chapter 42 ROME More Concessions and Written Law

ROME  More Concessions and Written Law

Having won concessions from the aristocrats, commoners wanted more. They went on strike again, this time demanding freedom from arbitrary punishment and other abuses. The strike stopped work on farms and in shops, and to appease the commoners the Senate gave tribunes the power to veto any laws passed by the Senate.

Although officially limited to vetoing laws, the tribunes began initiating legislation. A law in 471 created an assembly of commoners, theComitia Plebis, presided over by tribunes, creating a greater connection between commoners and tribunes. And tribunes were to share authority with the consuls on the field of battle.

By 450, commoner tribunes were serving as military commanders in place of a consul – the Senate wanting perhaps to take advantage of men with extraordinary military talent. Also by 450, the number of tribunes had been increased to ten.

A military assembly (Comitia Centuriata) was created, consisting of both commoners and aristocrats. This assembly was presided over by the consuls. It met to consider the names of aristocrats who would be candidates for the positions of consul, to elect the consuls, to enact legislation, to listen to appeals of those convicted of capital crimes, and to decide whether Rome should go to war.

Bureaucracy was extended. To relieve the consuls of the duty of taking the census, the office of censor was created. There were to be two censors. The census was needed for the collection of taxes and in organizing military duties. The censors learned of the extent of a man's property so that men who could afford it would be obliged to equip themselves with the better and more complete armor of the hoplite warrior. Or, if the census determined that someone could afford the required horse and equipment, he was liable for service as a cavalryman. And commoner cavalrymen were recognized by the Senate as a new class, called the Equites.

To the executive branch of government (the consuls) and the legislative branch (the Senate) a third branch of government was created: the judiciary. This had been urged by the commoners, who wanted laws to apply to them and aristocrats equally. An officer of the law, called thePraetor, was put in charge of the judiciary. He was to be elected annually by the military assembly, and it was hoped that he would exercise judgments independent from politics. But jury duty was to remain exclusively for aristocrats. Only aristocrats had sufficient leisure time for such service, and it was believed that as jurors they would strive to maintain their reputations as men of honor by judging on the evidence presented them.

To avoid arbitrary decisions concerning the law, plebeians demanded that laws be put into writing, and this resulted in the creation of what became known as the Twelve Tables, laws written on twelve bronze tablets. These laws were to be open to legislative change, to embody both precedence and experience. Up to this time Roman laws had been unwritten and connected with religious lore, with aristocrats believing that only they had sufficent understanding of the mysteries of religious lore.

Punishments for breaking the laws expressed in the Twelve Tables were harsh, conforming to strong commitments to virtue. Anyone convicted of slander was to be clubbed to death; a thief was to be flogged, unless he was a slave, in which case he was to be executed by being thrown off Tarpeian Rock on that small rise called Capitoline Hill; someone convicted of defrauding a client was to be executed; perjury was a capital crime; death was the punishment for a judge who accepted a bribe or for anybody who connived with the enemy or delivered a Roman citizen to an enemy. The death sentence, however, may have been rarely carried out. In place of executing someone, the Romans might demolish his house and allow him to go into permanent exile. But for an offense against the gods, the Romans, an intensely religious people, showed little mercy. Vestal Virgins, whose job it was to maintain the sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta, were usually buried alive if convicted of being unchaste.

Roman law recognized the supreme authority of the father within his family. A father could sell his son or daughter into slavery. He could have a rebellious son put to death or, as the Romans put it, sacrificed to the gods. A daughter was her father's property, sold in marriage to whomever he pleased. He could also tell his son whom to marry and when to divorce. Roman law also reflected a Roman harshness toward physical weakness: the dreadfully deformed were quickly put to death shortly after birth, and parents could kill their infant if at least five neighbors consented.

One of the earliest adjustments to the new written laws came in 442 when a tribune introduced legislation against what had been a standing prohibition against marriage between commoners and aristocrats. Aristocrats had been concerned about the purity of their blood – a superstition as old as Egypt's pharaohs 2,000 or so years before, who married their sons and daughters to each other to prevent blood contamination. Speaking before the Senate against this legislation a consul described it as a rebellion against the laws of heaven. He accused the tribune of scheming to obscure or confuse family rank, leaving nothing "pure and uncontaminated." The tribune spoke of the humble origins of the aristocracy's ancestors and claimed that their nobility was not a right of birth or blood but a co-optation. How much this argument convinced the senators is difficult to determine. But in one respect the law against marriage between commoners and aristocrats was impacted by a practical matter: commoner families headed by vigorous entrepreneurs had accumulated wealth, and aristocrats from poorer families had an interest in marrying into these more wealthy families. After much arguing the law was repealed.

Strength after Defeat by the Gauls

By the end of the 400s BCE, the city of Rome occupied an area about 32 by 48 kilometers. Around this time, several tribes of Celts – whom the Romans called Gauls – ventured southward from their homeland to the Po River Valley in northern Italy. They threatened the Etruscan city of Clusium, about a hundred miles north of Rome. Clusium requested help from Rome, and Rome sent three commissioners to investigate. One commissioner asked the Gauls why they thought they could take lands that belonged to others. The Gauls replied that the people of Clusium had more land than they needed and that "all things belong to the brave."

The Roman commissioners joined the Etruscans in a skirmish to defend Clusium, and one of the commissioners killed a Gallic chieftain. In 390 BCE, the Gauls headed for Rome to seek revenge. The Gauls outnumbered Rome's defenders two to one, and the Gauls shattered Rome's spear carrying phalanx formations. Many of Rome's defenders fled across the Tiber River to the nearby city of Veii, and some fled to the countryside. Other soldiers rushed into the city to its citadel, as non-combatants were fleeing the city through the same gates. These gates remained open, and the Gauls poured into the city, where they slaughtered old men, women and children and looted and burned. They attempted an uphill attack on the citadel but failed to dislodge the soldiers there.

