Making the Middle Republic: New Approaches to Rome and Italy, c.400-200 BCE

During the fourth and third centuries BCE, Roman expansion into Italy reshaped the peninsula's Archaic societies and prompted new political relationships, new economic practices, and new sociocultural structures. Rural landscapes and urban spaces throughout Latium saw intensified use amidst novel principles of land management, animal husbandry, and architectural design. This book offers fresh perspectives on these transformations by embracing a wide range of approaches to Middle Republican history. Chapters take up topics and methods ranging from fiscal sociology, bioarchaeology, comparative slaveries, field survey, art and architectural history, numismatics, elite mobility, and beyond. An emphasis is placed on how developments in this period reshaped not only Rome, but also other Latin and Italian societies in complex and often multilinear ways. The volume promotes the Middle Republic as a period whose full dynamism is best appreciated at the intersection of diverse lines of inquiry.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: a middle in the making Seth Bernard, Lisa Mignone and Dan-el Padilla Peralta; 2. Italian descent in middle Republican Roman magistrates: the flipside of the conquest Parrish Wright and Nicola Terrenato; 3. The long shadow of tributum in the long fourth century James Tan; 4. Paying for conquest in the early middle republic Nathan Rosenstein; 5. Building up slaveries in ancient Italy and the central Sudan Walter Scheidel; 6. The strangeness of Rome's early heavy bronze Liv M. Yarrow; 7. Rural transformation in middle republican central Italy: the archaeological perspective Tymon de Haas; 8. Towards an agroecology of the Roman expansion: republican agriculture and animal husbandry in context Angela Trentacoste and Lisa Lodwick; 9. No longer archaic, not yet Hellenistic: urbanism in transition Domenico Palombi; 10. On architecture's agency in fourth-century Rome Penelope J. E. Davies; 11. Becoming historical in Oscan Campania Seth Bernard; 12. Becoming political: middle republican quandaries Christopher Smith.

About the Author :
SETH BERNARD is Associate Professor of Roman History in the Department of Classics at the University of Toronto. His work focuses on the social and economic history of Rome and Italy, particularly during the Republican period. He is the author of Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy (2018). LISA MARIE MIGNONE is a research affiliate at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Her research examines Roman social, cultural, and religious geography: the ongoing and interactive relationship of historical events, the sites in which they occur, and the people who perform them. She is the author of The Republican Aventine and Rome's Social Order (2016). DAN-EL PADILLA PERALTA is Associate Professor of Classics, and associated faculty in African American Studies, at Princeton University. His main lines of research are Roman Republican religious and cultural history, the history of slavery, and classicisms in the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. He is the author of Divine Institutions: Religions and Community in the Middle Roman Republic (2020).

Review :
'… samples of excellent research on … disparate and demanding topics.' T. P. Wiseman, Times Literary Supplement 'This erudite work proposes answers to many gaps in early Roman history … Highly recommended.' A. J. Papalas, Choice '… the volume … is very successful. It contains a considerable number of contributions that successfully pursue the goal of meaningfully synthesizing the complex state of research, raising larger questions and offering convincing perspectives for a constructive overview of archaeological facts and historical processes.' Bernhard Linke, H-Soz-Cult