The modern Via Cassia, now as in antiquity the great arterial road up through the heart of south-eastern Etruria, after crossing the Fosso dell'Olgiata less than a kilometre to the west of the north-western gate of Veii, climbs steadily for about 7 km. to cross the Monti Sabatini, the line of extinct volcanic craters that runs eastwards from Lake Bracciano, forming a natural northern boundary to the Roman Campagna. After cutting through the southern crest of the crater of Baccano, with its magnificent views southwards and eastwards over Rome towards Tivoli, Palestrina and the Alban Hills, the road drops into the crater, skirts round the east side of the former lake, and climbs again to the far rim, before dropping once more into the head of the Treia basin, on its way to Monterosi and Sutri.From this vantage-point a whole new landscape is spread out before one (pl. XLVII). To the west and north-west, the tangle of volcanic hills that forms the northern limit of the Monti Sabatini, rising at its highest point to the conical peak of Monte Rocca Romana (612 m.); beyond and to the right of those, past Monterosi and filling the whole of the north-western horizon, some 10–15 km. distant, the spreading bulk of Monte Cimino (1053 m.), with its characteristically volcanic, twin-peaked profile; to the north and north-east, the gently rolling woods and fields of the Faliscan plain, deceptively smooth, stretching away to the distant Tiber.
It is the aim of the following pages to study the evidence for the condition and economy of Capua in the period of the Roman Republic, and to suggest some fresh conclusions on its role in the more general evolution of Roman commerce and influence. For two centuries or more after the Second Punic War, until other more favoured and more extensive regions of the empire began to compete with Italian agriculture and industry, the cities of Campania maintained a certain degree of primacy over others in the peninsula. Among these, Capua had for long held the chief political power, and even after its defeat by the Romans in 211 B.C., retained some degree of prestige throughout antiquity. Before her defection to Hannibal, Capua might be ranked with Carthage or Corinth in wealth and power; and even at the other end of antiquity, in the fourth century A.D., Capua was the third city of Italy, next only to Rome and Aquileia, a position substantially retained in the Dark Ages and in later history.
The purpose of the following pages is to study the problem of debt in Rome of the Ciceronian age. A part of this argument will be uncontroversial or at least familiar; that is, the way in which Roman politicians lived in prolonged states of indebtedness. The rest of the argument will be frankly more speculative; it will suggest that Caesar's arrival in Rome in 49 B.C. provoked a crisis that was in some degree inevitable; but that Caesar in consequence undertook certain remedial measures that were of an importance for the future developments of Roman law.
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