Sicily has been the fulcrum of the Mediterranean throughout history. The island’s central geographical position and its status as ancient Rome’s first overseas province make it key to understanding ...the development of the Roman Empire. Yet Sicily’s crucial role in the empire has been largely overlooked by scholars of classical antiquity, apart from a small number of specialists in its archaeology and material culture. Urbanism and Empire in Roman Sicily offers the first comprehensive English-language overview of the history and archaeology of Roman Sicily since R. J. A. Wilson’s Sicily under the Roman Empire (1990). Laura Pfuntner traces the development of cities and settlement networks in Sicily in order to understand the island’s political, economic, social, and cultural role in Rome’s evolving Mediterranean hegemony. She identifies and examines three main processes traceable in the archaeological record of settlement in Roman Sicily: urban disintegration, urban adaptation, and the development of alternatives to urban settlement. By expanding the scope of research on Roman Sicily beyond the bounds of the island itself, through comparative analysis of the settlement landscapes of Greece and southern Italy, and by utilizing exciting evidence from recent excavations and surveys, Pfuntner establishes a new empirical foundation for research on Roman Sicily and demonstrates the necessity of including Sicily in broader historical and archaeological studies of the Roman Empire.
Although Strabo provides lengthy accounts of Troy and Rome in the Geography, the role of these cities in his geographical thinking has received little attention from scholars. This article argues ...that for Strabo, Rome and Troy serve as exemplars of the progression of human civilization from Homeric prehistory to the Augustan present. They are paradigmatic “rising” and “fallen” cities, through which the lifecycles of all cities in the oikoumenē can be understood. Moreover, in his treatment of the fall of Troy and the rise of Rome, Strabo departs from his Augustan-era contemporaries by illustrating the historical interactions of each city with its respective region, rather than Rome’s purported Trojan origins. In describing Rome’s expansion into Latium (Book Five) and the post-Trojan War history of the Troad (Book Thirteen), Strabo emphasizes the mutability of urban landscapes through the destruction of existing cities and the creation of new ones – two processes in which Rome has played a significant role, and which continue to shape human settlement across the oikoumenē.
If Verres' successor, L. Metellus, or other patroni would not assist them, they could expect that other ambitious and influential Romans-Cicero and perhaps indirecdy, Pompey himself-would be willing ...to do so.55 Previous prosecutions of governors of Sicily in the quaestio de repetundis had a mixed record of success, and even after Cicero's victory, the amount that was actually recovered from Verres was probably small. ...for Sicilians and other provincials, having their day in court in Rome was perhaps not as important as the consolidation of relationships with powerful Romans-and thus their own standing within and beyond their communities-that the mounting of an extortion prosecution entailed.56 Cicero's account of his treatment in Syracuse on his evidence-gathering trip earlier in 70 b.c. illustrates this fluidity of allegiances: shortly after they had attempted to tear down their monuments of Verres (2.160), the members of the council commissioned a monument for Cicero (in the form of a bronze decree commemorating his hospitium publice), in a meeting in the bouleuterion where statues of Verres and his son still stood (5.142-145).57
Cicero obscures or disparages Verres' interactions with Sicilians during his governorship. However, a close reading reveals extensive, voluntary cooperation between individuals, communities, and ...Roman administrators in legal and economic affairs, and shows how such collaborative relationships could break down (to the governor's detriment) in the competitive atmosphere of thepolis.
The focus of this chapter is the Sicilian cities in which the process of deurbanization reached its climax between the mid-first century bc and the mid-first century AD. The first few decades of this ...period were eventful for Sicily. Following Sextus Pompey’s occupation and war with the triumvirs (43–36 bc), the province was brought firmly into the Augustan empire, and the princeps himself visited the island again in 21 BC to “settle affairs” there.¹ More broadly, this also was the key century for the development of a distinctly Roman urbanism, in which the consolidation of the Roman Mediterranean empire
THE SOUTHWESTERN COAST Pfuntner, Laura
Urbanism and Empire in Roman Sicily,
01/2019
Book Chapter
The two preceding chapters have described deurbanization as a significant and complex phenomenon in Roman imperial Sicily. The classical polis ceased to be a significant form of settlement in many ...regions but especially along the southern coast and in the more isolated sections of the mountainous interior. In other parts of Sicily, however, cities remained a vital part of the settlement landscape. This chapter and the next two chapters examine several of these cities, with a particular focus on their place in the emerging urban hierarchy of the early Principate.
In Sicily, like the rest of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean, the
THE NORTHEASTERN COAST Pfuntner, Laura
Urbanism and Empire in Roman Sicily,
01/2019
Book Chapter
The cities examined here and in the next chapter share several features. Like Lilybaeum and Agrigentum, all (except possibly Tyndaris) remained in occupation until the end of antiquity and sometimes ...beyond. Despite vicissitudes in their postantique histories—including volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and warfare—all (except Tyndaris) remain vital urban centers today, complicating the reading of their ancient archaeological records.
All of these cities are located on or near the eastern, Ionian coast of Sicily, in regions with long histories of Greek colonial settlement that remained outside Carthage’s sphere of influence in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. In general they
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