to join Hannibal.
In the 110 years after the Second Punic War, Roman dominance of peninsular Italy led to cultural hybridization between Romans and non-Romans, the end result was a more Romanized population. However, legal rights did not keep pace and many loyal Roman allies, who had been sending men to fight in the Roman legions for five generations, lacked any say in their continued utilization nor any recourse in legislation passed by the Roman government. This led to one final inter-Italian tribal conflict known as the Social War (91-88 BCE). The end result of the war was the extension of Roman citizenship to all of Italy, after which the population became even more culturally and linguistically Roman. As the first century BCE progressed through the reign of Augustus, Rome's first monarch since the regal era, Italians were further integrated into Roman social orders and government positions. It is then that a larger nation emerges. Due to this fuller integration of Italians into the Roman system, Italy morphed from a Roman nation that dominated Italy into an Italian nation with Rome at its core.

5
The Roman nation was also one that featured a more civic nationalism, based on common rights for all members and shared territory. It also featured a similar culture, but it was a culture that welcomed outsiders who then co-opted and hybridized Roman cultural features of their own volition. Rome was certainly not an ethnic nation, composed solely of one or two major ethnic groups that excluded others.
Instead, throughout its history Rome granted citizenship to Italians of different ethnicities and later to even non-Italians. Citizenship made one a Roman national, ethnicity did not matter. Anthony Smith argues that many civic nations were actually xenophobic and exclusionary to a significant degree, thus their "accepting" image was a façade. He points to the establishment of the French Republic in 1790, supposedly a new civic nation, but one that excluded and mistreated Jews. 4 While Smith rightfully argues that many civic nations have been exclusionary throughout their existence, Rome was not. It continued to admit peoples to citizenship, even to those outside of Italy, throughout the imperial period. Then in 212 CE Emperor Caracalla granted citizenship to all free men of the Empire, which then featured a wide array of disparate ethnic and cultural groups.
In arguing that Rome was an ancient nation, it also opens the possibility that there were several other pre-modern nations. However, these other potential nations will not be discussed at length beyond a few minor comparisons. Instead, the focus will remain on defining the major features of a nation and arguing that Rome does indeed meet these criteria. In arguing this case another question must be addressed, why does it matter if ancient Rome was a nation as opposed to a state, city-state or 6 empire? It is critical because it effects how this history of Rome is studied. Perhaps most critically, how Rome came to conquer the entire Mediterranean world in an environment that Arthur Eckstein argues featured multiple powers of equal military strength and equal diplomatic abilities. He specifically asks how Rome managed to replace the "long-prevailing Hellenistic anarchy in the region by a hierarchy of states with Rome at the top" at an incredible pace between 230 and 170 BCE. 5 He finds that it was perhaps their "exceptional ability in Italy to assimilate or conciliate outsiders and foreigners" alongside outstanding alliance management. 6 Rome did excel at being an inclusive state and it handled alliances very well. However, if we find that Rome was a nation with a nationalist citizenry, then it adds another significant level of potential analysis to Roman history and answers Eckstein's question in a different way. If the Roman people were members of a Roman nation, then perhaps they had a level of unity that many other states lacked, hence why Rome succeeded in conquering the Mediterranean where other states of equal military might failed. And if there were other ancient nations in addition to Rome, then it appears the Roman nation developed better than other nations by fostering nationalism far beyond its founding groups.
Regardless, if nations and nationalism existed in the ancient world, then a new avenue of historical exploration can be opened.

Plan for thesis
The second chapter of this thesis will seek to clearly define the major characteristics of a nation and a state, how they differ, and which features overlap. As significant work has already been done in the realm of defining a nation, the definition 7 of nation utilized for this work will be composed of a hybrid of extant definitions from a variety of academics. Amongst them are Anthony Smith and Azar Gat, who both agree that nations, or major features of nations, existed in the ancient world. However, criteria from the hostile modernist school, which believes nations only sprung into existence in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, will also be utilized. Specifically Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined community" will feature as a central component in my definition of a nation. Although his concept was designed to argue nations can only exist in the modern world, it does in fact apply to Rome.
The third chapter of this work will investigate the rather vast historiography of nations and nationalism and how it has been, or could be, applied to the study of the ancient world. A significant proportion of scholars disagree that nations existed in the ancient world, while the voices who advocate they did exist are limited. Thus an examination of how academic arguments and theoretical frameworks contrast and compare is necessary before a full discussion of Rome can be undertaken.
Chapter four will discuss the concept of Romanization at length. Romanization is a dated concept if viewed as a process where Roman culture clashed with, and then destroyed, any culture it came into contact with. Instead, Romanization is better typified as hybridization, in which individuals within communities had agency in their co-option of Roman cultural features. Non-Roman people's decision to co-opt Roman culture was often driven by a desire to achieve better access to the Roman economic system or for personal gains within the Roman system. Over time a new hybridized culture appeared, however, in the case of ancient Italy, the cultures hybridized but still appeared more Roman in the end. Thus Romanization will still be utilized as a term 8 throughout this thesis, but the chapter seeks to explain that it is different from the old conception of Romanization and focuses on native agency and hybridization, rather than cultural domination.
Chapter five will focus on the Second Punic War of the late third century BCE, the point at which Roman nationalism first clearly manifests in the historical record.
Ancient sources become much more accurate and fact based around this era, in large part due to the works of ancient historian Polybius. In the midst of the war, we see several instances of Romans and their closest allies exhibiting a willingness to die for the nation. This period also featured the construction of the first Roman histories and epic poems in Latin, a sign that Romans had clearly defined themselves as a unique, named people. While written sentiments matter greatly when it comes to identifying nationalism, actions matter even more, hence why the group behavior of Romans in time of war is a focus. Eric Hobsbawm argues that "nations do not make states and nationalism but the other way round," a principal that demands citizens of a given state have a direct hand in the creation of nation. 7 This study fully agrees with Hobsbawm's point and chapter six will focus on Roman co-option of foreign gods and how it helped the average Roman imagine their community as a larger nation. It will focus on the "official" co-option of foreign cults by state leadership, but it is critical to show the average Roman had agency in imagining their national community. I argue that Romans of all classes exhibited the perception that they were part of an imagined community, achieved by keeping locally installed religious and political calendars 9 known as Fasti that precisely synced with religious festivals in Rome and other cities.
This gave a majority of Romans, from slave to freemen to elites, a sense of simultaneity with people they would never meet.
Chapter seven will focus on the final phase of Italian unification into a nation that encompassed peninsular Italy. At first the Roman nation was isolated to nearby central Italy and its Roman colonies. However, its military, religious, economic and accompanying cultural expansion after the Second Punic War brought all of Italy south of the Po Valley under Roman rule. Although Rome now ruled most of Italy, the established oligarchy of Rome had carefully guarded their power structure by limiting the rights of their Italian allies and blocking any grants of citizenship to them. This led to a civil war known as the Social War (91-88 BCE), which ended with the allies legal inclusion into the Roman state, officially unifying an Italy. The chapter concludes with the reign of Augustus, who deposed the old republic and in the process fully incorporated all Italians into the Roman state. This allowed them broader access to higher social orders (such as the equestrian rank), government posts and local political offices. Following the mass enfranchisement after the Social War, Augustus had implemented a fuller integration of Italians into the state; the effect was a shift from an Italy dominated by a Roman nation to an Italian nation with Rome at its core. Figure 1.1 -Map of principal sites of Roman Italy (Ancient World Mapping Center)

Chapter Two
What is a nation?
Did ancient Rome constitute a nation at any point of its 1,100 year existence?
A seemingly simple question that requires complex answers due to the modern academic discourse surrounding the political ideology of nationalism. After World War II, a significant body of academic works began to be published which asserted nations were a relatively recent phenomenon, springing into existence only in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. This movement arose in contrast to published works from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that advocated ideas that nations had always existed throughout history and perhaps even existed in an unbroken chain from time immemorial to the present. The historians and authors working at the turn of the previous century composed their thoughts on nations in the midst of an extreme rise in nationalist fueled strife and conflicts. Their works were often interspersed with Social Darwinism and racism, sometimes as an attempt to justify the exclusion of one group from their "ethnically pure" nation, or to assert the "re-conquest" of another country they deemed had always belonged to their "people." In the rise of the Nazis these writings found a strong following. Nationalism reached its extreme zenith during Hitler's Third Reich, which saw the rise of an ultranationalist ideology that extolled the German nation over all other nations. Its inhabitants were re-imagined by faulty Nazi science into pure "Aryans," and propagandized archaeological excavations asserted these Aryan Germans had inhabited Germany for thousands of years, and had always belonged to a singular German nation. Of course none of this was accurate, all based on faulty science, historical research and archaeology in an effort justify Nazi policies and inflate the nationalistic pride of Germans living in the 1930s-40s. So the counter-reaction by academics in the latter half of the twentieth century was indeed a valid response.
Nationalism had fanned the flames of both World War I and World War II and the latter war had resulted in innumerable atrocities including the Holocaust, which was backed by an extreme ethnic nationalism.
Thus post war academics believed they had a valid point in striking down concepts that nations had existed prior to the French Revolution. First, because most ancient or medieval states and empires were indeed not nations, and second because political movements like the Nazis had utilized faulty research into national identity to justify their actions. Later academics accurately observed that the German nation had only existed as a unified entity since 1871 and prior to that date had been a divided, multi-ethnic, disparate region in sharp contrast to later Nazi propaganda. They also accurately noticed the majority of nations in the world had only come into existence in the past 100-200 years, hence they assumed all nations were recent. However, before we delve further into the academic debate surrounding the study of nations, it is first critical to define the major features of a nation and also distinguish how a nation differs from a state. While it can be difficult to pin down precisely what constitutes a nation, a variety of existent definitions will be assessed and merged together into a clear set of criteria. 13

Nation: A definition
A nation as such is obviously not an empirical thing. A nation as such cannot be seen. What can be empirically observed are only the individuals who belong to a nation. Hence, a nation is an abstraction from a number of individuals who have certain characteristics in common, and it is these characteristics that make them members of the same nation. 8 As international relations expert Hans Morgenthau explains in the above passage; nations are somewhat abstract things, not easily observable from "ground level." They can share the legal elements of a state which are geographic borders, common laws, and a government with coercive power over its inhabitants, but they also feature something else. That "something else" is the features of a named human community. As such nations feature a population with a common culture, common language, shared myths and history, the occupation of (or desire to occupy) their historic homeland and a distinct public culture. Nations also have common laws and customs for all members, features that can overlap with states. 9 The major features of a nation are somewhat more complex than this brief summary so a full explanation of each feature is required.
The first and most basic criteria for the existence of a nation is that it must be able to define itself with a collective, commonly held name i.e. Rome, Greece or Germany, and the people living within the nation must also refer to themselves as Romans, Greeks or Germans. A second and highly critical element of a nation, according to sociologist Anthony Smith, is that it must hold and cultivate shared myths, memories "symbols and traditions of the historic culture community" based on 14 the singular or multiple ethnic groups predominant in the original community. 10 This is also the crux of Smith's ethno-symbolist approach (see appendix for full definition).
Political Scientist Azar Gat fully agrees with Smith's emphasis on shared myths and memories amongst a nation's founding ethnic groups, asserting "there have been very few nations, if any, whose existence was divorced from ethnicity, that is, which did not share cultural and at least some kin affinities." 11 However, Smith diverges slightly from Gat and argues that nations sometimes end up with ethnic groups significantly different from the original dominant ethnic groups, and these later peoples then appropriate the myths of the original inhabitants while altering them to suit their own ends. 12 Additionally, Smith argues the initial appearance of a nationalist population often comes with a "rediscovery of [a nation's] history, the revival of its vernacular language….and the cultivation of its literature, especially drama and poetry." 13 Third, a nation must occupy and continue to develop a "common ancestral homeland." 14 Once more this criteria comes from Smith, and he adds an ancestral homeland must have recognized borders, or rather be territorial delimited. 15 The occupation and development of an ancestral homeland is indeed a necessary component of a nation, but Smith seems to err in his latter assertion that borders must be permanently defined. This is because the specific borders of any state or nation can move over time. Few would argue the United States is not a nation with a nationalist citizenry, however, its borders have expanded and changed significantly from its 15 origins as a nation in the eighteenth century. Originally the United States was isolated mostly to the geographic northeast, it then expanded along the coast from Maine to Florida. After the early nineteenth century Louisiana Purchase, it co-opted the present day mid-west and then expanded again to the Pacific Ocean. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the US added colonial holdings in Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines, the latter pair which are now independent of US rule. By the 1950s Hawaii and Alaska, also former US territories, were added as official states. While an American might be able to confidently assess the borders of the US today, Americans of earlier ages of expansion had to change their perception of the nation's borders periodically. Thus Gat offers a better example of how individuals within a nation perceive their common homeland via "territorial contiguity." 16 This concept allows for a nation to expand and change its borders over time as both the United States and ancient Rome did, and as many nations and states have throughout history. 17 For Gat, territorial contiguity can include multiple ethnic populations within a nation's borders, but contiguity between the main ethnic groups is necessary for a political sovereignty that fosters close interaction between inhabitants and "constantly sustains and reinforces the commonality of culture and kinship." 18 Fourth, a nation requires a distinctive and common public culture along with the observance of common customs and common laws for all members (citizens or subjects, depending on the political situation). 19 Beyond common laws, Smith suggests there is significant variance in what constitutes common public culture and 16 common customs. Gat is more specific and believes language is a part of the common public culture of a nation. This is because he finds the vast majority of states, except a small minority, feature a "dominant shared language at either the vernacular or literary level." 20 Dominant does not denote "only" language, merely that there is a language for conducting official business, or one language that is more common than the others. 21 Religion, when it contains a significant public aspect, can also be an element of common public culture and customs, something that also fits into Smith's conception of shared myths and traditions. However, Gat singles out religion specifically, arguing its role in the "formation of national identity has been significant," although less so than language and continuity. 22 A fifth major criteria is that a nation must be an "imagined community," a concept developed by modernist political scientist Benedict Anderson. An imagined community is best explained in an example utilized by Anderson in which he asks the reader to imagine an American citizen in the present era. This American, even if she resides at various places over her lifetime, will never meet or know the vast majority of her fellow Americans nor does she have any conception of what her fellow Americans are doing at any given time. Regardless, this American "has complete confidence in [all other Americans] steady, anonymous, simultaneous activity." 23 Anderson further explains that an imagined community instills a sense of simultaneity and calendric progression throughout time for all its members. For Anderson this requires a clock and calendar, the novel and newspaper, all features of modern 17 industrialized societies. 24 This all fits into his modernist paradigm, which completely disagrees with the concept of pre-modern nations. Yet his conception of the imagined community still fits into the ancient world in specific cases. Chapter six will argue in part that Romans managed to achieve this imagined community, alongside a sense of simultaneity displayed via religious and political calendars known as Fasti that precisely synced festivals between Rome and far flung cities. This imagined community gave the inhabitants of Italy, whether near Rome or hundreds of miles away, confidence that their fellow citizens and allies were in sync, celebrating the same public festivals (the ludi) simultaneously.
Last, and perhaps the most critical feature that marks the existence of a nation, is that a people must exhibit a willingness to die for their nation. Willingness is the key component; the people of a given nation cannot be driven to service solely by force or fear of reprisal from an oppressive regime. This would eliminate a population's agency in choosing to fight and potentially die for their imagined national collective. Certainly any number of states and empires throughout history have conscripted variant members within their borders to fight in wars, but if none of the aforementioned criteria are met and the individuals have been forced to fight, this does not represent a "willingness to die" for a nation. This concept forges a key component of Gat's definition of a nation. He further argues that Smith's definition of a nation does not fully account for this component, so he is "left with no better answer than modernists to the fundamental puzzle of the ethnic and national phenomenon: his 18 'ethnosymbolic' approach scarcely explains people's explosive devotion and willingness to sacrifice and die for their ethnic and national collective." 25

States and nations
Now that the criteria of what constitutes a nation has been defined, it is useful to examine the difference between a nation and a state. Often "nation" and "state" are used interchangeably in both public and academic discourse as if they are one in the same, and while there is some overlap in that a nation shares some features of state, they represent very different concepts. As previously discussed a nation is a more abstract concept, one created by the human communities that reside within them, meanwhile a state signifies only a legal entity. Some confusion perhaps arises because both a nation and a state feature geographic borders (even if they change over time), common laws for all members, and a government with some type of coercive power.
Although states share these features with nations, states are not always occupied by a population with shared cultural features and thus members may not view themselves as part of singular nation. A state may include multiple disparate ethno-cultural groups, each with their own distinct public cultures and common histories. As such, each may never develop a sense of national cohesion with other groups within the state. Sometimes states with disparate ethnic and cultural groups change over time and populations might hybridize their cultural features into a new unified culture with a shared history. Thus they may develop a national identity at a later date, however, this is not always the case. In this regard, Smith argues "nation" is not interchangeable with "state" because states are tied to institutional activity whereas 19 nations are better described as a type of community. He further adds that states are purely defined as a "set of autonomous institutions, differentiated from other institutions, possessing a legitimate monopoly of coercion and extraction in a given territory." 26 For Smith, a state needs only the ability to rule over a population, enforce laws and threaten violence (or commit violence) in effort to levy taxes, troops and resources necessary to maintain the state. Sociologist Charles Tilly agrees, and his definition of a state is an entity with the ability to coerce its citizens or subjects, "distinct from households and kinship groups" and that exercises priority "over all other organizations within substantial territories." 27 To these definitions Ernest Gellner adds there is a significant overlap between states and nations. More specifically that nationalism is parasitic and "emerges only in a milieux in which the existence of the state is already very much taken for granted." 28 Gellner's analysis is very accurate as states did arise long before nations.
The first states appeared in history somewhere from 6,000 -4,000 BCE. 29 In the case of Rome, the city was founded sometime in the eighth century BCE by the Latin and Sabine tribes, and as their military power grew throughout the fourth and third centuries BCE, they absorbed surrounding tribes and territory that came to be administered by a central Roman government. Their expansion of territorial dominance demarcates the shift from Rome the city to Rome the state. The progression from tribes, to cities to states played out on a macro scale as well, although not every tribe made the leap to city and then state. Tilly finds the first cities 20 on earth came into existence between 8,000 and 7,600 BCE, followed several thousand years later by the rise of the first states, such as the Mesopotamian cities of Ur and Lagash around 2500 BCE. 30 He highlights Ur and Lagash because they were early examples of cities that expanded to conquer and rule other peoples and featured the coercion necessary to define a state, one "ruled by warriors and held together by force and tribute." 31 While Tilly finds a proliferation of states throughout all history, he indicates few European states are (or ever were) nation-states, which he also labels as human groupings that "share a strong linguistic, religious, and symbolic identity." 32 However, as is typical of the academic discussion surrounding nations, Tilly separates nationstate from national state, very similar terms with somewhat different connotations. He labels national states as entities that rule multiple contiguous regions via "centralized, differentiated, and autonomous structures" and adds even these have rarely existed in history. 33 Citing specific examples, Tilly deems China a 3,000 year old national state that was never a nation-state due to the disparate languages spoken within its borders and its wide variety of ethnic groups. 34 He also argues that most nations only came into existence since the nineteenth century, a belief he shares with modernists. 35 Yet Tilly's claim that there have been few nation-states, national states or nations throughout history is a problematic one. The issue is not so much his definitions of nation-state and national state, nor his rather accurate assertion that China is more a 21 state than a nation, rather he seems stuck on the conception that a nation is composed solely on a singular ethnic group and remains that way. For example he deems Ireland and Sweden as some of the only near nation-states in existence due to their mostly homogenous populations. 36 However, ethnicity and the formation of nations is not a concept as simple as one ethnic group equals one nation, ad infinitum. In partial agreement with Tilly, Azar Gat argues that ethnicity and nationalism cannot be divorced and that "nationalism is one particular form of a broader phenomenon, that of political ethnicity and ethnicity has always been highly political..." 37 However, Smith disagrees with both Tilly and Gat in part, arguing that ethnic communities alone are not nations and despite some overlap, "in that both belong to the same family of phenomena (collective cultural identities), the ethnic community usually has no political referent, and in many cases lacks a public culture and even a territorial dimension, since it is not necessary for an ethnic community to be in physical possession of its historic territory." 38 Yet Smith's strict division of ethnic communities from nations is too sharp as we find there is significant overlap between ethnicity and the initial development of nations.
Somewhat contradicting himself, Smith argues that ethnic groups are often present at the founding of nations, but that later members of the nation, with ethnic backgrounds different from the nation's original ethnic groups, later appropriate (hybridize) the myths and culture of the nation they inhabit. 39 In fairness, Smith's main point is that a singular ethnic group does not constitute a nation alone. This is because an ethnic 22 group alone might never develop the features of a state and thus may never feature the common laws for members found in nations. Ethnic groups do not always speak a singular language and different tribal divisions within ethnic groups might even have variant perceived homelands.
Therefore it is not that each nation must be composed of a singular ethnic group to meet the criteria of nation as Tilly claims, nor is it the opposite, that singular ethnic groups can never constitute a nation as Smith asserts. Instead, nations can be founded by one or more ethnic groups. These ethnic groups might first found a city, but it then must develop into state that presides over a wide array of people before its population might ever view itself as a nation. However, a state may be the last phase of change, states have forged large empires throughout all history and ruled over disparate peoples who were simply held in line be coercion, eventually breaking apart in rebellion or dividing via conquest by other states.
However, in some instances states develop into nations, especially if internal populations have hybridized cultures and histories to the point that they now have a new common culture and myth history. At this point, these hybridized groups may have come from multiple ethnic backgrounds that were not part of the nation's original founding ethnic groups. This process mirrors the development of Rome, founded by two ethnically similar tribes in the Latin and Sabines, it became an inclusive state that rolled neighbors under its authority as allies or via grants of citizenship. Over a long stretch of time, cultural hybridization forged a common, more Romanized culture that co-opted the myths and history of the founding tribes. Eventually these later members of the Roman state came to behave and view themselves as members of a singular Roman nation.
Development from city to state to nation should not be considered as a default process by any means, it is simply one potential outcome for human groupings. The rarity of events playing out in this fashion is best explained by Azar Gat. He argues that many ethnic communities had the potential to develop into states or nations, but most have been "too small and weak to achieve and retain statehood, that is, national independence, whereas more powerful ethnic communities went on to conquer others, assuming a dominant position within a multiethnic state or empire." 40 However, Gat does not address the potential for cultural homogenization/hybridization within a multiethnic state as occurred in Roman Italy, but his point is valid nonetheless. Small ethnic groups may never become states and thus never develop into nations, but nations are still often founded by ethnic groups. The precise moment of transition from ethnic group to nation, according to Gat, occurs when a people becomes "politically sovereign, either as a dominant majority, Staatsvolk, within a national state, or as the politically central element within a multiethnic state or empire." 41 Although Gat is opposed to the modernists, his argument falls in line with Gellner's theory that states always come before nations. 42 As nations require both common cultural features and the legal aspects of a state, this assessment seems accurate.

States: Modern and historical examples
The vast majority of organized communities throughout history have developed as states, as such there are many examples to study. One significant example, due to its subject people's nationalist fueled role in instigating World War I, is Austro-Hungarian Empire of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This large, sprawling imperial state was cobbled together from twelve or more disparate ethnic and cultural groups and featured some fifteen different languages spoken within its borders. While ruled from German speaking Austria, the Empire never experienced a cultural homogenization as Italy did under Rome and thus ruled over a strife laden territory of peoples, many of whom sought national independence. These included Serbian nationalists who were then seeking to forge an independent Yugoslavia.
One of those fighting for independence from the Empire was Gavrilo Princep, an ardent Serbian/Yugoslavian nationalist who famously assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 as part of an effort to separate Yugoslavia from Austro-Hungary. While his successful assassination caused a chain reaction that led to World War I in the short term, in the long run the war saw the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as their Axis alliance lost the war. The empire was then broken into multiple countries in post war settlements, and continued to subdivide throughout the twentieth century, eventually turning into multiple states and nations including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Serbia and Slovenia amongst others.
However, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a vast empire, and while empires are also states, it did not constitute a typical modern arrangement like Iraq or Spain. In modern discourse, the latter entities might be described as nations and both feature degree of 25 common culture, however, a closer examination finds they are better described as states.
One of the most pertinent examples of a modern state, one that has never constituted a nation is Iraq, a state that continues to experience severe internal strife in part due to its artificial construction by outside global powers. From the nineteenth through early twentieth century, the present territory known as Iraq was controlled directly by external imperial powers which sought to fit the peoples of the region into various territorial arrangements. None of these took into consideration the ethnocultural, linguistic or religious groups that resided within the territory. Originally ruled by the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, present day Iraq was broken into multiple administrative provinces under the Ottomans. However, after the allied victory in World War I saw the defeat of the Axis affiliated Ottomans, the British Empire became the regions new power broker.
Under the authority of the League of Nations in 1920, the British led the dissolution of former Ottoman territory and set the approximate borders of the current Iraqi state. This was done without little consideration of the variant ethnic groups or religious factions that inhabited the region, but the end result was a legal state with defined borders with common laws and a ruling government. This new Iraqi state had an ethnic Arab majority, but it also included (and still includes) significant ethnic minority groups including Kurds and Assyrians in addition to multiple and highly disparate religions and sects. The major religious split within Iraq over this time has been between the two main Muslim sects, minority Sunnis and majority Shi'ites, but there also remains an ever dwindling but significant minority of Yazidis, whose 26 religion is similar to Zoroastrianism, alongside Assyrian Christians/other Christians.
No major cultural hybridization between these ethnic and religious groups has occurred within Iraq, despite that its present state borders have existed for ninety-four years. Instead, all of the aforementioned groups have been involved in internal warfare at some point over the last 100 years.
While nations can harbor minority groups that sometimes become integrated with the major ethno-cultural groups, to date the citizens of Iraq have never developed a singular Iraqi human community with common myths, shared history, a common public culture and language or any other facets of a nation. Meanwhile the Iraqi state seems like it could harbor three or more independent nations. The best example is the Kurds, a significant ethnic subpopulation of Iraq and an example of a national people that feels "trapped" within the larger state of Iraq. Kurdish people have fought for an independent Kurdish homeland since the early twentieth century, a fight that continues through the present. They even occupy most of their perceived historic homeland, which straddles parts of present day northern Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. While still stateless for the foreseeable future, they represent an example of a human community that meets all criteria of being a nation (albeit an ethnic nation), one that even occupies most of its desired historic homeland and runs their territory with the apparatus of a state. However, their homeland of "Kurdistan" is not independent and instead resides within multiple other states. Regardless, the Kurds have an imagined community of fellow Kurds and a functioning state apparatus, even though their state lacks formal independence.

