Kathryn Lomas

Urban society in Roman Italy

Do theories of the ancient city matter?, C.R. Whittaker Max Weber and the ancient city, L. Capogrossi warfare and urbanization in ancient Italy, Tim Cornell the urban texture of Pompeii, A.F. Wallace-Hadrill the organization of space in Pompeii, R.M. Laurence the idea of the city and the excavations at Pompeii, M. Goalen slouching towards Rome - Mussolinis imperial vision, L. Quartermaine urban elites and acculturation in southern Italy, Kathryn Lomas rusticity and religion - city and countryside in Roman Italy, John North three Ostian houses - urban development and the building trade, J. DeLaine villa economies and the city, N. Purcell.

The Weakest Link: Elite Social Networks in Republican Italy

This chapter reviews the evidence for interconnections and social networks between members of the Roman and Italian elite with reference to the early and middle years of the first century BC. It examines possible strategies for creating, maintaining and exploiting such connections and focuses on two types of relationships, which may have operated in different ways, but which seem to have been equally vital to the relations between high-status individuals and families from non-Roman backgrounds. Vicinitas or neighbourliness, is a geographically-determined relationship which implied some degree of social obligation between people from the same area. Hospitium or guest-friendship was a means of formalising relationships of reciprocal hospitality between individuals and families from different areas or communities, often extended over many generations. It was a long-established feature of aristocratic behaviour in Italy, although the nature and importance of hospitium in linking Romans and Italians may have changed during this period. Keywords:aristocratic behaviour; geographically-determined relationship; Hospitium; interconnections; Italy; Roman elite; social networks; Vicinitas