Social War

The Social War was a war fought within Italy between the City of Rome and it's Italian allies, who had long been frustrated with their lack of participation in politics; they couldn't be elected to the cursus honorum and were thus cut off from sources of Republican wealth and power.

The central cause of their rebellion was the lack of citizenship, though there were more extreme factions, such that a group of rebels declared Corfinum their new capital.

The rebels were completely out-gunned from the start, though they were able to win a few victories that forced Rome to make a few concessions. Rome eventually granted citizenship to all loyal Italian and some Gallic cities (including cities that denounced the rebel cause).

This was the first full-scale civil war involving all levels of society; it was to be a paragon of it's kind for all the civil wars to follow, from Cinna and Sulla, Pompey and Crassus , to Caesar until finally Augustus.

The new citizens needed to be included in the existing voting tribes, or else have a new tribe created (which would cut all the new citizens off from political power); some strategy needed to be developed to include the new citizens in voting tribes, and this became a significant source of debate and tension in italy.

Loss of personal identity of other italian cities; all were becoming subsumed under "Roman."