27
With so many disparate peoples featuring sharp religious and cultural divides, the Iraqi state of the twentieth century had multiple rebellions alongside the periodic violent repression by one or another religious sect or ethnic group. By the 1960s, the authoritarian Ba'ath Party came to rule Iraq with an iron fist, it was the party that brought forth one of Iraq's longest serving dictators in the late 1970s in Saddam Hussein. It was then Hussein's extreme and violent usage of state coercion that kept the Iraqi state together until the United States led invasion deposed his rule in 2003.
He was the last strongman in long line of leaders who held together an Iraqi state that never truly constituted a nation and whose people never developed an affinity toward a nation called Iraq. A nation cannot be enforced from the top down on a populous that despises other groups of their fellow citizens. Hussein held together these disparate factions with extreme coercion and internal violence, which included large massacres of Kurds and Shi'ite Muslims between 1988 and 1991, when both groups attempted to break away and/or change the Iraqi state.
As of 2014 Iraq is still beset with continued internal strife. Another group composed of both Iraqis and foreigners alike has formed, labeling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and it has taken control of large swaths of Sunni inhabited Iraq in an effort to create a new caliphate. ISIL has also clashed with Kurds, Yazidis, Assyrians and Shi'ites, declaring them all heretics and signifying once more the non-existence of an Iraqi nation. Even though Iraq has a dominate language in Arabic, its inhabitants religious and cultural differences are extreme and thus it has always better constituted a state than a nation. Perhaps in the case of Iraq, religious differences are the largest cause for division as evidenced in the types of conflicts that 28 have occurred there. Religion is powerful force that can either foster unity or extreme divisions, as Wallace-Hadrill argues, "religion may divide groups within a community, and it may cut across the boundaries of community." 43 In Iraq's case it has been a major cause of disunity. Thus the majority of the citizens of Iraq have never viewed themselves as Iraqi nationalists, and if "nationalism is a state of mind, a sense of shared communal-political identity, affinity, and destiny..." as Gat argues, then the inhabitants of Iraq never held these sentiments. 44 War torn Iraq is but one example of a modern state that is not a nation. Spain is another excellent example. Since the Spanish expulsion of the Moors in 1491, the unified Spanish state has always held within its borders multiple disparate cultural and ethnic communities with little affinity for a Spanish nation. Many of these groups have fought to carve independent homelands out of Spain, chief amongst them the Basques.
An indigenous ethnic group with its own language, shared myths, history, and distinct public culture, the Basques have long desired an independent Basque Country in the northeastern corner of Spain. In addition to the Basques, the Catalan peoples of northern Spain, yet another separate ethnic group with their own language and cultural traditions, have fought for an independent homeland back to the sixteenth century.
Their desire for a Catalan nation began almost immediately after the expulsion of the Moors, and never flagged. Catalonia temporarily gained independence in the midst of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and they have continued to fight, albeit peacefully now, for an independent homeland. In 2014 Catalonia held a non-binding referendum for independence from Spain and 80 percent of the population voted to break away 29 from Spain. 45 Even the United Kingdom, once a vast global empire now whittled down to mostly the main British Isles, has suffered from some internal discontent.
Throughout the twentieth century Scottish nationalists have advocated for independence from England in an effort to overturn their eighteenth century unification. Their latest attempt at independence was also recent, failing in a popular vote during the summer of 2014. 45 Jackson 2014, 10 November.

Chapter Three
Nationalism: An academic debate The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have often been referred to as the "age of nationalism" in Europe. There were many rebellions, wars and political actions that saw new nations forged from certain ethnic and cultural groups, real or perceived. Amongst these new nations was Germany, forged into a singular entity by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1871 from several hundred formerly independent Germanic states. The same happened for fractionalized Italy, also unified as a nation in 1871. Many of these new nations were constructed by groups or individuals who imagined their new nations contained a "racially pure," or at least culturally similar population of people, collectively moving in the same direction. In turn, much of the literature about "nation-building" from the era, even in the academic arena, was full racist and nationalist rhetoric. In contained inaccurate histories that often connected these new nations to ancient tribal peoples that hardly represented anything akin to a nation, yet were portrayed as such. 46 Eric Hobsbawm, a modernist, argues it is not worth reading any material from this era because of its authors racially charged rhetoric and flawed reasoning. 47 He is correct the literature of the era was often racist and almost always academically flawed, but ignoring it entirely, or at least its influence, is a mistake. Those nineteenth century authors had an immense influence on the governments and citizens of the early twentieth century. One might also argue the nationalist rhetoric of the nineteenth century was a critical element that drove the Great War. Ultra-nationalism then reached its zenith within the fascist Nazi movement, one that took nineteenth century nationalist and Social Darwinist conceptions of a "racially pure," Aryan German nation, and turned it into the mass genocide of the Holocaust and yet another global war.
The horror of these ultra-nationalist fascist movements, resultant in so much death, have driven many of the pioneering modernists to claim nations are recent inventions, almost in a hope that nations will go away one day as swiftly as they came.
As Gat argues, modernists view nations as "pure historical constructs;" completely arbitrary things that "bear little more significance than a fashion or craze." 48 In effect it also means modernists do not accept ancient or medieval nations. Hobsbawm proclaims that nations "[belong] exclusively to a particular, and historically recent, period" 49 His modernist associate in Benedict Anderson fully agrees, asserting that "Western Europe the eighteenth century marks…. the dawn of the age of nationalism." 50 For them, the maximum range of this fashion trend of nationalism is the late eighteenth century, and like a fad that reached its peak with fascism, their framework seems to suggest nations will also fade away at some point. Amongst the modernists pioneers who hold these sentiments are Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, Karl Deutsch, Hans Kohn and Benedict Anderson. Of course people are always products of their experiences, even academics guided by objectivity are at least 32 partially effected by events of the time they lived in. Gat suggests the life experiences of Hobsbawm, Gellner, Deutsch and Kohn have significantly affected their works as they were all "Jewish immigrant refugees from central Europe....during the first half of the twentieth century. All of them experienced changing identities and excruciating questions of self-identity at the time of the most extreme, violent and unsettling nationalistic eruptions. It was only natural they reacted against all this." 51 Another element behind the modernist rejection of pre-modern nations is that many leading modernist voices, notably Hobsbawm and Anderson, adhere to a Marxist interpretation of historical processes. Underpinning their viewpoint is the Marxist theory of historical materialism which indicates social progress is driven by material and productive forces, such as technological advancements and the production of capital goods. Historical materialism also dictates that social features such as class, political institutions, and even states are all side effect of economic developments. For Anderson, economic and technological developments are a requirement in the development of nations because he asserts they did not exist until the development of clocks and calendars (set to uniform standards and available to all) and printing presses became capable of producing mass media such as the daily newspaper and novel. 52 In Anderson's view, industrial capitalism created the aforementioned technologies which in turn enabled an individual to perceive they were part of an imagined, national community. Not all modernists agree with elements of Marxist theory, Gellner amongst them. However, historical materialism is still at 33 the core of his arguments as he asserts the roots of nationalism reside within "the distinctive structural requirements of industrial society..." 53 Hence the negative reaction to the concept of ancient nations by modernists, and understandably so. If nationalism was the driving force behind the Holocaust, then one would hope nationalism is not an innate human trait. Gellner is so certain of this, he argues nationalism "does not have any very deep roots in the human psyche" and the organization of humans into "culturally homogenous" centrally educated units is the rarest of phenomenon. 54 Modernists also tend to interpret history through the lens of historical materialism, which leads them to reject any possibility that states could have turned into nations prior to the development of modern industrial capitalism.
However, their perpetual requirement for industrial capitalism as a pre-requisite seems artificial. Nations are simply states that also contain human communities with multiple common cultural features and whose citizens/subjects identify themselves as member of the nation. This leads Gat to reject the modernist paradigm outright. He asks if nations are both rare and recent, then how did a "profound emotion as nationalism suddenly spring up in nineteenth century Europe from no apparent source in the human psyche?" 55 The modernists have had a significant influence on academic discourse and there remains a considerable contingent of them who refute the existence of pre-modern nations on a variety of grounds. As a consequence, ancient Rome has drawn very limited study as a possible nation. In their effort to explain away 53 Gellner 1983, 35. 54 Gellner 1983 Gat and Yakobson 2013, 17. the nationalist fueled horrors of fascism as a temporary blip in human history, they also cast a large "anti-nation" net over the entirety of history.
While the influence of the modernists has been sweeping, some recent scholarship has begun to diverge from their conclusions to argue that ancient nations could, or did exist. Anthony Smith, although a student of influential modernist Gellner, has recently begun to diverge from his old mentor. Smith states that modernist arguments are only accurate in that most modern nations are chronologically recent creations. However, he asserts modernists are generally wrong and examples of nations "can be found in earlier epochs," which undermines the theoretical basis of their framework. 56 Smith then argues that ancient Egypt, Armenia and Israel match his newly designed conception of nation. However, he retreats entirely from the utilization of any modernist criteria in his re-examination of nations in lieu of his own model, despite that some modernist criteria can be applied to ancient states. This leaves his arguments open to further attacks by modernist academics.
Joining Smith in the camp in favor of ancient nations is Azar Gat, who boldly asserts the Roman state is the "closest parallel found in antiquity to a large national state in the modern sense, with a universal language and a single system of local government and civil law." 57 Gat expands his study beyond Rome, arguing that Macedonia was Europe's first national state, and also agrees with Smith in part that Egypt was a nation. 58 However, the problem with Gat's latest work, Nations -The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism is that it does not delve deeply into primary sources to find evidence for his claims and thus some of his assertions appear weak or flawed. This leaves to door open for modernists to further assert that ancient nations did not exist because the supporting evidence is not convincing.
There is another set of modern scholars who agree that nationalism was existent in a few specific instances in the ancient world, something they refer to as a lesser nationalism known as "proto-nationalism." Amongst them is Constantina Katsari, who argues that ancient Greece exhibited proto-nationalist sentiments; and Aviel Roshwald who agrees and also proclaims the ancient Jews were early protonationalists. 59 On a similar but also disparate track, historian Caspar Hirschi finds that some modern nations have their roots in the Middle Ages, partly kicking aside the modernist paradigm. However, he maintains a significant hostility to ancient and Roman nationalism. 60 While his main thesis is that the origination point for nationalist sentiments was Catholic Europe during the Middle Ages, he also dedicates a full chapter to the ancient world, specifically Rome. In Hirschi's view "there were no nationalists walking the streets of ancient Rome." His reasoning is that only elites harbored nationalist sentiments, which he further argues remained exclusive to them and never spread to the average Roman citizen. 61 Erich S. Gruen disagrees with this view in his work Cultural and National Identity in Republican Rome, as he asserts that while Roman nobiles were often the standard bearers of the Roman "ideal," they also sought to spread those ideals through theater and other public festivals and events, 36 which "provided a channel through which the ruling class could propagate aristocratic values by shaping the direction of popular culture." 62 While Hirschi sees nationalism isolated exclusively Roman nobles, Roshwald, Katsari and Clifford Ando make strong cases for widespread nationalist or protonationalist identity in the ancient world. However, they focus mostly on ancient Greek identity centered on the polis or city state, while ignoring Rome. In "Money and Proto-National Identities in the Greco-Roman Cities of the First and Second Centuries AD", Katsari argues there is strong evidence that "political and cultural identities in the ancient world were not only as strong as they are today but also defined the thoughts and actions of ancient populations on an everyday basis." 63 However, she further explains the ancient Greeks, both prior to Roman conquest and after, only had a protonational identity rather than a full national identity due to the "premature nature of these ideas." 64 Katsari explains that Greeks maintained a strong national identity with their polis, an identity that ultimately morphed under Roman rule into two loyalties, one to Rome and one to their Greek home city. She then delves into a study of coinage in Roman controlled Greece, which often featured the Roman emperor on one side and an image of a Greek city's founding god or important public buildings on the other. This further enforces her argument for strong Greek identification with the polis but also a second tier loyalty to Rome. 65 Katsari provides a unique way of viewing Greek nationalism, that of a people who had a strongly defined sense of shared cultural 37 identity prior to their conquest, although isolated to their poleis, and they maintained it alongside a new loyalty to their conquerors.
In a similar line of reasoning, Roshwald makes a strong argument that ancient Greeks constituted a nation in his book The Endurance of Nationalism, avoiding the lesser concept of proto-nationalism advocated by Katsari. While some academics have argued the Greeks were not a nation due to a lack of peninsular wide unity, Roshwald argues "Athenians, Spartans, Thebans and other Greek-speakers all seem to have regarded their individual poleis as part of a greater Hellenic whole" and viewed themselves as one ethnos with a shared language and culture. 66 Like Katsari, Roshwald is aware of the strong affiliation to the polis and coins a new term, nationpolis, to describe city-states such as Athens that fit within a Pan-Hellenic ideology. 67 However strong a force Roshwald believes nationalism was within ancient Greece, he never fully addresses the failure of Greek city-states to achieve a fuller union into a singular Greek nation, a unity the Romans achieved within Italy. Meanwhile, Roshwald is dismissive of a Roman nation as he argues they ruled a "multi-ethnic empire." However, Roshwald seems to have based this mostly on the later Roman imperial era and not the Republican Roman period, where this thesis argues Roman nationalism began. He is also unaware of both Gat and Smith's research which argues that while core ethnicities underlie all nations, as time progresses the culture and beliefs of core ethnic groups are co-opted by later groups of various ethnicities in a continuation of the nation. So "multi-ethnicity" does not indicate there is no extant nation. Meanwhile, Roshwald has ignored the many Roman and ancient authors who 66 Roshwald 2006, 26. 67 Roshwald 2006, 27. 38 proclaimed Italic peoples shared a common blood and even standard behaviors. 68 Regardless, Roshwald's contribution to the study of pre-modern nations is highly valuable and is part of the deconstruction of the modernist school of thought. While Katsari and Roshwald each have unique takes on the Greek polis, Clifford Ando asks a larger question in his article "Was Rome a Polis?" Investigating this question through the eyes of conquered Greeks in a fashion similar to Katsari, Ando reaches the conclusion that Rome was in fact a highly successful "polis that conquered many territories and [was] an empire that possessed no more effective cohesion than a Hellenistic kingdom" a belief, Ando states, that the ancient Greeks also held about Rome. 69 Here, like Roshwald, Ando has failed to take into account Smith and Gat's concept of a national ethnic core that shifts over time, and whose beliefs are then co-opted by later different ethnic groups in a continuance of nation.
Nor does Ando take into account the inclusive policies of Rome that later manifested in the extreme loyalty of Latium and central Italy during Second Punic War. Instead he superficially views Rome at its imperial end as a "multi-ethnic empire" and does not examine the cultural and legal cohesion of Italy, the national core of the Roman state.
Returning to the modernists, Patrick Geary has taken up the mantle of Gellner and Hobsbawm, arguing in The Myth of Nations -The Medieval Origins of Europe that nationalism is an exclusively modern phenomenon. His work is designed to strike down arguments that nations might be found in the medieval era, arguing that even 39 Hirschi's conception of a medieval heritage for some European nations is inaccurate.
However, while working his way to that argument, Geary also attempts to knock over the concept of ancient Roman nationalism along the way. Utilizing a theory of shared ethnicity as a prerequisite to nationalist sentiments, he argues "Roman was a constitutional, not an ethnic category in any meaningful sense of the term." 70 Furthermore, Geary suggests that class distinctions were the most important selfidentifying category for the citizenry of the Roman Republic, not feelings of shared ethnicity or nationalistic sentiments. He then adds that although Romans had a strong conception of "other" via their depictions of barbarians, most citizens never saw these "far flung" barbarians and thus "other" never played a role in a typical Roman's identity. 71 After arguing that few Roman citizens could have been regarded as a nationalists, Geary then attempts to dismantle the concept of a nationalism isolated to the Roman nobility, claiming they "remained firmly attached to their province and especially to their city" as opposed to the Roman state. 72 However, he fails to recognize that a nation is typically not composed of a single ethnic group throughout its entire existence, few ever are. He also fails to recognize that Rome was indeed founded by a few core ethnic groups, whose founding myths, culture and language spread to later Italians. It was Rome's inclusive policies that allowed later groups to co-opt Roman cultural features alongside grants of citizenship, which in turn forged a culturally cohesive Italian population. Rome was indeed more of a civic nation 40 because of this, but it also developed a common culture after centuries of inter-Italian hybridization. Geary does not recognize either of these features and also somehow does not realize that civic nationalism is indeed a type of nationalism. 73 It is also preposterous to discount the nationalism of Roman elites considering they wrote about these sentiments extensively, even down to minutiae such as how ones toga should be styled to be sufficiently Roman in appearance (Suet. Aug. 98.3).
Countering Geary's conception that Roman elites were not nationalists, Wallace-Hadrill examines Tacitus and Livy and finds that Roman elites had even asserted the "true Roman" position when it came to standing or sitting at public spectacles. He indicates sitting too long was deemed a "soft, Greek pleasure" because "pleasure and relaxation are bad for armies: theatres, gymnasia, table luxury and the like undermine the discipline and manliness of the citizen-soldier. Sitting is comfortable and soft: standing is tough and manly...." and a "permanent set of seats is an inducement to sit permanently. That way the army goes soft and the people is corrupted." 74 Tacitus even references standing versus sitting as maintaining the "national morality" (Tac. Ann. 14.20). So Roman elites spent a good deal of time assessing and contrasting traditional Roman morality and traditions in contrast to Greek morality.
Although Roman nationalism is often disputed in the modern scholarly debate, Gruen nearly supports the idea in Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome.
Gruen's goal is not to prove Rome was a nation, but rather to show how Romans formed their own cultural identity through interaction with the Greek East. While he 41 skirts the issue of Roman nationalism directly, his primary focus is on how the Romans defined themselves in comparison to "other," in this case the Greeks. The author argues the Romans sought to co-opt from Homer's epic poem the Iliad, the character of Aeneas, whom they then propped up as the mythical founder of Rome. He argues the Roman embrace of the Hellenic Trojans, a people who were both Greek and anti-Greek, "enabled Rome to associate itself with the rich and complex fabric of Hellenic tradition, thus to enter that wider cultural world, just as it had entered the wider political world. But at the same time it also announced Rome's distinctiveness from that world." 75 Gruen then claims that the Roman upper classes fully accepted the connection of Rome to greater Hellas, which actually helped them forge "a sense of their identity and laid a foundation for a national character." 76 As previously mentioned, Gruen also believes elites attempted to spread the concept of Roman distinctiveness through theater and festivals that "provided a channel through which the ruling class could propagate aristocratic values by shaping the direction of popular culture." 77 However, this line of reasoning removes some agency from the non-elite inhabitants of Italy, who also envisioned themselves as Roman. The average Roman citizen was able to participate directly in the ludi, or religious festivals and games, and they did so simultaneously with other Roman cities by following religious festival days on publicly installed calendars known as Fasti. As will be discussed in chapter six, average Romans and even slaves sometimes produced these Fasti of their own 75 Gruen 1992, 31. 76 Gruen 1992, 31. 77 Gruen 1992, 31. 222. volition. So while elites did attempt to enforce "Roman character" via public theater and festivals, non-elite Romans chose their level of participation in these events as well.
In sharp contrast to Geary and Hirschi, and in partial disagreement with Gruen, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill argues that Roman culture was not exclusive to elites and argues this "assumption is the product of a modern construction of the 'Classics' as a discipline." 78 Looking directly into Roman public spaces, Wallace-Hadrill asks us to look at Roman "baths and amphitheatres, characteristic Roman structures that appear in Britain as a result of 'romanisation.' Both types of public structure evidently served to recruit to the system, and hence define, a portion of the population extending considerably beyond the elite." 79 Furthermore, he argues that while theatrical events and public spectacles may have been "prime instruments" for elites to assert their standing and enforce their imagery of Rome, these constructions "could not have worked if it had not enjoyed a mass appeal." 80 Wallace-Hadrill has a strong point, it is difficult to force a "mass movement" on people who have no sense they are already part of a mass cultural, political and religious identity already.
Another important connection drawn by Gruen is that Romans, by linking themselves "to the ancient past could lend confidence in the endurance of Rome's legacy." 81 A connection to an "ancient past," is a common element of nations. This sort of historical reconstruction of myth-history is so common within nations that Smith lists it as his first criteria for the existence of a nation, which requires "the 43 growth of myths and memories of common ancestry and history of the cultural unit of population." 82 This point is not fully realized or discussed by Gruen, instead he reaches a similar conclusion, that ancient societies (Rome in particular) recognized their differences from other cultures and often emphasized them, but "could also visualize themselves as part of a broader cultural heritage…. and could couch their own historical memories in terms of a borrowed or appropriated past." 83 Yet the recognition of external cultural influences need not indicate there was no strong, centralized conception of Roman identity. As will be discussed in chapter six, Romans co-opted foreign cults regularly but still drew a line in the sand between Roman and non-Roman practices. This became evident in Roman legislation that was passed concerning the worship of Anatolian goddess Magna Mater; laws that banned Romans from imitating the "wild" practices of the eunuch Phrygian priests connected to her (D.H. 2.19.4-5).
Stepping away from the debate about the existence of nationalism in antiquity, two academics, Jon Fox and Cynthia Miller-Idriss argue there is a critical feature that instills nationalism within individuals in a passive fashion. They argue this occurs when public spaces are "endowed with national meaning not only through the intentions of their architects but also through the interpretations of their every day users." 84 Delving into further detail, Fox and Millier-Idress discuss the importance of architecture in that citizenry can often identify structures that belong to "their" nation, versus that of another. A key example they utilize is one that occurred after the 44 conclusion of the Cold War, "years after reunification in Germany, the internal design and organization of police stations in Berlin mark them unambiguously as eastern and western to the officers who inhabit them. The preferences and practice of spatial consumption mark and constitute the places of everyday life in nationally relevant ways." 85 Fox and Miller-Idriss believe nationalism in part, comes from the bottom up, and they argue average citizens must be talking about the nation and experiencing it subconsciously in their daily lives for a nation to exist. Their suggestion is interesting for this study, considering the standard and easily recognizable Roman construction style spread not only across Italy, but also extant in provinces thousands of miles from Rome. For Italians outside of Rome, these Roman structures must have acted as a constant and daily reminder of their membership in the Roman national community.

Rome and Mediterranean anarchy
How did the Romans, originally a small tribe residing on the Latium plain of Italy's central west coast, rise to not only forge a united Italian peninsula, but also conquer and reshape the entire Mediterranean system by the second century BCE?
More importantly, how precisely did the Romans achieve this while surrounded by hostile, well established, neighboring states of equal or superior strength throughout the entirety of its existence? According to historian Arthur Eckstein, Rome had always existed in this multi-polar world, surrounded by neighboring states under conditions of international anarchy (a leaderless world with no singular dominant government).
However, several of those states, notably Macedon, the Seleucid Empire and Carthage became overtly hostile and fell into conflict with Rome between 264 and 146 BCE. 85 Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008, 552-553. Eckstein 2008, 231 -232. 46 conditions that proliferated the Mediterranean from 230-170 BCE, an era that featured several major conflicts between Rome and other states of equal military might.
As realism is a central theoretical framework in Eckstein's studies, it is necessary first to define it. Eckstein explains that realism focuses "on the harsh and competitive nature of interactions among states under conditions of international anarchy." 88 Realist theory, specifically international anarchy, is a theory strongly advocated by oft-controversial realist political scientist Kenneth Waltz, who argues the world is perpetually in a state of international anarchy. Waltz argues that "among states, the state of nature is a state of war. This is meant not in the sense that war constantly occurs but in the sense that, with each state deciding for itself whether or not to use force, war may at any time break out." 89 IR Realism also dictates the most critical actors in the international realm are "territorially organized entities: city states of dynastic empires in antiquity; nation-states in the modern world." 90 If we accept both Waltz's theories and Eckstein's suggestions that Rome existed in an anarchic world of equally powerful states, how was it that Rome rose out of this anarchy successfully and achieved unipolarity as the "one dominant actor" and "sole remaining superpower" by the mid second century BCE? 91 Eckstein offers a few suggestions, perhaps breaking slightly with IR Realism, and argues the Romans were simply excellent at managing alliances and readily accepted "the advice of their Greek friends, both with regard to strategy during the wars and in the creation of the geopolitical outcomes after the wars, resulting in 47 outcomes that were relatively congenial to all." 92 Eckstein adds this feat was even more impressive, considering that Greek leaders did not speak Latin and each side was culturally quite different from one another. 93 Based on this example, it seems one piece to the puzzle of Roman hegemony was exceptional alliance management that led to united actions and acceptable outcomes. This also seems a direct attack on W.V.Harris' and Peter Derow's claims that Rome was exceptionally aggressive and bleak. Although Eckstein partially agrees, arguing Rome was aggressive in the international arena, "diplomatically assertive, militaristic in culture, and always ready for war." However, he further explains this was also "true of every other major power within the Mediterranean anarchic system in which Rome existed, true of all secondtier powers, and true even of many small states." 94 For Eckstein, exceptional aggression is not the singular answer that can explain Rome's rise to power.
So if Rome was not more diplomatically aggressive nor more militarily advanced than its neighbors, how did it manage to replace the "long-prevailing Hellenistic anarchy in the region by a hierarchy of states with Rome at the top" by 188 BCE? 95 If we accept Eckstein's thesis, that Rome was merely one equal state in an anarchic world, something must account for Rome's rise to the pinnacle of the international hierarchy. He offers one major suggestion as to how Rome achieved this, but does not delve into any significant details to fully explain it. That perhaps "Rome's advantage….lay in the Romans' exceptional ability in Italy to assimilate or conciliate outsiders and foreigners, and in the exceptional Roman ability at alliance 48 management" 96 This is a critical point raised by Eckstein. It suggests that Rome's major advantage in a multi-polar anarchic world was its ability to somehow forge a cohesive Italian peninsula with such success. That a unified and extremely loyal Italy perhaps provided troops and resources at consistent levels as to outpace competing states. What was responsible for this cohesion, something other states either lacked or did not develop as well?
Could this un-named cohesive force, the lone exceptional trait Eckstein grants to Rome, be nationalism? I posit that it is indeed nationalism, and that by the late third century BCE, central Italy around Rome constituted a nation, a nation that would later expand to all peninsular Italy by the mid first century BCE. Having a united home territory, whose citizens and allies exhibit their loyalty in a willingness to die for their national collective is an asset under global anarchy. It allowed Rome to more easily replenish its military forces even after losing 100,000 soldiers in the first two years of the Second Punic War. This in turn made Rome far more stable than other states, including the Carthaginian Empire that frequently dealt with subject revolts within its borders due to a reliance on mercenary armies and harsh treatment of subjects and allies.
Investigating this theory further, we turn to one of Eckstein's students, Paul Burton. Like Eckstein, Burton utilizes modern political theory to explain Roman relationships in the international arena. However, Burton diverges slightly from Eckstein on theory, falling into the camp of "modified" IR Constructivism. 97 Burton 49 indicates that Constructivism primarily "focuses on forces within the international system that compel states towards cooperation rather than division, and on the importance of shared ideas and discourse..." 98 Within this framework, Burton's central argument is that amicitas (friendships) are the most accurate way to characterize Roman relationships with allies, this is in contrast to the popular view that Roman allies were client states, which denotes an arrangement of subjugation. 99 Utilizing the works of Roman historians, Burton argues the Romans themselves never utilized any terminology that could remotely be translated as "client state," always instead using "friendship." The evidence for this even appears in the archaeological record, including "numerous Roman coins and frescoes [that depict] the physical aspects of establishing international friendship… and several extant inscriptions attest to international amicitia as historical fact." 100 While Burton's research is focused on proving that amicitas was the primary nature of Roman foreign relationships in the third and second centuries, his study ultimately poses the same question that Eckstein does. How did Rome achieve dominance in a world of equally hostile military powers? Like Eckstein, Burton has a theory, but he never fully develops it. He first suggests that between 264 and 146 BCE "whether by design or accident," Rome's victories over its enemies resulted in "more security for more states, gradually tilting the nature of the system away from violent anarchy to a more stable collective security regime" 101 He then suggests that Rome must have possessed some unique trait, perhaps "the native ability of Italian troops, 50 the style of training they underwent, the Roman Republican constitution, the enormous resources and favorable position of Italy, and perhaps even an unusually stubborn and determined Roman national character may go some way towards answering why and how it was the Romans, and no other ancient imperializing state, that achieved this." 102 It is only in the end of his work that Burton hints at the answer to his question, that "stubborn and determined Roman national character." Roman nationalism was indeed responsible for Rome's consistent stream of loyal soldiers willing to die for the state. It was perhaps the central reason for its success at the expense of other equally powerful states that lacked these features or that failed to foster nations as large and inclusive as Rome's.

