I had no idea Pompeii had tried seceding from the Roman Republic. I’ll definitely check out the site of this polybolos find next time I’m in southern Italy, hopefully next year when we visit Sicily.
I didn’t know there was a University of Bologna. I am guessing there is a university of Salami, and that, nowadays, many universities teach lots of baloney. The Italians recognized that fact a long time ago.
Brrrrrt!
Mostly it was a conquest. A number of cities in Italy (different ethnic groups; Pompeii was Oscan) were allied with Rome. There was an attempt to wrest control of Italy by a previously allied city, Rome’s response was to raise forces to fight back. Pompeii, uh, chose poorly. Rome settled the towns around the Bay of Naples with retired soldiers, and over generations they became more and more Latin. By the time of the eruption, around 150 years had passed and Italy was Roman, probably with some bilingual remnants.
If it hadn’t been for constant attacks (the Etruscans peaked around the time Rome conquered Ostia; a hundred years later the Gauls burned down most of Rome and probably degraded Etruscan capabilities; starting about 220 BC Hannibal spent over a decade trying to defeat and destroy the city, and was allied with and later worked for one of the rump successor states of the Alexandrian Empire) the Romans probably wouldn’t have developed standing armies and created an Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91%E2%80%9387_BC)