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

y a toponym which would help to define the geographical authority of the office. A
study of the tile stamps and inscriptions in stone suggests that the office of the
meddix tuticus was single and annual, because it was eponymous. It follows that this
office was the chief magistracy of the federal state of the Pentri. The vast majority of
the epigraphic evidence comes from rural sanctuaries of which some were and some
were not linked to towns. Several inscriptions attest meddices tutici issuing contracts
for building parts of temples and checking the completion of the building work,
which implies that sanctuary buildings were under federal control. The sanctuary of
Pietrabbondante with its theatre, which may have been used for council meetings,
was particularly important as suggested by its abandonment soon after the Social
War. The appearance of the senate and possibly another council in inscriptions at
Schiavi d'Abruzzo implies that this was a federal senate which could give orders or
advice to the meddix tuticus. The office of the censor was probably also a federal
one.
Evidence for the local units of the Pentri state is provided by the local meddix
of Fagifulae and possibly the aediles of Alfedena. The building of the great number
of hill-forts required substantial manpower and expertise, and their maintenance and
occasional restoration must have been overseen by magistrates. Because of the lack
of inscriptions and tile stamps from hill-forts at present we cannot tell whether they
were built and maintained by local communities or by the Pentrian state.
I have emphasised that there are broad similarities between the models of Letta
and Fracchia and the situation in Samnium, especially as regards the relationship
between the fortified centres and the settlement pattern: the population of villages
and urban-and pre-urban settlements grew significantly in the vicinity of the
fortifications in the period between the Samnite Wars and the Social War. The hill-
94