Chapter Four
Romanization -A problematic concept but necessary term "Romanization" as a term and concept can be problematic and thus requires a full explanation before continuing further. According to its original meaning from nineteenth and early twentieth century, Romanization was a process in which "superior" Roman culture "civilized" the cultures of other indigenous peoples, destroying the local dialects, languages and cultural features of those who came in contact with Rome. This is a highly inaccurate assessment of the actual process at play. This definition of Romanization also paints an image of colonizer and colonized, of outright native resistance to Roman cultural aggression, followed by native acceptance of a more "civilized" culture. This outdated viewpoint, one that held sway through the early twentieth century, also served as a model that reinforced Western imperialist adventures of the era. Because if Romanization were in fact a beneficial "civilizing mission" deliberately conducted by the Romans to "improve" the lives of non-Romans, this in turn seemed to justify the attempts of England to westernize and thus "civilize" non-western peoples in imperial holdings like Kenya or India. 103 However, this conception of Romanization is inaccurate and the actual process of "Romanization" was not merely a simple tale of a Roman cultural steamroller bowling over resistant natives, who eventually saw the "error" of their traditional ways and changed. Instead it is a story of prolonged hybridization under Roman cultural influence.

53
Contrary to the original narrative of Romanization, there is no evidence Roman leadership had a deliberate, centralized policy to Romanize other peoples, even amongst their Italic neighbors. Despite this, many features of Roman culture had indeed been co-opted by non-Roman Italians through the first century BCE. In part due to grants of Roman citizenship, shared military burdens, religious co-option and the desire of non-Romans to gain better economic opportunities within the Roman system that came to rule over them. While grants of full or partial citizenship to allies had been somewhat more plentiful prior to the Second Punic War, further grants of citizenship, even for loyal allies, ground to a halt by middle second century BCE. It signified a desire by Roman elites to limit potential new Romans into their system for fear it might disrupt their political authority and special status. Even though these later Roman allies had sent soldiers to fight in Roman legions in global wars throughout the second and first centuries, most were still refused legal recognition until after the Social War of 91-88 BCE. By this time, after centuries of interaction and fighting side by side with Roman citizens in dozens of wars, many non-Roman Italians spoke Latin, dressed as Romans and had co-opted many cultural practices. In effect they had become very Roman but lacked the full protections of Roman law.
While Roman cultural influence was strong and Italian neighbors often coopted significant parts of it over time including language, dress, material goods and architectural styles, these co-options took place slowly over multiple generations.
Thus Romanization is better described as a process of hybridization, yet a process that was still slanted toward the inclusion of more Roman features over an extended timeline. An example that shows just how far Roman cultural influence penetrated, even within highly disparate cultures, appears in bronze dippers discovered in the Italian Dolomite region of northeastern Italy. Dated from third century BCE through first century CE, these dippers belonged to Venetic speaking Gauls, a people not conquered by Rome until the first century BCE. They also featured sharp ethnic and cultural differences from Latin/Italic peoples prior to Roman contact. The dippers had been part of a religious sanctuary and were utilized for drinking sacred water from a sulfurous spring. 104 Inscribed on the oldest discovered dippers, in the Venetic language, are the names of local Celtic gods Trumusiatius and Tribusiatis. As Roman contact and influence increased, even prior to conquest, the gods stayed the same but their names came to be inscribed in Latin characters instead of Venetic, early signs of cultural hybridization. Yet the more recently dated dippers had changed again and show a full replacement of the old Celtic gods, now renamed as the Greco-Roman god Apollo and written in Latin. 105 Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price have argued it would be a "crude oversimplification" to claim this shift indicates the loss of native culture, in fact the rituals of the ceremony never changed, just the language and god. 106 So even at the end phase of the process, hybridization still better represents the changes on the bronze dippers. However, the authors also argue it is short sighted to deny a significant change occurred because a change in written language and gods is not superficial, and to "call a god not Trumusiatis, but Apollo, was to relate the local healing god to the broader classical pantheon." 107 Even though these changes seem to slant more toward a Roman culture than an indigenous one in the end, a process of hybridization is still a more accurate description over the old concept of Romanization. Historian Andrew Wallace-Hadrill finds much the same, arguing the "various cultural influences and processes described in Romanization and Hellenization cannot be seen as a progressive erosion of local cultural identities." 108 Instead, as evident in the Celtic bronze dippers, it seems "Roman" was introduced alongside native culture via a more natural process due to the expanding economic and military influence (via conquest or alliance) of Rome into surrounding territories. This meant non-Romans exhibited agency in deciding what elements of Roman culture were useful to adopt and when to adopt them. Often the adoption of Roman cultural features by non-Romans was in effort to gain access to, or to achieve personal or economic advancement under the new system. There was no "civilizing mission" at play in these scenarios. Instead, Romanization was a more integrative process, one which represented not "the expansion of one national or ethnic culture at the expense of others," as argued by Greg Wolf, but the "....the emergence of a new highly differentiated social formation incorporating a new cultural logic and a new configuration of power." 109 Yet as in the bronze dipper example, it appears that after hundreds of years of cross cultural integration, in many cases Roman cultural features seem to have 56 enveloped and replaced rather significant aspects of local cultures. In his examination of the spread of Latin throughout Italy from the fourth century BCE through the first century CE, Wallace-Hadrill found that Latin had become so widespread by the first century BCE that it resulted in the death of many local languages and dialects.
Although he points out there was always "a long period of bilinguality" preceding the Crawford exhibits a merging of Latin and Umbrian over just three generations of the same family. The first inscription is the grandfather of one family and it was wholly Umbrian, his recorded name features Umbrian characters and naming order, it is also written in the Umbrian language from right to left. 114 However, his daughter and her husband's names are written from left to right in Latin style, while their son went a step further and adopted Roman name ordering as opposed to Umbrian name ordering.
He recorded his name in Latin characters and wrote it from left to right, but it was still 58 written in the Umbrian language. 115 There is more than simple language hybridization in effect here, as these individuals had chosen to permanently record their names in a more Latin style on their funerary monuments. The permanence of the act indicates their identities had begun to shift to a hybridized one throughout their lives, so much that they abandoned purely Umbrian inscriptions and had even altered traditional name ordering to match that of the Latin style. Yet the continued use of the Umbrian language indicates there were still some regional and traditional loyalties. So even though there was a sharp break away from Umbrian language alongside a more Roman style culture after the Social War, the change after 88 BCE was facilitated by prior centuries of Roman language and cultural co-option.
The debate over Romanization also involves the spread of Roman material culture throughout Italy and how it affected non-Romans. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many academics held a view that if one culture was found to have imported significant amounts of goods from another, it was evidence the importers had also shifted their culture to match the source of the goods. However, this is no longer deemed to be accurate and the present consensus is best summed up by Wallace-Hadrill, that "no single feature of material culture can present itself as the litmus test" of Romanization. 116 Yet the discovery of substantial amounts of Roman artifacts throughout Italy that pre-date the imperial period, even into Celtic territories, signifies a growth in Roman influence. With that influence came the potential for indigenous peoples to want access to the new dominant Roman economic system, which in turn can fuel hybridization cultural shifts. A major example of the impact of Roman goods on non-Roman material cultures appears in excavations from the northern Italian city of Oleggio. There, a necropolis with 268 burials and dated from the second century BCE through the early Empire reveals major cultural changes wrought by Roman rule. 117 The city of Oleggio had been allied with Rome since 194 BCE, although their treaty indicated residents could not hold Roman citizenship (Cic. Balb. 32). However, they were later granted Latin rights (all rights except voting) immediately after the Social War's conclusion in 88 BCE and full citizenship by the mid first century BCE.
Returning to the excavated graves, the most interesting transformations took place through the late second century into the early first century BCE. The earliest graves feature many traditional items and symbols of Celtic culture, including iron Celtic brooches for pinning heavy woolen cloaks, alongside ritually bent or broken swords and armor. However, Roman goods began to appear alongside Celtic items in this period, some of which even indicate participation in Roman/Hellenistic cultural practices such as "strigils [bathing implement], razors and hair-cutting shears [that] point to bathing and care of the body." 118 Other Roman items found in graves include small glass and ceramic bottles known as unguentarium, silver mirrors, and prototypical Roman styled black glazed pottery. This represents a definitive period of cultural intermingling and hybridization, but by the early first century CE the Celtic items began to disappear entirely. No longer were there bent swords or Celtic style brooches, instead these items were replaced by Roman style jewelry and other 60 ornaments. By the reign of Augustus, the graves of Oleggios' Celts had shifted to contain exclusively Roman items, a full transformation. 119 In a similar investigation, M.W. Frederiksen made an extensive study of changes in artistic and architectural throughout Oscan speaking Campania and found Roman influence also caused significant shifts there. Campania had been a somewhat disloyal region toward Rome from the fourth through third centuries BCE and thus maintained a level of Oscan cultural independence. The largest break in their alliance came when Capua, the major city of the region, switched its allegiance to the invading Hannibal in 216 BCE. Rome broke their alliance with Hannibal by conquering the city in 211 BCE. After Rome took Capua, Livy explains that Capua and other parts of Campania were severely punished, leaders were executed and all residents were sold into slavery (Liv. 26.16). However, Frederiksen disagrees with Livy's portrayal, arguing that "a later senatorial decree recommended severer terms and an extensive evacuation of the old population, but it seems that it was never carried out" and many families simply fled and resettled elsewhere in Campania. 120 This was the case for the family of Roman historian and military tribune Velleius Paterculus, whose family was of ancient Capuan origin (Magii family) and survived by fleeing to Aeclanum. 121 Both prior to 211 BCE and after it, Frederiksen finds Campanian funerary stelae often featured full-length, standing figure relief portraits that were more similar in style to those found in the Greek east, while in Rome he deems stelae of this style to be 61 "extremely rare." 122 However, the stelae that appeared after 90 BCE changed quickly, and Frederiksen finds the Campanian style was extinguished despite little change in the population from the first century BCE through the first century CE. 123 He attributes this shift to a growth in Roman economic might, one that caused a "revolution in materials" due to the Roman ability to quarry huge amounts of marble and export it throughout Italy into regions like Campania. 124 Due to Campania's "close links of commerce and sentiment with Rome, there would be little doubt that Capua shared prominently in the upsurge of luxury under Augustus." 125 This signifies that Campanians had chosen to hitch their fortunes and political futures to Rome, especially once they were more fully integrated into the Roman system under Augustus. Once more a picture emerges not of a superior Roman culture that conflicted with and later crushed another culture, and instead highlights the agency of non-Romans who had chosen to better their political and economic fortunes by appearing more Roman. So while Campanian culture and artistic traditions survived nearly the entire Roman Republican period, they were "extinguished finally by the new prosperity of the Empire and the consequent rapid changes in tastes." 126 In this regard Crawford agrees that economic factors proved a significant aspect of cultural assimilation within Italy. Investigating the spread of both black gloss tableware (fifthfirst century BCE) that was produced in kilns at many sites throughout Italy, and the more centrally produced red gloss tableware (first century BCE -fourth century CE), Crawford finds a vast dispersion of both throughout the peninsula. Taken in kind with a uniformity of building styles throughout Italy by the first century BCE, he finds the spread of Roman material goods to be "clear evidence of a considerable degree of economic integration and a counterpart of the process of cultural assimilation..." 127 However, Wallace-Hadrill questions whether the wide diffusion black-gloss pottery was even "perceived by their users as tell-tale sign of being Roman." 128 A valid question, as a cultural group that utilizes the material goods of another culture does not always indicate a shift in identity has occurred. Yet the expansion of Roman material goods throughout Italy went beyond the utilization of black and red glazed pottery and tells a story of wider co-option of Roman cultural features. Through the first century BCE, we find significant increases in Roman jewelry across Italy, in addition to expansion of Roman artistic and architectural styles. This alongside implements such as strigils and razors, as in Oleggio, which point to the adoption of Roman personal grooming preferences, such as frequent bathing. It appears Roman economic prosperity and the desire of indigenous peoples to gain access to that world, may have proven the ultimate death knell for a lot of local cultural practices.
Regardless, the process of Roman co-option was not instantaneous and dual identities, bilingualism and hybridization were a reality for hundreds of years in many cases.
Access to the Roman economic world was indeed an important reason behind cultural hybridization. Greg Woolf argues that indigenous peoples often chose to coopt elements of Roman culture in the hope of achieving personal advancement, a better economic reality or both. However, he argues the process of hybridization 63 changed both Romans and the indigenous, and is best "compared to the growth of an organism that metabolizes other matter and is itself transformed by what it feeds on.
Eventually all participants acquired new places in the imperial system of differences because that system itself had been transformed." 129 Woolf has dedicated many studies to the process of cultural integration between Romans and non-Romans outside of Italy, specifically in southern Gaul, but he asserts the processes appear to be the same everywhere, even within Italy. 130 It is critical to understand that native peoples had agency in the co-option of Roman culture. As previously noted, the Roman government had no centralized directive or plans to "Romanize" anyone, instead it was the natives own choice to adopt Roman practices and language. However, there were benefits to appearing more Roman according to Woolf. Natives could choose "unwisely" by continuing to follow purely native traditions, or they could choose "well" by taking up a "classical education, new styles of eating and cleanliness" and "the construction of Roman style buildings." 131 Choosing wisely netted a positive response for the Gauls of Gallia Narbonensis, because "Romans patronized the civilized and discriminated in favour of those Gauls whose reliability was evident from their adherence to Roman values." 132 However, these choices still did not represent the expansion of Roman culture at the expense of local cultures, instead he explains "Romanization" more accurately 64 represented the "emergence of a new, highly differentiated social formation incorporating a new cultural logic and a new configuration of power." 133 So how do we rectify the outdated conception of Romanization with the eventual reality that most Italians, by the first century BCE, appeared to have experienced a shift to Roman cultural features, artistic and architectural styles after decades or centuries? This alongside a linguistic shift that first saw Latin/native bilingualism or hybridization, but ended with Latin as the dominant language after the Social War. The shift to a new hybridized culture, as argued by Woolf may be a valid, but the new culture that came out of the process was still more Roman than it was related to the original culture, as evidence by the changes at the Celtic graves of While it did have features of both Roman and non-Roman culture, and regional loyalty remained important for Romans, elements of traditional Roman culture and language composed the majority of the newly formed culture. This is evidenced in even in small scale examples such as the Celtic bronze dippers of the Venetic Gauls. 134 While the ceremony of drinking from the spring continued, and had dated back to an era when Celtic culture dominated the region, the language on the dippers changes to Latin and the gods were changed to Roman gods. This is a perfect example of hybridization, but the change to Latin language and Roman gods appears to be significant and a clear shift toward a more Roman culture. Multiple generations after Celtic gods became Roman gods and their language had shifted to Latin, individuals participating in ceremonies at the spring may no longer have even realized its Celtic origins. The ceremony of the first century BCE centered on the worship of Roman gods, individuals participating wore Roman style dress and came from cities with Roman style architecture. So while elements of Celtic culture were indeed still in the ceremony, the identities of the participants had become Roman several generations after the first Celts began to hybridize cultures.
A later example of peoples fully co-opting Roman cultural features appears in Tacitus' work Agricola, a biography of Roman General Gnaeus Julius Agricola (c. 56 -c. 120 CE), who conquered much of Britain. Tacitus explains copying Roman culture had become so desirable amongst Britons of the mid-first century CE that even, "they who lately disdained the tongue of Rome now coveted its eloquence. Hence, too, a liking sprang up for our style of dress, and the 'toga' became fashionable" (Tac. Ag. 21). His notation that some of those adopting Latin had recently despised it perhaps indicates hybridization was occurring for the economic and social benefits cited by Woolf. The Britons must have eventually accepted they were defeated, and now they 66 wanted better access to the Roman system. They did so by copying Roman dress, behaviors and language. However, Tacitus does not view this as a positive. Instead, he argues their willing acceptance of Roman culture also led to an acceptance of Roman "vices," which he considered "the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet" (Tac. Ag. 21).
While Tacitus finds these vices due to his conservative/traditionalist Roman perspective, they were in fact major Roman cultural features that persisted for centuries. He adds the Britons' believed these cultural co-options made them civilized, but in reality it was the key to their subservience (Tac. Ag. 21). Tacitus' assessment of the native co-option of Roman culture as only an agent of control is inaccurate, because in doing so he removes the agency of the natives. Tacitus does indicate they accepted Roman culture, but he also seems to view them as clueless natives playing dress up to please their masters. Instead, indigenous peoples like the Britons had made a conscious decision to co-opt and hybridize Roman culture in an effort to gain better access to government positions or potential social advancement. Thus it was not a choice made of ignorance, rather their decision to adopt Roman culture was calculated and had real potential benefits. While the Britons, like Italians before them, maintained long periods of bilingualism and hybridized culture, as several generations passed under Roman rule, the Britons eventually appeared, acted and sounded more Roman in the end.
As Romanization is a critical element in arguing a case for a Roman nation, either a redefinition of the term is required or an entirely new term is needed.
Academics such as Gayatri Spivak have suggested that "creolization" is a far better term than Romanization, a way to create a "third space" between the colonizers and the native population. 135 Creolization is a model in which existing cultures are not destroyed and replaced by the new colonizer, nor does the colonized people passively accept the new culture or militantly fight against it. 136 This works very well with Woolf's framework, which paints indigenous peoples as making individual choices to become more "Roman" in an effort to gain political, economic and social benefits. 137 However, the general concept of creolization does not sit well with Wallace-Hadrill because he argues it mostly applies to the merging of languages and fails to describe the complex process of entire cultures blending together. Even if focused exclusively on languages, he argues bilingualism is more often the historical result of two disparate cultures with different languages merging together, rather than a default of a new hybridized Creole language. 138 Whether creolization, hybridization or bilingualism best represent cultural shifts in peninsular Italy, after 88 BCE Roman cultural features became dominant across Italy. As Crawford points out, even the "literary language of late republican and early imperial Italy is remarkably uniform, despite the diversity of origin of those who wrote it." 139 There is a wide consensus and a vast amount of evidence that supports Crawford's position that Latin became the dominant language of Italy by the end of the Republic.

Romanization in the construction of national identity
If Woolf's hybridization and Spivak's creolization explain the processes of how cultural features interact and merge over time, neither can fully explain changes in 68 group identity over time. How do these theories deal with the non-Roman allies of central Italy during the Second Punic War, who had exhibited a willingness to die for the Roman national collective? It appears a co-option or hybridization of Roman culture could grow far beyond a limited desire for economic and personal advancement. It eventually coincided with a shift in self-identification as a member of the Roman nation. This national loyalty, after a long period of hybridization, also existed far beyond just a handful of elites.
Throughout Italy and the former Empire there are still the ruins of hundreds of Roman style baths and amphitheaters, even at the extreme periphery of the Empire in places like Britain. While these structures had practical uses, according to Wallace-Hadrill they also "served to recruit to the system, and hence define, a portion of the population extending considerably beyond the elite." 140 These Roman styled structures, taken in kind with local co-option of Roman culture had significant effects on the common people where installed. It is a certainty that local elites utilized the construction of baths and theaters to establish a better standing with Rome and assert their statuses within their own community, but according to Wallace-Hadrill this "mechanism of elite construction could not have worked if it had not enjoyed mass appeal." 141 The mass appeal of nationalism and conception that one's fellow citizens are all members of the same nation (even if that perception is not always accurate) is critical for the existence of nations. When this perception exists, it signifies that people feel part of the same nation across all classes, beyond a singular city and are thus part of an imagined community.

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It is clear Rome did not destroy and consume other cultures, nor were conquered territories and allies mere passive victims of colonization. Rome often (although not always) handled the conquered with a lighter touch, granting them allied status in many cases and later welcoming other peoples and cities into the Roman fold with various levels of citizenship. It was then indigenous non-Romans, of their own volition, who chose to participate in various Roman cultural practices, whether it be theater, games, bathing and dining preferences, language, funerary practices, artistic styles, architecture and public religious events. This is not to say a resident of Tarentum abandoned their former Greek identity entirely because they came to be dominated by Rome, rather many maintained both a bilingual identity and dual culture for some time. Cicero devoted a passage to the concept of dual identities in The Republic and the Laws and revealed what in all likelihood had become a common sentiment by the mid-first century BCE: Yes, I maintain that he and all people from small towns have two countries, one by nature and the other by citizenship.... But the one which takes its name from the state (Rome) as a whole should have first place in our affections. That is the country for which we should be willing to die, to which we should devote ourselves heart and soul... (Cic. Rep. 2.1-6).
In rather succinct fashion, Cicero verifies what Woolf, Spivak, and Wallace-Hadrill have argued, that people often maintained dual identities. What they do not deal with is how these dual identities manifest in loyalty toward Rome. Not just political loyalty, or alliances and cultural co-option for convenience or safety, but as manifest in Cicero's own words, a loyalty toward a "country for which we should be willing to die," in this case Rome (Cic. Rep. 2.1-6).
So we return again to the original question, how do we deal with the concept of Romanization and the utilization of the term itself? The old definition of Romanization is certainly inaccurate and cannot explain the nuances of merging cultures, nor the decades and centuries of bilingual and hybridized cultural practices.
However, neither hybridization, creolization nor bilingualism can fully articulate the end result of these processes that saw a new culture that still appeared decidedly more Roman than "other." Therefore the term Romanization will still be utilized throughout this work. However, it should be understood to mean a long process of hybridization and bilingualism that stretched over multiple generations. A process that rolled elements of the local into a new culture, albeit one that still leaned more Roman in language, cultural practices and general appearance. This definition of Romanization also suggests that native peoples made their own decisions to participate in Roman cultural practices in an effort to gain personal or economic benefits. However, within Italy Romanization still saw Italians come to identify as Romans first, initially in central Italy, then throughout the peninsula. Regional loyalties were extant amongst even those with full citizenship as in Cicero's dialogue. But these regional identities remained secondary to Roman identity, and manifest in large scale group behavior, such as the response of the Roman allies to the Hannibalic invasion.

Chapter Five
The origins of Roman nationalism When did the inhabitants of Italy begin to view themselves as members of a Roman nation? It is difficult to answer with precision as Rome expanded throughout Italy over a 400 year period and the peoples they absorbed or came into contact with were all handled in different ways, from full integration into the Roman state, to military alliance or in some cases near total annihilation. Due to the slow nature of Roman expansion, the variant legal statuses granted to allies and defeated peoples, and the inconsistencies of Romanization, it is possible the question of "when" Italians felt they were members of a Roman nation is the wrong question. Instead, shifts amongst the identities of non-Romans toward a more Roman identity should be understood as a very long process that differed for each Italian tribe or state in each region of Italy.
Legal inclusion into the Roman state was also variant, in both time and type of citizenship, so dating a specific Italy wide moment for the existence of a nation is impractical. Especially when it also must be understood that non-Romans co-opted Roman cultural features at their own volition and pace. Even then, non-Romans first hybridized "Roman" with their own languages and cultures, forging a bilingual or dual identity, trends that could continue for three or more generations.
However, it seems the end result of Romanization was still a more singular Italy, one dominated by Latin and Roman cultural features. By the late first century BCE, Latin had replaced all local languages and a general Roman cultural and 73 architectural uniformity befell the peninsula. 142 So somewhere between the fifth century BCE, when Rome was a weak regional power frequently at war with its neighbors (even those of the same tribal backgrounds), and the first century BCE, something happened to lay the groundwork for a more monolithic Italy. Dramatic changes in legal status for Italians happened after Roman victory in the Social War when citizenship was granted to all of Italy south of the Po Valley, but just a few decades after war's conclusion, the regional languages, artistic styles and religious practices of Italy all became very Roman. Grants of legal rights, taken alone, cannot be the sole factor in causing shifts in the ancient cultural practices and languages of non-Romans, but instead should be viewed as one element of the process of Romanization.
This is not to discount the inclusive effect that holding full Roman citizenship, voting rights and legal protections meant those who had these rights. However, the importance of holding these rights increased only with a growth in Roman territorial and economic might. As Rome expanded throughout the fifth and fourth centuries, legal recognitions granted to peoples became an important factor as it indicated individuals held a real stake in Roman affairs and thus the survival of the Roman state.
For a culturally dissimilar population, Roman citizenship might not change local language and culture immediately, but as inhabitants of other cities now had access to the Roman system, speaking Latin and following some Rome practices became personally or economically beneficial. Something that further fueled cultural hybridization.

