The world has long been fascinated by Roman imperial expansion, and rightly so. The reason for fascination was already explained by the Greek historian Polybius (c.150), a contemporary witness: ‘‘Who is so indolent a person as not to wish to know by what means and because of what qualities of government and way of life the Romans have succeeded in subjecting almost the entire known world to their rule ( arche) - and this within a period of 53 years?’’ (Polyb. 1.1.5). Polybius meant the period between 220 and 167, during which time Rome defeated Carthage in the western Mediterranean, and in the Greek East defeated the great monarchies of the Antigonids (based in Macedon) and the Seleucids (based in Syria and Mesopotamia). The result was Roman dominance from Spain to Syria. This chapter will focus on that crucial period but will also discuss the phenomenon of large-scale Roman expansion in the last stages of the Republic (the first century).
The huge geographical scope of dominance achieved by the Roman Republic already by the 160s was unparalleled for an ancient city-state.1 Monarchs in antiquity had achieved wide and long-lasting territorial rule, but never city-state republics or democracies. The nearest city-state rival to Rome in domination over others was Athens in the fifth century, but the Athenians’ empire had covered a much smaller territory, and lasted only some 70 years before being destroyed by rival powers in the Peloponnesian War. The area covered by Roman domination was not only immensely larger, but it appeared to Polybius in 150 that there were no competitors on the Mediterranean horizon with the military, political, economic, and social resources to challenge the Romans’ domination - and he was right.
Yet an ambiguity regarding the nature of‘‘empire’’ is apparent in Polybius’ date for the achievement of universal Roman rule: 168/7. At that time there existed not a single
Roman-ruled province in the Greek East, not a single Roman army - nor was there even any permanent Roman diplomatic representation. Indeed, Polybius’ Roman empire, at least in the East, consisted solely of legally independent states.2 Yet the Roman statesman Cato the Elder in 167 seems to have thought the geographical scope of Rome’s dominion was similar to that depicted by Polybius.3 In what sense, then, was Rome in the mid-second century already an ‘‘empire’’? The answer here leads into a discussion of why the modern study of Roman imperial expansion under the Republic is fraught both with scholarly controversy, and - unusual for a controversy dealing with events so far in the past - fraught with emotion.
The answer has to do not with institutions, but with the existence and employment of power. As A. P. Thornton has written, at the heart of the concept of ‘‘imperialism’’ is the image of dominance, of power asserted, ‘‘and power is neither used nor witnessed without emotion.’’4 Power asserted: the Romans had a word for this. It was imperium, a word from which our terms ‘‘empire,’’ ‘‘imperialism,’’ and ‘‘emperor’’ all descend. Originally, imperium was the legal power to command obedience that Roman public officials possessed by virtue of election to office by the populace (and by virtue of the favor of the gods; see also Chapters 10 and 12). By extension and metaphor, imperium came to denote the power of the polity of the Roman People to command obedience as well, obedience to its orders internationally: the imperium of the Roman People (imperium populi Romani). Gradually, too, the term came to denote the geographical area where such commands of the Roman People would be obeyed: hence, empire.5 But the geographical scope of obeyed commands had little to do with the varied institutions through which such commands might be transmitted; the imperium populi Romani did not require the existence of provinces, soldiers, and governors. It was enough for the exercise of imperium, for its geographical scope, if a Greek state (or Celtic tribe), legally independent, obeyed what it was told to do by Rome or by a representative of Rome - as, for instance, did the powerful King Antiochus IV, in a famous incident in 168 when he was ordered by the Senate to abandon his conquest of Egypt (Polyb. 29.27.1-10; Livy 45.12.3-8).6 As Derow has pointed out, the habitual stance of the Roman State throughout Polybius’ Histories is one of giving orders to foreign polities - orders which it firmly expects to be obeyed.7 This explains why both Cato and Polybius saw the Mediterranean as an arche ruled by Rome decades before there were permanent Roman provinces there. Yet the Romans never did develop a word corresponding to the process of ‘‘imperialism.’’ Romans were uninterested in abstractions, but no Greek philosopher or historian developed a term directly corresponding to ‘‘imperialism’’ either. ‘‘Imperialism,’’ employed by modern scholars to analyze ancient Rome, is actually a modern word - and one with an unusual history.
Originally, ‘‘imperialism’’ denoted the internal political dominance of an all-powerful ruler (‘‘emperor’’) over his subject population: the classic ancient examples of this ‘‘imperialism’’ were the Roman emperors of the first to fourth centuries ad; the classic modern example was Napoleon Bonaparte. When early and mid-nineteenth-century writers spoke of‘‘imperialism,’’ they meant internal dictatorship, not expansionist foreign policy. ‘‘Imperialism’’ as a term denoting desire for foreign empire only emerged in the 1870s, during the controversy in Britain over the successful attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to have Queen Victoria proclaimed by Parliament not merely Queen of England but Empress of India: to favor such a move was “imperialism.” ‘‘Imperialism’’ is still linked here to dictatorial rule (Victoria as ‘‘empress’’), which was why Disraeli’s effort was controversial: opponents claimed that Queen Victoria, a constitutional monarch, should make no claim to dictatorship. But because the term also now denoted rule over a foreign country, indeed a faraway country, ‘‘imperialism’’ after the mid-1870s came to denote the desire to rule over foreigners. This development was accelerated, because in the two decades after the proclamation of Victoria as Empress of India the conquest and imposition of direct political control over Africa (and parts of Asia) by European powers was extraordinary in scale - and the process itself soon came to be called ‘‘imperialism.’’9 Yet the Earl of Caernarvon could write in 1878 that ‘‘imperialism, as such, is a newly coined word to me’’ - and he was the British Colonial Secretary!10
‘‘Imperialism’’ was from the beginning, then, not only a modern word but one caught up in controversy over the warlike and expansionist use of power by modern states, and particularly the intense debate over European and, later, American domination of ‘‘the third world.’’ And the controversy over modern empire has had, in turn, a profound and continuing impact upon scholarly writing on the expansion of Rome, because ‘‘power is neither used or witnessed without emotion.’’ At first the emotions provoked by European imperialism were positive - at least among Europeans. Empire was thought to be both natural in a Darwinian sense (the rule of the stronger) and morally progressive, in that Europeans were bringing education, enlightenment, economic progress, and good government in the wake of their machine guns.11 But soon enough there came a rebellion by intellectuals against the brutality and self-confidence of‘‘the imperialists’’ (the advocates and organizers of European empire). Many intellectuals attributed the extraordinary expansion of European power in the tropics between 1870 and 1900 not to the virtues but to the socioeconomic pathologies within modern European society: empire was neither natural nor good; it had unnatural causes and was evil. By extension, all imperial expansion - including in the distant past - was easily thought to derive from similar social pathologies within the imperial state.
