Magna Graecia in Roman times

The aim of my research project is to present a comprehensive study of the magistrates and institutions of the Italiote and Italian communities of southern Italy in Roman times (from the 1st cent. BC to the 1st/2 nd cent. AD). By granting citizenship after the Social War (91-88 BC) Rome created a new state that had to effectively organise and administer a considerably larger territory. This meant basically that the territories and state system of the new cives hat to be reorganised: their communities were transformed to municipia, self-administering subdivisions of the Roman state. The administrative independence was guaranteed by the presence of the quattuorviri, i.e. a group of four magistrates. How did the local governments react to the Romanization of their institutions that started after 90 BC? Are there any traces of the original local magistracies to be found within the new coloniae and municipia instituted by the Romans? The scientific quest for answers to such questions, that have been posed more often recently by historians as well as jurists at international symposia as well as in publications, is the aim of this project. Thus the possibility shall be created to reconstruct another important piece of the constitutional history of ancient Italy. Necessarily my study must start with a fundamental account of the local political systems. It is this method of research that will provide us with a complete picture of the essential institutional aspects and structures of the Italiote and Italian populations. Based on this account we will be able to proceed to comparison. Thus the work will consist of two major parts: the first of which will present a documentary collection of all the relevant sources (literary/epigraphical/numismatic/archaeological) for each single community. This collection will be the basis for the second part of the study, which is orientated towards theoretical and statistical questions. For each of the three territories (i.e. Campania, Lucania and Calabria) the following aspects will be presented in detail: number, chronology and types of the communities (municipia, coloniae, etc.) that have been instituted by the Romans; for how many and which of them the application of the given scheme of magistrates (quattuorviri, duoviri, etc.) can be shown, was absent or anomalous; the main characteristics and functions of the state-organs and magistracies, be the "canonical" or not. Up to now no extensive investigation in this way of this subject has been undertaken and this obvious gap shall be filled by the project, which fits well into a new field of international interest. Over the last decades the scientific community has turned its interest towards historical, cultural and sociological questions of the civilisation in ancient Italy apart from the Romans. The collection of all relevant testimonies on the forms of political organisation in Ancient Italy connected with a thorough analysis that will be presented for the first time in my study, will be of eminent benefit for all further studies in this field.

During the research project the political and constitutional history of the various Greek and Italic communities of southern Italy during the Roman times (from the 1st century BC to the 1st - 2nd century AD) was studied. Three years of research yielded the following results:1) The monograph/Habilitationsschrift: Gli statuti di Banzi e Taranto nella Magna Graecia del I secolo a.C., Reihe: Wiener Studien zu Geschichte, Recht und Gesellschaft, hrsg. von N. Benke, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. VII-XIII + 297, Map 1, Figures 5. The two charters, published together for the first time in a single volume - with Ital. translation and historical-juridical exegesis - are among the main epigraphic sources from Ancient Italy and Ancient World as well.2) The monograph: L.CAPPELLETTI F.SENATORE, A.Rosenberg, Lo Stato degli antichi Italici. Ricerche sulla costituzione originaria di Latini, Oschi ed Etruschi, Preface of C.Letta, Scienze e Lettere, Rome 2011, p. VII-XXI + 310, Plates 1-16. Pp. XV-175 contain my Italian translation with commentary, updated references and bibliography (from 1913 to 2010) of the book of A.Rosenberg, Der Staat der alten Italiker. Untersuchungen über die ursprüngliche Verfassung der Latiner, Osker und Etrusker (Berlin 1913).3) The monograph: La Magna Graecia in età romana. Ricerche su magistrature e istituzioni locali (I sec.a.C. - II sec.d.C.). ca. 300 Seiten, in preparation. For the first time all pertaining evidence - primarily literary and epigraphic sources - on the magistracies and institutions from all southern Italian municipia and coloniae was compiled and analysed, both on political-historical and juridical point of view. 4) Expansion and updating of the open-access bibliographic database Constitutions of Ancient Italy www.loredanacappelletti.it (set up in 2007 during the FWF project No. P16768-G02), currently the first and unique internet presence offering to students and researchers as well as to a broad general audience the complete specific literature - ca. 5000 titles - on the constitutional history of Etruscans, Italians and Italiotes and their individual communities in pre-Roman and Roman times, as well as on special topics such as "Social War", "Municipalization/Colonization/Romanization" in Italy and the provinces..5) The project and its results have been presented in various publications as well as on conferences, in seminars, lectures and through the website.