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The fact that Rome was willing to grant citizenship to even those of different ethnic backgrounds, language groups or regions was also a somewhat unique phenomenon in the ancient world. Eckstein argues this gave Rome a significant advantage compared to an "exclusivist city-state such as Athens." 143 Citizenship grants were given in a rather controlled fashion until after the Social War. Typically Rome granted citizenship to some of the peoples they defeated in battle, others achieved citizenship in times of peace. On an individual scale, one gained Roman citizenship if born of a legal marriage between Roman citizens, legally manumitted slaves were also granted citizenship and it also became a reward for service in the legions. There were multiple types of citizenship, the most comprehensive was full Roman citizenship which included right to vote in assemblies and full protection under Roman laws.
Others were granted either civitas sine suffragio or ius Latii (Latin Rights), both of which were an intermediate step toward full Roman citizenship that included various legal protections but lacked right to vote in assemblies. An example of a people having their legal status upgraded appears in 268 BCE, a few years after the Pyrrhic War had concluded, when the Sabines had their civitas sine suffragio upgraded to full citizenship (Vell. Pat. 1.14.7).
Furthermore, some Italian cities and states were socii or allies, their relationship with Rome was arranged via treaties (and could thus vary state to state). Latin cities) multiple times back to the sixth century. However, there were also periods of alliance that saw the Latins provide troops to the Roman army. When war broke out in 340 BCE, the Latin League had been allied with Rome for over 100 years.
According to Livy the root of the conflict was due to the Latin League's involvement in military conflicts without Roman permission, which he also claims was part of a conspiracy to overthrow Roman authority (Liv. 8.2.). However, this account is deemed highly questionable by modern scholars and seems to be based on events surrounding later Social War, which Livy then projected back to the Latin War. 144 Regardless of causes, Rome went to war one last time with the Latin League and came out victorious in 338 BCE. In victory, Rome gained control over large swaths of central Italy. However, they did not simply force their influence onto the Latin cities via blanket policies, nor did they seek to maintain loyalty with violence.
Instead Rome granted citizenship to many Latin cities on a case by case basis. Capua, Fundi and Formiae were all granted civitas sine suffragio because they had allowed free passage of Roman forces through their territory during the conflict (Liv. 8.14).
Even some fierce enemies received citizenship including the city of Lanuvium.
Although the residents of Lanuvium fought with intensity against Rome, they were granted full citizenship upon their surrender. Livy notes their grant of citizenship came "with the proviso that the temple and grove of Juno Sospita should belong in common to the Roman people and the citizens living at Lanuvium" (Liv. 8.14). Other combatant cities to receive full citizenship after the war were Aricium, Nomentum, and Pedum. However, not everyone came away with alliances or citizenship. The Veliternians, who had been Roman citizens back to the beginning of the Republic, were stripped of all rights for their betrayal and their walls were torn down, their local government disbanded and their population deported and replaced by Roman colonists (Liv. 8.14).
Rome operated in a different fashion from most other ancient states, because the peoples they conquered were not typically brutalized over the long term. Heavy 77 tribute was rarely demanded nor were the conquered ruled by an iron fisted Roman governor. Instead, as with the variant end results for the defeated Latin states, Roman treatment for the defeated ranged from full acceptance, to alliance to outright destruction, dependent on each individual circumstance. However, becoming a part of the Roman state (as an ally or citizen) was not as simple as surrendering or signing a treaty of alliance. Instead there was a specific legal process overseen by the Senate that required other states to submit their whole cities to the Roman people, similar to the previous example of Lanuvium granting ownership of all its temples to Rome.
Polybius records the process, called dedere se in fidem, in its entirety: Those who thus commit themselves to the faith of Rome surrender in the first place the whole of their territory and the cities in it, next all the inhabitants of the land and the towns, male and female, likewise all rivers, harbours, temples, tombs, so that the result is that the Romans enter into possession of everything and those who surrender remain in possession of absolutely nothing (Plb. 36.4.2).
Livy records a similar process from the era of Etruscan kings after the Romans had defeated the Sabine city of Collatia (Liv. 1.38). It then served as a model for all future surrenders to Rome. Livy adds a few more critical elements left out by Polybius, first that the representatives of the surrendering state were asked if they were legally endowed with the authority to surrender. Second, whether or not the surrendering faction was an independent state and not subject to the authority to another state. Third, as in Polybius' example, the people of Collatia were asked, "Do you surrender into my power and that of the People of Rome yourselves, and the people of Collatia, your city, lands, water, boundaries, temples, sacred vessels, all things divine and human?" (Liv. 1.38). If the answers were affirmative and all criteria were met, the city/state would be "received" by Roman leadership (Liv. 1.38). The use of the word receive is interesting as it certainly paints a scenario of defeat, but at the same time indicates the conquered peoples and their land had become part of the Roman state. At this point the inhabitants of the city might have their legal standing within the Roman system established, anything from ally with limited rights, to full citizenship or citizenship without voting rights. If admitted to either full citizenship or civitas sine suffragio, it marked a process of further integration with Rome.
For the conquered who had little contact with Rome prior to their submission, grants of citizenship might begin the long process of hybridizing Roman culture and language as individuals attempted to fully participate in their new legal and economic reality. However, in the case of Italian cities nearer Rome or those with already similar cultural and ethnic backgrounds, hybridization had likely been occurring through normal contact and trade, long before citizenship or alliances were formally established. So while changes in legal status might not cause instant and dramatic cultural shifts, in some instances grants of full citizenship could lead other peoples to begin co-opting Latin or copying other Roman cultural features for the perceived and real benefits of access to the new system. Rome's lighter touch, often accompanied by grants of citizenship or alliance, was completely divorced from ethnicity, in that citizenship was not contingent upon a people being of a similar ethnic stock. This gave Rome the ability, according to Eckstein, to better "conciliate outsiders." 145 In turn, he argues this granted Rome the "advantage of possessing extraordinarily large resources 79 which they could mobilize in the usual bitter competition for survival and power that characterized all states within the Hellenistic anarchy." 146

Roman perceptions of national membership
Although the Latin War ended with the further legal inclusion of Italian peoples into the Roman state, the conflict had been between peoples of a common ethnicity, and in this case even a common tribe as many Romans descended from Latin tribes. While tribal divisions were a dominant feature of early Roman history, most of Italy shared a common Italic ethnicity (see figure 1.2). Despite this, internal warfare and disunity was common from the sixth century through the conclusion of the Second Punic War. This reality seems to confirm Smith's theory that ethnic groups are not nations by default. Shared ethnicity is not enough to forge a nation, instead the trappings of common culture, language and a legal state with common rights are all needed. 147 Throughout Italy of the eighth through fourth centuries, there were several tribes and cities with common cultures, but most of them lacked the features of a state.
Thus the type of community many Italians lived within during this period might best be described as cities or city-states. Regal era and early Republican Rome might even be best described as just another city-state with limited coercive power. However, Rome was surrounded by peoples with very similar cultures and a shared ethnicity in the Latins, so is there any way to assess how they felt about Romans or vice versa?
Unfortunately there are no surviving Italian works from prior to the Second Punic War. So an assessment of how some Italians may (or may not) have felt about 80 their common ancestry with others of similar cultures is impossible to determine.
Although we can ascertain from internal warfare that common ethnicity did not reduce conflicts in the early Republican period. Despite the dearth of early Roman histories, many works by native Roman authors of later periods survive, and some of these works highlight the commonality of all Italians alongside rather nationalistic attitudes.
One Roman historian who expressed views of a singular Italian people was Vitruvius (c.80-15 BCE), a citizen and former military officer. Vitruvius was born eight years after the Social War concluded, so grew up in a period in which the last vestiges of regional languages and cultures had declined in favor of the Latin language and Roman culture. Thus his views, while useful, need to be placed in the context of an era in which Rome already controlled all Italy and all Italians had citizenship. By the time of his birth, Romanization had also run its course over a century or more (dependent on region).
Vitruvius' monumental work, On Architecture, was dedicated to exploring Roman and Greek architectural styles and building methods. As a central component of his work, Vitruvius argued that climate had forged different types of peoples across the earth, each endowed with unique group traits that also manifested in different architectural styles (Vitr. 6.1.3-6). In his examination of Italians and their climate, he finds them to be a singular and unique people in contrast to other peoples of the world.
In a closer examination of Italy's "middle" position on the earth, between the extreme north and south, he finds that Roman rule was divinely ordained, and since "nature herself has provided throughout the world, that all nations should differ according to the variation of the climate, she has also been pleased that in the middle of the earth, and of all nations, the Roman people should be seated" (Vitr. 6.1.10). He adds that his country's position had allowed the "people of Italy to excel in both strength of body and vigour of mind" (Vitr. 6.1.11). Of note, he is deliberately inclusive of all Italians throughout these passages and his classifications of peoples appear to be an attempt at explaining something akin to an ethnic group. Although for Vitruvius, ethnic and cultural differences were forged by the climate of regions, and the climate of Italy had forged the most perfectly balanced people.
While Vitruvius finds Italy to be perfectly positioned and thus destined to rule the earth, he does not highlight any other "middle" peoples on the same longitude as being "perfectly balanced" or destined to rule the world. Not even the Greeks across the Ionian Sea. Although he does realize the Greeks are also a middle people, noting the populaces of central Greece have voices less "shrill and high toned" than those of the far south, but not as low pitched as those from the far north (Vitr. 6.1.6). This would seem to place the Greeks on geographic par with Rome, but he does not mention them as true equals. Instead, he finds the position of Rome and Italy somehow superior, their location established by divine order in a perfect "temperate climate" which in turn made them "masters of the world" (Vitr. 6.1.11). Somehow the Greeks or even Illyrian peoples, the latter whose territory was directly across the Adriatic Sea from Italy and level with the city of Rome, were still excluded as equals in his model. This seems to be a deliberate omission or contradiction by Vitruvius, for if the "middle, between the equator and the pole" are the most balanced, then why are the Illyrians not considered perfect? (Vitr. 6.1.7). Why have the Greeks not conquered the world? He provides no actual answer beyond national pride; the Romans have the 82 "best" people due to their superior placement on earth even though they share that placement with innumerable other states. This contradiction also carries over to his discussions on Greek and Roman architecture. Vitruvius attempts to argue these two people's architectural styles are distinct, but Wallace-Hadrill finds this "division is an artificial construct, with evident ideological and nationalistic underpinnings." 148 More so, Vitruvius' separation of Roman and Greek architecture glosses over the clear influence the latter had on the former, learned from centuries of Roman interactions with nearby Magna Graecia and Greece itself. 149 By arguing in this fashion, Vitruvius creates an "us versus them" dichotomy between Romans and Greeks, visible in his architectural discussions, but also evident in his decision to not group Greeks (or anyone else) alongside his geographically perfect Romans (Vitr. 3.2.1-8). While he constructs these artificial architectural divisions between Greece and Rome, Vitruvius has no issue utilizing Greek medical science from On Airs, Waters, and Places by Hippocrates as the basis for his theory that geography forges the characteristics of different human populations. He extends these Greek theories further into his analysis of humanity, finding that peoples of "southern nations are quick in understanding, and sagacious in council, yet in point of valour they are inferior." Meanwhile those of northern nations are fierce in battle, but "oppressed by a gross atmosphere, and cooled by the moisture of the air, are of duller intellect" (Vitr. 6.1.9-10). In dividing humanity in this fashion, while also breaking Greek architecture into a separate category, he reveals a nationalistic pride in Rome and Italy. As was typical of educated Romans, he most certainly studied Greek 83 language, history and sciences, hence his utilization of the Greek theory that human traits were based in geography. So his views should be understood not as devoid of Greek thought or hostile to the Greece in general, because it was in fact based on Greek works. However, he still dedicated much of On Architecture to discussing how the Romans and their architecture were different from the Greeks and others, finding his people superior in comparison. Throughout his analysis of human behaviors and traits, he is also certain the majority of Italians are all similar and "move" in the same direction as a nation. Meanwhile he finds that southerners and northerners are completely different from Romans, both flawed in some way, but each is also portrayed as a group that move in the same direction as a people. In regards to Italy's neighboring middle people, the Greeks, Vitruvius decides to portray their architecture in a void. Whereas he finds Roman styles developed independently and were distinct from Greek architecture, despite that all Roman architecture has its basis in Greek styles and techniques (Vitr.3.2.1-8). Here his Roman nationalism seems to manifest very clearly. Vitruvius paints a standard set of human behaviors for Romans/Italians, traits that he then applies across the peninsula under the assumption that most everyone in his nation is similar and moving in the same direction. In so doing, he constructs an imagined community where he perceives any Italian at any given moment is behaving the same general way as other Italians. It was the Italians superior traits, combined with their modus operandi as nation, that he believes fostered their global conquests. For Vitruvius, Italy's geographic position on earth was divinely ordained, having been placed in the "middle of the earth" as the center "of all nations" (Vitr. 6.1.10). His view that Italy was one of many nations, each with a certain type of people, easily fits into the nationalistic model. He labels both himself and his countrymen as Romans/Italians, while also classifying non-Romans and placing them in other nations, even though he does not name each specific nation. His contrast of Rome to others appears again when he asserts superior Roman traits also granted them the ability to "repress the attacks of the barbarians [northerners], and by her strength to overcome the subtlety of southern nations" (Vitr. 6.1.11). Vitruvius was keenly aware of the infamous sack of Rome by the northern based Gauls in 390 BCE, an event seared into the minds of Romans and recorded in many histories. The Romans had to pay the Gauls a ransom of 1,000 lbs. of gold to leave the city, and Livy recounts the event as a humiliating one in which the Gauls utilized unjust weights. When the Romans complained, Gaulish Chieftain Brennus purportedly responded "Woe to the vanquished" (Liv. 5.48). Yet Vitruvius skips over this significant moment of failure to repress the northern barbarians, his nationalistic pride in Roman achievements has led him to gloss over it.
It is clear throughout On Architecture that Vitruvius perceives himself and other Italians as part of a Roman/Italian nation, which he then readily contrasts with other nations and peoples. His interchangeable usage of Italian and Roman is also interesting as he was born after the Social War, and after full Roman citizenship had been awarded across the peninsula. Thus Vitruvius may have been at a cross-section in time where an Italian nation with Rome at its core was perhaps rising to dominance 85 over the more territorially limited Roman nation that previously held sway over Italy.
However, Vitruvius' lifetime did not see a peaceful Italy, he lived through and fought in some of the multiple civil wars that occurred in first century BCE Italy. Although those wars were fought for political control of Rome rather than the replacement of Roman hegemony.
Regardless, the period Vitruvius lived through coincided with a steep decline of Italy's many regional languages and cultures in favor of Latin language and Roman culture. By his later life during the reign of Augustus (after 31 BCE), many non-Roman cultures and languages had become extinct outside of scholarly study. This coincided with the Augustan monarchy's expansion of the equestrian social order to all Italians, which granted them fuller access to the Roman state. These grants reduced the limited privilege of the old Roman elites, and further assimilated Italians into a singular national entity. So while On Architecture exhibits a clear Roman national identity, it is also a product of the era it was written in and is not instructive as to how Italians came to develop these sentiments in prior generations. Nor can we assume the musings of ancient writers alone are enough to confirm widespread Roman nationalism. So an examination of prior eras is still needed to discover the processes and changes that led to individuals identifying as members of a Roman nation, and perhaps a later Italian nation with Rome at its core. … the quaestors of both consuls, Lucius Atilius and Lucius Furius Bibaculus, and twenty-nine military tribunes, some of consular rank, some of praetorian or aedilician -amongst others are mentioned Gnaeus Servilius Geminus and Marcus Minucius, who had been master of the horse in the preceding years and consul several years before -and besides these, eighty senators or men who had held offices which would have given them the right to be elected to the Senate, but had volunteered to serve as soldiers in the legions. The prisoners taken in this battle are said to have numbered three thousand foot-soldiers and fifteen hundred horsemen (Liv. 22.49).

Early signs of nationalism
If the eradication of eight Roman legions, multiple quaestors, tribunes, eighty senators and other office holders was not a severe enough blow to the Roman state, Hannibal also took approximately 10,000 prisoners in assaults on military encampments near the battlefield (Plb. 3.117.7). Livy explains that after the battle, the names of those killed at Cannae were published in Rome and "the City was thrown into such universal mourning that the annual celebration of the festival of Ceres was suspended, because it is forbidden to those in mourning to take part in it, and there was not a single matron who was not a mourner during those days" (Liv. 22.56). To make matters even worse for Rome, Cannae had been their third significant loss to Hannibal in two years. The other devastating defeats occurred in 218 BCE at Trebia, then again the following year at Lake Trasimene. At Trasimene Hannibal had also been outnumbered, a common theme in all three major battles, and executed yet another brilliant tactical maneuver by ambushing four Roman legions, killing approximately 15,000 and taking another 15,000 prisoner (Plb. 3.84).
In total, it has been estimated these three battles cost Rome and its allies approximately 100,000 total soldiers killed in action in addition to one third the Roman Senate, all lost in the field of battle. 156 It was a devastating series of losses, not only in regards to soldiers killed or captured, but also due to the significant loss of While it is difficult to point out with 100 percent certainty an exact moment when the Romans and Latins began to project Roman nationalism, the immediate responses to Cannae seems one of those moments. The Senate's response after the battle was one of complete defiance and refusal to surrender. As Livy explains, "in spite of all their disasters and the revolt of their allies, no one anywhere in Rome mentioned the word 'Peace" (Liv. 22.61). Instead, the Senate took an unprecedented step to rebuild the army and authorized the recruitment of all adult males "from seventeen years upwards…. some even younger," regardless of wealth or class (Liv. 22.57). This was a drastic decision, because throughout the early Republic and most of the late Republic, the army had been composed only of those who met the land/wealth requirements for service and could also furnish their own arms. By the Hannibalic War, a prospective soldier still had to own 11,000 assess worth of land, but the role of a soldier and his armor were based on experience and age rather than what type of armor they could afford. A typical legion of the era consisted of cavalry and heavily armored veteran infantry units known as the triarii, armed with heavy spears, these men had the most experience and acted as the final line of battle when the army was in formation. Next were the principes, younger than the triarii, they were also heavily armored and composed the second battle line. Below them, and younger still, were the lesser experienced hastiti, who were armed either on par with the principes or slightly lighter and were the front of the battle line. The last unit was the youngest, the velites, skirmishers who wore almost no armor and carried multiple throwing spears. 157 While the role of wealth in constructing the army had been reduce from prior eras, one still had to possess enough land to even gain admittance, so the elimination of the land requirement was significant.
In addition to recruiting soldiers of all classes and ages into new consular armies, the Senate sent for a garrison of 1,500 soldiers from a naval fleet and converted them into infantry units (Liv. 22.57). Together these soldiers composed perhaps only two legions, not sufficient enough for defense. In an effort to raise and arm even more soldiers, Livy explains the Senate expanded their recruitment pool: They also sent to the Latin confederacy and the other allied states to enlist soldiers according to the terms of their treaties. Armor, weapons, and other things of the kind were ordered to be in readiness, and the ancient spoils gathered from the enemy were taken down from the temples and colonnades. The dearth of freemen necessitated a new kind of enlistment; 8000 sturdy youths from amongst the slaves were armed at the public cost, after they had each been asked whether they were willing to serve or no (Liv. 22.57).
So depleted were the Romans of able bodied soldiers, so dire their situation, that slaves were freed and armed to fight in the legions for the first time in Roman history alongside men and boys of all classes. Understood amongst Livy's explanation is that many of those recruits over seventeen years of age were likely middle aged and older men, not the most optimal soldiers, but still capable of bearing arms and more importantly, willing to do so.
To an outside observer, these actions may have appeared a sort of doomed Reich's days were numbered, not only to Allied forces that encountered these children and elderly "soldiers," but also to many of the ill equipped Germans themselves. We can only imagine what the ramshackle Roman legions raised after Cannae looked like.
One composed of teenagers, former slaves, old men, repurposed sailors and the fragments of other armies; all wearing the armor of formerly vanquished foes taken from the city's temples. It must have appeared as a desperate act even amongst Roman citizens, the Latin allies and especially to Hannibal Barca.
Outside the city walls, Hannibal certainly assumed his victory was final and now awaited the surrender of Rome and a peace treaty. It has often been wondered why Hannibal did not simply attack the city of Rome and destroy it once and for all instead of expecting peace negotiations? The potential reasons are many but it appears Hannibal did not actually desire the absolute eradication of Rome. Livy claims instead that Hannibal was "contending for honor and dominion. His forerunners had yielded to the valor of the Romans, and he was striving to compel them in their turn to yield to his own good fortune and valor" (Liv. 22.58). Another possible reason for Hannibal's failure to attack Rome is more pragmatic; he did not bring proper siege equipment across the Alps and decided an extended siege would be detrimental to his army. The situation led Hannibal's cavalry commander Maharbal, who urged an immediate attack on Rome, to proclaim "the gods have not given all their gifts to one man. You know how to win victory, Hannibal, you do not know how to use it" (Liv. 22.51). We do not know if Maharbal truly expressed these sentiments, as Roman historians were wont to invent speeches in their histories, but it is an accurate summarization of Hannibal's failure to act. The decision by Hannibal not to sack or besiege Rome was ultimately a poor one for the Carthaginian Republic, as it allowed Rome time to rebuild its army and morale en route to ultimate victory fourteen years later. Livy argues that Hannibal's "delay is believed to have saved the City and the empire" (Liv.

22.51).
Before making a closer examination of Rome's rejection of Carthaginian peace overtures, it is critical to address the behavior of Roman allies in the first two years of war. While Rome lost several southern Italian cities and regions to Hannibal's cause, the approximately thirty Latin cities of central Italy remained loyal, as did most of central Italy. This raises two major questions: What kept the Latins loyal to Rome when it was clear they could no longer defend themselves or enforce alliances; and does the defection of southern Italian cities and tribes give credence to arguments critical of Roman nationalism? Critics have often pointed toward these moments of temporary disunity to assert that Roman nationalism was a complete myth, one constructed in the modern era and reflected back into the past by later nationalists.
Amongst the critical academics is historian Caspar Hirschi, who argues "there were no nationalists walking the streets of ancient Rome." He also argues that Roman elites were the only group with the faintest nationalist streak and those sentiments remained exclusive to the upper classes and never spread to average citizens. 158 Patrick Geary, a medieval historian, fully agrees with Hirschi and suggests class distinctions were the most important self-identifying category for the citizenry of the Roman Republic. He is staunchly opposed to the existence of ancient nationalism of any kind, but also suggests class superseded shared ethnicity, religious institutions, language or any other social bond. 159 Geary even disagrees with Hirschi and attempts to dismantle the concept of a nationalism isolated to the Roman nobility, claiming they 99 "remained firmly attached to their province and especially to their city" as opposed to a more socially inclusive Roman nation. 160 In contrast to both, a closer examination of the loyalty of Roman citizens and central Italian allies after Cannae will show quite the contrary, that one of the few places Roman nationalists could be found was indeed on the streets of Rome. If Geary and Hirschi are correct, then we should find Romans and Latins alike were primarily divided by class or other affiliations and did not conceive of themselves as Romans, nor did they hold any concern for their fellow allies/citizens in other cities. If the Latins truly held no national allegiance to Rome, then under the extreme duress after Cannae, we should find even the culturally similar Latin cities had swapped their loyalty to Hannibal to guarantee their own safety or gain independence. Additionally, if Roman and Latin citizenry perceived the war as both a lost cause and beneficial only to the elites, then there should have been mass disinterest in continued fighting, perhaps evident via mass defections of soldiers in the field. For Azar Gat, crises such as Hannibal's invasion create moments of extreme duress that in turn represent a tangible test for the existence of premodern national affinities. He then asks, "did premodern peoples view foreign intrusion and rule with total indifference and apathy, as modernists claim, because their horizons were wholly parochial and they regarded the elite that exploited them as alien and foreign as the foreigners? Or did they very well feel that the foreigners were foreigners, resented them for this reason, and were prone to express that resentment in action…?" 161 100

