The conflict also blurred the distinction between Romans and their enemies; the presence of large armies in Italy during the war also provided opportunities for generals to seize power extralegally.

[14] By the time of the Social War, the allies were mainly located in the following regions: two northern ones (Etruria and Umbria) and more further south (Lucania, Apulia, and Magna Graecia).

These attempts were largely brought because Roman tribunes and magistrates believed that granting citizenship could be traded for Italian elites acquiescing over occupied public lands.

[30] More modern versions of the citizenship thesis have been advanced by Emilio Gabba,[31] arguing that Italian commercial classes (the publicani) drove romanisation in an attempt to share in the rewards of empire.

[36] The extent of the upheaval of the alliance system similarly leads Mouritsen to reject granting citizenship as part of Drusus' attempt to change jury composition as means far in excess of the ends sought.

Drusus, seeking to placate the plebs in exchange for a change in the jury courts, proposed a law to do more widespread land distributions against the allies' protests.

But others, such as Mouritsen, have taken a more critical eye at the evidence and viewed the Italian magistrates and senate as a more formally federal structure without direct popular involvement.

A Roman praetor by the name of Quintus Servilius, possibly the quaestor of 103 BC, rushed to the city and threatened violence if Asculum did not desist.

This sequence is at odds with Appian's account, which paints Asculum as rioting in late 91 BC in response to Marcus Livius Drusus' assassination in Rome and Roman prosecution of Italian allies.

[56] In this narrative, Drusus, whose political star was waning since the death of his influential supporter Lucius Licinius Crassus, had his legislation invalidated by the senate.

[57] Appian asserts that after Drusus' death but before the start of the war, the equites set up the quaestio Varia (the Varian court) to prosecute those who aided the Italians in securing citizenship.

Mouritsen writes of the court, "such stab-in-the-back theories are plausible only when no other explanation is at hand; apparently the Romans did not see any direct connection between the franchise question and the outbreak of the war".

Rome also conscripted ships and mercenaries from its overseas allies; two triremes, for example, were taken from Heraclea Pontica on the Black Sea and returned eleven years later.

[71] There was a policy of mercy toward pro-Roman combatants in the southern theatre commanded by Gaius Papius Mutilus; the war also assumed a "distinctive character" in the extent to which Roman soldiers defected to the Italians.

[76][77][78] After this battle, when the huge number of bodies returned to Rome caused a panic, the senate decreed that war dead should in the future be buried on the field.

[84] Attempts to incite rebellion in Etruria and Umbria could have opened a third front against Rome, but were quickly suppressed; Appian notes also that the senate acceded to garrisoning Cumae with freedmen, recruited into the army for the first time.

[86] As Rome started to gain the upper hand, the senate decreed some time around October that consul Lucius Julius Caesar should bring legislation allowing any Italian community that had not revolted or otherwise promptly laid down their arms to elect Roman citizenship.

This was passed and became the lex Julia de civitate; it also removed one of the main causes of the war – be it demands for citizenship or for security of land holdings – and provided that new tribes would be created for new citizens.

[102] Early in the year, Pompey Strabo's command in the northern theatre was prorogued and he quickly accepted the surrender of multiple Italian towns and communities, putting an effective end to the war in the north.

Municipal constitutions dating from time immemorial over the next decades were replaced by laws and charters passed under the auspices of the comitia in Rome.

[114] One of the main issues in 88 BC (the consulship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla) was how the newly enfranchised Italian citizens would be enrolled into the Roman tribes.

[115] Plans were made to create possibly two or eight new tribes, pursuant to the lex Julia,[116] which would deprive the overwhelming number of new citizens of much of their political influence.

He brought and passed legislation, possibly by force, which would have the new citizens inscribed in the existing thirty-five tribes instead; he could only bring that proposal successfully with the support of Marius, whom he won over with the promise of the Mithridatic command.

[119][120][121] After Lucius Cornelius Cinna took control of the city, espousing the cause of Italian suffrage, he settled the matter in favour of distributing the new citizens among the old tribes, which was confirmed during and after Sulla's civil war both by the victor and the senate.

Moreover, because no censuses were held to reclassify citizens on their wealth, those grandfathered into the upper centuriae who had fallen on harder times sold their votes to the highest bidders.

[132] But the war's extensive militarisation of Italy triggered an opening for generals to grab political power:[133] [It brought] for the first time in over a hundred years... large-scale military campaigning back to Italian soil.

[137] Harriet Flower, in the influential 2010 book Roman republics, further speculates that the conflict may have driven a wedge between the common soldiery and the voters at Rome, reducing their loyalty to the state.

[148] The sources also attribute to the allies demands for libertas, a broad term describing legal protections against unjust punishment, the vote, the right to appeal, and the rule of law.

[149] Sources voicing demands for libertas include Rhetorica ad Herennium,[150] in which a speech is putatively being given before the quaestio Varia in which the Italians are painted as rebelling against Roman rule.

[155] Other historians also hold this view, including Gaetano De Sanctis (drawing parallels between the Social war-era Italians and 19th century risorgimento) and, most influentially and radically, Henrik Mouritsen.