The Ties That Bind: Ethnicity and Social Cohesion in Hellenistic Central Puglia

The aim of this paper is to explore why resistance to the Roman conquest of South-East Italy, and Central Apulia in particular, was not more effective. The intention is to explore some of the ties that one might have expected to have bound the population together at a time of crisis and to consider why they did not. The paper looks at the evidence for the existence and robustness of regional ethno-political groupings and considers how the trend towards the centralization of population (or urbanization) may have weakened affiliation to such entities, encouraging the development of a more fragmented political landscape. Moving from the regional level to that of individual communities, it is suggested that internal divisions were growing, which may have undermined social cohesion and political unity. A possible decline in traditional ethnic affiliation among some social groups may have been a further factor which militated against a unified resistance.