Citizenship and voting rights: Elements of an imagined community
As discussed throughout this chapter, Roman losses in the first three years of the Second Punic War were extensive, far more significant than the miniscule losses suffered by Carthage. Yet even with a loss of twenty five percent of their military aged men in battle, the Romans recovered and ultimately raised more legions to active service than existed at war's outbreak. Historian Adrian Goldsworthy suggests the conflict created an environment of willing shared sacrifice which spread throughout all classes of Roman society, including the Latin allies, who submitted to "years of harsh military discipline and extremely dangerous campaigning." 162 Despite these difficulties, the vast majority of those serving throughout the war did not desert, nor did the Latin allies file any significant protest. Instead, both Latins outside of Rome and Romans within the city walls "were led by a fierce patriotism to sacrifice themselves for the State." 163 This loyalty was fostered over many decades due to what Eckstein believes was Rome's "exceptional ability at alliance management." 164 Further, he adds that unlike an exclusivist city-state like Athens that imposed extreme taxation on subjects or "allies" while also denying them citizenship rights, Rome did not dole out harsh treatment and instead provided its allies with a "real stake in Roman success;" that stake was in grants of Roman citizenship or the promise of future citizenship. 165 Over time, these grants of partial or full citizenship rights alongside the process of Romanization helped foster unity between Rome and her non-Roman citizens and 101 allies, many of whom had hybridized or fully adopted Roman language and cultural features. For those with full or limited citizenship when Hannibal invaded, their stake in protecting Rome must have been even greater due to their intertwined economic and political connections. Hannibal's main focus was to defeat the Romans, but what he failed to understand about Rome was its unique policies which had granted them loyal citizens and allies throughout Latium and beyond. These extended Roman citizens and allies proved intensely loyal even in the face of disaster and proved the deciding factor in the ultimate defeat of Hannibal.
A major reason for this loyalty, even amongst those far outside the city of Rome, was the right of citizens to vote in assemblies. As previously discussed, there were several types of citizenship, civitas sine suffragio and ius Latii, both were intermediary types of citizenship that featured most Roman legal rights but without the right to vote. However, full Roman citizenship came with voting privileges for all adult males. Citizens were divided into two main units for voting purposes in this era, the Tribal Assembly composed of thirty-five urban and rural "tribes," which were more akin to districts and did not indicate actual ethnic or tribal grouping. The other voting unit of this era was the Century Assembly, composed solely of 193 centuries (later increased to 373) of soldiers, broken down specifically into equites (knights), pedites (foot soldiers) alongside a contingent of unarmed soldiers. 166 However, after the last two rural tribes were added in 241 BCE, the 170 centuries of pedites were shifted into tribes and separated within the tribes by property/wealth and age. 167 Amongst the tribes, four of them were urban tribes centered in Rome, the other thirty 102 one were rural tribes spread around Italy. The Century Assembly, composed of mostly of wealthier equites after the changes of 241 BCE, was also subdivided by property and age, the wealthier groups being permitted to vote first. 168 There are further divisions within each voting group that can become very confusing and are not useful for our purposes.
Turning to the voting process, not all votes carried the same weight. Each tribe and century subdivision voted as a block and if one block achieved a majority vote, it spoke for the vote of the entire tribe. Because wealthier individuals were often the first voters in each block, they had a distinct advantage and could possibly influence their group's overall vote, especially within the centuries. 169 Additionally, in the case of yes/no type questions, it was possible a majority decision was reached before all groups voted. This has led some scholars to question whether all tribes got to vote in these circumstances. However, Ursula Hall argues that all tribes were likely required to vote or did so regardless. 170 Once more, the ancient sources are not clear so there is room for interpretation in the actual process.
What remains certain, according to Lily Ross Taylor's extensive study of assemblies, was that voting was "a major occupation of the citizens who lived in Republican Rome…Every year at a stated period they elected all the regular and plebeian magistrates…" 171 Utilizing a form of direct democracy, Roman citizen assemblies had the voting authority that in modern democracies is held by elected representatives. As such, citizens also voted on every proposed law, levied verdicts 103 against those accused of crimes against the state and, as Polybius found most important of all, "they deliberate on the question of war and peace. Further in the case of alliances, terms of peace, and treaties, it is the people who ratify all these or the reverse" (Plb. 6.14.9). Voting occurred with such frequency that there was rarely a season of the year without voting or accompanying voting campaigns. 172 It was even the assemblies that typically appointed dictators, a position invoked only in times of great emergency. After Hannibal's second major victory at Lake Trasimene in 217 BCE, the Senate and people wanted to appoint a dictator to handle the crises. Standard procedure was for the Senate recommended a dictator, he was then nominated by a consul and the assemblies were then called to vote to confirm or deny his position. However, after Trasimene, Livy states the consul was absent and due to Carthage having overrun the countryside, a messenger could not be sent out to call the rural tribes in for a vote (Liv. 22.8). However, Livy states "the Assembly Assembly, citizens who appeared were all able to vote. Their votes truly mattered and citizens took an active role in deciding many critical issues. The dispersion of Roman voting rights, regardless of ethnic background or home region, also began to establish an imagined community between the city of Rome and its four urban assemblies and "greater" Rome and its thirty one rural assemblies. This imagined community originated in the frequent votes held every year in Rome, but even more critically, the process of advertising assembly votes linked Roman citizens across Italy to a shared rudimentary calendar of sorts.
Returning to the advertisement of votes, this was done in a variety of ways. As discussed in the previous example of the vote to establish Q. Fabius Maximus as dictator, Livy writes the Senate intended to send a "messenger or a dispatch…through Italy" but none could make it through Carthaginian lines (Liv. 22.8). Thus a messenger or dispatch of some type seemed a common practice in advertising the vote to Roman citizens far afield. This was almost certainly a common practice during the Republican era under discussion. In addition to sending messengers, Edward Best describes the process of public advertisement that occurred before a vote and throughout the entire process: Before a voting assembly (comitia) was summoned, a magistrate or tribune published an edict spelling out the subject to be decided. By custom the publication consisted of an announcement before a public gathering (contio), which was called for this purpose; then the information was published in writing on a wooden tablet in white paint. When the laws were considered certain to pass, the proposal would be inscribed on bronze. 173 105 These public pronouncements were hung up throughout the city of Rome and most definitely in the territories of the four urban tribes. However, turning again to Livy's dispatch/messenger comment about the process for appointing a dictator, it is very likely public pronouncements of some type were also hung in the cities of the thirty one rural tribes (Liv. 22.8). Especially in times of less duress than Hannibal's invasion, when travel across Italy was easier. This is further confirmed by Cicero, when he describes a large contingent of citizens who travelled from Atina (located 87 miles southeast of Rome) to Rome in order to vote for their fellow Tribal Assembly member (Teretina tribe), Cn. Plancius, who was running for the curule aedileship (Cic. Planc. 21). Plancius would have most certainly informed his friends and neighbors of his running for office, but political advertisements and assembly notices also went up in town, just as in Rome, well in advance of the vote. Candidates also had to present themselves in Rome in advance.
How long was "well in advance?" Once more, Cicero provides a time frame from a proposed vote for new consuls in the mid first century BCE that stated individuals had to be in "town as candidate for the legal three nundinae" (Cic. Fam. 16.12.3). This meant three market days, however, it was not three actual days but instead represented seventeen to twenty five actual days. 174 So candidates presented themselves three weeks in advance, and it is also likely dispatches and postings went up throughout Rome roughly three weeks in advance. This gave ample time for voting announcements to be posted in all the cities and regions of Italy that held Roman citizenship.
Antina was just over a day's travel from Rome, thus not an incredible distance from the Roman core, nor too far for dispatches. However, the overall process and frequency of voting portrays a Roman world in which candidates and issues appeared/were posted about well in advance, messengers went out to the cities announcing votes, all of which resulted in public postings in even the furthest cities from Rome. This synced Roman time with non-Roman time, even if in a limited window, at multiple points throughout the year. Then, as was the case for the citizens of Antina, groups of varying sizes might come to Rome (certainly not the entire eligible electorate) to cast their votes on candidates and issues. The issues citizens voted on varied from internal Roman policies to major issues that ranged from making war or peace, to the treaties and alliances that went along with them (Plb. 6.14.9).
Does this scenario fare well with Benedict Anderson's model of an imagined community? One that would have granted Italians (at least those with Roman citizenship), a sense of simultaneity and calendric progression with other Italians? 175 Although rudimentary at this time and limited to a smaller section of Italy, and also lacking in modern mass printing abilities, it appears it the voting system does represent an imagined community. All citizens were informed of impending votes, candidates appeared in advance and political notices were sent out and posted in all cities with Tribal and Century Assembly members. With their calendars linked, citizens then had the knowledge that all Romans, no matter where they were, had a stake in the system and that their vote could affect universal policies. Thus inhabitants who might not regularly encounter the vast majority of other Roman citizens could 107 imagine themselves as part of a broader world. A criticism levied by modernists might be that this model was not broad enough, limited to only select cities and the voting system did not reinforce the conception of a broader Roman world in the way newspapers of the nineteenth century and later did. However, voting is just one aspect of the Roman imagined community. A broader sense of calendric progression and simultaneity would be later established throughout Italy via religious and political calendars known as Fasti and public religious games known as the ludi. The Fasti synced festivals in Rome with festivals in every major city of Italy. In turn the ludi were also synched by the Fasti and celebrated in Rome simultaneously with other Italian cities. Taken in kind with voting practices, a truer picture of an imagined community becomes apparent. All of this is discussed further in chapter five.

Loyalty of the allies
With Hannibal's string of victories, it must have appeared advantageous for many Italian cities to switch allegiance for their own safety. Hannibal had not only defeated three major Roman armies from 218 -216 BCE and looked unbeatable, but he had also terrorized the Campanian country side, sacking the cities of Nuceria and Acerrae, then burning them to the ground (Liv. 23.15-17). Many in the south did change allegiance, either out of fear or desire to usurp Rome as was the case for Capua. However, none of Rome's Latin or central Italian allies changed loyalty to Carthage. Their loyalty was impressive considering Hannibal had made it a point that his war was solely against Rome and its citizens, not other cities of Roman allies.
Returning to Hannibal's military actions in Campania, prior to his ordered destruction of Nuceria, the general had attempted to talk the leaders of the city into joining the 108 Carthaginian cause. Nuceria was independent at the time, but had maintained its loyalty to Rome since the end of the Second Samnite War. That loyalty held despite their being surrounded. Livy recounts the Nucerian decision: Then, to keep up his character of being friendly to all the Italian nationalities except the Romans, he held out honours and rewards to those who consented to remain in his service. Not a single man was tempted by the prospect; they all dispersed, wherever they had friends, or wherever each man's fancy led him, amongst the cities of Campania, mainly Nola and Neapolis. About thirty of their senators, and, as it happened, their principal ones, endeavoured to enter Capua, but were refused admission because they had closed their gates against Hannibal. They accordingly went on to Cumae. The plunder of Nuceria was given to the soldiers, the city itself was burnt. (Liv. 23.15) This instance of loyalty to Rome might be dismissed by critics as merely a reaction based in fear. Perhaps Nucerian leaders felt their best shot at survival was rejecting Hannibal. After all, most of their population did survive even though their city was destroyed, so perhaps it was a decision based on circumstances and not loyalty.
However, there is a more poignant example that definitively exhibits the loyalty of Rome's allies. Polybius details a critical moment after the battle of Lake Trasimene in 217 BCE that verifies Hannibal's desire to make war against only the Romans and not their allies. Hannibal had just accepted the surrender of 15,000 Roman and allied troops after his resounding victory that day. He then ordered that all Roman prisoners should be kept under guard, but then "released the allied troops without ransom and sent them all home declaring, as he had on previous occasions, that he had not come to make war on the Italians but to fight for their freedom against the Romans" (Plb.

3.85).
Hannibal's repeated offers of peace and freedom to Italians, including his offers to Nuceria and the Latin soldiers after Trasimene, proved quite publicly that his war was against only Rome. However, none of Rome's Latin or central Italian allies joined Hannibal or dropped out of the war, even when shown directly by Hannibal they would be spared if they abandoned Rome. Instead the allies and citizens outside the city walls of Rome continued to fight a war that in 217 and 216 BCE seemed lost against a then undefeated Hannibal. In continuing the fight instead of dropping out to preserve their own safety, the allies exhibited a willingness to die for their national collective. It seems Rome's lighter touch with its defeated Italian enemies in previous centuries, its inclusive citizenship policies and the effects of Romanization had indeed forged an unbreakable Roman alliance. This central Italian block, with common rights and duties for all members, a common culture, shared language and intertwined religious practices now combined with a willingness to die for their nation, now emerges as a nation. Albeit a Roman nation limited to Latium and other parts of nearby central Italy.
Hannibal's continued attempts to lure away the Latins and other Roman allies betrays a critical element of his world viewpoint that contrasts with how the Romans ran their system of political relationships and alliances. Hannibal clearly viewed each city/region as its own entity, hence why he freed even the Latins who were strong Roman allies of shared Roman ethnicity, culture and religion after Trasimene, or why he felt Nuceria would join his cause. For Hannibal, the world was full of city states, like Carthage, Athens and Sparta that were limited in scope due to restrictive citizenship policies. These city states had highly extractive taxation policies on those they defeated, and the peoples the conquered outside of their home territory were most certainly never granted citizenship. In the case of Carthage, neighboring peoples were coerced to fight for them via threat of violence, promise of plunder or direct payments.
Loyalty to Carthage was only existent if driven by fear or greed. What Hannibal did not understand about central Italy was that he was facing down an entirely different structure. He succeeded in breaking away many southern Italians because the Samnites had warred with Rome for centuries and not been granted citizenship, and were thus excluded. Magna Graecia, Hannibal's other large gain, had remained culturally more Greek than Italian, and thus they were not as intertwined as central Italians were with Rome. However, within central Italy, especially amongst the Latins, the Roman alliance system had become so strong that many members had come to view themselves not just as allies, but as members of a greater Roman nation.
However, it cannot be argued the late third century saw Roman nationalism throughout Italy due to the southern (and some northern) peoples siding with Hannibal. It appears Roman nationalism began to grow in intensity, at least amongst However, none of those conflicts involved fights against other Italians and none threatened the existence of Rome like Hannibal's invasion had. It is these moments of potential annihilation from an external threat, that according to Simmel, forces members of a state "so tight together and subjects them to such a uniform impulse that they either must completely get along with, or completely repel, one another. This is the reason why war with the outside is sometimes the last chance for a state ridden with inner antagonisms to overcome these antagonisms, or else to break up definitely." 180 Fitting into Simmel's framework, some of Rome's allies broke from the Roman state, but others, the central Italians and more specifically the Latin allies took an entirely different course. These allies and non-Roman citizens had become so loyal to Rome after the fourth century Latin War, they had in effect become Romans themselves, willing to fight and die alongside members of their national community.
After the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal immediately attacked the Roman camps around the battlefield and took approximately 10,000 Romans prisoner (Plb. 6.58.2).
With prisoners in hand, a separation of southern Italy from Roman alliance and a string of stunning victories behind him, he expected that peace was on the immediate horizon. He perhaps thought the Roman Senate would not only pay ransom for the captured soldiers, but might also use a prisoner exchange to begin peace negotiations.
The general had good reason to expect Rome would sue for peace. After all, Carthage had surrendered when defeated by the Romans thirty years earlier in the First Punic 180 Simmel 1955, 92. 113 War. How could the Romans react otherwise now in a much worse position than Carthage was in the First Punic War, their armies destroyed and Hannibal mere miles from their capitol? As stated by Livy, the Roman government and citizenry, along with its allies, had resolved internally that there would be no surrender, instead their response was the immediate reconstruction of the army (Liv. 22.61). However, the Senate would have a chance to respond to Hannibal's peace overtures and their response continued to show an extraordinary unity and resolve.
In an effort to begin a dialogue, Hannibal selected a group of ten distinguished Romans from amongst the prisoners and sent them to the Roman Senate for ransom negotiations. In Livy's version of the story, a Carthaginian envoy named Carthalo was charged by Hannibal with leading the captives to Rome. Carthalo marched to the city with full confidence of receiving an audience with the Senate due to the string of Carthaginian victories. However, as he approached the city gates, Carthalo encountered a representative from the Senate who denied his admittance and warned him to leave Roman lands entirely (Liv. 22.58.9). This was a rather bold move considering Rome no longer posed a military threat and was at the complete mercy of Hannibal. What was the purpose of turning Carthalo away and endangering the captives? It was a stern message to Hannibal that Rome was so disinterested in peace that his envoys were not even welcome within the pomerium, the sacred boundaries that marked the city's limits. The Senate's decision appeared a reckless response, because a rejection of peace overtures could have inspired Hannibal to immediately besiege Rome. Yet the Senate's defiant response went further than the rejection of Hannibal's envoy at the city gates.
With Carthalo turned away, the Senate decided to admit the ten Roman captives who were there to plead for their own ransom and that of their countrymen.
After gaining entry into the city, Livy explains they went before the Senate and stated their case (Liv. 22.61). Here Livy records several lofty speeches from both prisoners and senators alike, all of them either fabrications or exaggerations designed to portray Livy's views on the situation. Yet the Senate's final decision on whether or not to ransom the captives, as recorded by both Livy and Polybius, is accurate. They rejected outright the payment of ransom for all captives, and in so doing condemned all their fellow Romans to death or enslavement. 181 In a harsher secondary decision, the Senate also decided private citizens were not allowed to individually ransom their relatives. Both Livy and Polybius indicate this was partly a financial decision as Rome did not want to distribute any funds to Hannibal, nor did they want to expend money needed to rebuild their own legions.
However, the decision was not purely financial. The decision was also about defending Roman "honor" by teaching a lesson to the perceived "cowards" who had surrendered to Hannibal and now sought ransoming. Polybius seems to capture the thoughts of many Romans, when he writes the captives should have fought to the death "in the battle like brave men worthy of Rome," as others had done at Cannae (Plb. 3.116). To this Polybius adds the Senate sent a clear message to all future soldiers, they were to either conquer the enemy or die in the "field, as there was no hope of safety for them if defeated" (Plb. 6.58.11). Denied their request for ransom, Livy writes that some of the ten hostages snuck off and attempted to return to their 181 Liv. 22.61; see also Plb. 6.58.12. homes and families but were subsequently arrested and sent back to Hannibal (Liv. 22.61). However, he explains there was another account of the tale that indicated some of the envoys escaped back to their homes and were allowed to stay but were ostracized for the rest of their lives (Liv. 22.61.4). Polybius partially agrees with the story of escape, claiming that one Roman representative attempted to stay in Rome on a technicality (Plb. 6.58.4). The Roman, having promised Hannibal he would return to the Carthaginian camp, returned to it after first setting out by pretending he forgot something. He then travelled to Rome with his delegation, assured he had met his promise of "returning" to camp. The delegate then attempted to stay in Rome on this technicality, but the Senate, sticking to their decision "put him in irons and returned him to the enemy" (Plb. 6.58.12).
It is difficult to say which version of the tale is accurate, but regardless of details, all versions portray an increased level of Roman resolve and a broader sentiment that Rome was going to continue the war. In concert with the recruitment of new legions from all social classes and former slaves after Cannae, it seemed in this moment that class and social status had become a secondary affiliation compared to national unity. This is not to argue social classes were eradicated during the Second Punic War, they were never dissolved. Rather it appears Hannibal's invasion began to foster or strengthen the perception that all classes were Romans first, and members of their respective class or region second. If class affiliation had remained more important than national affinity at this point, one might expect to see the Senate sue for peace in the hope of maintaining rank and privilege. Perhaps lower class Romans or Latin allies would have revolted against the elites in an effort to force peace negotiations and guarantee their survival. After all, Hannibal was still a tangible threat and the Senate was building an army from castaways, while also turning away envoys of peace at the city gates. Even more critical, Rome could have desperately used those 10,000 captives to help rebuild their decimated military but declined their ransom anyway. Despite these dire circumstances, there would be no revolt amongst the Latin allies and no mass defections of newly recruited Romans and freedmen in what should be construed as a display of national unity. Citizens and allies alike exhibited a willingness to fight to the death, even when Rome could not enforce its treaties of recruitment and the entire Roman system teetered on the brink of destruction. While we will never know Hannibal's precise reaction to the rejection of his peace overtures, Polybius surmises the Roman response snatched away "Hannibal's joy at his victory in the battle [which] was not so great as his dejection, when he saw with amazement how steadfast and high-spirited were the Romans in their deliberations" (Plb. 6.58.13). Their model for handling neighbors did not including handing out citizenship rights of any kind, instead they made alliances with neighboring states that were in turn maintained via monetary rewards or the threat of violence. Carthage also forced some regions and cities to be Carthaginian client states and ruled over them with an iron fist. This led Hannibal's army, and most Carthaginian armies for that matter, to be composed of mercenaries with little stake in Carthaginian society or government. Carthaginian cavalry, for example, often hailed from North African kingdom of Numidia and their ranged units were often slingers from the Balearic Islands. On his trek from Spain to the Alps, Hannibal recruited Celts and Iberians to add to the Libyan infantry Carthage often relied on in all its conflicts. None of these mercenaries held a particular loyalty to Carthage, nor did they have a shared culture, language or more critically citizenship rights on par with the Phoenicians. Hannibal deserves immense credit for keeping his multi-ethnic army together on campaign in Italy for sixteen years, all due to his multi-lingual skills and inspirational abilities, but the loyalty Hannibal inspired was isolated to Hannibal alone and did not extend into loyalty toward Carthage.

Carthaginian model versus the Roman model
The lack of cultural and national unity throughout Carthaginian dominated North Africa caused frequent internal strife between its subject states and mercenaries.
One such incident, known as the Libyan War (or Mercenary War), occurred between the First and Second Punic War circa 240-237 BCE. Polybius states the Carthaginians were unable to adequately pay their mercenaries for service which led to the revolt of Numidians, Libyans, slaves and other peoples. So severe was the conflict that the Phoenicians were in danger of losing the city of Carthage itself (Plb. 1.65.4). Polybius does not hesitate to place blame for this revolt on Carthaginian policies: They had exacted from the peasantry, without exception, half of their crops, and had doubled the taxation of the townsmen without allowing exemption from any tax or even a partial abatement to the poor. They had applauded and honored not those governors who treated the people with gentleness and humanity, but those who procured for Carthage the largest amount of supplies and stores and used the country people most harshly (Plb. 1.72.2-3).
He shows a high degree of sympathy with the extreme oppression Carthage levied against its subjects in this passage. However, more importantly he is contrasting the Carthaginian system in Africa with Rome's alliance and citizenship system in Italy, and the differences could not be starker. It appears the Roman model, one of citizenship grants and alliance policies that allowed for sharing of war booty, reasonable taxation practices and shared economic benefits worked much better at fostering intense loyalty. Whereas the Carthaginian model worked only when they could maintain the threat of violence via strong shows of military force to keep its mercenaries and client states in line.
Rome did not intentionally develop its policies to create unified nation, but their policies achieved that regardless. Roman grants of limited or full citizenship, handed out regardless of ethnicity often combined with a co-option of Roman cultural features and language by non-Romans, all of which resulted in a cohesive Roman nation. In turn this created an environment where non-Roman Italians were willing to sacrifice for the national collective. At the same time, non-Phoenician Carthaginian subjects were never considered as potential citizenry by the Carthaginian government.
They remained as subjects with little to no legal rights, and were often forced to hand over significant tribute and deal with severe conscriptions, a one way exchange all in favor of Carthage. Other states, like Numidia, were paid for their mercenary services but changed allegiance when the money dried up. This mercenary system held up only as long as the money flowed or when rare inspirational generals like Hannibal maintained unity between various peoples who held no true stake in the Carthaginian system. However, their subjects and mercenaries had no inherent loyalty to the state.
When Carthage suffered serious financial issues or military defeat, few of their "allies" or subjects were willing to fight and die for a city they either held in contempt or were entirely indifferent toward. However, central Italian cohesion had more than just laws, good leadership and extensions of citizenship behind it. Due to Rome's lighter hand in dealing with even non-citizen allies, many peoples began to co-opt Roman cultural features and language in an effort to better participate in the new economic system they had become part of.
In addition, Rome periodically co-opted the gods of other cities and peoples (discussed in the next chapter) and shared them equally with the host community, which further bridged divides. In a reverse case of this religious co-option, even non-Romans came to co-opt Roman gods, merging them with their native religions, such as the case of the Celtic bronze dippers that shifted from worship of local gods to Roman gods as discussed in chapter four. 183 It is unlikely these kinds of hybridizations would have occurred if Rome handled neighbors and allies in a brutal fashion similar to Carthaginian practices. All of these factors combined to foster a very cohesive central Italian block that Hannibal could not break, despite multiple offers of independence and a military campaign that brought Rome to its knees in 216 BCE. The cohesion of central Italy created a reliable base of support during the war against Hannibal, and more importantly a steady stream of soldiers and resources, which gave Rome a significant edge over other states. In the third and early second century BCE, this 123 Roman nation was more isolated to central Italy alongside some outlying colonies.
However, as the second century progressed into the first century, a larger Roman nation that encompassed all Italy would begin to emerge, coming into full existence in the decades after the Social War.
Eckstein, a major proponent of Roman uniformity compared to other ancient states, also argues that Rome's major asset was the alliance system it fostered at home.
Examining the ancient Mediterranean world from 230 -170 BCE, Eckstein finds the Romans were not exceptionally aggressive compared to other states. Nor does he find that they were militarily superior on a technological level, and suggests "if the Romans' militarism, bellicosity, and aggressive diplomacy appear extraordinarily pathological in modern terms, these characteristics are nevertheless ordinarily pathological in their own world." 184 What then explains Rome's success not only in the Second Punic War, but in the fifty years after the war in which they built a Mediterranean wide empire? Eckstein suggests there was at least one identifiable and unique trait possessed by the Romans, their flexible alliance management system which gave them the "ability to conciliate outsiders" via the creation of Roman citizenship. 185 Instead of pure coercion or threat of violence, Roman citizenship could be applied to peoples in various locations and of multiple ethnicities, a part of forging closer affinity to Rome. Eckstein argues this gave the Romans better access to a wider array of resources that other states simply could not match." 186 124 Eckstein's argument that Rome's strength came from its unique alliance system are accurate, however, it is not a full explanation of the engine underlying these strong alliances. Why did granting citizenship, and dealing with each ally as circumstance dictated, create allies so loyal that they fought to the death for Rome of their own accord like the Latins after Cannae? The underlying engine unnamed by Eckstein is Roman nationalism, at this point isolated to part of central Italy. Across much of the ancient world, nations were rare and not as effective where they did exist, such as the many independent Greek city states. The nationalism of Greece remained isolated to geographically small areas due to restrictive citizenship policies and a more extractive approach to dealing with the defeated. With rights restricted to limited cities/regions, nationalism or even general cohesion did not exist with the same breadth as it did within Italy. This "willingness" to die is a critical element for Gat, who strongly asserts that those who reject the concept of ancient and Roman nationalism fail to take into account "people's explosive devotion and willingness to sacrifice and die for their ethnic and national collective." 187 There were some other ancient nations, but they were simply not as large or effective as the Roman nation. For example, the Greeks viewed themselves as sharing a common Greek ethnicity, but lived under conditions of perpetual petty warfare between their small poleis. Even the first Roman appearance on the Adriatic coast in 229 BCE to fight hostile Illyrian tribes elicited no response from the major European Greek states. Eckstein argues they simply "continued to focus their energies, as always, on the ruthless struggle for power among themselves." 188 Perpetually warring over relatively small pieces of land, Greek city states had limited territory from which to draw their troops and resources. Their constant hostility toward one another did not lend itself to granting citizenship or dealing with the defeated gently and as per circumstance dictated. For example when Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian 126 War, they brought Athens fully under the Spartan system, and for a time Athens lost its democracy and was ruled by Spartan dictators.
While many Greek writers littered nationalist sentiments amongst their writings, and a case could be made that multiple city states were nations, those nations remained exclusionary and small. Athens, for example, was an amalgamation of cities from the surrounding Attica region and contained all the requirements for a nation. Its people shared a common language, common rights and myth-history and it also had an elected government and national borders. However, it remained a limited nation in both size and membership, one that never expanded outward to encompass the Greek peninsula. Instead, unity within the Greek peninsula did not arrive until they were conquered by an external force in Philip II of Macedon. The failure of Greece to develop into a larger nation is interesting, because the Greeks shared a common ethnicity, language, gods and customs across the peninsula regardless of their poleis' borders, a feature that was lacking in early ancient Italy.
Greek historian Herodotus' highlighted the commonality of all Greeks in his history of the Persian Wars. In the text, Herodotus acknowledges that the Greeks shared a common ethnicity, their "Greekness, being our common blood and common language, common shrines of the gods and places/customs for sacrifices, and common way of life" (Hdt. 8.144). This passage comes from the recounting of a meeting between Athenian leadership and Spartan envoys in which Sparta expressed concerns that Athens would make a treaty with Persian King Xerxes before his planned invasion of Greece. Athenian leadership then must make a separate assertion of poleis based identity that "as long as one Athenian is left alive we will make no agreement with Xerxes" (Hdt. 8.144.3). The overall context of the passage betrays the petty factionalism that was at the forefront relations between city states. Despite Herodotus' recognition of shared ethnicity, religion and language, the Spartan act of questioning indicates they do not trust Athenians to be loyal Greeks. So while many city states of Greece might have constituted small nations, each Greek city state did not view other city states as members of a single nation, despite their common cultures.
Many Greek cities inspired a limited nationalism amongst their poleis, but their nations remained fairly limited and small. While Rome had its origins as a smaller nation, it continued to expand and be inclusive, its policies, even though not centrally planned, continued to foster membership and loyalty. Eric Orlin argues the Roman model sharply contrasted with the Greek city states like Athens, and is not comparable to Rome because "Athens controlled a smaller and more culturally homogeneous empire, she controlled it for a much shorter time, and perhaps most important, she had a much more restrictive citizenship policy." 189 It seems no Spartan would ever claim themselves loyal members of a Greek nation headed by Athens or vice versa. Thus many Greek poleis met all criteria of a nation, but their nations were small, exclusionary and remained hostile toward one another for all but brief periods of alliance. This despite Greece being culturally and ethnically similar. Once more, Greek disunity confirms that ethnic groups alone do not a nation make. The contrast between the Greek and Roman systems could not be any starker for Gary Forsythe. You are not Capuans or Tarentines, but Romans, from Rome you sprang, from Rome you have been planted in colonies on land taken from the enemy, in 129 order that you may augment her dominion. Whatever duties children owe to their parents, you owe to Rome, if indeed you feel a spark of affection for her or cherish any memories of your mother country (Liv. 27.9).
This was an invented speech to be certain, and it in fact overemphasis the complaint by the Latins for dramatic purposes. Goldsworthy argues the Latin complaint was not made out of disloyalty or anger toward Rome, but rather because the Latins' "resources had been exhausted" to the point of breaking. 192 However, the Latins stayed loyal despite the complaint and having already suffered through nine years of war, they continued to supply soldiers and suffered through seven more without further complaint. Thus the grandiose speech invented by

