ABSTRACT
The parallels shown between the hill-country of south-west Turkey and that of central Italy tend, I would argue, to suggest that there are structural links between elite mobility, increased public building, and increased private wealth leading to settlement change. These phenomena can be identified in Samnium from the Augustan principate, and in Lycia from the time of Vespasian. Some seventy years elapse in both cases before a significant number of local dignitaries reach senatorial rank, but in each case the process is the same. The first conclusion to be drawn, then, is that the comparison of two apparently different areas, at opposite ends of the Mediterranean, can be an illuminating way of devising new models for areas which have in the past been comparatively little studied from this sort of perspective.
