This dissertation analyzes the settlement landscape of Sicily in its seven centuries under Roman hegemony, with the aim of understanding the effects of large- and small-scale economic and political changes on patterns of urban settlement across the island and within its regions. Sicily's long history of urbanization and its early and enduring incorporation into the Roman Empire make it a valuable case study for examining the relationship between imperialism and urban development, allowing a "long view" of the impact of imperial power on local, regional, and supra-regional economic, political, and social structures.

I begin with an overview of the historiography of Roman Sicily, followed by a summary and justification of my own methodology. I argue against the once dominant strand of scholarship that framed Sicily's history under Rome as one of decline and obsolescence. Instead, based on the recent proliferation of archaeological research in Sicily, my approach to the island's urban history in the longue durée rejects the dichotomy between urban and rural settlement. In its place I adopt a flexible definition of settlement that takes into account the wide range of roles that cities could exercise for their inhabitants, and the potential for these roles (and their manifestations in urban space) to change over time.

I follow this introductory section with the empirical core of the dissertation: a quantitative overview of the development of Sicily's urban landscape across its seven centuries as part of the Roman Empire, based on a database containing archaeological and historical data on urban settlements occupied within this period. I identify two main transformative periods. First, the establishment of Roman hegemony after the First Punic War led to the sharp decline in the number of secondary urban centers (mostly hilltop settlements fulfilling a primarily defensive function) in the western interior. Second, the shift of commercial currents towards Rome after the sack of Carthage in 146 BC brought about a contraction in urban settlement on the southern coast that climaxed in the mid- and late first century BC (and was institutionalized in Augustus' new urban hierarchy), and that later affected urban settlement in the interior. Outside these periods, however, the urban system as a whole was relatively stable.

This overview of urbanization across the island is followed by an examination of the history and material culture of several archaeologically and historically well attested urban settlements, focusing on their individual development in the first two centuries AD. In these case studies, I argue for the "transformation" rather than the "decline" of urban life in Sicily. Many older cities, especially along the southern coast and in the interior, gradually lost their roles as centers of political authority and of elite residence and investment, though some remained centers of economic activity, sometimes following movement to more economically integrated sites. Political activity was instead concentrated in a few large coastal cities that had been made colonies by Augustus or that later gained colonial status. These cities were centers of diverse populations and a wide range of economic activities, and they maintained strong connections with other regions of the Mediterranean. In the final chapter, I examine the new forms of settlement that arose in the imperial period, whose emergence and development, as I suggest, reflected the evolving political and economic position of Sicily within the Roman Empire as a whole. These semi-urban centers tended to be located close to maritime and land transportation routes and they show evidence of intense economic activity, but few signs of political autonomy. Some lay in the hinterland of primary urban centers and served as economic satellites; others served as population and service centers in areas otherwise devoid of urban settlement.

A key finding of the dissertation - and one that is not necessarily paralleled in other parts of the Roman Empire - is that within Sicilian cities, economic activity and political authority were only loosely related variables. Though only a small number of urban centers were loci of political authority, economic activity was diffuse: towns that lost their political roles could remain centers of economic activity, while new settlements were largely geared towards the processing and distribution of agricultural products. I conclude, therefore, by suggesting ways in which Sicily's urban history can be understood more broadly, in the context of the urbanization of the Roman Mediterranean, and especially in comparison to North Africa and southern Italy, regions with strong historical ties to Sicily, but with different histories of political, economic, social, and cultural relations with Rome.

This dissertation analyzes changing rural settlement patterns in the Lower Danubian Plain from the Late Iron Age through Late Antiquity in order to elucidate the role played by garrison settlements in the economic strategies of peasants living near the Roman frontier. The military cordon on the northern frontier has been seen both as a stimulus to provincial economic development and as an oppressive burden preventing growth in its vicinity with no consensus forthcoming. I approach the question from the perspective of the rural producers, using the landscapes in which they chose to live as evidence for common goals and conditions. In order to isolate the role of garrison settlements from other features in the landscape, I employ a novel method of comparative multivariate logistic regression analysis. This allows me to test different hypothesized relationships against known settlement patterns while controlling for other influences on location. The result is a quantitative measure of how well each hypothesis fits empirical data.