The pioneering intellectual analysis of imperialism and empire as moral critique was Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study (1902). Hobson’s goal was to attack Britain’s role in the Boer War (1899-1902), but he also gave a critical analysis of the entire expansion of the British Empire since 1870. Arguing that the Empire had brought little benefit either to ordinary Britons or to the subordinated populations, Hobson attributed British expansion to economic and financial distortions within British society. Capitalist overproduction of goods at home led to a search to create new markets for those goods overseas by force; surplus of capital at home led to the investment of capital overseas by the rich - and then to the demand that these risky investments be protected by British military intervention and direct British rule.12 Lenin based much of his own analysis on Hobson, but in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1920) he added the idea that the domination of the great European and American monopolies, and their (economic) division of the world, did not even require the intervention of governments; the indirect economic empire of the corporations (backed, to be sure, by government force) was just as efficient at extracting wealth from subject populations - which both Hobson and Lenin believed to be the primary goal of empire. Lenin’s prestige as a successful revolutionary and the founding father of the Soviet Union ensured that his economic ideas long had wide circulation.1
These economic analyses of ‘‘imperialism’’ in the modern world had their impact on modern discussion of the motives of Roman Republican expansion. If the basic goal of empire is financial and economic profit, then we must search for Roman financial, commercial, and economic motives and interest groups in order to explain Roman actions. Commercial interests at Rome certainly sometimes benefited from the creation of empire. Slave-dealers followed Roman armies, as they did most armies in antiquity, and - if those armies were successful - reaped their grim profits (see also Chapters 27 and 28); but there is no evidence that the Roman government ever engaged in wars as slave-hunts.1 Roman government-contracting companies (pub-licani) gained control over the mines in Spain in the 190s, and the proceeds were huge (Polyb. 34.9.8-11 = Strabo 3.2.10).15 Again, in 187 the Senate passed a decree allowing the city of Ambracia on the Adriatic coast of Greece to impose whatever harbor dues it wished - yet Romans and Latins (mostly merchants, one would think) were to be exempt (Livy 38.44.4). But the provision in this senatorial decree was unique as far as we know, and the decree as a whole was concerned with restoring the Ambracian economy in response to accusations that the city had been unfairly attacked by a Roman general (Livy 38.43.1-2, 44.3-6).16 In any case these are the benefits of empire; the question is whether capitalist cabals originated Roman wars.
This claim indeed used to be made.17 But the evidence is sparse. Probably the best example of the influence of commercial interest-groups is the complaints by Italian merchants to the Senate about piracy in the Adriatic Sea in the 230s; these helped lead to the Roman decision to intervene militarily in Maritime Illyria in 229 - the first time Roman forces had ever gone east of the Adriatic. But the merchants had to complain a long time before getting action from the Senate (Polyb. 2.8.3), and the motives of many senators in 230/229 may have been strategic (the rise of a powerful pirate state in Illyria on the eastern flank of Italy) rather than economic.18 Other examples are far less clear, and in any case run up against the fact that most senatorial aristocrats were large landowners, not merchants; indeed, senators were forbidden by law after 218 to engage in large-scale trade (Livy 21.632.3; cf. Plaut. Merc. 73-78; Cic. Verr. 2.5.45). The law was sometimes skirted via senators’ use of front men, but the fact remains that senatorial interests were primarily landed interests, and thus are not likely to have taken the interests of merchants (a lower status-group in Roman society) into constant and serious account (Plut. Cat. Mai 21.5-6; Cic. Verr. 2.5.45). The relationship between the Senate and the publicani, for instance, was filled with suspicion, with the senators on watch (after bitter experience) for the defrauding of the Roman State by businessmen.19
Repeated victories in war certainly brought wealth to Rome and to individual Romans in the form of loot, and wealth to the State via the large war indemnities that were imposed on defeated polities. But again, there is little evidence that the
Roman Republic ever went to war in order to gain loot and money; these were the beneficial consequences of victory rather than the causes of wars. Indeed, wars were (and are) risky financial investments; Rome owed its citizen-creditors heavily after the Hannibalic War, but new military commitments prevented full monetary repayment (Livy 31.13.2-9). It also appears doubtful that most Roman provinces down through the 130s did more than pay their way financially. Sicily after 210 was exceptional; other provinces - for instance, Macedonia after the 140s, with its long barbarian frontier requiring strenuous defense - ran at a loss. Even Spain, with its great mines, barely covered the cost of constant Roman warfare there.21 The Senate in 167 rejected pressure from publicani favoring direct Roman rule in Macedon in order to gain control over the Macedonian mines - precisely because of perceived strategic costs for the State. It was new and serious military-political problems with a revanchist Macedonian monarchy that ultimately led to the establishment of a permanent province there in the 140s.2
Moreover, the idea that modern financial and economic interests regularly manipulated their governments in the age of modern European expansion has itself come under increasing doubt by scholars. Instead it appears that governmental elites in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were primarily concerned with geopolitics and national security issues.23 How much more likely is that to have been the case with ancient governmental elites, such as that of the Roman Republic, which were made up primarily of large landowners, in societies where the ‘‘commercial’’ element - let alone the ‘‘industrial’’ element - was always small?
This point about the ‘‘archaic’’ nature of Roman society leads us to another major thinker who has greatly influenced modern scholarly approaches to the causes of imperial expansion. Writing in horrified reaction to World War I, Joseph Schumpeter in his Sociology of Imperialisms (1919) drew a conclusion opposite to that of Lenin and Hobson. The causes of war and imperial expansion were still to be found in pathologies within the societies of expansionist states, but the pathologies did not arise from capitalism, for capitalists tended to favor peace, since peace encouraged trade. Rather, the problem lay in the control over government policy still exercised by old precapitalist elites who possessed a primitive, warlike ideology. The powerful place in society enjoyed by these premodern elites had originated in their leadership in war and expansion, and was in fact threatened by modernization and capitalism. Consequently, they sought to maintain their status through war and expansion. Imperialism was authored by such governmental elites, not by capitalist cabals, and it had no rational state goal, such as economic or financial profit. Schumpeter famously defined imperialism as ‘‘the objectless disposition on the part of a state to unlimited forcible expansion.’’24 This unlimited expansion was the work of the archaic elements in society that constituted ‘‘a war machine.’’ With the rise of capitalism the social classes constituting the war machine had begun to outlive their usefulness in protecting society, but - in another famous phrase - ‘‘created by wars that required it, the machine now created the wars it required.’’25
Schumpeter-like thinking has had a larger impact on modern scholars’ concepts of Roman imperial expansion than the economic-financial theories of Hobson and Lenin. This is because the Schumpeterian image of an ‘‘archaic’’ premodern elite imbued with a primitive ethos of war appears to fit much better as a description of the Roman senatorial aristocracy than does the image of calculating capitalist financiers found in Hobson and Lenin.26
One starts from the fact that for the first centuries of Rome’s existence, it was under constant military pressure from powerful neighbors: the other cities of Latium; the Etruscans to the north; Sabine and other raiders from the hills to the east and south. The situation was compounded after 400 by powerful raids into central Italy from Celtic tribes that had taken up residence in the Po Valley. One of those attacks destroyed the city of Rome itself around 390.27 Under such external pressures the Romans naturally developed a militarized culture and a militaristic governing elite. It was the only way to survive in - and then prevail over - this harsh environment (see also Chapters 6 and 17).
The Schumpeterian approach, mixed with some Marxist economic analysis, found brilliant expression in the immensely influential book by W. V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327-70 B. C. (1979). Harris addresses the mystery of why, after two centuries as a rather ordinary city-state barely able to hold its own, Rome from the 330s suddenly began an extraordinary career of expansion which led in 150 years to domination of the entire Mediterranean. Harris’s answer is that Rome by the 330s had become an exceptionally militarized, militaristic, bellicose, and aggressive state - exceptional not just in modern terms, but in ancient terms as well. Rome was led by a senatorial aristocracy for whom war-making was the primary life experience. War-making for them was glorious in its essence, the primary road to political power and influence, personally profitable (via loot), and socially salutary, for success in war preserved the status and power of the aristocracy while providing, in the form of the distribution of confiscated enemy land to the poor, a solution to the problem of the maldistribution of wealth and land at Rome itself. The Roman populace, eager for loot and land to ease their difficult lives, participated willingly in the Roman career of bellicosity and aggression. Roman warfare was exceptionally brutal in practice, and Roman weaponry exceptionally savage in design. Romans of all classes idolized victory and fervently worshiped the goddess Victoria. Ideology at Rome, as seen in the quinquennial prayer of the censors for ‘‘increase in the things of the Romans,’’ was overtly expansionist.28
On such a reconstruction, war at Rome became a sinister Schumpeterian nexus where crucial social, political, and economic interests converged. In fact, many scholars now argue that by the fourth century war for Rome was a social, political, and economic necessity. ‘‘War was necessary to satisfy the material and ideological needs of the aristocracy... and war became necessary to resolve social and economic problems.’’29 Some scholars argue that war in fact was now so indispensable to the functioning of Roman society that ‘‘the Romans will have looked for war when none was ready at hand.’’30 This is Rome the war machine. Hence Rome’s extraordinary rise to power in the Mediterranean is easily explained as the result of continual aggression against its neighbors by a state that had become an insatiable Schumpeterian predator.3 Scholars now regularly assert that Rome devoted itself to an expansionist foreign policy ‘‘to an exceptional degree’’; that it pursued ‘‘a continuous policy of aggression’’; that it was ‘‘the rotten apple’’ in the Hellenistic system of states.3 The majority of studies on Roman expansion under the Middle Republic now take this stance.33
But problems exist here also. First, it is difficult to believe that the ordinary Roman farmers continually drafted for strenuous and dangerous service in the army in this period would have accepted such a burden unless they thought it inevitable and necessary for the protection of their families, property, and community. One should not forget that Roman troops were conscripted citizens, and a conscripted citizen-soldier and his family are going to be politically sensitive to wars of choice as opposed to wars of necessity. There was occasional reluctance of the populace to serve (see also Chapter 27), and it brought forth from the elite a public rhetoric that emphasized not profit or glory or land grants but - precisely - self-defense.34 Successful war brought benefits to all levels of Roman society, but the enormous strains which war simultaneously imposed on that society should not be forgotten. It was not only that army service was disruptive of economic life. The fact is that Rome suffered 90 major defeats on the battlefield under the Republic.35 This is a staggering number, suggesting in itself that the enemies Rome was fighting were not mere victims. Thousands of ordinary Roman farmers died in all these Roman defeats - and, of course, they died in victories as well. This is one reason why charges of warmongering were - as we know
- politically damaging to members of the Roman elite.36 One should not think of the Roman People as either fools or a mass of professional pirates.37
Nor should ‘‘the Roman senatorial aristocracy’’ be seen as a single entity pursuing its corporate interests through constant and even unnecessary war. The evidence indicates that factional, family, and personal jealousies within the Senate were intense (see also Chapters 1 and 17), and often acted to block glory-hunting by individuals. Indeed, many aristocrats did not spend their terms of public office in battle and glory (despite the way Livy sometimes reads), but in ordinary administration; such men had strong reasons not to allow excessive opportunities to others.38 And senators knew that the mortality-rate among young military tribunes
- often the sons of senatorial families - could be high in battle.39 Senators are not likely to have gone to war lightly.
In understanding the assertive Roman stance in the interstate arena, we also need to consider that as a result of two centuries of severe attacks from neighboring states down to 340, Romans may well have been far more sensitive to possible security threats than are modern scholars sitting in their libraries. As Raaflaub says, Rome’s difficult early history produced an elite that was ‘‘nervous and highly security-conscious, all too willing to take preventive actions whenever they perceived a possible threat, or to accept offers of alliance that to us seem to have entailed more problems than advantages.’’40 But Raaflaub also tends to argue that after around 340 the external threats to Roman security were not real.41 Given all the defeats the Roman suffered (see above), and enemies such as Hannibal, or the conquering Greek monarchs Philip V and Antiochus III, or the periodic invasions of central Italy by Celtic tribal peoples from the Po Valley, this seems doubtful. And it matters to our historical understanding whether the threats were real. Here Rich concludes from his study of Roman war-making in the Middle Republic that ‘‘The Senate never began a war without reasons, just because it had to have a war somewhere.’’42
To be sure, advocates of an insatiable Roman ‘‘war-machine’’ in the Middle Republic point to the action against the Dalmatians in 156 as an explicit case where Rome went to war because the Senate thought the army needed exercise (Polyb. 32.13.7-9; see also Chapter 28).43 But even in the Dalmatian case, Polybius indicates that other factors were involved: the damaging raids of the Dalmatians against friends of Rome (which had led to frequent complaints to the Senate), insults to the Roman envoys sent to order the raiding stopped, and hence a desire to terrorize these tribes into obedience in a region where Roman power had long been little in evidence (Polyb. 32.9, 13.6, 8). Moreover, - and this is striking - in Polybius the Dalmatian conflict takes place after a 12-year period of relative peace (32.13.7).45
Indeed, such incidents as the Dalmatian conflict must be balanced against the more important general trend: ‘‘continuous war, which was the dominant feature of Roman life in the fourth and third centuries, was already beginning to disappear in the first half of the second century.’’46 Although the standard textbook dates for the Pax Romana, the famous ‘‘Roman Peace’’ in the Mediterranean, are 31 BC to ad 250, the fact is that the Roman Peace was emerging in large regions of the Mediterranean at a much earlier date: Sicily after 210; peninsular Italy after 200; the Po Valley after 190; most of Spain after 133; North Africa after 100; and for ever longer stretches of time in the Greek East.47 But how can the Pax Romana have emerged in so many regions so early if the Roman Republic was a war machine not merely geared for war but dependent upon war in order to prosper? On this, Rich has shown that Republican warfare even during the great age of expansion in the Mediterranean, 264-146, was not at all regular in intensity, i. e., ‘‘mechanical’’ or even ‘‘biological.’’ Rather, it varied greatly in intensity according to the real external crises Rome faced, and even in this period we find many consuls (the highest regularly elected officials) and praetors (the second-highest officials) serving as administrators of relatively peaceful provinces rather than as generals commanding large-scale fighting.48
This general trend suggests that when serious threats had finally all been dealt with, when control was finally established where the Romans needed it or simply desired it, Roman warfare in the Middle Republic noticeably diminished.49 To be sure, in the Middle Republic a senatorial aristocrat could not run for public office at Rome without having served ten campaigns in the army (Polyb. 3.19.4) - and since election to public office was the goal of all senatorial aristocrats, the experience of army life and war was thus the primary life-experience of young elite men from about age 17 to 27.50 Yet even in the period of great overseas expansion Cato the Elder’s enormous influence in the Senate and before the People did not rest primarily on his military achievements (though he certainly had achievements to his credit).51 Again, the most important figure in the Senate around 110 was M. Aemilius Scaurus, whose auctor-itas was immense, but Scaurus had not reached his exalted status through achievement in war; in succeeding decades the same was true of influential figures such as L. Licinius Crassus or Q. Lutatius Catulus or - most obviously - M. Tullius Cicero. These men became famous and influential as orators, lawyers, and senatorial politicians, not military men. Indeed, it is clear from Cicero’s own career that the Polybian requirement for 10 campaigns of army service before running for office had lapsed at Rome by 100 if not earlier.52 Such evidence, taken in connection with the growing
Pax Romana, suggests that the intense militarism we see in the Middle Republic was a response to a specific set of circumstances and threats, and that as these circumstances became from the Roman point of view more congenial, the aristocracy and society became less militarized (see also Chapters 17 and 20).53
This is not at all to deny the militarism and bellicosity of Roman society under the Middle Republic. The Romans were successful after around 340 in expanding their power and influence, and they intended to be. A very significant percentage of male citizens (10-15 percent) were drafted into the army every year, which meant that direct experience of war among the Roman populace in the Middle Republic was from a modern perspective extraordinarily widespread (see also Chapters 13 and 28).54 Roman culture, religion, and ethics were everywhere informed by militaristic values, and the Roman diplomatic stance toward the outside world was indeed instinctively one of coercion, not persuasion. All this is well established.55
Yet beyond the early growth of the Roman Peace under the Republic, believers in an insatiable ‘‘Roman war machine’’ as the explanation for Rome’s success must deal with an additional analytical problem: they tend to study Roman ‘‘imperialism’’ in the Middle Republic as if Rome were the only polity of consequence in the world: the sole polity with harshly militaristic characteristics and the sole polity with an impact on historical events. This is an isolationist and introverted historiography. If one raises one’s eyes from Rome itself to look at the broader geopolitical field in which Rome existed, the questions become different. What did the conduct of other states contribute to the history of Roman expansion in the Middle Republic? How different was Rome from the other major states with which it competed in Italy and then the Mediterranean for security and power? And if Rome was not much different, if the Romans were exceptionally bellicose and warlike in our terms but not in terms of their own environment, then how do we account for their exceptional success?
Here we can employ with profit the newer approaches used in the study of modern imperialisms. Whereas focus on the pathologies of the imperial metropole emerged as an intellectual response to modern European colonialism, conversely the end of European empires after World War II (and especially after 1960) created enough intellectual and political space for analyses that looked for explanation beyond the aggressive characteristics of the imperial state itself. Two such approaches claim to offer a fuller depiction of (complex) historical processes than does the metropole-centered focus.
The first approach underlines the role played in imperial expansion not by the institutions, characteristics, and actions of the imperial center, but by those of the polities that were eventually subordinated: ‘‘the periphery’’ as opposed to the metropole.56 Situations often exist on the periphery that are conducive to intervention: weak states under local threat asking for help and protection from the outside power; factionalized and divided states where one faction or another asks for help from the outside power; relatively strong states - but not as strong as they think or wish - whose aggressive conduct draws justified geopolitical concern. Such situations and such polities lead naturally to efforts at metropolitan control - and so, to empire. Similarly, ‘‘periphery-centered’’ scholars stress that empires endure (as with Rome) or fail (as with Athens) not only through military force from the center, but in good part though the collaboration in imperial rule which metropoles are able to elicit (or not) from the people and polities of the subordinated periphery. Empire is in that sense from start to finish an interactive and collaborative project.
The virtue of the ‘‘periphery-centered’’ approach is that it gives agency in the historical process to actors other than the imperial center. When one puts explanatory focus on the (pathological) character and actions of the metropole alone, then the agency of these other actors, and the resultant interstate complexity of interaction, is - ahistorically - denied.57 Thus an important yet typical diplomatic interaction in the ancient world was a weaker state under local threat asking for the protection of a stronger one; stronger states strongly tended to answer such pleas, even though an affirmative answer meant the risk of transforming a local conflict into something larger. The phenomenon and its dangers had been examined in detail already by Thucydides in the fifth century.58 Polybius thought that to accept a plea for protection from a weaker state was typical of all great states (24.10.11), and the Romans often faced such pleas. One cannot fully understand the development of Roman hegemony unless this interactive process is taken into account (see also Chapters 7 and 28). In 343, for instance, the town of Teanum Sidicinum in Campania, threatened by attack from highland Samnites, called upon the city of Capua for protection. The Capuans answered affirmatively, but the Samnites defeated them twice and soon were threatening Capua itself. The Capuans in turn asked Rome for protection, and the Romans - after hesitation - answered affirmatively, warning the Samnites away from attacking Capua. The result was soon war between Rome and the Samnites. Livy’s comment is that this war between Rome and the Samnites ‘‘arose from the quarrels of others’’ (7.29.3).59 Political scientists, observing this phenomenon at work in the modern world, have called it ‘‘empire by invitation’’ - invitation to protective hegemony from polities under local threat.60 As happened in the case of Rome, Teanum, Capua, and the Samnites, the phenomenon - widespread as it was (and is) - posed obvious dangers for increased conflict between competing great powers.
Again, there are clear instances in antiquity where rulers of states on the periphery of a great power wrongly calculated their own strength, and acted provocatively. An example is Demetrius of Pharos’ actions against states friendly to Rome in Illyria around 225-219, which eventually led to Roman military intervention - an intervention which would not have occurred without Demetrius’ own aggressions.61 Conversely, Roman diplomatic skill in eliciting widespread and long-lasting collaboration from people and polities on its periphery was certainly an important factor in the relatively stable hegemony that Rome was able to establish first in Italy and then in the Mediterranean primarily by force.62 In the Greek East, furthermore, Roman diplomatic skill in creating hegemony came from an extended learning process in which the Romans themselves adapted significantly to Hellenistic ways of diplomatic interaction.63
Placing causal emphasis upon the actions and attitudes of the ‘‘peripheral’’ states and not solely on the metropole rightly emphasizes the complexity of interstate life and the difficulty which even a powerful state has in controlling (or even predicting) those interactions.64 Yet this approach also runs a danger of gravely underestimating the role played by the great powers themselves. Just as the lesser states were not and are not solely the helpless victims of the aggressions of the great states, so the great powers were not and are not the helpless victims of the manipulations or provocations of peripheral polities. Decisions to intervene are ultimately theirs alone.65 Similarly, while the eliciting of collaboration is a crucial element especially to the efficiency of imperial rule, one must remember that the use of force by the center is still the basis on which all empire is founded.6
Still, in leading us away from an introverted historiography where Rome, its culture, and its society are studied in isolation, and instead toward the character of the interactive geopolitical field in which metropoles such as Rome are situated, the periphery-centered scholars point us in a fruitful direction. This brings us to the final analytical approach: international-systems theory.
Modern international-systems theory is dominated by a family of pessimistic theories about international interaction called ‘‘Realism.’’ Contemporary Realist thinking rose to intellectual prominence as a response to the terrible international events of the 1930s, followed by the horrors of World War II and then the onset and long persistence of the Cold War despite many diplomatic efforts at detente.67 And while taken aback by the peaceful ending of the Cold War in 1989-91 and the alleged relative success and smooth working of international institutions during the 1990s, Realists have returned to their grim element ever since September 11, 2001.
What is grim about the interstate world as Realists portray it? The answer is clear from the major Realist manifesto, Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979). Waltz posits, first, that a state always exists in a system of which it is one unit among many; these systems have their own characteristics, which in turn have great impact upon the units within them. Second, much of the behavior of states in the international arena is caused by their self-seeking within a situation of anarchy. ‘‘Anarchy’’ means that the international world consists of sovereign and independent states without international law, and/or the effective means to enforce it. In the absence of international law, states must provide for their own security - which takes power. Hence, third, sternly power-maximizing behavior becomes prevalent among all decision-making elites.68 Such conduct originates not so much from greed as from the desire for self-preservation in a fiercely competitive world: ‘‘States must meet the demands of the political eco-system or court annihilation.’’69 The combination of anarchy with ruthless power-maximizing behavior leads to a fourth principle: ‘‘The state within states conducts its affairs in the brooding shadow of violence.’’ In systems of interstate anarchy war, or the threat of war, is always present - and every state must be prepared to defend its interests through violence. Hence all states become highly militarized.70 Indeed, in such an environment, ‘‘war is normal,’’ that is, the normative means of resolving the serious conflicts of interest which often arise between and among independent and sovereign states.71 Under such conditions, to say that a state frequently goes to war is merely to say that it is experiencing intense competition from other units within the anarchic system.72 In sum, the interstate world is by its nature a tragic one, with states having to adapt their cultures to a very harsh environment. Successful adaptation to that environment leads states in the direction of bellicosity, aggression, and expansion - but that is just part of the tragedy.73
This approach is sociological - the sociology of states in interaction without law - as opposed to metropole-centered theories, which correspond, one may say, to the study of individual psychopathology. Any such sociological approach is wary of attributing large systemic effects to the conduct of a single individual, in this case a state - even an important one.74 International relations theorists term the metropole-centered approach ‘‘unit attribute theory,’’ and they are suspicious of it. The work of Harris and his supporters on Rome is, of course, a classic example of it. But if in a system of interstate anarchy warfare is regular and militarism the common behavior of most states, i. e., if war is the ‘‘normal’’ if tragic way by which most states resolve clashes of interest, then unit attribute theory must be used very sparingly. The danger lies in mistaking ‘‘normal’’ if tragic interstate violence for exceptional belligerence, in mistaking general tragedy for individual ‘‘evil.’’75
‘‘Realist’’ international-systems theory has been criticized for offering too pessimistic a view of interstate relations. The interstate world may be (and always has been) an anarchy unregulated by international law, but not every system of anarchy is totally brutal.76 On the other hand, the grim principles of state behavior proposed by Realism seem to hold up well if not for all systems, then at least for especially competitive (i. e., pathological) ones.77
Was the Hellenistic Mediterranean such a pathological system? If so, then any analysis of Roman expansion in the Middle Republic requires us to consider the pressures such a pathological state-system must have exerted on all states. We would also have to take into account not only the agency of weaker states on the periphery of Roman power, but - even more importantly - the agency of the powerful states that lay beyond the Roman periphery, that is, other metropoles or potential metropoles. On such a reconstruction, Rome was an aggressive and expansionist state but it existed and acted in a context it had not created and did not control. And Rome’s main targets were other aggressive and expansionist states.78
For the ancient world, little work has yet been done on international-systems topics. Preliminary comments will have to suffice here. The Hellenistic Mediterranean indeed seems to have been a brutally competitive state system. It was a structural anarchy: although there were a few informal norms of interstate conduct, such as not murdering ambassadors coming from another state, there was no international law and no means of enforcing even the few informal norms that existed. Thus although many sacred sites and shrines were supposedly protected by decrees from states guaranteeing inviolability, in reality such places were sacked and looted with impunity. No ‘‘international’’ effort was ever mounted to protect them militarily, and no one was ever punished for sacking them.79 Without mechanisms of enforcement, international law does not exist.80 Polybius himself stressed to his audience that theirs was world where relations between states were unregulated by anyone with the ability to impose justice (5.67.11-68.2).
The absence of international law in the Hellenistic age, as in the previous Classical age, resulted in a strong trend toward militarism and power-maximizing conduct among states. Hellenistic Greeks, like Classical Greeks, did put significant effort into attempting mediation and arbitration of conflicts, and this did help somewhat to ameliorate the situation.81 But no great state ever accepted third-party arbitration, turning over its decisions on state interests to another.82 Thus as Rostovtzeff concluded long ago, on important interstate issues ‘‘in the ancient world, the sole deciding force was might.’’83 This was a fundamental fact, and it affected the conduct of all polities.
One sometimes still hears talk of a ‘‘Hellenistic balance of power’’ as a conscious effort among the great Greek states to limit their war-making and their ambitions, to create a ‘‘consensual community.’’ But such a view is really no longer tenable. Pierre Leveque and M. M. Austin have shown how much the Hellenistic monarchs were ideologically, politically, and socially focused on war for the security of their realms and their personal positions, how militaristic and expansionist in ethos the decision-making elites of these states were, and how huge were their wars, fought with far larger armies than in the Classical period.85 Like the Romans, the Greeks fervently worshiped Victory (Nike - an important goddess with many temples, like Victoria at Rome). Warfare was endemic: in the 163 years between 323 and 160 just six years were without major wars involving one or more of the great dynasties.8 What held for the monarchies held also for middle-sized polities such as the Kingdom of Pergamum or the Achaean League - which, like Rome, were at war just about every year. And the same was true even for very small city-states, which pursued their own ferocious ‘‘mini-imperialisms’’ against their small neighbors.87 In the western Mediterranean, the rivals of Rome for security and power were all highly militaristic, bellicose, and aggressive polities: proceeding chronologically, this was true of the Latin cities, the Etruscan cities, the Aequi and Volsci, the Samnites, Tarentum, Carthage, and of course the Celtic peoples of northern Italy who had already destroyed Rome once.88 Polybius thought the Romans were courageous - but he thought the Macedonians were fiercer and braver; this gives an idea of the Romans’ environment.89 An additional factor contributing to the Mediterranean chaos was unsophisticated diplomacy: there were no permanent ambassadorial missions between states, which meant that continuous communication - which moderns take for granted and think necessary for smooth relations - was lacking. Meanwhile the basic instinct of all ancient governments in interstate crises was to engage in threats and coercion (not persuasion) of others - a habit of diplomacy that contributed its own destabilizing impact to interstate relations.90
One should note also the fragility of all these ancient states compared to the robustness of modern nation-states, and the impact this may have had on decision making. City-states in antiquity could often simply be annihilated: 40 were destroyed in the Peloponnesian War alone. And the frailty of even powerful states is stunning. Carthage went from being an imperial power to the point of physical destruction at the hands of its own mercenaries between 245 and 240. Rome in the 230s and 220s might have disappeared under a tidal wave of Celtic attack (Polyb. 2.35) - as almost occurred in 390. The Ptolemaic empire based on Egypt, one of the three pillars of ‘‘the Hellenistic balance of power,’’ collapsed between 207 and 200: a child on the throne; a series of unstable regencies in the capital at Alexandria (replaced by coup or riot); massive indigenous rebellion in Upper and Middle Egypt - followed by large-scale assault against the weakened empire from the vigorous rulers Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus III of Syria. In such a world, possible external security threats were bound to be taken with the utmost seriousness by all governing elites.91 Similarly, to answer requests for help from weaker states affirmatively - dangerous as that could be - was to take steps to increase one’s own resources while denying resources to potential competitors.92 Such actions, if successfully carried through, also increased one’s reputation as a powerful polity, and in a world without law, a fearsome reputation is an advantage in terms of security and survival.93
If the above depiction of the violent and lawless environment in which the Roman Republic came to maturity is correct, then the thesis that Rome owed its success primarily to exceptionally intense militarism, bellicosity, and aggression ought to be treated with skepticism. The Romans were indeed militaristic, bellicose, expansionist, and aggressive; but so was just about everyone else (in good part as a result of the pressures of the system). But if so, then Roman militarism, bellicosity, and aggressiveness cannot by themselves be the explanation for Rome’s exceptional success during the Middle Republic.
