Romans, allies, and the struggle for the Roman citizenship, 91--77 BCE

During the decade of the 80s BCE (loosely defined, as it includes the years 91 as well as 80, 79, 78, and 77) a series of wars were fought on the Italian peninsula which left the Roman commonwealth in shambles and had brought about the means whereby that commonwealth would ultimately be destroyed. These wars have received some modern scholarly attention, as have the generals who fought them and the statesmen whose policies led to them; however, this scholarship has tended to focus on particular episodes from the decade rather than concentrate on the decade as a whole. Such a tendency would be understandable if there actually were no connections between the events in question, but in fact there is such a connection: what each incident has in common is that all of them involved efforts on the part of Rome's non-citizen Italian allies to obtain the rights of citizenship and to enhance and preserve them, endeavors to which the Romans responsible for these occurrences in the 80s were responding. The result is a lacuna in the edifice of modern scholarship which impedes a complete understanding of the Late Republic and its ultimate downfall.;The current project attempts to span this gap in understanding. To do so, it first attempts to define the nature of the problem by demonstrating that the Italian Allies did want the citizenship, and illustrating reasons for why this desire existed. It then describes how Rome's reluctance to grant their wish led to a war which the Italians lost, but lost in such a way that to secure peace the Romans were willing to grant them a form of partial citizenship. The Allies were not content with this, and their discontent was used by Roman politicians in a manner which ultimately led to several episodes of violence, as is also narrated. This unrest finally brought about a Civil War in which the Italians played a large part; that war, and its final outcome, is also examined.;Keywords: Allies (socii), Allied (Social) War, Roman Civil War, L. Cornelius Sulla, L. Cornelius Cinna...