Mobilità e politica nel Mediterraneo romano: il caso dei proscritti sillani

This PhD thesis investigates the mobility of the Sullan proscribed and the impact it had in the Mediterranean Sea. By the 1st century BCE, Rome had long since become a Mediterranean empire. At that time, there was an exploitation of the possibilities of movement that the new political configuration of the Mare nostrum could offer. Not only did this spatial turn involve commerce, cultural exchanges, and migration, to name a few, but political persecuted as well. Starting from existing prosopographic studies, through a new reading of ancient sources and modern studies on the Sullan proscribed, this research traces, together with the proscribed, the routes that led them to find rescue in different places in the Mediterranean, and then sheds light on which choices characterised their movement and their new lives. The study of the mobility of the escaping proscribed not only gives us an idea of how the political and economic elites were aware of Rome’s full Mediterranean influence, but also can offer useful material for comparison with other types of movement typical of forced migration. This research also aims to contribute, from a different perspective, to enrich the debate on the significance of the Sullan proscriptions and the consequences they caused in the Roman world. The impact that such mobility had in the Mediterranean context provides evidence of how the proscriptions were not only a moment of realignment in Roman society and politics, but also represented a turning point in the multiplication of networks: a crucial feature in the establishment of an Empire.