The first chapter reviews the state of the question on Roman peasant economies, frontier economies and the military community. Having concluded that current interpretations based on documentary and artifactual evidence have failed to settle the issue of military-rural relations, I propose the quantitative analysis of archaeological landscapes as a promising way forward. Here, landscape refers to the embodied perception of a meaningful environment. Each settlement anchors the movements of the people who live there, so the locations of ancient settlements, combined with modern topographic and climatological data provide a foundation for the reconstruction of landscapes as experienced by their ancient inhabitants. I finish the chapter by describing a method of comparative modeling using logistic regression analysis for hypothesis testing. The goal of most locational analysis of this sort is a single mathematical model that predicts or explains settlement location using environmental variables. I suggest that multiple models be created using variables that have been constructed according to competing hypotheses and the goodness of fit between each model and known data be compared to the others. The model with the closest fit contains the variable that best reflects ancient reality. In this way, it is possible to assess the empirical support for each hypothesis and to select the best one.

The second chapter discusses the Lower Danubian Plain in modern Bulgaria, ancient Moesia Inferior. This frontier zone has not figured prominently in discussions of Roman frontier society. This is unfortunate because the area has a unique history of conquest that sets it apart from other, better-known frontiers: unlike the frontier in Western Europe, it was not heavily garrisoned until relatively late and, after the beginning of the fourth century, it was quite close to the imperial capital at Constantinople. In this chapter, I describe the natural environment of the study area in the middle of the Danubian Plain and the local economy prior to Roman conquest before discussing the history of the area from first century BCE through the sixth century CE. I show that the pre-Roman population of the area, though sparse, was well suited to integration with the Roman military community. I then describe the history of violence in the area and the ways in which different violent episodes impacted the countryside. Next I trace the construction and maintenance of the physical infrastructure of Roman power—forts, cities, and roads—from conquest to collapse before investigating the changing origins of the resident population. I conclude the chapter with an examination of the evidence for the economic status of garrison settlements in Moesia Inferior.

In the third chapter, I describe the process of systematizing the diverse and varied record of archaeological research in the study area. The result is a database that includes ancient places of various functions grouped into chronological phases stretching from Pre-Roman to Late Antique. I also describe how I reconstructed archaeological landscapes for each settlement and how these landscapes, grouped chronologically, were analyzed. First, the immediate territories around settlements are compared to territories around random locations to determine if there are factors that are more or less abundant in one group than the other. Then, the accessibility of traffic routes and possible market centers is compared. As a result of this, I show that Roman settlements are located in very different landscapes than either Pre-Roman or Late Antique settlements. There is little consistency in Pre-Roman landscapes, but Roman landscapes are ideal for intensive agricultural production, and Late Antique landscapes offer greater defensive capabilities. I then use logistic regression analysis to create baseline models of settlement location to which I add Market Potential variables to test the various hypotheses on which they were constructed. The primary result is that settlements from the Middle Roman period (second to third centuries CE), avoid forts and cluster around non-military centers.

In the final chapter, I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative landscape analysis and comparative modeling before assessing the impact of these results on our understanding of the local economy and the role of garrison settlements in both central Moesia Inferior and the Empire in general. I end by outlining next steps, both for improving the methodology and expanding the scope of investigation.

This dissertation reaches the following main conclusions: 1) Settlement-centered landscapes contain valuable evidence for the behavior of people who are not well-represented by traditional archaeological and historical evidence. 2) While no clear tendencies emerge from the Pre-Roman settlement pattern, Roman settlements show a strong preference for landscapes best suited to intensive agricultural production. In contrast, after the late fourth century, rural settlements prefer locations with access to defensible refuges, demonstrating the value of the security previously provided by the Empire. 3) The rural economy of central Moesia Inferior flourished during the Roman period so military demand did not depress the local economy. 4) At the same time, peasants in this particular frontier zone were not using garrison settlements as frequent markets for their produce. They may have supplied the frontier indirectly or infrequently, but most would have had few opportunities to visit the army bases themselves. This means that peasants were not in a position to exploit soldiers’ demand for local produce to supplement their rations. 5) Nothing in the material or literary record would have suggested that the military communities were isolated in this way, so further investigation along these lines in other frontier zones is warranted.

