The small towns of Sicily in the transition from Republic to Principate

Abstract

This paper revisits longstanding debates surrounding the transition from Republic to Principate in Sicily, considering new archaeological and epigraphic evidence emerging from the island's smaller urban centres. While the handful of coastal cities that became colonies in the Augustan period or later have long dominated accounts of Sicily's urban development under the Principate, research on a number of smaller, more "peripheral" centres is enabling a more detailed and nuanced understanding of how urban communities (and their ruling classes) weathered the events of the final decades of the Republic and the transition to the new political order established by Augustus. The picture emerging, albeit very tentatively, is of communities of reduced means that were still intent on establishing and commemorating their place in Augustus' new imperial order. Moreover, local elites particularly from Sicily's new municipia were not indifferent to the opportunities for advancement within and beyond their home communities that opened up during the reign of Augustus and his successors. Therefore, although Sicily's experience of the transition from Republic to Principate was still unique in many respects, it was less of an outlier from Italy and other western provinces than usually thought.

Keywords

• Augustus
• Roman Sicily
• towns
• municipalization
• equestrians
• evergetism