Tombstone From S. Angelo In Formis, near Capua (first half of first century B.C.), a good example of funerary sculpture in late-
Republican Italy. The general type of the commemorative relief has Greek antecedents, but the style of the figures is Italic, and the
motif of full-length portraits within a deep-sunk field particularly associated with the Capua region. In the panel below is a scene
interpreted as the sale of a slave. The inscription records that the stone was set up by the freedman M. Publilius Satyr for himself
and for his own freedman Stepanus.
If it is true that the period between Sulla and Augustus saw an enormous advance in the level of Romanization achieved, it remains
to ask why. The principal reason is to be sought in the process of veteran settlement between 59 and the early 20s B.C. Beginning
in 59 with the veterans from the eastern wars of Cn. Pompeius Magnus, enormous numbers of men, uprooted from their homes,
serving together for long periods, were settled in groups far from their place of birth. The consequence for the next generation was
the shattering of the existing social fabric both in the places of origin and in the communities where these men were settled. The
Italian society of the early Empire which resulted was perhaps the most important and the most lasting consequence of the Roman
revolution.
TOC