The aim of Fronda's book is to examine the Second Punic War from the perspective of Rome's Italian allies, and to identify the political, economic and military factors that led some of the allies to remain loyal while others defected (2–3). F. proposes that the actions of Italian states should be viewed from the perspective of realist politics or realpolitik, according to which states behave as rational unitary actors that pursue their own interests, and inevitably come into conflict with each other. In the political vacuum following the Roman defeat at Cannae, Italian states were free to decide on their own foreign policy for the first time in several decades, and in some cases over a century. F.'s main thesis is that long-standing rivalries and animosities between the Italian states ultimately determined their decision as to whether or not to defect to Hannibal.
The book begins with a discussion of sources and methods, followed by an overview of Roman-Italian relations in the centuries preceding the Second Punic War (ch. 1). F. is very much aware of the difficulties in reconstructing the point of view of Italian communities from the Rome-centred narratives of Livy and Polybius, which are the main surviving accounts of the period. F. distances himself from what he sees as an excessively sceptical approach, which assumes that such accounts are false unless proven otherwise (11). Throughout the book the reliability of individual passages is carefully assessed, with the aid of numismatic evidence and the results of recent archaeological research. This allows F. to gauge the motivations, internal divisions, and conflicting interests of Italian states in four key regions of south Italy: Apulia, Campania, western Magna Graecia, and south Lucania/eastern Magna Graecia (chs 2–5). There follows a discussion of the Roman reconquest of the peninsula in ch. 6. Finally, in ch. 7, F. draws together the results of the regional case studies, to argue that the high degree of interstate rivalry in Italy made it impossible for Hannibal to elicit widespread defection from Rome. Upon winning over key states in a region, Hannibal unwittingly prompted a number of rival states to side with Rome. The chapter ends with an interesting discussion of hypothetical scenarios of a Hannibalic victory.
F.'s analysis of developments in Campania lends especially strong support to his thesis (126–45). The fact that Atella, Calatia and Sabata joined Capua in defecting to Hannibal makes sense when one sees these four cities acting together earlier in the second Samnite war (c. 326–304 b.c.), even though on that occasion they sided with Rome. On the other hand, Naples and Nola, Capua's main rivals, fought together against Rome in the second Samnite war, and remained loyal after Cannae. A similar pattern is identified in Apulia, although the textual evidence there is less robust (85–98, especially 89). F. draws on archaeological and numismatic material to argue that the communities who defected (namely Arpi and the neighbouring settlements of Herdonia, Salapia and Aecae) were bound together by economic and political ties stretching back to the fourth century b.c. Arpi's main rivals (Teanum Apulum and Canusium) remained loyal to Rome, echoing the pattern in Campania where rival powers adopted opposing sides, and dragged their ‘satellite’ settlements along with them. F. is nevertheless careful to leave room for contingent developments that deviate from this pattern. One important example is the case of Thurii and Taras, which were major rivals yet both revolted to Hannibal (211–30).
Practically all of the Italian states that F. takes into consideration are city-states. A slightly more peripheral place is given to the non-urban political communities of the central Apennines, where Hannibal seems to have had very limited success in eliciting defections. F. refers to central Apennine communities as ‘tribes’ (291–4), although there is evidence that by the late third century these communities were already complex polities which minted their own coins. F.'s treatment of the central Apennines is understandably less detailed, given the lack of written sources. Yet he rightly suspects that resentment towards Rome may have been more pervasive in the region than ancient historical writers suggest. For example, he challenges Livy's assertion that all of the Pentrian Samnites remained loyal after Cannae, by noting that the Pentrian settlement of Fagifulae defected to Hannibal (Liv. 24.20.5). This comes as a timely contribution to broader debates about the extent to which ethnic identity influenced allegiance and political action in republican Italy, especially in areas where the city-state was absent. It is becoming increasingly clear that ethnic identity was one of several factors that shaped military and political action, as recently demonstrated by Isayev with regard to élite networks among the Hirpini in the second and early first centuries (E. Isayev, ‘Italian perspectives in the period of Gracchan land reforms and the Social War’, in K. Lomas, E. Herring and A. Gardner (eds), Creating Ethnicities & Identities in the Roman World (2012)).
The potential of F.'s approach to interstate relations goes beyond the Second Punic War, and opens up new interpretative possibilities for understanding Roman expansion in Italy. He makes some thought-provoking points about Rome's tumultuous relationship with the Samnites, suggesting that it may have resulted from an enduring rivalry where previous wars made subsequent wars more likely, rather than from any ‘pathological’ bellicosity on the part of Rome — or, for that matter, the Samnites, who are often accused in ancient as well as modern historical writing of being distinctively prone to war.
On a methodological level, F. makes a convincing case that aspects of Livy's narrative cannot be summarily dismissed as pro-Roman distortion, as upon closer inspection he reveals the complexity of relations among Italian communities. There is clearly some pro-Roman bias in Livy's image of Italic communities who repeatedly appeal to Rome for help. Yet, from the standpoint of realpolitik, F. convincingly argues that such an image is coherent with a highly competitive political setting such as that of Republican Italy, suggesting that it was by manipulating the local rivalries between Italian communities that the Romans justified their interference and extended their influence.
Overall, F.'s book contributes substantially to the history of the Roman Republic and appeals to a wide readership, from undergraduate students to specialists on the politics, society and culture of Republican Italy.
