1. Replenishing the senate: Only two years into the war, 177 Roman senators had died, leaving a great many of empty seats. Livy reports that one of proposals to replace these senators was to grant citizenship to and then select new senators from the Latin peoples (that is, Italians who lived near Rome and with whom Rome had strong ties to but who weren’t Roman citizens). This proposal was not appreciated at all. Indeed, Livy explains that one Titus Manlius pointed out that in the past a Roman senator had “threatened to kill with his own hands any Latin he saw in the Senate house” (23.22 trans. Yardley). So it was pretty clear that this proposal didn’t pass. Instead, one of the dictators that the Romans had appointed in this time of crisis selected to become senators men who in the past had been lower level magistrates. However, this dictator Fabius, understood that this was a controversial move that could easily prompt an assassination attempt. To attempt to counteract this, after his selection, he resigned from his office.
2. Granting Citizenship: But while the Romans were incensed at the very idea of Latin senators, they decided to grant citizenship to 300 Capuan veterans who returned from fighting in Sicily (23.31). The rationale for this grant of citizenship is not hard to see: not only had these men proved their loyalty to Rome in battle but Capua was also a Roman ally that had stayed with Rome, despite numerous opportunities to defect to the Carthaginians.
3. Enslaving Captives: Indeed, some Roman allies not only defected but rebelled against the Romans during this time. The Hirpini people (frequently described as descended from the Samnites, Italians who really didn’t like the Romans) rebelled against the Romans prior to Hannibal coming nearby. As a result, the rebellion was quickly quashed. What is interesting to me is that Livy adds “More than 5,000 prisoners of war were auctioned off” (23.37). Shortly after recounting this episode, he explains that captives from a Macedonian envoy that was attempting to establish an alliance between Philip V and Hannibal were also auctioned off (23.38). To auction off a captive is basically make them a slave, but Livy doesn’t describe them as slaves. He merely describes them as a captives who are auctioned. This connects to one of the ideas that I keep returning to with my analysis of the comedies: there are really two types of slaves, those who deserve to be slaves and those who are actually free people who are enslaved.
4. Fearful slaves: Livy’s ideas about the people who deserve to be slaves comes up in various guises, but I’ll mention one that I came across yesterday. When Livy describes Hannibal as making an attack on Hamae, he writes “Hannibal surmied that he would find at Hamae an army of fresh recruits, slaves for the most part, gloating over the their success...” (23.36). Livy appears to indicate that Hannibal is excited about the prospect of fighting against the volones because he doesn’t think that slave volunteers could be good soldiers.