In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

chapter eight Crisis and Restoration, 91–70 h rome had faced a grave crisis in Italy during the Second Punic War, but the Italian War fought between 91 and 89 was far more calamitous. In the only war of record the Romans faced a genuine manpower shortage; two consuls in consecutive years were killed in battle; and for the duration senators in Rome laid aside their togas to wear military dress instead. Roman and Italian armies collided in battle after battle, devastating the settled landscape of central and southern Italy as hundreds of thousands died. Writing one hundred years later, the historian Velleius Paterculus reported that three hundred thousand soldiers were lost on both sides; no one has counted the civilian dead.1 Velleius’s contemporary , the geographer Strabo, described ghost towns and villages in Etruria, Campania , and Samnium that were once flourishing market centers and communities. Inspired by the resolute demands of Rome’s Italian allies for full membership in the Roman state, the Italian War was unprecedented, forcing peoples who shared essentially the same cultural expectations and outlook to confront one another with violence. Long association with Rome had shaped Italian cultural expectations and outlook. Together over the centuries Italians and Romans had reached an accommodation to the social and economic changes introduced in Italy by Roman expansion. Together they had conquered the Mediterranean, sharing the experience of Roman military discipline and organization. In the months leading up to the outbreak of hostilities, Romans and Italians had served 324 harmoniously as comrades-in-arms in seven full-strength legions, perhaps as many as forty-two thousand Romans and eighty-four thousand allies, on Roman military fronts around the Mediterranean engaged in the joint venture of world conquest. Elite members of Italian communities and their Roman counterparts enjoyed a common base of wealth, status, and education. Although periodic grants of citizenship had for some time been made to limited numbers of Italian allies, as we have seen earlier, Romans were adamant in their opposition to granting citizenship to all Italians. The Italian War broke out because the fervid pursuit of full Roman citizenship on the part of Rome’s allies in Italy met an equally strong opposition on the part of the great majority of Romans. How could the predicament be resolved? This chapter and the next explore the interaction between public lawmaking and events over a period whose limits are set by significant historical events: the Italian War beginning in 91 and the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44. Conspicuous among the problems of this turbulent period are the widespread frictions accompanying the expanding Roman population. Conspicuous among the attempted solutions are the numerous public law proposals addressing a wide range of issues, the great majority dealing with the restoration of the Roman way as interpreted by different groups of elite Romans. The entry of new citizens into the pool from which political leaders emerged, intensified by the convulsive toll of war and civil war on the political leadership over the decade from 91 to 80, brought about a radical transformation in the numbers and composition of the oligarchy. The struggle to absorb unprecedented numbers of new citizens at all levels had profound consequences for customary ways. This transformation underlay changes in the public lawmaking arena, involving the politically obscure origins of many officeholders who proposed laws, the issues they presented to lawmaking assemblies, and the conduct of the assemblies. Thus a prime factor in these changes was the expansion of the Roman community accompanied by the attenuation of the traditional balance among the various tribes, classes, and status groups. This transition eventually led to the emergence of a new office, the “dictator for writing the laws and restoring the Roman state,” whose holders, first Sulla and next Caesar, for the first time appropriated the process by which the Roman people had acted in unison with duly elected officials to enact legitimate law. The typically infrequent use of the public lawmaking process for resolving otherwise intractable issues and crises was transformed as lawmaking became more frequent and highly politicized. For ambitious leaders, both those new men from less elevated background and men like Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar with a heightened sense of the linkages among different Roman groups, Crisis and Restoration, 91–70 325 public lawmaking provided an avenue to popular support and political advancement . Concurrently it became increasingly difficult to develop a community consensus on critical issues. Yet the deeply shared Roman faith in public lawmaking remained...

Share