For seven months the Gauls remained and fought around Rome. Then they gave up and returned north, leaving Rome in ruins. The Romans rebuilt and gathered lessons from their military defeat. They adopted new weaponry, dropping the spear in favor of a two-foot long sword. They adopted helmets, breastplates and a shield with iron edges. They reorganized their army, putting in the front rank of their battle line not the wealthy soldiers as before but the youngest and strongest.

From the year 367 through the following eighty years, the Senate approved a variety of reforms, including laws that allowed commoners to become consuls, praetors, or quaestors – the latter being money managers connected to various aspects of government or military campaigns. Bills were passed that, for the sake of greater equality, limited the size of lands that were distributed by the state. Debt payment was reformed. And in 326 a law was passed that protected the personal freedom of commoners by outlawing the practice of debtors being made serfs to their creditors.

War in Italy erupted again on the plains of Campania, near Neapolis (Naples). Samnite warrior-herdsmen from nearby hills had begun using grasslands for their animals – lands that people of Campania had fenced. The people of Campania sought help from Rome. Roman envoys went to leaders among the hill people for discussions and were rudely treated. War between Rome and the Samnites followed – the First Samnite War. The war lasted two years, ending in 345 with Rome triumphant and the Samnites willing to make peace.

Rome's Latin allies began making forays against the Samnites. The Samnites asked Rome to control its allies, and Rome called upon the Latins to leave the Samnites alone. Seeing itself as the responsible power in the region, Rome went to war against its Latin neighbors and some non-Latin cities. Rome won these wars. It disbanded the Latin League, and it took land from the defeated and distributed it among its commoners. There was not the slaughter or dispersals that accompanied military defeat elsewhere in ancient times. This leniency, rather than weakening Rome, strengthened it by winning respect and gratitude from its former adversaries.

Rome now dominated all the Latins, and it controlled an area from just north of Rome southward almost to Neapolis. This was a heavily populated area relative to ancient times, and the area would be the the base from which Rome would spread its power and influence over the whole of Italy.

Rome Wins Domination of Italy and Defends itself against the Hellenistic East

Rome used its prestige to regulate relations among various Italian cities. It made alliances. It created colonies, giving land in these colonies to common Romans and other Latins. The grant of land was accepted with the obligation of military service, each colony serving as Rome's keeper of peace in its area. As in Macedonia, the power of a nation was being created. Rome was growing in population. And it was growing in manpower by extending citizenship to people in its colonies and to cities it trusted – to cities with people who wished to identify with Rome's greatness and were willing to go to war as Romans.

Romans fought a series of battles with the Samnites from 327 to 311, when Etruscan cities joined in a showdown against Roman power. The Romans and their allies won a series of victories against both the Etruscans and the Samnites. There was on-again, off-again warfare. At the turn of the century the Samnites decided that they had had enough of peace. They organized a coalition that included Etruscans and Gauls. The Romans had taken advantage of the lack of coordination among its enemies but now faced them all at once.

The Romans benefited from their self-discipline and military leadership. They won a crucial battle in 295 at Sentinum, a town in Italy's northeast where more troops were engaged than any previous battle in Italy. After the victory at Sentinum the war slowly wound down, coming to an end in 282. Rome emerged dominating all of the Italian peninsula except for the Greek cities in Italy's extreme south and in the north along the Po River Valley, which was still Gaul country.

As the war was winding down, the Greek city of Tarentum, on Italy's southern coast, became disturbed by a colony that Rome had established just eighty miles to its north. Tarentum had its own sphere of influence in the south. It had a democratic constitution, the largest naval fleet in Italy, an army of 15,000 and enough wealth to buy a good number of mercenaries. Tarentum had ignored an opportunity to join the Etruscans, Gauls and Samnites in the war against Rome, but belatedly it decided to fight Rome. It gained the backing of the Pyrrhus, King ofEpirus, just west of Macedonia, on the Adriatic a short distance from Tarentum. Pyrrhus agreed to command the combined troops of Tarentum and other Greek cities in Italy, together with troops of his own. Pyrrhus was a former kinsman of Alexander the Great. He saw war against Rome as an opportunity to extend Hellenistic authority over Italy as Alexander had planned, and he saw an opportunity to win for himself some of the glory that Alexander had won. Like many other Hellenistic people, Pyrrhus underestimated Rome.

In 280, Pyrrhus landed 25,000 troops in Italy, including some 3,000 horsemen, 2,000 archers and the first elephants brought to Italy. He engaged the Romans in the Battle at Heraclea, using the elephants to drive through Roman lines, creating panic among the Roman soldiers. Pyrrhus won this and more battles against the Romans, but he found Rome's armies more ferocious than those he had faced in the East. His victories against the Romans came with enormous casualties, giving rise to the expression "Pyrrhic victory."

Pyrrhus tried to win over to his side some of Rome's allies, but without success. Rome's manpower was too much for Pyrrhus, and by the year 275 Pyrrhus felt defeated. Pyrrhus returned to Greece, where he would be killed in another of the many wars that had been fought among those who had followed Alexander as kings.

In 272, Tarentum surrendered to Rome. Rome allowed Tarentum the same local self-rule it allowed other cities. Tarentum in turn recognized Rome's hegemony in Italy and became another of Rome's allies, while a Roman garrison remained in Tarentum to insure its loyalty (trust but verify). