In the early first century BC, one of Rome’s major enemies, Mithridates VI of Pon-tus, reflected on his opponents: ‘They themselves say that their founders were brought up by the milk of a she-wolf so that the entire race has hearts of wolves, is insatiable of blood, and is ever greedy and lusting after power and riches.’ No pre-industrial society has ever mobilized such a high percentage of its male population in war over such a long period of time as Rome. It is estimated that between 9 and 16 per cent of male citizens could be supported in her armies in normal times and 25 per cent at times of crisis. The supremacy of Rome in war depended not only on her manpower but on a mixture of ferocity in battle (even the dogs were cut up, recorded the historian Polybius of a Roman victory over a city in Spain) and comparative generosity over those defeated. It was a formidable combination that was to underlie the strategy of Roman imperialism in the centuries to come.
In Rome itself military victory was idealized. Wars were assumed to be just and the temples built during the Samnite Wars were based on Hellenistic victory cults. There were dedications to Victoria, Jupiter Victor, Bellona (an early Roman war goddess) Victrix, and Hercules Invictus (‘the unconquered Hercules’). The earliest Roman silver coin, probably minted in connection with the building of the Via
Appia, has Mars, the god of war, on its obverse side. (The symbolic wolf of Romulus and Remus was always associated with Mars and it was said that the sanctuary of the god just outside Rome was surrounded by wolves.) The religion of Rome was integrated into its political life. Every campaign was initiated by consultation of the gods and sacrifices. Plunder was used to dedicate and furnish new temples, so many in fact that not all could be maintained. Two hundred and fifty years later the emperor Augustus was to boast that he had restored no less than 82 of them.
The culmination of a conqueror’s success came in the triumph. A victorious general could claim the right from the senate to extend his imperium across the pomerium so that he could bring his troops in procession into the city and sacrifice at the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. For the day, the victor even dressed as Jupiter (as Pindar’s athletes became divine at the moment of victory, so did Rome’s commanders) and was crowned with a laurel wreath. He was preceded by the magistrates and senate, oxen for sacrifice, war booty, and his captives. He himself rode in a chariot with his family beside him. Behind the chariot came the troops, who had the right to shout not in triumph but to denigrate their commander. (At one of his triumphs Julius Caesar was taunted with tales of his homosexuality as a young man.) As the procession reached the Capitol the prisoners would be taken off to be executed and the general continued up the hill to place his wreath on the lap of the god. (A challenging approach to the history of the triumph is provided by Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2007.)
The triumph was an essential feature of Rome’s militarism and can be analysed at many different levels. For a day the victor could be close to the gods. It was an occasion too for the glorification of his family who rode beside him. Yet the ritual itself was designed to make sure that the state kept ultimate control. The senate was always sensitive to any individual who used the triumph as a stepping-stone to political power (and later, as generals vied for the glory, insisted that at least 5,000 enemy dead be counted on the battlefield before one could be granted). In this sense the triumph was a way of controlling individual ambition by allowing it one moment of exultant expression. The reality of death was also incorporated into the ritual. Not only was the victor reminded of his own mortality but the state expressed its own power over the defeated through their executions at the height of the ceremony. Not least, as Rome expanded overseas, the triumph acted as the mechanism through which the treasures of Greece and other conquered nations entered a city that in the early third century was still isolated culturally from the Mediterranean world.
Rome’s rise is exceptional in many ways. The sudden conquests of Alexander the Great had taken place because a brilliant individual had managed to dislocate a rival empire in a small number of set-piece battles. This was very different. The Romans managed a consistency over decades. It was not only the tenacity of their troops that mattered, it was their pragmatic approach to politics and alliances. The early legends showed that Rome was quite happy to draw on Trojan, Greek, Latin, and Sabine sources for its origins so there was never a sense of Latin exclusivity especially so far as citizenship was concerned. This meant that neighbouring peoples could be drawn into alliances and other political and economic relationships. The
Links between the aristocratic families of different cities, each anxious to maintain their status from popular challenge, seems to have been an important factor in creating cohesion. However, in Rome itself these families were also ready to accommodate the plebeians so that a coherent and flexible political system emerged. The incorporation of freed slaves, most of them from alien cultures, into Roman citizenship further diluted any sense of there being a Roman ‘race’ Here was a launching pad for further conquest.
In 265 Bc Rome’s power extended only as far as northern Italy where the Celts provided a major barrier to further expansion. (NB Although the term ‘Celt’ is used here and below, readers should be aware of the difficulties it poses—see Interlude 5.) In the rest of the peninsula she was the dominant power in the sense that, despite the survival of local cultures and languages, there was no city or people able to challenge the combined strength of her own manpower and that of her allies. However, any expansion further afield appeared unlikely. Rome had no navy and had, in fact, already made treaties with Carthage, the major sea power of the western Mediterranean, in which she accepted Carthaginian supremacy at sea. Yet in the next 120 years Rome was to transform herself into a major Mediterranean power with interests as far west as Spain and east as far as Asia and the Aegean.
World History