Roman religion: The building blocks of Roman Italy
Let us, O conscript fathers, think as highly of ourselves as we please; and yet it is not in numbers that we are superior to the Spaniards, nor in personal strength to the Gauls, nor in cunning to the Carthaginians, nor in arts to the Greeks, nor in the natural acuteness which seems to be implanted in the people of this land and country, to the Italian and Latin tribes; but it is in and by means of piety and religion, and this especial wisdom of perceiving that all things are governed and managed by the divine power of the immortal gods, that we have been and are superior to all other countries and nations (Cic. Har. 19).
This commentary, from a speech Cicero delivered in 56 BCE, reveals the importance Roman leaders placed on the state religion; for many, the gods and the proper worship of them had been responsible for the good fortune of the nation and the vast expansion of the Empire. Not only does Cicero recognize Rome as the "superior" power amongst all other nations in this passage, he also asserts that religion had been the deciding factor that separated Rome from other states, thus inferring continued piety would serve to guarantee Rome's predominance in the world. Interestingly this passage was not part of a speech in which Cicero was merely waxing poetic about the grandness of past Roman achievements (although he frequently did so), instead it is the printed version of a speech he delivered in the Senate to defend himself from the political attacks of Clodius, his populist senatorial opponent. Regardless of its context, it shows the importance Romans and Italians alike placed on proper worship of the gods. "Proper worship" is the key phrase, as Roman religious practices were largely about conducting ceremonies in a precise and consistent pattern. Even a single word uttered incorrectly during a ceremony, or a priest turning in the wrong direction after a sacrifice meant the entire process had to be repeated from the beginning in order for it to "count" with the gods. 193 Many religious ceremonies featured a public component or were celebrated as annual/semi-annual public festivals such as the ludi magni (great games) and ludi Romani (Roman games) in honor of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (Liv. 1.35.7-10). Sometimes the public were even brought in as active participants in the redress to wronged gods.
A major example that illustrates both a public ceremony and how the Romans conceived of their role in relation to the gods was a public vow for a "Sacred Spring" undertaken during 217 BCE, when Hannibal's invasion threatened the existence of Rome. While Hannibal's superior generalship was the main factor behind his string of early victories within Italy, many Romans did not view it as such; instead they believed their losses were a punishment from the gods due to not following proper religious protocols. What was the cause of this divine ire? Livy explains that in early 217 BCE Gaius Flaminius had accepted his new consulship and then, without adhering to the proper religious rituals, hastily rode off to confront Hannibal before he could approach . The end result was a stunning defeat at Lake Trasimene and the loss of over 15,000 soldiers. Polybius, still sticking with a realist perspective on history, blames the loss entirely on the rashness of Flaminius and superior generalship of Hannibal instead of divine intervention, stating that Hannibal had "anticipated the plans of Flaminius, the Roman commander, and got the measure of his opponent" (Plb. 3.81.12). Livy also details the specifics of the battle and finds fault 132 in Flaminius' actions, but then places full blame of the loss on his lack of adherence to proper religious procedure. After the loss at Trasimene, Rome appointed Quintus Fabius Maximus as dictator. Livy states that his first day in office was dedicated to arguing that "Caius Flaminius had erred more from neglect of the ceremonies and auspices than from temerity and want of judgment, and that the gods themselves should be consulted as to what were the expiations of their anger..." .
Due to Livy's frequent injection of first century themes into his works alongside his sometimes sensationalized retelling of events, it is reasonable to call into question his focus on improper religious protocols as the deciding factor in Flaminius' defeat. However, we can safely state Livy's focus on failed piety and improper religious ceremony was not a complete reconstruction of events or a concept that he projected into the past. Polybius, writing much nearer the time of Hannibal, agrees with Livy that Romans were frequently focused on signs from the gods and how to address those signs via proper religious protocols. He explains that in the days before Cannae in the summer of 216, just one year after Lake Trasimene, the inhabitants of Rome were filled with dread. That "every temple and every house was full of signs and prodigies, so that vows, sacrifices, supplicatory processions and litanies pervaded the town," because in times of danger, "Romans are much given to propitiating both gods and men" (Plb. 3.112.6).
It can then be assumed with some accuracy that after the loss at Trasimene Romans responded in a fashion similar to what Livy explained. However, the response went further than merely blaming Flaminius and the city for lack of piety. It also initiated a response from Roman religious officials in an effort to appease the now angry gods, who had seen fit to hand Hannibal dual victories within Italy at Trebia and Lake Trasimene. We are told that the Sibylline books were consulted (purported prophetic works from the regal period of Etruscan kings) and it was found the vow to Mars, god of war, had not been regularly fulfilled, that holding games were essential and more critically, a ceremony known as a "Sacred Spring" was required (Liv. 22.9.9-10). This ceremony required the inhabitants of Roman territories who possessed livestock to sacrifice all animals born to their herds and flocks in the course of a single spring (Liv. 22.10). However, because the demands of this expiation were so extreme, Livy indicates the vow to perform it required the consent of the Roman people, although in all likelihood it could have been ordered by Roman leadership without that formality (Liv. 22.10). All social classes were included in the Sacred Spring, as Livy explains that "whether he be slave or freeman" should sacrifice their newborn livestock, and even if the animals were stolen or sacrificed incorrectly "it shall be accounted to be duly offered"(Liv. 22.10) After the order went out, a "litany of intercession" occurred and the populations of both Rome and its allies from the countryside, "whose private interests were being affected by the public distress, went in procession with their wives and children" (Liv. 22.10). This Sacred Spring and ensuing litany of intercession is another example of Roman actions that acted to strengthen the bonds between Rome and her allies, even across social lines as it included slaves and all social orders and economic classes. The public of greater Roman came together during this troubling period and participated in a rather demanding request to sacrifice newborn livestock in an effort to help preserve the nation. They did so while also sharing significant military 134 burdens, all undertaken with little or no complaint and no major acts of rebellion. A testament to the unity fostered by the Roman system.

A nation of immigrants and vagrants
Returning to Cicero's original statement about the many ways in which Rome was not superior to its enemies; in numbers, strength, cunning or even arts; his argument remarkably aligns with the modern research of Eckstein, who has argued something similar. Eckstein believes Rome was relatively equal to all surrounding states and held similar pathologies to them that included comparable levels of aggression, militarism, technical skills, even aggressive diplomacy. 194 While both the ancient historian Cicero, and modern historian Eckstein, argue for Roman similarity to its neighbors, neither has a full explanation for what made the Romans unique. Nor do they offer a detailed explanation of how the Roman system fostered a unified system so strong that it assisted in their conquest of the Mediterranean world, although Eckstein offers a partial explanation. He argues that part of Rome's success was due to its incredible "political skill at reaching workable accommodations with a multitude of Italian states and peoples, an accomplishment that eventually gave Rome access to the military resources of all of Italy." They achieved this, he argues, by attaching Italy to Rome over a long period of time and thus eventually "learned not merely military skill but skill in effective alliance-management." 195 However, he does not delve into further details about how this was achieved. Meanwhile, Cicero's suggestion is that Rome succeeded because of its religion and piety which is incredibly, if unintentionally, somewhat accurate. Roman piety and religion were critical factors in the eventual unification of various Italic peoples under a shared Roman identity, although it was a long process fraught with both minor and major military and political conflicts. The process of religious co-option began long before the Second Punic War and continued to have a unifying effect down through the late second century.
The central elements behind the unifying nature of Roman religion was its general acceptance of foreign cults alongside Roman founding myths that stressed a Rome founded by foreigners such as Aeneas, a refugee of the Trojan War. Of course Rome has two mythic founders, the other Romulus, and like Aeneas he was also of foreign lineage. Wallace-Hadrill finds these Roman founding myths present a selfimage of Rome centered on "the permeability of its citizenship. Romulus offers the founding myth by establishing from the outset a city of immigrants and vagrants, not of autochthonous natives." 196 Taking the story of an immigrant and vagrant founding of Rome further, Plutarch's biography of the mythical Romulus states Rome welcomed fugitives and asylum seekers from anywhere, and "surrendering neither slave to masters, nor debtor to creditors, nor murderer to magistrates, but declaring it to be in obedience to an oracle from Delphi that they made the asylum secure for all men" (Plut. Rom. 9.3).
The legacy of these more inclusive Roman founding myths was a population that was accepting of foreign cults and foreigners in general. Many Roman gods had originated in the far off lands of their mythical founders, and as the myth-history explains, Rome itself was founded by refugees and/or foreigners. Eric Orlin suggests this gave citizens "an image of the Romans as a nation of immigrants," a fact proudly 136 displayed in monuments and epic poems such as Vergil's Aeneid. Orlin also finds a comparison to the United States, as he argues "one did not have to trace one's ancestors back to these primitive beginnings to be thought of as Roman, just as in the United States one does not have to trace ancestry back to the Mayflower." 197 Despite the generally accepting nature of Roman state religion, it should not be assumed its expansion throughout Italy peacefully quelled all unrest or that the sharing of common gods and religious practices alone converted all Italy to the Roman cause.
Instead, the landscape of Italy featured periods of alliance and peace. Cultural hybridization between Romans and non-Romans was a sporadic long process that did not denote instant changes in political loyalty. Thus Italy was periodically interrupted by civil strife, but even through this strife religion was a critical element of social cohesiveness for Rome, its citizen allies and non-citizen allies. This was because religion was very important to Romans, and Orlin argues "was the sphere on which the Romans prided themselves the most and that distinguished the Romans from the rest of mankind. They believed that proper religious practice was the cornerstone of their success in conquering the world." 198 This chapter will make a closer examination of Roman religion, notably its acceptance of foreign cults that acted as a powerful force of social inclusion amongst Italic peoples. It will also examine public religious festivals and games, alongside religious and political calendars known as Fasti that indicated an increasing affiliation between all Italic peoples under what would become a Roman nation.

Acceptance of foreign Junos as Roman divinities
In 396 BCE, military tribune M. Furius Camillus, temporarily appointed as dictator, sat outside the walls of the Etruscan city of Veii, preparing for a final assault after ten years of war against the Veientani (Plut. Cam. 7.1) Located only ten miles north of Rome, Veii had long caused problems for Rome and the lengthy war had turned unpopular. According to Plutarch, Camillus had fought with much success against the Aequians and Volscians years earlier, at one point he charged full speed into enemy lines while wounded and for these actions he was bestowed with military honors (Plut. Cam. 2.1-2). Against Veii Camillus decided to use cunning instead of bravado to end the decade long siege, so he sent his soldiers under the walls to attack the city from within and it worked, the city fell in short order. The inhabitants that were not killed in the initial assault were mostly captured and enslaved (Liv. 5.22).
Of more interest to this chapter than the battle itself were the religious events surrounding the capture of Veii. According to Livy, before Roman troops broke through their underground tunnels into Veii, Camillus swore to devote a tenth of the spoils taken from the city to Apollo and to "Queen Juno" or Juno Regina (Liv. 5.21).
Outside the city walls, Camillus had asked the goddess to move from Veii to Rome in the event of Roman victory, where he would then dedicate "a temple worthy of thy majesty" (Liv. 5.21). Once the city had fallen, Camillus made good on his promise and the Romans began to move some of the fallen city's gods along with their votive gifts, including the statue of Juno Regina, but Livy specifies "they did as worshippers rather than as plunderers" (Liv. 5.22). When it came to moving the wooden statue of Juno Regina, extra care was utilized. A small cadre of men were selected from the army; they properly washed themselves as an act of purification and then adorned themselves in white vestments, entered the temple reverently and placed their hands on the statue and asked once more "Art thou willing, Juno, to go to Rome?" (Liv. 5.22). In Livy's mythologized version of the tale, the statue agreed by nodding.
Regardless, the care taken before moving the statue and the reverence displayed throughout the entire process is likely an accurate portrayal considering the Romans moved other gods to Rome with the same level of care and respect. Juno Regina was then successfully transported to the Aventine Hill in Rome, a gateway where foreigners often first passed into the city and where temples to foreign gods were located. There Juno Regina was brought to "her everlasting seat, whither the prayers of the Roman Dictator had called her, and where this same Camillus afterwards dedicated the temple which he had vowed" (Liv. 5.22).
Livy's account of Juno Regina's move to Rome, although fictionalized and altered to match a similar story about a Palladium (religious icon) stolen from a citadel at Troy during the Trojan war, is one of the most famous examples of a Roman evocatio ceremony ever recorded. 199 An evocatio ceremony was the transportation of a foreign cult to the city of Rome. Even though Livy's account is mythologized, we can assert the Romans at least defeated Veii and that Juno Regina was moved to the Aventine Hill in Rome as part of an evocatio. This is because the temple still existed on the Aventine 180 years later and sacrifices were made to it during the Second Punic War (Liv. 22.1). Rome would duplicate evocatios many times over the following centuries, but they also utilized a different process focused on co-option at other times.

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The latter process of foreign cult importation were more akin to adoptions than However, Romans also famously dealt with each defeated city as a separate entity, even when cities were joined together as parts of larger confederations. Rome's actions after the defeat of the Latin League in 338 BCE bear this out. Instead of enslaving/slaughtering the populations of every hostile Latin city, Rome negotiated rather benign surrenders and sometimes even granted citizenship immediately. One such city was Tusculum in the Latium region of Italy that in 381 BCE had supplied soldiers the Volscians, an Italic enemy of Rome. Tusculum later begged for forgiveness from the Roman Senate and was rewarded with a peace treaty and later full Roman citizenship (Liv. 6.25-6). One of Tusculum's central gods, Juno Lucina, was then incorporated into the Roman pantheon in 375 BCE alongside a temple dedicated to the goddess within Rome (Plin. Nat. 16.235). An act that further strengthened both friendship and cultural bonds with the people of the city, who now also held full Roman citizenship.
The case of Juno Lucina's export to Rome was drastically different from the case of Juno Regina taken from Veii. Unlike Juno Regina who was removed entirely from Veii, never to return, Juno Lucina was intended to be a shared cult and was worshipped equally within Rome and Tusculum. 200 The evidence for this is provided by inscribed cippi (boundary stones) near the Capua area in concert with inscriptions found inside Tusculum. These inscriptions are dated hundreds of years after Juno Lucina's temple was built in Rome and discuss a practice called "Tusculan rite." 201 Orlin states that nothing is known of these rites, but they "suggest a connection between Juno Lucina and Tusculum, as well as between Rome and Tusculum..." 202 While the details of Tusculan rite are unknown, it is clear that Juno Lucina was not taken from Tusculum via evocatio as Juno Regina was from Veii.
Rome did something similar with another nearby city, Lanuvium, after they were also defeated in the Latin War in 338 BCE. The city of Lanuvium had central role in the war against Rome, but regardless, Livy states the city "received the full citizenship and the restitution of her sacred things, with the proviso that the temple and grove of Juno Sospita should belong in common to the Roman people and the citizens living at Lanuvium" (Liv. 8.14). The case of Juno Sospita is somewhat unique due to 141 how Romans shared this god with Lanuvium because they did not build a temple to her within Rome until 194 BCE, 146 years after this arrangement was made. 203 In lieu of a temple, Roman magistrates and pontiffs instead travelled to the Lanuvium annually to offer sacrifices. The act of major Roman magistrates with imperium travelling to another city to perform public religious ceremonies, all while following proper procedures with full reverence was a "mark of high honor." 204 Beyond honor, the annual practice strengthened the relationship between the people of Rome and Lanuvium as it showed the public that Roman worship of their common god was critical to the fortunes of both their cities.
While the removal of Juno Regina from Veii is quite different from the acceptance of both Juno Lucina and Juno Sospita's into the Roman pantheon, all cases indicate behaviors that were not emulated by all other ancient states, at least not in this particular fashion. Not only were the co-opted gods treated to proper ceremonies as if they had always belonged to Rome, but even prodigies (omens) connected to these foreign gods were accepted as if they had happen within the city of Rome itself. At the temple of Juno Sospita in Lanuvium during the winter of 217 BCE, the first year of the Second Punic War, several prodigies were reported at her statue. These included Sospita's spear moving by itself and a crow flying into the temple and landing on her couch (Liv. 21.62). Although this all occurred within Lanuvium, the Roman response was impressive. Livy writes that Roman magistrates and pontiffs fell on the city and the statue was "purified, and full-grown victims were sacrificed to the deities named in the Sacred Books; an offering of forty pounds' weight of gold was conveyed to Juno at 142 Lanuvium, and the matrons dedicated a bronze statue of that goddess on the Aventine" (Liv. 21.62). This was a rather bold and public statement to the people of Lanuvium. It signified Roman authorities believed the prodigies in Lanuvium were just as serious as prodigies in Rome, which in effect asserted that Lanuvium was an extension of the Roman nation.
Rome's actions in the adoption of non-Roman cults is perhaps part of the answer to Eckstein's theory that Romans were particularly skilled "at reaching workable accommodations with a multitude of Italian states and peoples." 205 Their reverence and care in handling religious ceremonies connected to gods they had coopted in other cities, and their treatment of prodigies as if Roman prodigies certainly fits into the mold of achieving workable accommodations. Taken in kind with extensions of citizenship and alliances that featured at least limited benefits for the allies, and the cohesion fostered by Roman actions becomes more evident. The acceptance of foreign cults and the development of myths around them was also a step toward peoples having "shared myths and memories," a major component of Smith's definition of a nation. 206 In the cases of Tusculum and Lanuvium, awards of full citizenship went in concert with the adoption of those cities gods. Once more, Rome was not consciously attempting to Romanize these people, but instead forge a better relationship with their neighbors in Latium. Despite intentions, the populations of these cities became part of the unbreakable central Italian block in the Second Punic War; their common rights and common religious practices having been established with Rome over 100 years before Hannibal landed in Italy. The inhabitants of these 143 cities already spoke Latin and had similar cultures to the Romans, so the extension of rights and sharing of gods pushed cohesion to a higher level.
While Rome had been known to level an entire city including temples, this was not something done consistently. Even when the enemy they faced was particularly difficult such as the inhabitants of Lanuvium and Veii. In contrast, Hannibal had destroyed or despoiled several Italian temples during his campaign through Italy, which did not help earn further allegiance from his enemies. One such example came in 211 BCE after Hannibal made a failed attempt at taking Rome. He then retreated with his forces to nearby Capena and came across a grove and temple to the Latin, Umbrian and Sabine warrior goddess Feronia. Livy explains that the temple "was celebrated in those days for its wealth" as it had collected a large quantity of gold and silver offering over the years (Liv. 26.11). Hannibal then despoiled the temple of everything it held as he continued to retreat south east away from Rome. Livy adds that all the historians he consulted about this matter agreed on the plundering of this temple (Liv. 26.11).
Hannibal's actions at the temple seem on par with the harsh actions of the Carthaginian state as discussed in chapter five. The Feronia shrine was in Etruscan territory and had been worshipped by Latins, Umbrians and Sabines alike and all of these peoples, including southern Etruria, were Roman allies or citizens. Hannibal had maintained that he was only after Rome and not Latins, Etruscans or anyone else after Trasimene in 217 BCE, and had even offered the Latins independence from Rome (Plb. 3.85). Thus his desecration of the temple seems a reckless decision compared to his earlier claim, further driving potential allies away instead of bringing them into the fold. This is not to suggest Rome always peacefully handled foreign gods. In 146 BCE Rome razed both Carthage and Corinth to the ground, destroying any temples and cults within those cities. However, Rome often took an alternative approach and harbored an open religious system that conciliated the conquered and sometimes coopted their gods.
Returning to the grove and temple of Feronia, in contrast the Hannibal, Rome had attempted to gain the favor of its neighbors by its actions at the temple. Six years earlier in 217 BCE Rome ordered the temple's riches greatly enhanced by the freedwomen of Rome as part of expiations ordered by the Senate after the severe losses at Lake Trasimene (Liv. 22.1). As Feronia was physically located outside of Rome in the lands of Etruscan, Latin and Sabine allies they hoped to retain, the act clearly showed that Rome, even in its time of greatest distress, was concerned with the proper worship of gods outside the city walls. Gods that were worshipped by neighbors whose loyalty they hoped to maintain. According to Orlin, these actions "emphasized the unity of the Roman enterprise in the face of Hannibal's threat" and also showed that Rome was attempting to win back "the favor of the gods, just as the inclusion of the Italian allies was demonstrated by choice of deity." 207 In concert with the offerings at the temple of Feronia, the Senate also ordered offerings be made by freeborn matrons to Juno Regina on the Aventine Hill (Liv. 22.1). Actions that helped to foster social unity within the city of Rome.
A year after Hannibal despoiled the temple in 210 BCE, multiple prodigies were reported at Feronia that included statues sweating blood all day and night. In 145 response, Roman pontiffs decreed oxen should be sacrificed to placate the gods (Liv. 27.4). Prodigies in general were identified by the occurrence of "unnatural" events by the pontiffs, such as animals appearing in places they should not be, children or animals born with deformities, odd sounds and rumblings, "blood" rain or lightning strikes on temples. 208 In this case Roman authorities seemed to be making a concerted decision to recognize the importance of the temple to its neighboring allies, hence the sudden recognition of prodigies after Hannibal's despoliation. The expiations for the prodigies at the grove of Feronia were ordered throughout the entire city of Rome, and intercessions were "to be offered up at all the shrines in Rome, and on the following day similar intercessions were to be offered….at the grove of Feronia" (Liv. 27.4).
This sent yet another strong message to Roman allies, that even prodigies outside of Rome effected the state to the same degree as if temples inside the Roman pomerium had experienced prodigies. A message that in Orlin's assessment "further expressed the solidarity of the Romans with the people of southern Etruria..." and "the broader acceptance of the importance of the Etruscan sanctuary and the people who worshipped there." 209 Each Roman action in regards to declaring prodigies or coopting gods, taken individually, was indeed an effort to improve specific relationships.
But these decisions were also designed to improve Rome's favor with the gods, or appease the gods of allies, in the hope that allies would maintain their loyalty to Rome.
However, when a macro view is taken, and each individual co-option or expiation of prodigies is viewed across Italy, it becomes clear Roman actions had a significant role in forging a cohesive central Italy before and during the Second Punic War.

