ABSTRACT

When in 32 bc ‘all Italy’ (tota Italia) vowed to support Octavian, this expressed a novel kind of unity for the Italian peninsula. On the only previous occasion when ‘Italia’ was named as a political concept, it had been in 90–89 BC, when silver coins proclaimed the state of Italia in opposition to Rome. 1 Now in contrast Italy was fully Roman, viewed by those in the capital as different from, indeed superior to, the other regions conquered by Rome.