About the Italian allies (on whom I'm writing my dissertation) it's not at all clear that they wanted citizenship. The result of the Social War was citizenship for all the Italians, but there is evidence that they really wanted to overthrow Rome. Most of this is in the legends and imagery of their coinage, which is inconvenient here, but there is also the text of the Ad Herrenicum 4.14 that suggests the allies really wanted to take over the Empire.

Personally, I suspect different Italians were involved in the war for different reasons, and we can't really sort those out from the extant evidence.

I suppose the short answer would be, because Rome was so powerful. They did not start out that and were not, during their very early history, considered something to be copied or looked up to.

If you look at the legends of the early founding of Rome you see that they were largely a group of the dregs of society. Basically people that had been run of or could not make a home in other, more civilized areas. These were, for obvious reasons, mostly men. Rome realizes that they were going to need some women if they wanted to last past a generation so they ask for marriage rights with the neighboring tribes and were refused, given their less than desirable status. Rome throws a huge festival and invites its neighbors to the party. Including, famously, the Sabines. They wait for the men to get drunk and grab the women, the famous, rape of the Sabines.

I won't go into any more detail on that, it's just to show that they were not always considered a powerful idea.

As Rome expanded across the peninsula they fought many wars against various tribes, the. Latins, the Samnites, etc. these were wars of conquest, as these groups were not trying to get into the Roman family, so to speak, but rather to avoid the tyranny of Rome. There were wars, in fact, fought by tribes to gain their independence.

It wasn't until later, when the empire had expanded, that the Italian allies pushed for full citizenship. The allies were required to supply troops and calvary to the roman wars but had no say in the elections and got a much smaller percentage of the spoils. The empire, at least on the peninsula was an unavoidable fact at that point and they simply wanted fair treatment.

As the empire grew so did it's influence. It did Romanize the areas to conquered and administrated and it made sure that it's closest friends controlled those areas.

If you were a friend of Rome, you were likely to be very well treated, and protected from your enemies. And, as a king, if you left your country to Rome, you knew it would be protected from your traditional enemies.

So, yeah, the idea of Rome was so powerful because Rome herself was so powerful. She could be a great friend, but if you fought her, well the saying was, Rome creates a wasteland and calls it peace.

In considering this question I think it would be best to clarify if by generation you mean the commonly cited 20 years or if you are referring to a lifetime of around 60 years. As depending on which definition is used one could make some convincing parallels that may not be 100% accurate.