Alba Longa, Lavinium and Rome: Founding myths of a common people
One of the strongest bonds of unity forged by the Romans with other cities was a result of the annual Feriae Latinae or Latin Festival, held in the city of Alba Longa, with an accompanying ceremony in the city of Lavinium (not to be confused with Lanuvium). Both ceremonies had been celebrated by Rome since the early fourth century. 210 These cities became critically important to Rome due to later mythical reconstructions that connected them to the founding of Rome. In Alba Longa the central divinity of the Latin Festival was Jupiter Latiaris, and according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, proper worship first required a truce between any warring factions.
The truce was necessary because the ceremony brought forty-seven Italian cities together and also required many of those cities to bring animals, cheeses and milk as offerings and sacrifices. In addition, a bull was "sacrificed in common by all of them, In concert with the Latin Festival, another set of ceremonies were held at nearby Lavinium and also featured the participation of Roman consuls. There the consuls made dedications and sacrifices to Vesta and the household gods known as the 147 Penates, the latter of which were supposedly brought to Italy from Troy by the Aeneas upon his founding of Lavinium (D.H. 1.67). Annual participation was maintained not just to appease the gods, but also to renew the alliance between Rome and Lavinium each year. 211 Both of these festivals had been inherited by Rome upon their conquest of these cities, but as part of their often conciliatory behavior they not only maintained the ceremonies as they existed but also made them a top priority, evident by the participation of the consuls. Eventually Roman founding myths were tied to these cities and ceremonies, strengthening Rome's cultural connections with the Latin cities but also forging political alliances that became unbreakable. The mythical stories behind the festivals were the driving force that kept them going for hundreds of years and were the glue that kept Rome so strongly connected to not only Alba Longa and Lavinium, but to the Latins overall.
Famously Rome had two founding myths, that the city was founded by the twins Romulus and Remus. The second founding myth was that Romans were the descendants of the Trojan War refugee Aeneas. To rectify these competing myths, stories were constructed that seamlessly merged the tales together and also tied them to the founding of Lavinium and Alba Longa. These stories were then recorded in a 148 Tracing the Aeneas founding myth, Livy writes that after the collapse of Troy he spent years wandering the Mediterranean (Liv. 1.1). Aeneas and his band of exiles eventually landed in Italy and built a town called Lavinium, naming the town after his wife. Once settled, Aeneas and his new wife had a son named Ascanius (Liv. 1.1).
Thirty years later, Ascanius left Lavinium and founded a city at the foot of the Alban hills which he named Alba Longa. 212 Then sixteen generations later or roughly 400 years, twins Romulus and Remus, the direct descendants of Aeneas, were born in Alba Longa. Before their birth, Livy writes the twins' great uncle Amulius seized the throne of Alba Longa. He then pushed his brother Numitor from power and forced his niece Rea Silvia to become a Vestal Virgin while she was already pregnant, or she was perhaps later raped (Liv. 1.4).
When she gave birth to the twin boys, they were ordered thrown in the Tiber River by Amulius. However, they washed ashore and were then were famously suckled by a she-wolf that kept them alive until they were found and raised by shepherds . Upon growing up and discovering their true identities, Romulus and Remus led a revolt against Amulius and restored their grandfather The Latin Festival took place on March 5, and something occurred to mar its celebrations; the magistrate of Lanuvium omitted to pray over one of the victims for "the Roman people of the Quirites." This irregularity was reported to the Senate and by them referred to the college of pontiffs. The pontiffs decided that the Latin Festival not having been properly and duly celebrated must be observed anew, and that the people of Lanuvium, whose fault made the renewal necessary, should provide the victims. A fresh misfortune increased the general uneasiness. The consul Cn. Cornelius, whilst returning from the Alban Mount, fell from his horse and was partially crippled. He went to the Baths of Cumae, but became gradually worse and died at Cumae. The body was brought to Rome and received a magnificent funeral. He had also been a pontiff. Orders were given to the consul Q. Petilius to hold an electionas soon as he obtained favourable omens from the sacrifices -to provide him with a colleague and also to proclaim the Latin Festival. He fixed the election for the 3rd and the Latin Festival for the 11th of August (Liv. 41.16).
Exhibited in this passage is the extreme precision that all religious ceremonies were required to be carried out with. In this case, a single prayer was missed and it was deemed to have caused the death of Consul Cn. Cornelius, thus the entire ceremony had to be redone. However, of more importance in this passage is that Lanuvium, the city which shared Juno Sospita with Rome, was responsible for the error in the performance of this critical Roman ceremony. It is a rather telling interplay of how closely connected the Romans had become with the Latins as they were given a central role in conducting a festival of critical importance to the good fortunes of Rome and her allies. Imbued with such trust, Lanuvium appears as an equal to Rome 151 or rather perhaps an extension of Rome. This becomes further evident as Lanuvium's priests, who had botched the original ceremony, were also made full participants in its correction, required to redo the ceremony and provide new sacrificial animals by the Roman College of Pontiffs and Senate. Thus their interconnectedness with Rome and other Latins was affirmed by both their leading role in the initial ceremony and their active role in correcting it under guidance from Rome.
Lanuvium's top role in critical religious ceremonies intimately connected them to both the Roman religious system and the wider world of Roman citizens and allies.

Combined with the loyalty exhibited by Latin and central Italians in the Second Punic
War, it is hard to argue that a resident of Lanuvium or Alba Longa or any central Italian city with shared citizenship or alliance would not have consider themselves a Roman by the early second century. This central Italian block now had shared religious burdens, common rights for members, a common myth-history, and shared language and culture. Added to this, their common religious festivals were deemed to positively or negatively affect a wider Roman world that extended far beyond the pomerium, which again points elements of an existent imagined community.

The limits of "foreign" within Italy
Romans certainly had a broad acceptance of foreign cults, but it should not be assumed that all adopted gods were retained in their original forms no matter how against Philip V of Macedon, who was allied with Hannibal (Liv. 29.10). A Roman delegation was sent to Pergamon where they were warmly greeted by Attalus, who handed them a "sacred stone" which was the incarnation of "the Mother of the God" and it was then brought back to Rome where a temple was dedicated (Liv. 29.11;37).
To keep the practices of the cult accurate, they also imported the Phrygian priests of Magna Mater, who were decidedly un-Roman in their appearance and practices. They were all eunuchs who marched around in the streets banging drums, ecstatically dancing, chanting loudly and whipping themselves until they bled. 216 Their acts were deemed so outrageous that Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports legislation was enacted to ban "native-born" Romans from walking through the city in bright clothes, begging for alms or accompanied by flute-players, nor were Romans allowed to worship the god with wild "Phrygian ceremonies" (D.H. 2.19.4-5). Dionysius' himself admits he is amazed at Rome's importation of both foreign gods and foreign peoples, proclaiming Romans "are under every necessity of worshipping their ancestral gods according to the customs of their respective countries" (D.H. 2.19.3).
Yet he adds the "city has never officially adopted any of those foreign practices," and even though Romans "introduced certain rites from abroad, she celebrates them in accordance with her own traditions, after banishing all fabulous clap-trap" (D.H. 2.19.3). In this regard he specifically mentions Magna Mater, noting that the priests conducted all worship at the exclusion of both the Roman people and officials (D.H.

2.19.3).
Dionysius' assessment is overly harsh and somewhat inaccurate, but the Romans periodically did set restrictions on worship and other times made alterations to foreign cults to maintain a sense of "Romanness." However, the boundary was never so strict as to entirely eradicate the original practices that went along with a cult.
In order to allow Romans a chance to participate in the religious rites of Magna Mater, a public festival known as the ludi Megalenses was designed. Although it was not implemented until around 191 BCE, thirteen years after the goddesses importation, it allowed Romans a more "appropriately Roman" way to worship the goddess that did not involve wild dancing and yelling in the streets (Liv. 36.36). This was perhaps a hypocritical act, as Roman authorities seemed more concerned with traditional Roman morality in this instance rather than being disturbed by "wild" foreign practices they had never witnessed. The Roman festival of Lupercalia, designed to purify the city and avert evil spirits, was just as wild. It was celebrated by having naked youths run through the streets of Rome while yelling, making a ruckus and hitting people with leather straps. It also featured what Plutarch deemed a "peculiarity," the sacrifice of a dog (Plut. Rom. 21). Yet Lupercalia was "traditionally Roman" and practices around Magna Mater were not, hence the divide.

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To handle worship of Magna Mater, Roman elites set up sodalitates (a society or brotherhood of sorts) to dine in honor of the goddess, which was also separate from those "wild" Phrygian priests (Cic. Sen. 45). Thus Romans authorities both drew a line, at least between Roman and non-Roman morality, while simultaneously allowing Romans to publicly worship a foreign cult. The contradiction of having no issue with Lupercalia, but being concerned with worship of Magna Mater seems to indicate Roman authorities were very concerned with defining the boundary of Romanness in regards to foreign cults. Of course Rome accepted the goddess and allowed worship, but its worship was merely constrained to match a more traditional Roman morality held by state leaders. Regardless, it had an effect on the continued enforcement of a common public Roman culture, but one that was still open and allowed for the admittance of foreign gods and ceremonies.
These actions were mirrored in regards to the spread of the Bacchic cult and its later repression within Rome and Italy at large. Livy indicates the Bacchic cult of Greek origin was suddenly discovered by the Roman authorities in 186 BCE and had become incredibly popular and widespread . Most of Livy's book thirty nine is dedicated to listing the various morality flaws of the cult, which he lists as sexual debaucheries between adults of all social classes, excessive drinking and even murder. Arguing in language that could almost be pulled from a modern era nationalistic diatribe, Livy finds the immoral men who participate in the Bacchic cult, or "shrine of obscenity" cannot be trusted to valiantly defend Rome or its women and children while "reeking with their impurity and that of those round them" (Liv. 39.15).
Beard, North and Price argue via archaeological evidence, based on a cult grotto discovered in Etruria, that the cult had likely been popular and widespread throughout all of Italy for many years prior to 186 BCE, so it was not "suddenly" discovered as Livy claimed. 217 Instead they argue the Senate simply decided to repress the Bacchanalia due to it having a private and independent power structure from the official state religion of Rome. The authors assert the main concern was "the power over individuals obtained by the group's leaders that would have seemed so radically new and dangerous to the Roman elite. 218 According to an inscription on a bronze tablet found in southern Italy from 186 BCE, the cult was not entirely banned despite moral objections, rather it was merely restricted as the worship of Magna Mater was.
The inscription shows that private and secret celebrations were banned along with privately appointed priests and "masters." In addition, it stated that no one could perform any Bacchic rites unless they have "approached the urban praetor and is given permission with senatorial decree, so long as no less than one hundred senators are present when the matter is considered." 219 However, the most interesting assessment of the situation presented by Beard, North and Price was how vast the spread of the cult and what that meant for the ever quickening pace of cultural unity within all of Italy. Even in areas far outside the loyal to Rome central Italian region: The fact that the cult in this form had established itself so widely is itself remarkable; for Italy was still a very diverse area in languages, culture and traditions. Paradoxically enough, given its repression, it is the spread of the Bacchic movement that provides the clearest evidence that the process of cultural unification in Italy was well advanced; the very presence of what 217 North and Price 1998, 1:93. 218 North and Price 1998, 1:93, 95. 219 ILS 18; see also ILLRP5111 (for M. Beard, J. North and S. Price, Religions of Rome [New York 1998], 2:290-291) seems to be a similar cult in so many places throughout Italy itself implies a degree of cultural convergence. 220 Even with a strengthening cultural unity, the Italian peninsula of 186 BCE was definitely a state under Roman authority, but it still was still over 100 years away from sharing the common features of a nation. Central Italy around Rome had manifest as a smaller scale Roman nation at least by the time of the Second Punic War, but the peninsula at large was still patchwork of allied and independent regions that had a range of citizenship rights. Regardless, it seems the wide spread of the Bacchic cult by 186 BCE indicates an ever growing cultural hybridization that would ultimately lead to a culturally and linguistically similar Italy by the first century.

Acceptance of foreign gods and Roman loyalty
The Romans accepted numerous cults from the fourth century through the end of the Second Punic War (and several after that), but can we ascertain a tangible result from these actions? Did the sharing of cults with host cities increase loyalty or forge something akin to national unity with Rome during times of great duress, such as the Second Punic War? For example, did the religious devotion shown in the 375 BCE dedication of a temple to Juno Lucina in Rome translate into more intense loyalty from the goddesses' home city of Tusculum? Wallace-Hadrill argues that religion is often a flashpoint that "may divide groups within a community, and it may cut across the boundaries of community." 221 Plb. 118.1; also defected to Hannibal, as those cities still possessed a dominant Greek identity and thus loyalty to their respective poleis. They also perhaps saw more autonomy from Rome in the potential victory of Hannibal. Amongst these secessions is an outlier, one that shocked even Rome, the secession of Capua in the region of Campania just south of Latium. This occurred even though Capuans had possessed citizenship without voting rights for over 100 years (Liv. 23.6-7). Even so, not every city within these regions defected. For example, Rhegium in the tip of Italy remained loyal to Rome as did Neapolis in Campania, despite most of that region going over to Hannibal (Liv. 23.15;30). Regardless, most of these peoples were culturally dissimilar from Romans/central Italians and there was little co-option of gods from these regions.
Although Orlin does point out the Roman adoption of the Greek healing god Aesculapius in 291 BCE was potentially a diplomatic overture to the Greek colonies of southern Italy, "a signal that the Romans did not intend to stamp out Greek culture in Italy, but rather sought to enter their world." 225 However, Orlin adds that no evidence of a cult of Aesculapius has been found in Italy prior to the Roman importation of the god. Although it is likely the Greek colonies of Italy would have known of the god via interactions with Greece. 226 Regardless, the Roman importation of a god from Greece, one that may not have been all that critical to the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, did not have the same level of effort and care as Rome's co-option of other gods and festivals. It did not feature Roman magistrates travelling to Magna Graecia's cities annually like they did for Juno Sospita in Tusculum. Nor would it have inspired the same loyalty as holding the Latin Festival at Alba Longa did, which also linked the founding of Rome to that city and all the peoples of the region together via shared myth-history. Hence it is unsurprising that Magna Graecia mostly went over to Hannibal in the war, because their connections to Rome, culturally and legally, were weak or non-existent.

Ludi and Fasti: Roman national identity amongst non-elites
The adoption of foreign cults by Rome had a direct impact on fostering a common cultural identity between Romans and the allies it shared those cults with.
However, it appears cultural hybridization was only fostered when the co-opted gods came from within Italy. The examples of Magna Mater and Aesculapius being adopted by the Romans from Asia Minor and Greece respectively certainly had a positive impact on alliances with those states, but there was no major adoption of Anatolian customs seen in Rome. As discussed previously, even citizen participation in the processions of the priests of Magna Mater was banned. Despite this, the development of the games for the Great Mother, the ludi Megalenses, regulated celebrations to a more "Roman appropriate" standard and allowed for mass participation. According to Orlin, these ludi or games, developed into "one of the quintessential Roman religious activities." While ludi had origins in Greek and Etruscan practices, they eventually developed into a uniquely Roman style of religious worship that involved public sacrifices, religious processions through the streets, public theater and chariot races, amongst other activities. 227 Most importantly, the general public were able to directly participate in the ludi, and thus had agency in the co-option of gods and the celebrations of those cults.
Certainly the Roman government and elites could control the ludi to a degree, but participants were able to express their own religiosity while participating in the games and festivities. Ludi celebrations continued to expand from the third to second centuries, and this expansion allowed for greater public participation amongst nonelite Romans. Originally Rome only had one or two ludi per year, but by 170 BCE there were twenty-nine days of ludi each year. 228 As games were celebrated both in the city of Rome and throughout Italy at the same time, this actually created the sense of simultaneity and imagined community, as participants could be certain that the festival they celebrated in Tusculum was also being celebrated in Rome. The central key for the existence of Anderson's imagined community, and thus the existence of nationalism, is the existence of modern mass media, like newspapers. So that a given resident of a nation, who will never meet, or even know the names of more than a handful of his fellow countrymen and "has no idea what they are up to at any one time… has complete confidence in their steady, anonymous, simultaneous activity." 229 While there was no mass print media in ancient Rome, there were national epic poems, such as the Aeneid, public plays and ceremonies during the many ludi, and a national currency that often featured imagery of state victories, religious festivals and propaganda. Currency was so close to mass print media, that Carlos Noreña argues that in "no other medium were simple messages transmitted under state authority so regularly, and so extensively communicated to so many individuals. It was this distinctive combination of official status, simultaneous embodiment of economic and symbolic value, and mass production, then, that made coinage such a potentially powerful medium of communications in a pre-industrial world." 230 However, there was also another vehicle through which Italians achieved an imagined community, the religious and political calendars known as Fasti that were inscribed in various cities around Italy. These calendars allowed the inhabitants of a community to sync their local religious festivals with those in faraway Rome, so as to celebrate ceremonies as a singular people. As Wallace-Hadrill argues, Fasti installed at the local level allowed for Roman time to become local time "by the juxtaposition of Roman magistrates with local ones." 231

Construction of an imagined Roman community via Fasti
Polybius, ever the realist, opined that one of the main reasons for Roman success in the world, a defining feature that made them unique, was the "nature of their religious convictions" (Plb. 6.56). He argued these convictions were also used by the Roman elite to maintain the cohesion of the state and control the masses, who he deemed as "fickle, full of lawless desires, unreasoned passion, and violent anger"(Plb. 6.56). In suggesting this, Polybius had taken a more realist approach than the Romans themselves, but it cannot account for the near obsessive level of devotion to Roman religious ceremony, even amongst the elite. If Polybius were correct, the elites would not have shown such concern with a single misplaced prayer in their religious ceremonies, such as the example previously discussed of a single botched prayer at the Alban Mount proceedings (Liv. 41.16). It was unlikely that anyone in the general population noticed the skipped prayer, and if these ceremonies were designed solely for control of the masses, it would have been especially easy for the elites of both 230 Noreña 2011, 249. 231 Wallace-Hadrill 2005 Rome and other cities to say the festival went well, thus appeasing the masses.
However, Livy goes through great pains to discuss this was a major problem, and was reported to the Senate and pontiffs as something to be remedied as soon as possible.
He also explained bad omens had occurred from the failure to properly execute the ceremony, such as the death of Consul Cn. Cornelius after he was thrown from his horse (Liv. 41.16). Incidents similar to this are repeated throughout Roman history, so it seems religion was not just a means the elites used to control the masses, but was in fact an institution they believed effected their own fortunes as well.
As the elite perception of religion has been accounted for, is it possible to also determine if the average Roman or Italian had any agency when it came to religious festivals and ceremonies? Or did Romans and Italians passively observe religious festivities, participating only as much as the state required of them? The cult of Bacchus, discussed in the previous section, had managed to spread throughout the entirety of Italy in the early second century without any official backing from the Roman state, and as Beard, North and Price argued, it provided clear evidence of the cultural convergence throughout Italy as it had spread through a range of diverse languages, cultures and traditions. 232 The only response from the Roman state in this case was an attempt to fully control the cult, thus removing it from the hands of the non-elites who had overseen it. This also counters Polybius assertion once more, that all religious activity was forced on citizens and allies from the top down as a means of control. Bacchanalia aside, the average Roman or Italian ally, no matter their level of 164 citizenship had agency when it came to participating the state religion, evidence via the many Fasti inscribed throughout Italy.
Most of the surviving Fasti are dated from the first century BCE through first century CE and are inscribed in marble, although some still in painted form survive. 233 There are forty-seven total surviving Fasti, all but one come from peninsular Italy (the other is Sicily), twenty-six come from Rome and the other twenty come from regions around Rome. 234 There are two types of Fasti, those that list the months and days including religious festivals, and those that list consuls, triumphs and dictators. Some Fasti contain both. 235 These Fasti were installed in public spaces in towns and cities throughout Italy, often by local politicians, but Wallace-Hadrill argues they were not centralized propaganda forced on the towns by central authorities in Rome. Rather he finds they were a form of "of competitive flattery..." as to "inscribe the Roman calendar was a statement of loyalty to the Roman system." 236 In the city of Praeneste, about twenty miles southeast of Rome, several Fasti have been found. Although often in fragments, these calendars were commissioned locally and appear to be copies of calendars found in Rome. In effect this was the local leadership of a town attempting to sync their local religious festivals with those in Rome. In Wallace-Hadrill's view, it was a way for Italian communities to "buy into the system by synchronizing Roman time with Praenestine time (and local festivals, especially that of Fortuna Primigeneia, are registered on the calendar along with Roman ones, just as local magistrates)." 237 As these calendars were publicly installed, anyone was able to read them, or as literacy was fairly low in ancient Rome, someone could read the Fasti out loud to the public. This made them truly public calendars and gave inhabitants of Italian communities outside of Rome the choice of when and how to participate in a festival that was simultaneously happening in Rome. The installation of these Fasti throughout greater Italy, especially by the reign of Augustus when all Italy had been officially unified, indicates for Wallace-Hadrill that "Roman time has definitively slipped beyond the grasp of the nobility" and this development contains, but what its inscription by low class freedmen means. That even at the level of "the parish pump, local officials of freedman status could also make Roman time their own." 240 Examining the lowest strata of Roman society, the slave, we can even find inscribed Fasti made by their hands. In Antium slaves from an imperial villa in 166 the city set up a collegium (a club with legal approval) and inscribed a Fasti that included a monthly calendar and a list of magistrates from the 30s -50s CE. 241 The slaves were under no threats or orders to keep an up to date Fasti and the fact that they organized their own collegium and inscribed the names of each member who led the collegium each year shows they were very proud to keep track of things and inscribe events. 242  The Fasti went hand in hand with the ludi, which were inscribed on Fasti that were dedicated to tracking religious festivals. Orlin, examining the conception of imagined communities posited by Anderson, argues the ludi "on behalf of the Roman state provide an opportunity for the entire citizenry to come together and recognize their part in their common enterprise," but adds the dispersal of citizens throughout Italy made imagining a community difficult. 244 He suggests the answer was found in 167 the expansion of ludi to more days throughout the calendar year. Not only were the amount of days in which ludi were celebrated expanded, but the length of the celebrations were also extended, from three to seven days long. The games were then grouped with other festivals to extend the events even longer. Orlin argues this gave more Italians the chance to come to Rome and "feel themselves a direct part of the Roman state." 245 Eventually the ludi expanded to other cities throughout Italy and were no longer restricted to Rome, which allowed average citizens to participate even more easily and at the same time as participants in all other cities. 246  Roman law did not occur until after the Social War's conclusion. It was after this conflict that regional languages and cultural practices began to vanish at an accelerated pace, replaced by Latin and Roman cultural features. Thus it is necessary to examine the Social War and its causes and conclusion to gain a full picture of Italian unification.
Examining Italy prior to the first century BCE, we find many divergent non-Roman peoples, split into tribal groups, regions and city-states. These included the Samnites, Etruscans, Marsi, Lucanians, and the Greek city states of Magna Graecia amongst others. As Roman power spread throughout the fourth and third centuries BCE, many of these peoples were conquered and made into allies or citizens, others came to be allies in times of peace. Due to significant variations in date of conquest to type of relationship with Rome, some peoples Romanized more than others through the time of Hannibal's invasion of Italy in 218 BCE. The Samnites, although they had been allied with Rome since the end of the Third Samnite War in 290 BCE, had maintained a very independent Oscan culture. This, alongside a strong distaste of their alliance with Rome led to a desire to gain independence, and so they were one of several southern peoples to ally with Hannibal. Once Rome defeated Hannibal in 202, all Italy came under Roman control and the southern Italians were brought under Roman control as socii once more. While the Roman system of citizenship grants and alliances worked well most of the time, it sometimes failed and led to internal strife. After Hannibal's defeat, inter-Italian peace was achieved for over 100 years, but one last revolt was launched by a large contingent of peoples dissatisfied with their status as socii in 91 BCE, a conflict that became known as the Social War. The peoples who revolted included "the Marsi, the Peligni, the Vestini, the Marrucini; and after them the Picentines, the Frentani, the Hirpini, the Pompeiians, the Venusini, the Apulians, the Lucanians, and the Samnites" (App. BC 1.39). The causes of the revolt are multiple, and can be further complicated due to missing ancient sources and biased accounts. In short, ancient and modern historians agree the "truest" cause of the war was Roman failure to grant full citizenship to its Italian allies. 248 In fact few grants of full citizenship were recorded throughout the entire second century and Livy cites the last three were Formiae, Fundi and Arpinum, all awarded full citizenship in 177 BCE. 249 However, the request for citizenship by the socii was actually a last desperate act to rectify a series of real and perceived wrongs they had been experiencing. The allies had been fighting in Roman wars, alongside Roman legions for a century by the time of their revolt. One of the allies major issues, according to E.T. Salmon, was that they were Gracchus proposed a land reform in 134 BCE, the Lex Sempronia Agraria, that intended to repossess land from allied Italian land owners and redistribute it to poor Roman citizens (App. BC 1.11). Gracchus waxed poetic about how the "Italian race" was related by blood to the Romans, but his plan was designed to help only Roman citizens and not the Italian allies (App. BC 1.9). The Italian land owners who were set to have their land repossessed by the Gracchan land commission were all non-citizen allies, as such their status did not allow them appeal the decision. In addition, the Italians were not eligible for any of the redistributed lots. 252 At this moment the allies wanted to at least be granted the right of ius provocationis, (right to appeal) in the assembly, which they lacked. 253 Only as a secondary request did they want full citizenship as that would have also granted them the right to appeal the political decisions they had grown angry with. While Gracchus was later assassinated and his legislation shelved, this litany of slights toward the Italian allies grew.
However, it was not until the assassination of Livius Drusus in 91 BCE that Italian anger came to a head. Drusus had been elected as tribune that year and amongst a series of modest reforms, he also proposed to grant citizenship to all Italian allies.
Appian argues the Italians had invested much hope in Drusus and "especially desired [citizenship] because by that one step they would become rulers instead of subjects" (App. BC. 1.35). However, Drusus was assassinated by a political enemy while sending a crowd away from the atrium of his house one evening (App. BC. 1.36).
Appian states that when the Italian allies learned of this treachery, believed orchestrated by Roman elites against their cause, "they considered it no longer tolerable that those who were labouring for their political advancement should suffer such outrages, and as they saw no other means of acquiring citizenship they decided to revolt from the Romans altogether, and to make war against them" (App. BC. 1.38).
The Italian socii had first desired mere redress with the Roman government but had been denied by Roman elites who were bent on maintaining the present Italian power structure. Now the allies were intent on destroying the Roman government entirely and replacing it with a new entity called Italia.
At wars' outset in 91 BCE, in fear of their lives and for the safety of Rome, the Senate decided to award full citizenship to peoples who did not rebel. This included the nearby Etruscans, who had long been loyal but to that point held only partial citizenship. Appian believes by this action, "the Senate made the faithful more faithful, confirmed the wavering, and mollified their enemies by the hope of similar treatment" (App. BC. 1.49). After a year of harsh warfare, further grants of citizenship were awarded to all but the Samnites and Lucanians, the fiercest proponents for the destruction of the Roman system. Despite these grants of full citizenship, Roman elites were not inclined to surrender their power so easily and decided to enroll the new citizens into ten entirely new tribes in the Tribal Assembly as opposed to distributing them within the existing thirty-five tribes as had been the previous custom. The effect of this, according to Appian, was to water down the effect of their vote "so that they might not, by being mingled with the old citizens, vote them down in the elections by force of numbers" (App. BC. 1.53). These new tribes were then placed last in the voting order so the effect of their vote would be reduced. For if a majority was reached on an issue amongst the first tribes to vote, the votes of the last several tribes did not matter (App. BC. 1.49).
The rebellion was ultimately defeated in 88 BCE by Roman General Cornelius Sulla, who only a few years later declared himself dictator and became the first Roman general to enter the city with an army to seize control. Sulla also restored the old As noted by Velleius, the grants were awarded individually and had to be voted on by majorities in each city. 255 However, the war did not end in peaceful coexistence for all factions. During Sulla's military campaigns he waged total war against the Samnites. According to Strabo he slaughtered thousands of them and "would not stop making proscriptions until either he had destroyed all Samnitae of importance or banished them from Italy." Strabo further adds that after Sulla's campaign, the cities of the region had been 175 reduced to villages and others vanished entirely (Strab. 5.4.11). Beyond the eradication of several Samnite cities, the act of declaring war on Rome had finally succeeded for the Italians where legislative attempts had failed. The allies had been awarded citizenship, but the power of their vote was reduced by shifting them to new tribes that voted last.

