I can't do all of these right now, but I can do #5.

First, the Social War wasn't a series of wars, it was one that lasted from 91-89 or 88 depending on who is counting.

The "traditional narrative" is that the Allies were increasingly upset by Roman abuses, such as the Gracchan land commission which, while trying to redistribute Roman land, accidentally grabbed a bunch of Italian land and gave it to Romans as well. There was also an inability to influence Roman policy, which was a frustration because as Rome became more and more involved in long overseas wars, they relied increasingly on Italian allies to fight those wars, and the Italians derived little benefit from them. There was also an issue of social equality; while fighting wars abroad the Italians lived with and fought besides Romans, and were treated like Romans by the provincials, and indeed came to feel "Roman," while when they returned to Italy they were distinctly not Roman, without Roman civil rights or access to the Roman justice system, and felt they were treated more like subjects of empire rather than partners of empire. The "traditional narrative" says the Italian allies began to lobby for the Roman citizenship as a means of addressing these injustices.

In 91 BCE (according to the "traditional narrative") the pro-Italian tribune of the plebs Marcus Livius Drusus, who was in the middle of a campaign to extend the citizenship to the allies, got himself assassinated in his home. The assassin was never found. For the Italians, who had been lobbying in various ways to get the citizenship for at least 40 years, this was the last straw. There was a spontaneous lynching of a Roman praetor at Asculum, and shortly after the Allies had armies operating in two theaters in Italy. Rome was very much fighting on the back foot for the first year of the war, losing both consuls by the 2nd year of the conflict, and as a way of managing the situation extended the citizenship first to Italian communities that had not revolted but were considering joining the rebels like the Etruscans and Umbrians, and then in 89 to belligerent Italian communities that surrendered. Most accepted that deal, though some continued cause trouble for another ten years.

I kept saying that's the "traditional narrative." That's the narrative you find in the ancient sources, and until very recently in all the modern scholarship - people might argue about whether it was mercantile Italians or agrarian Italians that were the driving force behind the war, but there's no real argument about the narrative.

About 20 years ago a guy names Mouritsen came along and pointed out that almost all of the sources we have for this war were from about 100 years afterward, and that narrative represents the story Romans (including those descended from Italians) told themselves to justify the political situation (everyone in Italy is Roman) when those stories were being told, and that they have little to do with the actual goals of the Italians, causes of the war, or explanation of the settlement. Mouritsen proposed instead that the real goals of Italians were as diverse as the Italian coalition (some Italians not caring about citizenship, some wanting it, some settling for it, some wanting to destroy Rome, some wanting to form a broader coalition including Rome as an equal partner), and that the expansion of the citizenship to the rebels wasn't a concession of the Romans to the allies, but instead a punishment inflicted by the Romans on the allies. I mean, how would you feel if someone walked into your house at swordpoint and told you that you weren't a citizen of whatever state you're a citizen of, but instead you were now a citizen of a state you had just been at war with for at least two years? I'm not a US Civil War scholar but I feel like the persistence of memes such as "the South will rise again" and veneration of the Confederate flag might be a useful analogy.

Mouritsen's criticisms of the "traditional narrative" have in general been well received by the scholarly community, but people don't seem to like many of his conclusions. His contribution seems to me to be the emphasis on the diversity of the Italians.

The citizenship issue did have a long tail. To get the Italians enrolled as citizens a census would have to be held. They tried in 86, but failed to complete it, and there wouldn't be another attempt to hold a census until 70. In that census, Roman Romans made the decision to enroll Italian Romans in only ten new tribes, effectively isolating them out of the popular assemblies (because each of the traditionally 34 tribes got one vote - this would give all Italians only 10 votes between them). Some Italians at least did not stand for this and Appian tells us about battles fought in the forum over this issue. The Italians won this point and were enrolled across the 34 tribes. Even so, they were not able to penetrate the highest ranks of the Roman elite until about 40 years later. Only with the dictatorship of Julius Caesar do we start seeing significant numbers of recognizably Italian senators. In fact, the historian Syme thought Augustus' autocracy was very much the result of the Italian elite choosing an equality of slavery with the Roman elite, when they found the Roman elite unwilling to accept them.

It was an effective change of demographics, and changed Roman self-conception. in 48 CE Claudius spoke to the Senate arguing for the admission of the Gallic elite to that body, and he didn't speak about a Roman Senate, but an Italian Senate. He didn't speak about provincials and Romans; he spoke about provincials and Italians. But he won that argument, Gauls entered the Senate and it ceased to be an Italian body.