WAR AND THE ROMAN STATE

In over a century of virtually continuous warfare, Roman officials and armies established their city as the most powerful in Italy, and they erected around it a network of alliances that made Rome a key participant in the larger politics of the Mediterranean world. This pattern of regular warfare merits explanation, although no single element or cause can serve as the key to all of Rome’s wars.

Several features of Roman society and politics encouraged acceptance of, and perhaps the active search for, frequent wars. Possession of the military virtues was central to the self-image of the Roman elite, to the ways they competed among themselves for offices and honors, and to their claims to leadership in their city and over the elites and inhabitants of other communities. Regular warfare provided ambitious Romans with the opportunity to display their bravery and skill, and to accomplish deeds that would spread their fame among the citizens—vital achievements for those who wished to reach high office. Indeed, the office of consul, the highest in Rome and the focus of elite competition, was itself substantially military in nature, and its occupants would have expected, and probably desired, to command armies in the field. Military command, moreover, had given successful members of the Roman elite a leading role both in their own city and in the surrounding ones of allies and dependents. To maintain this position, they felt obliged to punish cities that challenged Rome or refused to remain subordinate, and equally to protect dependent communities or groups within them who proved loyal.

Decisions over war and peace were not just for the most prominent members of Rome’s elite to take. The Roman practice of campaigning virtually every year required consensus among the populace and between the voters and the members of the ruling elite. Citizens voting in assemblies regularly chose the men who would lead them in war, and it was citizens again who served in the forces that fought the wars. Successful warfare brought tangible benefits to many Roman citizens. For example, victorious armies plundered, and even common soldiers could expect to share in the loot. Land, too, was a prize. The captured land distributed in the colonies and viritane assignments of the period would have enabled many poorer Romans to receive a plot that was sufficient to support themselves and their families. Demands from the poor for land redistribution were not the cause of turmoil at Rome, therefore, that they often were elsewhere; wealthy Romans had comparatively little cause to fear that their property was in danger. In the last decades of the fourth century, moreover, our sources preserve regular accounts of mass enslavements of defeated enemies. Some of the newly enslaved probably were sold outside of Italy. Others were put to work on the lands and in the households of Roman citizens, beginning a gradual shift away from the labor systems of archaic Rome, which had been based on dependent clients and debt-slaves. It may be no accident that a law passed near the end of the fourth century prohibited the old practice of nexum, which condemned Roman citizens to bondage if they failed to repay their debts.

Altogether, the acquisition of wealth through regular campaigns no doubt reduced the level of internal conflicts in the city. Accounts of the fifth and much of the fourth century record recurrent strife between the elite and segments of the populace over land, debt, and access to offices. Such conflicts seem to have lessened in the late fourth and early third centuries, and this shift—which included an end to the Struggle of the Orders—may itself have been a consequence of the wars. The demands of the poor for land and freedom from debt, and the desires of the rich for a dependent labor force for their estates, could all now be met at the expense of Rome’s neighbors.

Internal factors are not the whole picture, however. Roman historians later regarded these wars as essentially defensive in nature, aimed at restraining aggression by others or at punishing disloyalty by cities which had supposedly accepted Roman leadership. From this perspective, therefore, Roman expansion was a successful response to the aggressive actions of others. Such a viewpoint may indeed plausibly explain some campaigns against some enemies, but it is unlikely to apply universally. Even so, it is important to recognize that other states, whether friend or foe of Rome, had their own agendas, ambitions, and military traditions. Some of these communities were themselves aggressive and expansionist, and they may, on occasion, have forced the Romans to respond to their initiatives. Unfortunately, the surviving evidence, which focuses so strongly on Rome itself, does not permit the full recovery of these other, less successful histories.

WARS WITH CARTHAGE

Wars with Carthage—called Punic from the Latin adjective punicus or Phoenician—dominate Roman history in the middle and late third century. Carthage was the most powerful of the cities that had emerged from the Phoenician colonization of the ninth through sixth centuries. Carthage came to control, directly or indirectly, a considerable territory. In North Africa, the Carthaginians and other Punic cities nearby held the richest parts of modern Tunisia. By one means or another, the city of Carthage and members of its elite also exploited subordinate communities of their territory’s original population. By the end of the fourth century, the Carthaginians controlled an area almost equivalent to Latium and Campania combined, although they restricted their citizenship much more than did the Romans. Still farther away, Carthage exercised some leadership, if only intermittently, over rulers of various tribes and confederacies; the Numidians, in modern Algeria, were the most important.

Carthage also expanded its power and influence by sea. From the end of the seventh century, the Phoenician settlements of western Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands were subordinate to Carthage in some way. By the end of the sixth century, the Carthaginians controlled the coasts of Sardinia, where they established colonies of their own and controlled mines in the interior. In the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries, Carthaginian armies fought, with varying degrees of success, against the Greek cities of Sicily. Carthage also had contacts, if sometimes distant and indirect, with cities in Italy. As part of their struggles with the Sicilian Greeks and to protect their trade, the Carthaginians concluded treaties with some central Italian communities, including Rome. The first of these Roman-Carthaginian agreements was probably made as early as c. 500, and others followed, although the precise number made thereafter is uncertain.