What, then, is the explanation? When ancient intellectuals considered the rise of states to hegemonic power, they focused not on these states’ internal pathologies but on their internal strengths, i. e., the strengths that allowed states to prevail over a cruel environment.94 Hence Polybius in Book 6 of his Histories famously sought the explanation of Rome’s rise to world power in the virtues of Rome’s ‘‘mixed constitution,’’ which fostered political stability in the face of crises and military disasters, as well as in the self-restrained and patriotic (self-sacrificing) Roman way of life (see also Chapters 12 and 18).95 Let us for the moment adopt the ancient approach of looking for strengths and not pathologies.
When one considers the two main types of states with which the Romans competed for survival and power in the Mediterranean - city-states and large territorial monarchies - one sees that each of these types of polity had significant weaknesses. Most ancient city-states were fiercely reluctant to admit outsiders to citizenship. As a result, although they were highly integrated polities capable of mobilizing a high percentage of their people in a crisis, their population resources were strictly limited, and they could be overwhelmed. By contrast, great territorial monarchies had potential resources much larger than any city-state, but their diverse populations of taxpaying subjects were not well integrated into the state or with each other; and since the monarchical regimes depended on military prestige for political stability, they could not, politically, take many defeats on the battlefield. In short, one type of state competing with Rome was well integrated but not large, the other large but not well integrated.
By contrast, the Romans proved capable of producing a polity that was both large and relatively well integrated. The towns of Latium had long had strong mutual ties, including intermarriage and interchangeable citizenship, and the foundation-legends of Rome stressed that its population had always been multiethnic (Latins, Sabines, Etruscans, and even Greeks and Trojans; see also Chapters 22 and 25). Rome was thus never as fiercely exclusivist as the Greek city-states. After the Latin War of 340338 the Senate evolved a system whereby Roman citizenship was divorced both from ethnicity and location (see also Chapter 28). Rather, it became purely a legal status that was available to the ‘‘deserving,’’ who did not even have to speak Latin.
Combined with a clear willingness to use ferocious violence to keep subordinate polities in line, this relative Roman inclusiveness enabled Rome to create first a quite stable hegemony in west-central Italy in the generation after 340, and then a quite stable confederation throughout the entire Italian peninsula in the two generations that followed. To do this required great Roman skill in alliance management, but it produced a system with far greater potential rewards for loyal allies and far more likely punishments for the recalcitrant or rebellious than, for instance, the allies of Athens confronted in the fifth century. Hence Rome’s stability and strength.96
And eventually more was involved than skillful alliance-management. There was also skill at managing integration. The Romans - very gradually - forged the peoples of Italy into one people, the Romans (see also Chapters 25 and 28).97 It was a long and involved process not complete even by the end of the Republic. But the implications for Rome’s exceptional success in the cruel Mediterranean competition for security and power were seen long ago by Theodor Mommsen.98 He exaggerated in asserting that Rome came the closest among ancient Mediterranean polities to creating a nation-state. Rome created something different from a nation-state; otherwise the extension of Roman citizenship beyond Italy itself - a prominent phenomenon of the Empire - would not have occurred. Yet Mommsen was also correct to emphasize Rome’s exceptional achievement. The creation of a polity that was simultaneously both large and increasingly well integrated gave Rome the advantage of control over large-scale resources which any large and integrated state would have in competition against large but potentially unstable dynastic empires or against small and limited city-states or loose tribal groupings.99 I would argue that it was from this achievement, unique in the ancient world - along with intense Roman militarism, bellicosity, and aggressiveness, which must never be forgotten - that Roman hegemony emerged.
But what of the Late Republic, and the huge territorial conquests of Pompey, Caesar, and Augustus? Those conquests resulted in an enormous geographical expansion of direct Roman rule and indirect Roman influence. Pompey’s campaigns in the East in the 60s led to the Roman annexation of Syria, previously the center of the Seleucid monarchy, as well as extending Roman power into Judaea and eastern Asia Minor. Caesar, of course, conquered Gaul as far as the Rhine, and even invaded Britain. Augustus annexed Egypt, previously the center of the Ptolemaic monarchy, and took the Roman frontier in the Balkans as far north as the Danube. He wished to go further, including the conquest of Germany as far as the Elbe.100 Should not the spectacular military achievements of these Romans be seen as simply a continuation of the exceptionally pathological and aggressive militarism which many scholars have posited as characteristic of the Middle Republic?
To a large extent the answer to this complex issue has already been indirectly provided by Cornell, but several points deserve emphasis.101 First, as the Pax Romana gradually emerged in many regions of the Mediterranean after 200/180, the overall character of Roman military endeavor changed. The majority of Roman armies and their commanders became engaged in garrison and administration duties, in military control, not in annual large-scale war (see above). This is already the situation that would exist more famously later, under the emperors. The Roman
Peace of the Republic, as during the Empire, usually involved a certain level of ‘‘low-intensity’’ warfare - e. g., bandit-suppression, or policing of the frontier. But this is not large-scale war: major wars against foreign enemies grew intermittent and infrequent after the early second century, and this overall trend continued into the Late Republic. Both periods thus stand together, in sharp contrast to the continual great conflicts in which Rome engaged in the fourth, third, and early second centuries. Similarly, the character of Roman military forces after the mid-second century was also changing. They were ceasing to be the annually conscripted militia of citizens typical of all ancient city-states, representative of and integral to Roman society; instead the army was gradually becoming a corps of often long-service professionals, men removed from general Roman society - a development which, again, would reach full fruition under the emperors.
