2nd lecture — The Punic Wars: From Village to Mediterranean Empire.

(This post is based on a lecture held by Jan Frode Hatlen at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology on August 28 2008. However, any factual errors in the text is strictly my responsibility.)

Rome “as we know it” — that is, Rome the way it has been portrayed primarily in movies, as a sprawling city with massive marble buildings — started to come into being at the time when Rome became a great power, approximately from the Punic Wars and onwards (264-241, 218-201 and 149-146 BCE).

The city that became an empire did of course start out as a village. This village was located at a crossroads of sorts, where the Tiber — a navigable river, although difficult to sail — was crossed by an old salt trade path. As a consequence there was some trade in the area, and the area was inhabited by a fairly large number of tribes from the hills along the Tiber. Rome itself — according to the myth founded by and named after Romulus in 753 BCE, after he had murdered his brother Remulus, who had wanted to found the city of Rema on the Palatine Hill — was at this time a village with an economy based on herding. Archaeological digs in Rome have for example uncovered remains of livestock enclosures and a hill fort in which the inhabitants of the surrounding area could seek refuge from hostile raiders. Taking into account the significant number of tribes in the area, it seems likely that this was far from a rare occurrence, as the tribes fought over the region’s resources.

This kind of rivalry between tribes or burgeoning city states was very common in the Mediterranean region. What made the Romans — who from the earliest times were a mixed people, consisting of people from several tribes — stand out, was how well they handled warfare, and how they in fact thrived on it. War was very common under these conditions, and in for example Greece waging war almost evolved into a sport, where the city states would agree to meet then and there (always a flat field; the Greek tactic of hoplites fighting in a phalanx formation didn’t work very well in more rugged terrain) to fight for this or that plot of land. In Italy, on the other hand, war soon started to be about dominance. In time, Rome would come to dominate the entire peninsula, after having defeated such peoples, leagues and alliances as the Veiians (the hereditary enemies of the Romans), the Samnites (who occupied the south end of the Apennines, and united in the Samnian League, which proved difficult for the Romans to defeat), the Latins (who soon became indistinguishable from the Romans) and the inhabitants of Tarentum (one of the largest cities in Italy at the time). In this struggle for dominance, the Roman system of alliances proved decisive.

The Alliance System and the Pyrrhic Wars.
As Roman influence and power grew, they started to tie defeated cities and peoples to them. Through a system where the Romans gave rights to their former enemies and soon-to-be allies and in turn expected return favours, Roman dominance was further expanded. There were two main forms of citizenship that the Romans could choose to bestow upon a defeated people. The first, and the least common to be given, was the cives romani — by which the chosen people received the rights of Roman citizens, including the right to vote and to run for elections. However, this was (almost?) never given to a defeated enemy during the expansion in Italy, and pretty much only applied to the population of Rome itself as well as to people living in some Roman colonies. These colonies also had a very weak political independence from Rome. The second, and most common, was the civitas romani sine suffragio — the rights of a Roman citizen without the right to vote. Cities and peoples given this status were much more independent, self-governed. Their inhabitants had the right to trade with and marry Romans, the right to appeal to Roman courts (although why they’d want to bother if they didn’t have any friends in the city, is a different matter entirely), and limited political rights. This was a two-way system, where less influence over internal Roman affairs meant more self-government for the ally — thus making citizenship something to strive to avoid for a city, as it would entail Roman governorship.

However, and most importantly for the Roman expansion, every ally had a duty of supplying troops whenever Rome required them to. By the third century BCE, Italy had been turned into a machine of mobilization for Rome, something which came in handy in 280 BCE, when Rome came into conflict with Tarentum. Before and at the outbreak of war, Tarentum was a city which had developed from a Greek colony. It was democratic and relatively pacifistic (to the extent that the term makes any sense at this time), so it invited the more militaristic king Pyrrhus of Piraeus to come from Greece and defend them. Pyrrhus beat the Romans twice, in humongous battles in which the Roman forces were wiped out. However, Pyrrhus’ forces also took heavy casualties, and while the Romans were able to raise a third large army due to its alliance system, Pyrrhus was unable to raise any more troops, and Tarentum was subsequently defeated and made an ally.

