Plan Of The Sanctuary At Pietrabbondante (c. 100-91 B.C.). The grandest of the Sammte religious centres of the Republican period
testifies to the wealth achieved by Italian merchants and bankers shortly before the Social War. The arrangement of a temple
axially placed behind and overlooking a theatre is typical of central-Italian sanctuaries at this time.
That is not to say that there were no shepherds. And the combination of the Italian climate - hot dry summers and cold wet winters -
with Italian geography - river and coastal plains and high mountains - meant that sheep farming took on a characteristic form found
elsewhere in the Mediterranean. This involved pasture in the lowlands, often on farmland where grain had been harvested, from late
summer till spring, and in the high mountains on grassland watered by melting snow for the hot season. Such a system, known as
transhumance, might simply involve moving flocks up and down the side of a single valley; or it might involve movement over
long distances, from winter pasture in Apulia, for instance, to summer pasture in the central Appennine mountains, when political
conditions made this possible.