Osservazioni sui paesaggi agrari, espropri e colonizzazione nella prima età repubblicana

This paper discusses the archaeological data of the archaic rural landscape in the modern suburb of Rome, as possible evidence of land expropriation in the 5th and 4th centuries BC as known from the problematic literary tradition concerning the history of early Republican Rome. The first keystudy is the ager of the Latin city of Fidenae; in this area the archaeological surveys found a strong discontinuity at the beginning of the 5th century BC, which could be linked to the literary data regarding land expropriations of 498 BC and the institution of the Clustumina tribus in 495 BC. The second keystudy is the ager Veientanus, where the archaeological data shows a clear drastic reduction of rural sites in the first half of the 4th century BC, in parallel to the rise of new rural sites. This could be evidence of the Roman conquest of Veii in 396 and subsequent land expropriation in favor of Roman citizens, as known from the literary tradition.