Tota Italia

While the first part of the oration concentrates on the harm that the decemvirs will do if they are allowed to exercise power outside of Italy, the middle of the speech encourages its audience to focus their attention on Italy and the actions of the land commissioners there. The idea that the decemvirs would "fill all Italy with their colonies" (34: totam Italiam suis coloniis ut complere ) is introduced early in the speech,^[51] but it is the pattern of topography Cicero creates later that gives the idea a concrete topographical form in the listener's mind.

Rullus had not explicitly named the lands on which he would settle colonies (66), and Cicero capitalizes on this fact to suggest a number of possibilities that will be certain to alarm his audience. Moving down the Appian Way, he mentions the "Alban, Setian, Privernian, Fundian, Vescian, Falernian, Liternian, Cumaean, and Nucerian lands."^[52] Proceeding from the "other gate" (66), he refers to the "Capenan, Faliscian, Sabine, Reatine, Venafran, Allifaean, and Trebulan lands." The decemvirs, according to the orator, will possess wealth so great that they will be able to purchase all these lands as well as others. With this list Cicero has named the sites of some of the richest farmland in central Italy.^[53] When the orator mentions these fertile agricultural areas around Rome, he encourages his audience to believe that such lands could not be destined for them but were intended by the framers of the proposal to be kept for themselves. Cicero reinforces this impression by telling his audience that Rullus saw them as the "sewage" of the republic (70: sentina ) and that for them Rullus planned settlements in the dry lands of Sipontum or the

[51] For the phrase tota Italia see also 75 (totam Italiam suis praesidiis obsidere atque occupare; in omnia municipia, in omnis colonias totius Italiae; totam Italiam suis opibus obsidebunt ), 98 (omnia municipia coloniasque Italiae ). Cf. 1.16 (totam Italiam inermem tradituros existimasti ), 17 (totam Italiam vestris coloniis complere voluisti; totam Italiam militibus suis occuparint ).

[52] Nuceria (an emendation proposed by A. C. Clark) replaces the codices' [ager ] Ancasianas, which is clearly in error. Zumpt, De lege agraria, 106 (ad 2.66), has Acerranus .

[53] The ager Capenas was perhaps allotted in part to Caesar's veterans (Cic. Fam. 9.17.2). For the settlement of veterans under Vespasian at Reate, see CIL IX.4682–85. Venafrum was the site of a colony under Augustus (CIL XI.4894). There also seems to have been a colony founded at Allifae under the triumvirs (CIL IX.2354). Jonkers, De Lege Agraria, 104 (ad 2.66), calls the list of towns "the most attractive lands in the proximity of Rome."

swamplands of Salapia in Apulia (71, 98). He even suggests the possibility that no lands whatsoever would be given them (72).

Both the identity of the towns and cities Cicero mentions in this part of the speech and the order in which they are named are significant. The first list includes the centers of the most important farming districts as one proceeds south from Rome. The first four sites—Ager Albanus, Setia, Privernum, and Fundi—are encountered as one travels south on the Via Appia, while the sequence Ager Vescinus, Ager Falernus, Liternum, Cumae, Nuceria represents a movement along the Campanian coast to a region just south of Capua. The omission of Capua itself would have been noted, since it was the terminus of the earliest construction of the Appian Way and the chief city of Campania and would thus have been a fitting end point in a list of fertile and strategic areas south of Rome.

The second list of towns mentioned for possible purchase by the decemvirs contains a peculiar feature. Cicero says that these towns are reached "from the other gate" (66). By this he must mean the Porta Flaminia, for the first places mentioned, Capena and the Faliscan territory (associated with the town of Falerii), were reached by exiting the city north and traveling up the Via Flaminia. The Sabine land was to the east of this region, and in this district, on a high, well-watered plain, stood Reate. Although the reference to Reate represents a departure from the implied directional guidepost of the Flaminian Way, it is nevertheless an important agricultural area to the north of Rome. But the next area mentioned on Cicero's list, Venafrum, is a complete departure from the implied organization of the whole, for it lies on a branch of the Via Latina in Samnium, south of Rome.^[54] Allifae is situated even farther south in a fertile valley of Samnium, while Trebula, in Campania, lies less than five Roman miles from Capua.

Two spatial patterns have been created here. First, each time Cicero names a sequence of places ending in Campanian sites close to Capua without mentioning Capua itself he makes the city conspicuous by its absence, for it was the most important agricultural area in all Italy and the location of the last extensive holdings of ager publicus near Rome. Through the creation in both lists of a topographical pattern that points to Capua but suspends mention of it, Cicero subtly prepares his listeners for the long section at the end of the speech in which Capua is made to

[54] The Oxford Classical Text attempts to solve the directional problem by adding the words ab alia [i.e., porta ] before Venafranus.

Fig. 5.
Italy and Sicily. The map illustrates in proper sequence the two list
of places mentioned by Cicero in De lege agraria 2.66.

appear the culmination of all the dangers posed by the settlement of decemviral colonies in Italy. Second, by naming important sites in an arc to the north, east, and south of Rome, Cicero touches on a potent and continuing Roman fear, that of encirclement by hostile forces. Rullus's new settlements are depicted not as peaceful colonies to be filled with the dispossessed poor of the city but as armed camps that will provide their commanders with strategic positions from which to launch an attack on Rome.

The fear that Rullus's plans for colonization might endanger the city of Rome is further aroused by Cicero's suggestion that the bill would allow the creation of a settlement even on the Janiculum. He asks what would prevent Rullus from settling a colony there, "a garrison upon our head and necks" (74: praesidium in capite atque cervicibus nostris ). The ridge of the Janiculum was the most crucial point in the western defenses of the city. Livy states that it had been fortified by Ancus Marcius not because the city required more space but because he realized that this area must never be controlled by an enemy (1.33.6: ne quando ea arx hostium esset ). During meetings of the Comitia Centuriata in the Campus Martius a red flag was displayed on the heights as a sign that the area was secure and the city therefore not endangered.^[55] Cicero's suggestion of the possibility that a praesidium might be located here would surely have been a frightening thought for his audience.^[56]

The central section of the speech, then, uses the arrangement of references to places in order to create a topographical image of the danger posed by the agrarian bill. While at the beginning of the speech Cicero pictures the whole world at the mercy of the decemvirs, here he predicts that all Italy will be filled with Rullus's coloniae and municipia . By mentioning areas for these settlements to the north, east, and south of Rome and by picturing a praesidium on the western heights of the city, the orator graphically suggests to his audience the direct military threat to the city posed by the bill. Cicero has thus moved his listeners from concern for the status of allies and dependent nations (a concern based for the most part on financial interests) to anxiety for their own security.

[55] Cassius Dio reports that the trial of Rabirius was stopped when the red flag on the Janiculum was lowered (37.27–28).

[56] The passage would also have summoned up the image of Lars Porsenna, whose encampment on the Janiculum represented one of the great military crises in Rome's early history (Livy 2.10–14).

Only one element is lacking to exploit this anxiety fully: a focal point of opposition to Rome.