The economic, political and social repercussions of the war against Hannibal and of the subsequent Roman expansion across the Mediterranean were at the root of the transformations which Rome and Italy underwent from the beginning of the Second Century BCE. The domination of Rome over much of the geopolitical Mediterranean scenario, as well as the vast wealth which flowed to Italy through trade now conducted on a “global” market, exerted a profound influence on the society of the time. Above all, these changes transformed the culture, way of thinking and behaviour of the nobilitas aristocracy at the head of the new “Imperial Republic”.
Rome’s allies also benefited from this rapidly expanding political, economic and financial system. Latins from ancient cities and colonies, some Italic populations, Roman communities scattered throughout the peninsula – all had played a crucial role in the wars of conquest and in the consolidation of the Roman economic and trading system. Within such a context, local elites represented in every way the connective tissue between the Roman state, the Italic periphery and the rest of the Mediterranean, in a tight web of reciprocal economic and cultural exchanges. All were set on a path of progressive integration into a new Mediterranean culture modelled on Greece, and which has consequently been termed Hellenism.
Every stage and development of this phenomenon is easily discernible in the monumental architecture which was erected. Public buildings financed by the local ruling classes during the Second Century BCE – built to provide local communities with a grandiosity in line with what was fashionable throughout the Hellenistic Mediterranean, and able to stand comparison with contemporary achievements in Rome – testify to the advantages and benefits the Italics reaped through their active involvement in this new “Mediterranean empire”. The phenomenon is appreciable in Latin cities such as Palestrina, Alatri, Segni, Gabii, Cora, Tivoli, but also in numerous contexts (urban and non) of the central-southernpPeninsula such as Assisi in Umbria, Chieti in Abruzzo and – on display here – Sentinum-Civitalba in the Agro Gallico and Monte Rinaldo in Picenum.