The First Punic War (264-241 BCE)
The Pyrrhis War brought Rome into direct contact with the Carthaginians, a Semitic people originally from Phoenicia, in today’s Lebanon, which had spread to today’s Maghreb a few centuries earlier, where they had established the city of Carthage (meaning “the new city” in Carthaginian) on a site just outside today’s Tunis. The Carthaginians were crafty merchants and skilled sailors, had been allies (in a more modern, equal meaning of the word) of the Romans for example during the Pyrrhic War, and had a fairly large system of colonies and subjugated cities in the western Mediterranean, but were now coming into conflict with the Romans. The Pyrrhic War had given Rome control over southern Italy, which became a problem as Sicily was Carthaginian sphere of influence. An incident in the Sicilian city of Messina brought the two city state semi-empires into armed conflict with each other. The Carthaginians envisioned a short, not too intense war, primarily fought at sea, although the Romans didn’t have a navy. This last point was mitigated during the war, however, and the Romans’ alliance system in tandem with the device referred to as a corvus helped them endure during the earliest stages of the war, until they started mastering more traditional naval combat.

In addition to the creation of the Roman navy, the results of the First Punic War include the expansion of Roman dominance to Sicily and Sardinia, as well as the office of the promagistrate. The promagistrates weren’t elected, but chosen by the Senate, and it wasn’t a public office, but one with military authority of an extended duration. The extended duration came as a consequence of the larger distances involved in the First Punic War, as compared to earlier conflicts.

The Second Punic War (218-201 BCE)
The First Punic War drove the Carthaginians out of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. This caused them to look for other places to settle, and they soon turned to Spain. They made alliances with local city states on the Iberian Peninsula, and their power and influence increased. This made the Romans worry, which caused the Carthaginians to agree to a treaty by which they were obliged to stay on separate sides of the Ebro river. Through various circumstances, the two broke the treaty, and the Carthaginian general Hannibal subsequently crossed the Alps into Italy with his army in 217 BCE. Here he defeated pretty much anything the Romans threw at him, massacring their armies most famously (or infamously, if you’re a Roman) at Lake Trasimene and Cannae. He stayed in Italy for most of the rest of the war, forcing perhaps as many as 40 per cent of Rome’s allies to join him, but the other Carthaginian commanders weren’t as successful, and when they were the Romans were able to mobilise new armies from their remaining allies, something the Carthaginians didn’t have the opportunity to do, as their military was still based on the service of their own citizens, like most other Ancient city states. When in addition the Carthaginians were unable to reinforce Hannibal’s armies and the Roman general Scipio took the battle to Spain and later Africa, Hannibal’s presence in Italy proved a nuisance to the Romans, as he prevented them from mobilising all of Italy against the Carthaginians, but he was unable to deal the Romans a fatal blow, and was finally recalled to Africa when Scipio landed there with his legions. Just like Hannibal had known that to beat the Romans, you have to take Italy, Scipio had realized that he should beat Hannibal in Africa.

After Scipio had defeated Hannibal and the Carthaginians in the battle of Zama in 202 BCE, the war pretty much ended with a total Roman victory. The size of the Roman army had increased dramatically as a result of Roman demands for more men from their allies, and that the troops should serve for longer periods of time. The prestige of the Senate and the generals also increased, especially that of Scipio. It was no longer the collective that is in the focus after a victory, but high ranking individuals, and the end of the Second Punic War marks the beginning of the period when the power of the Senate was at its apex, a period which lasted for approximately 100-120 years.

