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

emarkably wider than in the Greek world. The constitutions of the Greek cities on the
Italian mainland, which grew out of diverse historical backgrounds, varied according to
the constitution of their founding mother cities, but also altered with time and according
to local needs. In some of the Greek city-states, the members of the council, which was
called either (3ovAr or ovv£hQtov, were elected from a restricted number of candidates
and the membership was not for life, as at Rome. A number of Southern Italian
communities are known to have re-named their local councils as senates with the
progression of Romanization, but they mostly retained their constitutions and
magistrates until the Social War, and in some Greek cities, even after the war. In the
central Apennines, we have evidence for possibly two councils, as attestations of legü
and senatus, both from Schiavi d'Abruzzo, suggest. Similarly, evidence for two bodies
emerged at Pompeii which could issue orders, the kümbennieis (gen. sing. ) and
[küJmparakineis (gen. sing) were attested in inscriptions. One of the two councils may
have been a popular assembly, the other a council. At Capua, Livy mentions, perhaps on
the Roman model, that a local senate and a popular assembly existed in the city. The
Cippus Abellanus tells us that Nola and Abella had one senate each and literary sources
suggest that Nola may have had a popular assembly too. The constitutions of Samnite
states therefore fit well in the general tripartite political system of the Greco-Roman
world.
The other piece of evidence for communal organization among the Samnites is
the attestations of vereia at Capua, Cumae and Pompeii. The vereia may have originally
been a private war band but by the third and second centuries BC it became a civic
institution for state military training.
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