The secessio of Rome’s
Allies in 91 BCE

Seth L. Kendall (University of Kentucky)

It seems to be the communis opinio of modern Roman historians that by 91 BCE Rome’s Italian allies held a strong desire to be admitted into the commonwealth as full-fledged, equal citizens, and that when this desire was frustrated upon the defeat of the franchise proposals of M. Livius Drusus, those Allies went to war with Rome. Why this belief has come about amongst modern scholars is not difficult to ascertain, as almost all of the sources which describe the motivations behind why the Allies took up arms note the desire for the citizenship specifically. What is, however, slightly less clear is why many of these selfsame modern historians believe that the desire for the citizenship which had caused the war was abandoned once pila were finally cast, and that when the war finally did come the Allies were fighting for independence. This would seem to involve a contradiction – the Allies, having so fervently wanted to become enfolded into the Roman state that they went to war when their wants were not gratified, nevertheless fought in that war to separate from the Romans completely – and yet many scholars claim that the sources provide evidence for such an assertion. These include the preparations which the Allies made, which included founding what seems to be a new capital and the electing of magistrates; supplemental evidence is found in their minting of coins, which is taken to indicate the construction of a new nation. Moreover, there are in the sources the use of words like libertas and ἐλευθέρια in describing Allied aims in the war itself, which is held to indicate a desire for independence. Finally, there are the Samnites and Lucani, two participants in the war against Rome who continued to stay in arms even after citizenship had been granted to all who gave in; at least these, it is argued, must have wanted independence.

However, this construction not only seems to postulate a fairly large shift in Allied thinking concerning what they wanted from Rome, but also runs quite afoul of the sources, not one of which directly states that the Allies who fought against the Republic (even the Samnites and Lucani) ever wanted independence. Indeed, many assert that they still wanted the citizenship even after the war had started (most notably Appian 1.6.49 and elsewhere, Diodorus Siculus 37.18, and Cicero’s Philippics, 12.27). If the Italian aims did therefore not change, as the sources seem to indicate, then they must always have wanted the citizenship and had taken up arms to get it; this is a different thing than fighting for independence, a course of action tried many times before but whose every historical antecedent had ended in terrible failure. Instead, it will be argued in this presentation that perhaps what the Allies were attempting was something new, something along the lines of a secessio similar to that which the plebs had attempted centuries earlier, in 494. During that event the plebs had essentially attempted to withdraw their presence and, importantly, their military manpower from Rome in the attempt to extort from them enhanced rights, but had to be prepared in case their plan should backfire and they be given an unwanted separation. So, it could be argued, did the Italians, and all of the preparations mentioned above are consistent with this aim. The parallel is not exact, in that the Allies used force in a way the plebs never did. Likewise, the Allied secessio would prove less successful, in that the ultimate result for most of them was not the complete rights and privileges of the citizenship, but civitas in a diluted form. This was not accepted by the Samnites and Lucani, who continued to fight – not for independence, but for citizenship with a real meaning – after the rest gave in, and in fact very briefly attained it. Such an explanation is of course hypothetical, but it does preserve the evidence given in the sources concerning the citizenship which the Italians are held to have wanted leading up to and even during the war of 91-88.