A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean

Roman Elite Ethnicity 463

excluded was clearly the key contributing factor, and Roman sources are consistent in this
interpretation (e.g., Appian,Civil Wars1.34–8, Velleius Paterculus 2.15.2, and Florus
2.15). Surviving accounts of the Social War are written from a Roman perspective, but
there is evidence to suggest that the Italian communities involved took steps to assert
a collective, shared identity of their own in opposition to that of Rome. A rival capital,
Italica (Corfinium), was established, and coinage was minted representing a bull as the
symbol of the Italian allies, in direct confrontation with the wolf of Rome. The assertion
of an apparently independent identity from that of Rome is sometimes viewed as evi-
dence that the Italians aspired to win true autonomy and construct a distinct sociocultural
character for a new political reality. However, in the context created by the Roman repub-
lican elite, the assertion of distinctiveness does not contradict the full Roman citizenship
and participation by Italian aristocrats in Roman rule, which was the eventual outcome
of the struggle.
The Italian elites were, in fact, approaching the assertion of their ethnocultural iden-
tity in a manner that mirrored the approach of their Roman counterparts. The Romans
represented their own identity as encompassing multiple, largely Italian, genealogies and
traditions. The Italians allies might aspire to full incorporation within Rome, and even
to identify themselves as Romans, without compromising their ethnocultural distinctive-
ness. The Roman elite’s representation of their own and the Roman people’s ethnicity
had paved the way for such an accommodation. The war did not arise from a disruption
of the ethnic model imagined by the Roman elite. It expressed the victory and ultimate
dominance of that model.
One of the clearest attempts to articulate this accommodation of multiple identities
comes in the generation following the Social War and the extension of Roman citizenship
to all Italian communities. Cicero expresses the new circumstances of Italian enfranchise-
ment in terms of dual origins (dualpatriae):

Marcus[Cicero]: I really do think that he and all natives ofmunicipiahave two fatherlands,

one by nature and the other by citizenship, so that Cato, although he was born in Tus-

culum, was adopted into the citizenry of the Roman people; so, since he was Tusculan by

origin, Roman by citizenship, he had one fatherland from his place of birth, and another by

law....[W]etakeitthatbothwherewewerebornandwherewehavebeenadmittedare

our fatherlands. But that for which the name “Republic” signifies common citizenship must

be preeminent in our affection; it is on behalf of this fatherland that we have a duty to die, to

give our all, and to place at its disposal and, as it were, devote to it all that we have. But the

fatherland that nurtured us is not much less dear than that which adopted us. So I will never

deny that this place [Arpinum] is my fatherland, although the other is greater and contains

this one within it...he [the citizen of amunicipium] has [two] citizenships, but thinks of

them as one. Cicero,De Legibus2.2.5

It is telling that Cicero traces this model to the great Roman aristocrat,novus homoand
writer of theOrigines, Cato the Elder. Whether this is an accurate citation or not, it is clear
that the primary concern is with explaining and reconciling the multiple affiliations of the
Roman elite. Explanation in the form of a hierarchical duality may appear overly neat and