During the conquest of the Mediterranean (Second-First century BCE) and the municipalisation of urban centres after the Social War (91-88 BCE), Rome-which was previously considered a thyrrenis (Etruscan, with evidently negative meaning) city by the Greeks-had itself become a Greek city (polis hellenis).
What had happened, particularly in the years following the Second Punic War? What lay behind the extraordinary leap forward in the artistic and architectural production of Rome and the Italic cities from the late-Republican age into the Augustan era?
There was a vast surplus of resources of varied provenance, ranging from spoils of war to taxes imposed by Rome on vanquished populations and raw materials which had previously been inaccessible (gold, silver, marble and other materials suitable for craftmanship from Greece, Africa and Asia Minor). Trade had never been so far-reaching or lucrative for Roman and Italic mercatores and negotiatores (small and major merchants). But above all there was a vast, uninterrupted stream of slaves, that servile workforce which would play such a decisive role in transforming the economic, productive, social, territorial and urban structure of tota Italia. This phenomenon brought with it new cultural, behavioural (luxuria) and artistic “models” (peaking with the arrival in Italy of the great masterpieces of Greek art), which exerted such a powerful and transformative influence on the entire peninsula.
As these models combined with the ancient traditions and practices of the Roman-Italic world (religio, mores maiorum), as well as with a number of technological breakthroughs such as the invention of concrete and its application to vaulted systems, they swiftly brought about a supremely original process of renewal. This embraced behaviour, the manner of self-representation and the appearance of cities in their public, private, secular and religious spheres. This was the dawn of a new and magnificent world, from cities to temples, fora, city walls, domus, villae, funerary monuments and important sanctuaries.