The combination of these developments in fact suggests that Roman society over the last 130 years or so of the Republic was becoming an increasingly civilian one.1 Strikingly, this development includes a majority of the senatorial aristocracy, whose socioeconomic-political needs have usually been depicted as the dynamic force behind the Middle Republican ‘‘war machine.’’ Hence in the Jugurthine War, written in the 40s, the Roman historian Sallust could depict Marius in 107 comparing his own extensive military experience with the majority of the Senate, who only read about wars in books. Whether this is an accurate depiction of the situation in 107 is not clear, but Sallust clearly expected his aristocratic audience to accept the contrast as natural (see also Chapters 13 and 17).103
Yet the emergence of an increasingly civilian society at Rome is not the impression most people have of the Late Republic, because to see it requires careful scrutiny of scattered sources, and because the growth of the Pax Romana under the Republic and the increasingly civilian nature of Roman Republican society are subtle and longterm trends. Moreover, they are masked from us by two more dramatic phenomena of this period. First, the civil wars - hugely disruptive and destructive to Roman society - continue to fascinate modern scholars, with the result that the focus of modern attention is still on Roman warfare - though these were not foreign wars. And the towering figures of the great conquerors of the last generation of the Republic themselves mask the more subtle developments. The conquerors were famous men and fascinating men - but we must understand that they were unusual men.
Here Tim Cornell points to a second little noticed continuity between military conditions in the late Republic and later in the age of the emperors. Pompey’s conquests in the East, Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, Augustus’ expansion to the Danube and his attempt to extend Roman control to the Elbe, Claudius’ conquest of Britain, and Trajan’s conquest of Dacia and attempted conquest of Mesopotamia are all of a piece. That is: from the 60s BC to the ad 110s, the relatively peaceful conditions prevailing in most of the Mediterranean - a situation already emerging a century before Pompey - were dramatically interrupted by territorial conquests at the hands of great Roman dynasts. This is true whether we call these dynasts emperors or not.1 4 To this list of conquerors in Cornell one may add two failed large campaigns against the Parthians: Crassus’ attempt in 54-53 to equal the conquests of Pompey and Caesar, and Marc Antony’s similar effort in 36-34.105
If the Roman State after the early second century had already shifted primarily to a stance of administrative control, with its primary task the maintenance of military supervision over a now congenial Roman-dominated international environment, why and how did such great conquering figures arise? The answer is probably that the great dynasts were products of what has come to be called ‘‘the Roman Revolution.’’ Possession of empire offered enormous opportunities for the acquisition of wealth, influence, and power for certain Roman aristocrats - the provincial governors of the richest provinces (see also Chapter 29). 6 Polybius (31.25.3-5a) already depicts Cato the Elder in the 150s as worried about the social and cultural consequences of the increasing flow of wealth into Rome (see also Chapter 17). But the men who had the opportunity to make the greatest fortunes were few in number. It depended upon which province you got to govern and the task assigned you by the Senate. Cicero did not do well financially as governor of poverty-stricken Cilicia in the late 50s, in part because of the nature of his province, in part because he refused to be involved in monetary corruption. Pompeius stands in stark contrast: after his conquests of 67-62 he ‘‘left the East not only its patron but to a considerable extent (and one hard to realize these days) its owner.’’107 Pompeius’ wealth came both from the vast loot won in his campaigns and from using his political influence on behalf of eastern governments (e. g., to gain official recognition at Rome for King Ariobarzanes II of Cappadocia.)108 Caesar’s loot from Gaul was similar.109 A good portion of this wealth was then filtered down to Pompeius’ and Caesars’ officers and soldiers, as gifts and bonuses. These benefactions, in turn, won personal loyalty for the general - from armies that were no longer a citizen militia of small farmers as in the Middle Republic but were now made up of professionals drawn from a rural proletariat (see also Chapters 13 and 28). The result was that some within the Roman aristocracy, which was still a highly competitive society, acquired personal power and prestige on a hitherto unimaginable scale. While most men did not seek such great prizes, a few men did. The way was through foreign conquests.
The effect of these developments can be seen, for instance, in the career of M. Licinius Crassus. He was the conqueror of Spartacus in the 70s, but a slave-war brought little glory. Faced with the competition of Pompey and Caesar for the prestige and wealth necessary to dominate Roman politics, Crassus procured himself a large command against the Parthians. Plutarch indicates that this war was prompted by megalomania, and had no justification in morality or strategic utility (Crass. 16). It ended in disaster.1 What is striking is not merely Plutarch’s criticism, but how unpopular Crassus’ war was among the Roman populace at the time. The tribune C. Ateius Capito openly accused Crassus of starting an unjust war ‘‘against men who had done the city no wrong’’ (Plut. Crass. 16.3) - publicly warning of dire omens from the gods as the army departed the city. Ateius had widespread support.111 Nor did Caesar escape severe public criticism at Rome for pushing his mandate in Gaul to the point of total conquest, including war with the Germans. Cato the Younger in 55 publicly warned the Senate on religious grounds against Caesar’s conduct toward the Germans, and later misfortunes to Caesar’s army may have been portrayed as a fulfillment of Cato’s prophesy (Plut. Cat. Min. 51.1, 3-4, Caes. 22.4).112 Indeed, Caesar’s own troops came close to mutiny as they marched against the German tribes, partly on grounds that they were undertaking a war that was neither morally proper (i. e., it was aggressive) nor formally voted at Rome, but undertaken merely on account of Caesar’s personal ambition (philotimia: Cass. Dio 38.35.2).
What Cassius Dio terms ambition is probably the key. There is telling evidence that Pompey, Caesar, Antony, and for that matter Trajan, all patterned themselves in part not on Roman models but on Alexander the Great, the king of Macedon.1 3 From the 60s until the death of Trajan 180 years later, certain men who possessed extraordinary abilities (or at least extraordinary ambitions) attempted to extend the frontiers of Roman control through large-scale war. In the last stages of the Republic, the vast riches, influence, and power that accrued to such men if successful made it difficult for traditional republican institutions to constrain and contain them - and so, in the end, there emerged the emperors. But these aggressive Roman dynasts were simply not the norm ofRoman administration during these two centuries - neither in the Late Republic nor in the early Empire. Indeed, sometimes the conquerors acted because of fortuitous constellations of politics. The emperor Tiberius (ad 14-37), a very experienced general, administered a quite peaceful reign for 24 years, but the emperor Claudius’ political position was shaky because he had no military or political credentials - and so Claudius from ad 43 began the conquest of Britain. In addition, once the emperors were in control at the center, it became politically dangerous for any provincial governor to engage in large-scale war. Emperors became reluctant even to put members of the senatorial class in charge of provinces with large armies, because of the potential political competition they represented.
World History