Abstract

This dissertation is a comparative study of the great powers in the Mediterranean world during the third and second centuries BC: the imperial republics of Rome and Carthage in the West, and the great Hellenistic dynasties of Antigonid Macedonia, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Seleucid Near East. These states fought a series of wars among one another; the end result was the establishment of Roman hegemony across the entire Mediterranean. Why Rome? This dissertation treats two metrics of state power, manpower mobilization and state revenues, and examines them in relationship to the known outcomes of interstate warfare.

Part I of the dissertation reconstructs the manpower resources of each power. Each chapter in this section focuses on a particular power and explores three separate issues. I first determine the maximum mobilization each state could achieve. Next, I explore the strategies each state used to obtain recruits, in particular citizen soldiers, subject levies, and mercenary hires. Finally, each chapter concludes with a discussion of the military organization employed by each state in arranging coherent fighting units.

Part II reconstructs the state revenues of each power, using a method of forensic accounting based on estimated expenditures (in particular the cost of armies) and critical examination of fragmentary source references to tax rates, mining revenues, and other sources of state income.

The dissertation concludes that the Romans enjoyed a substantial comparative advantage over any of the Hellenistic powers in terms of the maximum mobilization rate, with a peak deployment of 175,000 soldiers in 190 BC. By comparison, the maximum Seleucid and Ptolemaic mobilizations both stood at around 80,000, while the Macedonian mobilization peaked at approximately 45,000. While this advantage has important explanatory power as to why Rome defeated the Seleucid and Macedonian kingdoms, is important to note that Rome deployed only a fraction of her manpower against these kingdoms, and frequently fought outnumbered in the decisive battles of the period. Moreover, Rome lacked significant manpower superiority over Carthage during much of the Second Punic War. In fact, during the opening decade of the war, Carthage deployed more soldiers than Rome did. Here the varying manpower strategies of the two states proved decisive. While Carthage managed to detach some of Rome’s Italian allies, an enormous core of citizen manpower remained to Rome’s advantage. While Carthage’s military deployment rivaled Rome’s in size, with approximately 170,000 troops deployed in 215 BC, it lacked a similar core of citizen troops. Through force and diplomacy, the Romans peeled away the subject populations that provided the bulk of Carthaginian manpower, in particular the Iberians and Numidians.

On the side of state finance, the dissertation finds surprising disconnects between state revenues and military success. The wealthiest state, the Ptolemaic dynasty, extracted enormous revenues from the agricultural regions of Egypt (roughly 90 million drachmai), but after the middle of the third century the geopolitical fortunes of the dynasty declined markedly. Meanwhile, the Romans had perhaps the smallest revenues during the third century, and their lack of fiscal sophistication was represented by a clumsy system of caste bronze coinage. Roman revenues did rise over the course of the successful imperial activity in the second century, but remained comparatively modest even during the period of unquestioned military dominance.

The organization of the Roman state accounts for its ability to mobilize more men for less money. The Roman habit of exploiting subject populations in Italy for unpaid military service dramatically lowered Roman military costs. Furthermore, citizen troops served for far lower pay than their counterparts in the Hellenistic East. Finally, the Republican nature of the Roman state (and Carthage as well) eliminated the substantial expense of maintaining a sumptuous royal court.

The dissertation concludes by discussing the role of resources in the arc of Mediterranean history during the period. It argues that Macedonia was an under resourced state both in terms of manpower and revenues, but one that “punched above its weight” due to an effective, well-organized army based on a heavily militarized citizenry. It notes that the geographic position of both the Seleucids and the Ptolemies made it difficult for them to exert control over the entirety of the Mediterranean, although each had the resources to gain hegemony over the Eastern Mediterranean, in the manner of the Ottoman Turks in the early modern period. Yet dynastic difficulties in both states and a tripartite balance of power in the East prevented either power from gaining permanent control over the east.

Ultimately, the dissertation concludes that, on the level of resources, Carthage was the only serious challenger to Rome. Like Rome, Carthage was centrally located, a geographic advantage that could have supported extending domination over the whole Mediterranean basin. During the Second Punic War, Carthage’s revenues and manpower mobilization equaled, and at times exceeded, that of Rome. It is not difficult to imagine an alternative history in which Carthage gained hegemony of the Mediterranean.

Nonetheless, Rome’s republican system of government, its expansive system of citizenship, and its exploitation of Italian subjects for military service allowed it to raise unusually large, effective military forces despite a limited fiscal base. As a result, Rome was not only an effective conquest state, but the only state in history to unify the Mediterranean.