This is a book that claims at frequent intervals to be innovative, unconventional, revisionist, or words to that effect; but a statement does not become true by frequent repetition, and we shall see that the claim has at least to be nuanced. The book is also rather thesis-like, with chapters mostly having an introduction and conclusions. It aims to be accessible to non-specialists, for instance referring to ancient texts primarily by way of the pages of a modern translation; but, in the context of some (pro-Roman) citizens of captured Veii being granted land and Roman citizenship, we are introduced to a similar grant to the Claudii (115) and to ‘the polity-sized Claudii coming to Rome’ (117), references which a specialist will instantly recognise, but which will mystify the non-specialist, particularly if they remember the references when they later come across the Claudii as one Roman gens, along with the Fabii and others.

Ch. 1 sets out to show that, with a few recent exceptions, writers on Rome have swallowed the view of the ancient sources, that Roman exceptionalism and military-political success were the result of unique moral qualities. This is rather unfair to Mommsen, one of whose early works was Oskische Studien (1845), mastering to the level then possible a difficult language, which no-one does unless they wish to know what the writers of that language had to say about themselves. Ch. 2 shows that in central and southern Italy as a whole, the early first millennium b.c. was marked by urbanisation, state formation, the emergence of elites, called lineages by T., and the designation of public spaces and sacred buildings. True, but has anyone ever supposed otherwise? Ch. 3 shows that in the central Mediterranean, other polities than Rome set out to expand their spheres of influence from the end of the fifth century b.c. onwards; again true, but surely generally held. The chapter is redolent of the concept of ‘peer-polity interaction’, associated in my mind with the name of Colin Renfrew, who does not figure in T.'s bibliography. Ch. 4, despite the claim to eschew narrative, consists essentially of narratives of the different trajectories of Roman dealings with Veii, Caere, Capua, and Arezzo, and the Samnites (there is not a shred of evidence that Rome ever produced coinage at Capua).

Ch. 5 broaches the problem of Roman exceptionalism, denying the relevance of the Roman military reforms of c. 300 b.c. and foregrounding the supposed role of Italian lineages. To take the latter point first, T. assumes without argument that the members of a gens acted as a cohesive unit and that a factional model of Roman and Italian politics is appropriate: the latter view is not now widely held, and the former belief is conspicuously not supported by the only period of Republican history that is well known, namely the late Republic. Note also that Latin Licinius may equal Etruscan lecne (185), but it does not follow that an Etruscan lecne came to Rome in the course of the process of Roman expansion: the Licinii may by then have been established at Rome for centuries. In denying the relevance of the evolution of the Roman army, T. relies heavily on J. Armstrong, War and Society in Early Rome (2016), at pp. 160–1; but, naturally with due caution and rightly emphasising the gradualness of the change, Armstrong attributes considerable importance to the manipular reform, for whose contribution to the eventual Roman victory at Pydna we have the record of the testimony of L. Aemilius Paullus. It is hard to doubt that the reform had already contributed to many other victories.

Ch. 6 deals with the consequences of (Roman) expansion; I could not agree more that number of casualties and volume of booty were regularly exaggerated by our sources, noting however that T. in the end does not deny considerable redistribution of resources to Rome (202–3). On the impact of enslavement and manumission (211–15), T. is typically optimistic: I doubt if our evidence is good enough to say more than that both occurred. Similarly optimistic are pp. 215–19 on the impact of confiscation of land. What T. says of Roman colonisation (219) is simply untrue: ‘the really problematic areas of the central highlands … were simply avoided’. Sora, Alba Fucens, Aesernia, Beneuentum? (The accompanying map is on too small a scale to make sense; the maps are in general dreadful.)

On centuriation, T. rightly draws attention to the general lack of evidence for the chronology of the various systems that have been identified; but, although the exposition leaves something to be desired (F. E. Brown, Cosa (1980), 9), it appears that the centuriation grid of Cosa was laid out in relation to the town. The case exemplifies a problem with the book as a whole. T. is enviably widely read in the secondary literature, and in comparative and theoretical material; the penalty is a certain detachment from the primary evidence, both for T. and for his reader. On roads, T. doubts that they served either a military or an economic function, and suggests that they were designed to facilitate communication between different lineages; this seems to me improbably abstract, and I wonder whether they were not rather an expression of some sentiment such as ‘We've built a road from here to X; that shows it belongs to us!’ What T. has to say on citizenship and law is relatively unspecific and, perhaps therefore, largely unexceptionable: note that (contra 240) the first statute to abrogate earlier statutes was the Lex Iulia de adulteriis. I am sympathetic to the view that, apart from a ‘few economically hyperactive hotspots’, the Italian economy changed little and slowly, and more as a result of long-run factors than of the process of Roman expansion.

Ch. 7, the last, consists of conclusions to the book as a whole, and underlines its claim to innovativeness: to summarise, I hope fairly, they are that a ‘Roman’ empire in Italy was as much, if not more, the creation of the elites of Italy as of those of Rome. When in 1978 I wrote that ‘in return for support against the lower orders, the governing classes (of Italy) were only too happy to accept Roman overlordship’ (The Roman Republic, 29) or spoke of ‘the strength built upon consensus both of the Roman political system and of the Italian confederacy’ (The Roman Republic, 42: I would not now talk of a confederacy), I did not think I was saying anything very new or surprising.