Decline and Recovery

The aftermath of the Hannibalic war in southern Italy is very badly documented in terms of literary evidence and unlike the period following the Civil Wars, there is little epigraphic evidence to supplement such literary sources as exist. There have been a number of attempts to synthesise the evidence for this period, ¹ particularly in terms of the economy of Magna Graecia and the agrarian development of the region. The existence, or otherwise, of latifundia in the South has generated much controversy and will be discussed in further detail in Chapter 7. An increasing quantity of archaeological evidence has done much to clarify the economic history of the second century, but the lack of literary and epigraphic sources means that the possibility of writing a linear history of Magna Graecia diminishes after 200 BC and virtually disappears after AD 14. Thus the years after the Roman conquest must be approached as a history of social, economic and cultural structures, rather than as a narrative of events.