As for the Third Punic War (149-146 BCE), it was strictly speaking not so much a war as it was a Roman campaign to eradicate the rather puny (hehehe) remains of Carthage; a campaign which was, to exaggerate, initiated by Cato the Elder’s “Praeterea Censeo Carthaginem esse Delendam” and concluding with the Roman annexation of Carthage’s African territories andthe creation of the province of Africa.

The Macedonian Wars.
The Macedonian Wars took place during and were part of the Punic Wars. Philip V of Macedonia had allied with Hannibal and promised military support, but while the Macedonians remained a cause of Roman unrest through three wars, Philip never had the charisma of Hannibal, and his kingdom never became a serious threat. However, after the Third Macedonian War (172-168 BCE) the Romans realized that the area needed to be stabilized by a permanent Roman military presence. Prior to this the Romans hadn’t annexed their conquered foes — they didn’t own their allies, for example — but merely dominated them while they retained much of their freedom. From the second century BCE, though, the Romans began annexing peoples they defeated, and install governors.

Social Factors in the Expansion of the Roman Empire. Romanization.
During the second century BCE, the Roman Empire became an empire of a magnitude hitherto unprecedented in known history (according to the lecturer; I have a feeling such entities as the Persian Empire could have competed with the Roman, at least in regards to quantity — I’m less sure of the qualitative side of things). It had a humungous army, which required enormous quantities of food every day. For the needs of the army to be satisfied, it was required that peace and order was maintained, and that roads and ports were constructed, so that taxes could flow freely to Rome and the economic life necessary to raise taxes was kept intact. Parts of the taxes were “invested” (it is contested whether or not the Romans thought of economy in the same way as we do; Bjørn Qviller (1999) claimed they didn’t, while Lomas (2004) maintain they did, to a certain extent (just to choose a couple of texts NTNU students, at least, ought to be familiar with)) in infrastructure, which increased the potential productivity, which in turn caused tax income to increase.

The Romans also culturally infiltrated the elites of neighbouring and conquered peoples. Some examples can be how British and Gallic chieftains wore togas, and Asian and African kings gave their children Roman names. This prepared the ground for Roman invasion and occupation, as a lack of local elites to lead the resistance against an invading Roman army could cause that resistance never to appear. And why should the elites fight people whom they admired and wanted to emulate as much as possible? I think it was Plutarch, but it could just as well have been Tacitus or someone else entirely, who remarked about these kinds of elites that they believed themselves free, but they were really slaves. Obviously, though, it was primarily the elite that was the target for and object of Romanization. Commoners kept their own culture to a much larger extent, and although they of course didn’t go completely unaffected, local pre-Roman languages survived in for example Gaul until the fifth or sixth century CE, when they melted together with Latin into the forefathers of today’s languages.

Political Structures and Developments in Rome.
Very simply, the development in Rome’s political system up until the civil wars can be drawn up as following:

It began with the founding of the city by Romulus in 753 BCE (seeing as this is as convenient starting point as any other). The city then came under the domination of Etruscan kings, until Brutus “the Elder” happened to them in 589 BCE (again, because myths are convenient to remember things by). The new society after the kings was ruled by a council of elders, or a Senate, a typical thing for a city state. As the city expanded, though, a more complex system of administration was needed, and new positions and assemblies were established, such as the Consilium Plebis (which could make laws named plebsciit, as opposed to those passed by the Senate, the lex), the censors, the quaestors, etc. The expansion also brought with it more and more slaves to the city, and as these were freed, a large element without any attachment to the political culture of Rome was created and given political influence. This paved the ground for increased political strife between the magnates, and in turn for the Civil Wars.

Polybius, who lived in the second century BCE, created the following idealized model of the Roman political system, where elements of democracy (the comitia and consilium), monarchy (the officials) and oligarchy (the Senate) are combined in a mixed constitution, which Polybius used to explain the success of the Roman Empire.

(Because of some copyright issues, I had to remove the models.)

For the last ten years or so of the Roman Republic, the following model of the hierarchy of Roman assemblies and official posts is more or less accurate:

(Because of some copyright issues, I had to remove the models.)