Submitted for award of PhD September 2006. - King's College London

was qualified by the place-name of their communities (Bundesstädte) and who were
subordinate to the authority of the meddix tuticus. 6
Beloch's thesis was first questioned by Garofalo, but it was Rosenberg's
comparative study of Italic constitutions that brought some of its problems to wider
attention. 7 Rosenberg's work opened up a new generation of studies that argued that
the Italic states enjoyed their own political and constitutional life, which had some
influence on the development of Roman political institutions. Rosenberg paid more
attention to the processes by which the Italic communities came into contact with
Roman power. He argued that the title rnedik(u)d tüvtik(ud) kapv(anud) attested in an
inscription from Capua does not fit Beloch's thesis that the meddix tuticus was a
federal magistrate, because the meddix tuticus would not have been called Campanus
if he had not been a local magistrate of Capua. 8 Rosenberg also proposed that Oscan
towns and cities were governed by pairs of meddices.
9 He saw a reference to the
pairs of meddices in Ennius' phrase summus ibi capitur meddix, occiditur alter,
which implies that one of them was superior to the other. 1° Ennius' summus meddfx
can be compared to Livy's description of a meddix tuticus of Capua who was
suminus magistratus Campanis. " Rosenberg also cited an inscription from Capua:
medik. minive kersna[i7ias. 12 The expression medik. minive had been interpreted by
Buck as meddix minor, and Rosenberg argued that Buck's meddix minor was in fact
the (meddfx) alter of Ennius. 13 Rosenberg concluded that the meddix tuticus was the
summus magistratus in Ennius, in other words the chief political, juridical and
6 Beloch (1890) 11. Now ST Cp31, Cp35 and ST Po 1.
7 Garofalo (1903) 61-79; Rosenberg (1913).
8 Rosenberg (1913) 18.
9 Rosenberg noted that two meddices appear on inscriptions at Messina (ST Me 1-3), Nola (ST Cm 6,
7 and Cm I A3-5), Corfinium (ST Pgl) and Velitrae (ST Vm 2).
10 Rosenberg (1913) 21.
11 Livy 23.35.13.
12 Ennius, Ann. 289; ST Cp 34.
13 See Rosenberg (1913) 22.
15