SOCIAL WAR (Lat. belluni sociale). A desperate struggle between Rome and her Italian allies (socii), which lasted for two years (n.c. 90-88). The races of Central Italy, the Samnites, Peligatians, Itlarsians, and Lucanians, had long been bound to Rome by a forced allegiance, with out enjoying the rights of Roman citizenship, which brought with them ereat social and polit ical advantages. They had long sought in vain an amelioration of their condition, for while their men fought side by side with the Romans in the wars of the Republic, they were denied all sem blance of equality. The hardy and vigorous mountaineers chafed under this oppression, and when, in B.C. 90, their Roman champion, M. Livius Drusus, was murdered for his attempted reforms, they broke out in an extensive and well organized revolution and aimed at a confedera tion of all Italy to crush the growing power of Rome. It was the first dream of a united Italian nation. The union was to be called Italia, its
capital was to be Co•finium, in the Pelignian country, under the new name of Rohm, and its government was to be a republic administered by two elective consuls, as at Rome. Their armies were very successful for a time, and Rome met some serious reverses; but by giving her coveted citizenship to those allies who remained loyal, and promising it to such as would return to her allegiance, she succeeded in breaking the strength of the revolution, which was virtually crushed in B.c. S8. But, though the Italians lost their independence, they gamed their original demands, for they were enrolled in eight new Roman tribes. and soon became assimilated to the Roman body politic. From the part borne by the Marsians in this struggle it is often called the Ma•sian (Marsic) War.