Dual identities: Between Roman and Italic
With citizenship granted throughout Italy after the war, it might appear that integration into the Roman state, legally, culturally, religiously and linguistically had finally begun, but in actuality Rome had influenced its neighbors for many years.
Grants of citizenship at the end of the Social War should be considered as just one aspect of integration into the Roman cultural and legal world, albeit a very important one. For M.H. Crawford, the mass enfranchisement of Italy was just one part of a long process of the "Romanization of Italy and the 'Italianization' of Rome." 256 In his assessment, both Italians and Romans hybridized one another and formed a new culture. Although as argued in chapter four, this new hybridized identity had a strong Roman bent. However, Italians had also contributed cultural features to the Romans that later became critical to Roman identity, such as the toga. Once an Italian wide dress, it was later co-opted as a strong marker of Roman identity and citizenship (Verg. Aen. 1.281-5).
How Italians and Romans hybridized cultures is captured by a few Roman authors, particularly Aulus Gellius' in his work Attic Nights. In this work, Gellius muses about Roman poet Quintus Ennius who lived in Italy between the third and 176 second centuries BCE. Ennius was raised in three different language communities and always used say "he had three hearts, because he knew how to speak in Greek and Oscan and Latin" (Gel. 17.17.1). For Ennius, languages each represented an identity and spiritual home and the era he lived in featured an Italian world that was still very diverse. Thus his three hearts represent one route of hybridization, where an individual does not fully identify as a member of a single tribe, city or nation, but instead crosses between them. In the generations after his life Rome came to further dominate Italy. If Gellius' descendants experienced a changing Italian world like the inhabitants of Umbria, whose funerary inscriptions had become progressively more Latinized with each passing generation, 257 then his later descendants had probably replaced those triple or dual hearts with a singular more Roman looking heart.
While cultural hybridization and Romanization were discussed at length in chapter four, it is useful to examine the process once more as it occurred within cities and regions that rebelled from Rome in the Social War. Despite fierce opposition to Rome from peoples such as the Samnites, the long period of inter-Italian peace after the Second Punic War fostered significant Romanization. This was magnified by the four or five generations of Italian allies that fought side by side with Romans in dozens of global wars; the evidence of their growing Romanization then appears in the archeological and numismatic records of the same time period. One of the peoples who revolted during the Social War were the Umbri, who resided in the Umbrian region of Italy east of Latium. The Umbri began to write in Latin throughout the second century BCE and Roman influence had become so strong that Latin had 177 replaced the Umbrian language in cases of public usage. 258 One example is a public inscription of multiple public works projects completed in the city of Asisium from the second century BCE. The announcement listed details of the upgrades, which included the construction of a new cistern, wall and arch, but the inscriptions were all in written in Latin. 259 This was well before the Social War and cases like this were not isolated, they occurred in multiple allied Umbrian cities throughout the same period.
Despite public usage, the Umbrian language had not died completely and local officials still often utilized their native language and traditional titles. Taking credit for these public works were six politicians who utilized their Umbrian title of marones, however, their titles were still recorded in Latin script. 260 It is a telling case of hybridization that once more bends toward Roman, as the public use of Latin indicates widespread use of the language. However, Umbrian was still utilized in daily life but it come to be written in the Latin script. Wallace-Hadrill argues this mix of language proves that "Umbrian was still fully alive as the local language..." but that the magistrates of Asisium preferred the "public image of their town should follow their Latin neighbors." 261 In the Social War most of Umbria was not part of the original revolt but they joined the Samnites and Marsi in rebellion shortly thereafter, along with parts of Etruria. As their participation in the rebellion was minimal, they were amongst the first groups granted full citizenship at war's outset in 90 BCE. Afterward, they quit the fight and joined with Rome having achieved a voice, at least theoretically, in Roman political decisions.
While the Umbrians were a "weak hand" in the Social War, quickly supplicated with citizenship, the Marsi and Samnites were not and these two groups were the heart of a fierce revolt. Despite this, they had also hybridized Latin and Roman cultural features to a significant degree. At wars' outbreak, M.H. Crawford argues the Samnites still mostly spoke their native Oscan and wrote in their own alphabet. However, the Marsi were already writing and speaking Latin by this time. 262 Even the preference for Oscan amongst the Samnites in the years before and during the Social War must be examined more closely as it betrays growing bilingualism. The rebellious allies had struck their own coins during the conflict in an effort to express their differences from Rome and to advocate for the new state of Italia they hoped forge in victory. One such coin portrayed an Italian bull trampling a Roman wolf, which appears on the surface to be a strongly anti-Roman image. 263 However, the Oscan language on the coin is written in Latin script, something Wallace-Hadrill believes shows a level of ambivalence about their own language at that point; "they use Latin, too, because it is in fact their common tongue." 264 To this he adds the coinage was a mirror image of Roman coinage "in its weight and denomination, in its designs and in its circulation pattern. At the very moment of expression of difference, the anti-Romans prove to be cast in a Roman mould." 265 It seems their differences with Rome were more about politics than they were about any type of cultural clash. Yes, I maintain that he and all people from small towns have two countries, one by nature and the other by citizenship.... But the one which takes its name from the state as a whole should have first place in our affections. That is the country for which we should be willing to die, to which we should devote ourselves heart and soul, and on whose altar we should dedicate and consecrate all that is ours. Yet the one which gave us birth is dear to us in a way not very different from that which took us in (Cic. Rep. 2.5-6).
While Cicero is an elite and thus his opinion cannot always be asserted to represent the sentiments of the average person, his dialogue here may very well be representative. Like many Italians of the first century BCE, regional loyalty was important, however, the impact of Rome on all Italians was significant. The impact is evident in regional shifts from purely native languages and cultures to hybridizations of Latin and Roman culture, driven in part by the economic influence of Rome.
Another feature yet to be discussed was the vast network of Roman roads, which also acted as an agent of Romanization. Wallace-Hadrill argues this vast network of consular roads, trunk roads and side roads that connected most of Italy facilitated "exchange and interconnections of all types..." and "that such exchanges increased in scale and social spread" over time. 270 For Cicero and other Italians in the first century BCE, the entire Roman system and all its economic and military features had been altering other Italian cultures for hundreds of years.
For those who had held citizenship prior to the Social War, Rome came to challenge even hometown loyalty due these citizens full access to the Roman state, hence Cicero's conflict. The effects of integration with Rome over many generations had forged individuals who looked and acted Roman, spoke Latin, practiced a common religion and soon came to identify themselves as Romans. It was the nation many had fought for, that paid them (in the case of soldiers and magistrates) and featured publicly celebrated religious festivals synced by calendars across Italy.
Through these processes and changes, the Roman state had become a nation that eventually usurped regional identities in the minds of it citizens. It then led to Romans such as Cicero, or the Latin allies in the midst of the Second Punic War, who were willing to devote themselves to, and even die for Rome (Cic. Rep. 2.5-6).
The end result of the Social War and the long process of Romanization was a unified Italy, one in which Roman language and culture eventually superseded local 182 identities. Within 60 years of war's end, Augustus began promoting these relatively new Roman citizens of greater Italy to equestrian ranks and government positions over the Roman nobiles (descendants of consular houses) of old. Italians had long been on a path to Roman national identity, but many lacked legal recourse until after the passage of the Lex Julia and related citizenship laws in 90 BCE. With legal rights and regional cultural identities quickly Romanizing after the Social War, the integration of Italy into the Roman nation was nearly complete.

Augustus and the creation of Roman Italia
In Ronald Syme's seminal work, The Roman Revolution, he suggests the true victor in the final portion of the Roman civil war between future emperor Augustus and rival claimant Mark Antony "was not Rome alone but Italy, perhaps Italy more than Rome, that prevailed in the War of Actium." 271 He further argues that Augustus' final victory in the naval battle of Actium off the coast of Greece in 31 BCE represented a victory "of the Caesarian party over the nobiles," so Augustus' victory was not his alone but also belonged to the lesser wealthy of all Italy as opposed to just Romans. 272 Under the new regime, Augustus greatly expanded access to the order of equites (knights) to all Italians, which in turn came with increased power in the Senate, councils and government offices. Augustus began this shift by reducing the Senate from 1,000 to 800 in 28 BCE. This eliminated a major aspect of Sullan reforms that had restored power to the optimates, who had wanted to limit citizenship and keep power in the hands of Roman elites. In his reduction of the Senate, Augustus also cut out elements that had been loyal to Antony or those he did not trust . 271 Syme 2002, 453. 272 Syme 2002, 453. 183 He then further reduced the Senate down to 600 total members and banned all senators from leaving Italy, unless by his command. Actions that further reduced any chances of a politician going off to a province and leading another revolt as Antony had done (Dio Cass. 52.6). In a corresponding move, Augustus increased the number of hereditary nobility by adding several families to the patrician order, swelling their ranks with a new permanent elite who now owed their success, and thus loyalty, to Augustus (Dio Cass. 52.5). Yet the biggest change was Augustus' decision to greatly expand the equestrian order, who were a secondary tier aristocratic order underneath the hereditary patricians (although patricians could also be equestrians).
In Cassius Dio's Roman History, the historian invents a speech that Marcus Agrippa, Augustus' most loyal general and advisor, gave to Augustus to talk him down from surrendering his dictatorship and returning control to the Senate. Agrippa's speech also advocates for the expansion of the equestrian order to all Italians (Dio Cass. 52.19.4). "Surrendering" the dictatorship was something Augustus acted out often, frequently denying he wanted to be dictator, but it was a mere façade. An example of his empty refusals of singular rule even appear on Augustus' self-written funerary monument, the Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Inscribed on stone, bronze and marble in cities throughout the entire Roman Empire and recording his life's works, one line of the inscription reads: "When the dictatorship was offered to me, both in my presence and my absence, by the people and Senate, when Marcus Marcellus and Lucius Arruntius were consuls, I did not accept it" (Aug. RG 5). Augustus never truly considered surrendering his position of course. Instead he acted in the role of the "good" humble Roman who did not want sole rule, just like Cincinnatus before him. In Dio's narrative, after Agrippa talks Augustus down from surrendering power, he tells Augustus that he should enroll men from all districts of Italy, utilizing only their wealth and excellence as criteria for knighthood. Not "Romanness" or connections to old families. He further explains that Augustus should add "as many new members in both classes as you please, without being over particular on the score of their number" (Dio Cass. 52.19.4). The goal of this action is then clearly laid out, a design to permanently secure the new principate: For the more men of repute you have as your associates, the easier you will find it, for your own part, to administer everything in time of need and, so far as your subjects are concerned, the more easily will you persuade them that you are not treating them as slaves or as in any way inferior to us, but that you are sharing with them, not only all the other advantages which we ourselves enjoy, but also the chief magistracy as well, and thus make them as devoted to that office as if it were their own (Dio Cass. 52.19.4).
Although a fictionalized speech it matches the reality of Augustus' actions. He reduced the old nobility in numbers and power, then promoted homines novi, or new men, into both the order of patricians and equestrians. In his victory in the Roman Civil War, Augustus had quelled years of political unrest, rolled back the political victories of the optimates for the final time but in so doing ended the Republic entirely. Hanging in the balance throughout the first century were the former Italian allies, granted full citizenship by 89 BCE, but their access to equestrian ranks and the Senate were cut off. A second part of Dio's dialogue addresses this issue, and further suggests the expansion of the equestrian order to Italians should continue: ...I declare that the citizens ought every one actually to be given a share in the government, in order that, being on an equality with us in this respect also, they may be our faithful allies, living as it were in a single city, namely our own, and considering that this is in very truth a city, whereas their own homes are but the countryside and villages (Dio Cass. 52.19.6).
Within this part of Agrippa's speech is a reference to how Italians, after further integration into Roman administrative positions and social orders, will come to view themselves. With their new equality, Dio believes all Italians will feel as if living in a "single city, namely our own," or more clearly, that all Italians should feel as if they are members of the Roman nation also, despite that their homes "are but the countryside and villages" (Dio Cass. 52.19.6). Many ancient writers struggle to vocalize the terminology of nations and nationalism, as it was not yet part of academic discourse. However, this does not mean a Roman nation did not exist, rather authors simply struggled with the terminology of how to describe a unified state with a common culture, shared myths, a historic homeland and common laws, all the features of a nation.
Dio's dialogue is a perfect example of this. He was writing his history of Rome from the second and third century CE, thus may also have been projecting his perceptions of the unified Italy he resided within, into the past. Regardless, he clearly believes that grants of citizenship alongside equal access to the Roman system turned formerly disparate Italians into Roman nationals as if all members of a "single city" (Dio Cass. 52.19.6). This suggests the rural cities and villages of Italy became parts of a greater Roman nation as a result of citizenship and Augustan actions. In Dio's Agrippa dialogue he finds Italy had in fact become a nation at that moment, even though he lacks the terminology, classing it as a singular city. However, it is worthwhile to suggest again that Rome was already a smaller nation at this time, but that Augustan changes started a shift to an Italian-wide nation, one with Rome at its 186 core. The Italians now came into parity, or perhaps even dominance, over the old Roman elite and their stake in society and loyalty to the system grew. Hence the Roman nation, existent but limited to a limited territorial area and group of citizens, had grown into what Dio effectively labels an Italian-wide nation.
In Augustus' actions was the full extension of a Roman nation previously isolated to Rome, parts of central Italy and wherever people held citizenship. These changes went beyond the extension of citizenship won by the allies in the Social War by expanding access to Roman social orders to all Italians. This in turn increased their access to governmental positions that were now based more on merit, no matter their home region. Augustus' reign also saw the eradication of the Republic, which reduced the power of the old elites, but in turn Augustus had granted broader access to a new group Italians who were previously excluded from power. It is important to note these changes succeeded in expanding access to a system formerly restricted to a limited group, but that the underlying engine of Roman rule was not radically altered. Syme argues oligarchy operated behind the scenes of both the Republic and Empire. Thus he recognizes that in the Augustan revolution "the power of the old governing class was broken, its composition transformed. Italy and the non-political orders in society triumphed over Rome and Roman aristocracy. Yet the old framework and categories subsist: a monarchy rules through an oligarchy." 273

Conclusion
Rome never had a centralized policy to forge a cohesive state or nation. There was no master plan executed by successive governments to achieve this. Regardless, their social, religious and political actions from the fourth through third centuries fostered strong cultural bonds in Latium and parts of central Italy. The end result was an extremely loyal population of citizen and allies that eventually saw themselves as members of a Roman nation and behaved as such, willing to fight to the death even when they had the option to escape the scenario. The loyalty of this initial block of citizens and allies gave Rome a massive and reliable recruitment stream that could not be matched by Carthage, Macedon, the Seleucid empire or any other power of equal military strength that Rome clashed with. While some of Rome's enemies met the criteria of a nation, none had been as inclusive as Rome, granting citizenship to ethnically dissimilar peoples regardless of home region. Nor were all ancient states as lenient with allies.
Rome certainly ran into conflicts with its allies, as they did in the Social War, but those allies had not been forced to levy more soldiers than Rome provided itself and they were also allowed a share in war plunder. The allies were also never taxed to the extreme levels that other states, such as Carthage, taxed their subjects. It was perhaps the Italian allies close proximity to full Roman citizens within Italy that made their more limited rights appear worse by comparison. If their Italian neighbors could appeal political decisions and hold a greater stake in overseas conquests, then only in contrast did the allies appear to have a bad deal. In comparison, a Libyan subject of Carthage would have loved to live under the more benevolent Roman alliance system, but then their situation was far more dire. Of course the most rebellious peoples of the Social War, the Samnites, still met a violent end at the hands of Sulla, so Rome did not always dole out citizenship or alliances to the their former enemies.

188
Examining the exclusion of Italians from citizenship after Hannibal's defeat, Wallace-Hadrill argues that Italian elites had done very well economically and socially under Roman expansion through the early first century BCE. So they were incredibly angered "not to be treated as equals by the Roman elite," holding only the limited rights of their allied status. 274 However, the situation of the Italian allies was temporary and grants of citizenship gave them recognition under Roman law, which in turn made all Italy legally Roman. Their new legal rights merged into societies that had been experiencing Romanization over multiple generations, so that when all Italy became legally unified, regional languages and traditions faded quickly. Latin then became dominant and regional traditions and cultural practices merged with Roman cultural features.
When Augustus became monarch for life, not only did he promote Italians over Romans, but his actions also represented the final eradication of tribal and regional divisions that had dominated Italy for a millennium. As part of Empire wide reforms, Augustus then divided Italy into eleven administrative regions that cut through the old tribal regions of Italy. The act legally rendered the former tribal and regional splits of Italy into relics of the past. The administrative divisions included the placement of "Ligurian Luna in Etruria, Campanian and Samnite Caudium in Apulia [and] Latin Tibur in Samnium." 275 He then set out to further solidify Italy by establishing twenty-eight colonies throughout the country, as he proudly recorded on his Res Gestae (Aug. RG 28). To this Suetonius adds that Augustus constructed many public buildings in each of these colonies and granted them some degree of "equal 189 rights and dignity with the city of Rome" by devising a system of fair voting for local city office positions (Suet. Aug. 46). Votes were then carried to Rome under seal to ensure fairness. While Rome was now a principate, elections as mentioned by Suetonius still occurred on a local level. Just as Augustus had rolled the Italians more equitably into the Roman system, he also made sure these new colonies had both the appearance of Rome via public buildings, and rights on par with the city of Rome. It continued to foster the image that everyone was part of the new Italian nation. Old regional divisions did not matter nor would Italic peoples or colonists be made to suffer with lesser rights or statuses.
Augustus' effort to repopulate Italy with Roman citizen and veteran colonies further pushed the final cultural assimilation of Italy. In those colonies Augustus constructed buildings and temples in Roman architectural styles, furthering the conception of the imagined community amongst the citizenry who now lived in cities that looked Roman and visited other cities that looked Roman also. As Roman style architecture expanded across Italy and the wider Empire, it must have seemed if every major city was just another part of greater Rome. In addition, the Italian allies of old, now full national members, came to know of fellow citizens who held Roman offices and could also aspire to them. All while the inhabitants of any Italian city could follow along with the ludi and religious holidays of Rome via their locally installed Fasti, creating a sense of simultaneity and imagined community with between Rome and all other Italian cities.
The colonies of Romans and former soldiers were often designed as "mini-Romes" even down to precise copies of Roman religious ceremonies. Beard, North and Price indicate the founding of a colony included rites that were taken from Romulus' mythical founding of Rome: "the auspices were taken and -like Romulus in the well-known myth -the founder ploughed a furrow round the site, lifting the plough where the gates were to be; within this boundary, which replicated the pomerium of Rome, no burials could be made..." and the land within the pomerium,   Beard, North, and Price 1998, 2:244. these pontifices and augures...be guaranteed freedom from military service and compulsory obligations in the same way as the pontifex is and shall be in Rome." 277 The founding of each new colony, when marked in this fashion and in copying Roman religious laws, made these colonies a literal extension of Rome.
As previously discussed, architecture in the cities and colonies of Italy had also been developing a Roman appearance throughout the first century BCE. Monumental Roman architecture, which eventually sprung up far beyond peninsular Italy in Gaul, Iberia, and North Africa had a dramatic effect on the local populace. When Roman style architecture was constructed outside of Rome and combined with Roman inscriptions, the effect could further reinforce the inhabitant's status as a member of a larger Roman community. The Res Gestae of Augustus was one such inscription that had been installed in stone and bronze on monuments and temples throughout Italy and the Empire. While it has been estimated only 15 percent of Romans were fully literate by the first century CE when the Res Gestae was first installed, Suna Guvan argues it was no longer "a static record chiseled in stone." Instead it touched the senses of the passerby, whether literate themselves or having it read aloud to him. 278 Further, Guvan argues architecture was a critical element in constructing the Roman imagined community: Whenever he passed by the temple or visited it on special occasions, the quotidian presence of the monumental building with its inscribed walls would be elevated to something larger than itself through the mingling of abstract and concrete reality. In this way, the beholder was every day brought into contact with the larger reality of the empire of which he was a part, and was linked with its founder, whom he had probably never seen and had little prospect of ever seeing. 279 Thus architecture and public inscriptions further served to develop a sense of a singular nation, linking individual citizens in far flung cities to Rome, even if they would never visit the city. They could rest assured that their surroundings looked like the surroundings of other Roman cities that also had similar religious temples and practices. Augustus, in his installation of the Res Gestae across Italy and the Mediterranean world, perhaps even took on the role of a new mythical founder in the way Aeneas and Romulus were for earlier Italians. Augustus was deified in death after all, and the Res Gestae made his story accessible to even more people than the stories of Aeneas or Romulus had been. Just as he had brought all Italy into the Roman fold, the list of accomplishments of a now deified Augustus perhaps helped to forge a new element of shared myth history for Italians in the era after his death.
As Eckstein has argued, Roman military tactics, the size of their armed forces and even their diplomacy all found parallels with other powers in the ancient world. In that regard, Rome was no different from anyone else, so what made them different?
What gave the Romans a secure base of recruitment that other states and nations could not muster? The answer becomes evident in the wake of Hannibal's devastating string of victories at the outset of the Second Punic War. After Hannibal had wiped out an estimated 100,000 soldiers and leading magistrates in just two years of warfare, non-Roman citizens and allies continued to meet their levy requirements, even when given the opportunity to quit the war directly by Hannibal. In the words of Gat the environment had become one of an "explosive devotion and willingness to sacrifice 279 Güven 1998, 40. 193 and die for their ethnic and national collective." 280 This "greater" Rome continued to supply soldiers in a way Carthaginian mercenary forces could not match, defeated them after sixteen years of warfare and then continued on to conquer much of the Mediterranean world in approximately sixty total years. When we then look at what was behind the national unity manifest here, we find that Roman citizenship and diplomatic policies, co-option of foreign cults, and ensuing Romanization over many centuries had fostered intense loyalty.
The nation was small at first, isolated to cities near Rome and the Roman colonies, but it was intensely loyal and showed definitive markers of nationhood. By the second century BCE, Rome had added most of Italy to its dominion and although devoid of citizenship rights, Romanization extended over multiple generations forging culturally similar peoples with further bonds of loyalty to one another. In the Social War, Italy found a more complete unity, but Italians were still excluded from full integration. Augustus made the final transformation official and all of Italy was now legally and culturally integrated, with equal access to state apparatus and social orders for anyone of property and merit. No longer was membership in old Roman families or connections to political legacies required to advance within the Roman system.
Most importantly, Augustan changes signaled a transition from the city of Rome as the key component of a more limited Roman nation to an Italian nation with the city of Rome at its core.

Major theories and key definitions
The academic discourse surrounding nationalism can be a hodgepodge of confusing terminology and theories that often makes discussion of the topic at hand, whether a nation exists, difficult to assess. Therefore it is useful to briefly examine some of the major theories that have been developed in the study of nations and nationalism. Amongst the major paradigms created by political scientists and historians to describe the formation and development of nations are primordialism, perennialism, ethno-symbolism and modernism. These terms are not self-explanatory to a general reader or even an academic reader from an unrelated field, so it is necessary to offer a brief and simplified synopsis of each.
Primordialism: Primordialist thought has changed over the past two centuries, but operates from a general premise that nations are a naturally occurring phenomenon in human social groupings. The original primordialists of the 19th and early 20th centuries believed nations had always existed as an intrinsic, natural phenomenon down through the earliest human groupings, even prior to the development of agriculture. 281 Under that very large umbrella, many societies could be classified as a nation. However, there was a second wave of the primordialist discourse that more clearly defined "natural phenomenon" as common cultural ties of "kinship, custom, 195 religion and language" amongst a group. 282 Modern academics, such as Steven Grosby believe these cultural traits underpin certain societies, and when a society possesses these traits in addition to a "historic" home territory, that group can constitute a nation regardless historical era. 283 Perennialism: The advocates of this paradigm believe nations have existed for a very long time, back to the ancient or medieval periods, but not as far back as the original primordialists argued. There are two schools of perennialist thought, one of continuous perennialism which argues some "nations are immemorial" and have continued in an unbroken line from the ancient to modern world. As an example of ancient nations existent through the present, perennialists cite the Armenians, Jews and Persians, but Rome rarely appears in their arguments. 284 There are also very few "nations," if any, that meet the criteria of existing in an unbroken chain for a thousand years or more. The second school of perennialist thought agrees with this and believes that nations are cyclical rather than permanent and "continually emerge and dissolve, flourish and disappear, in every period and continent." 285 Modernism: Modernists believe nations are a recently constructed phenomenon, mostly appearing during and after the Enlightenment period of the 18th century. To this modernists add that nationalism and the construction of nation requires printing presses, capitalism, the modern bureaucratic state and mass literacy, which they believe is the only way nationalist ideology can spread throughout the all 282 Smith 2008, 6-7. 283 Smith 2008, 7. 284 Hutchison and Smith 2000, xxviii. 285 Hutchison and Smith 2000, xxviii. 196 levels of society. 286 They argue these specific elements are required because in their assessment, the gaps between the elites and peasant masses prior to the 15th century were so extreme that there was no way for an average person to conceptualize their membership in a greater nation, nor see themselves as part of a shared nation with those of other social classes. 287 Ethno-symbolism: This paradigm was developed entirely by sociologist Anthony Smith, has a much more open definition of nation than the modernist school.
Smith argues there are several historic examples that undermine the "theoretical basis" of the modernist viewpoint and prove there are ancient nations. 288 His construct suggests that "cultural elements of myth, symbol, memory, value and tradition" are the underlying building blocks of nation, which contrasts with modernisms very specific criteria and allows for the existence of pre-modern nations. 289 To this underlying criteria, Smith argues a nation must possess a historic homeland, real or imagined via myth, have common rights and duties for all members, a distinctive public culture, shared myths of origin and self-definition. He clarifies this point further, indicating an ethnic group does not constitute a nation by default, but that a core ethnic group is often the original creator of a nation and created its shared myths, symbols and values.
However, later generations of a nation typically alter the beliefs of the former ethnic core (but do not eradicate them entirely) and in several cases, no longer even belong to the same ethnicity as the original group. 290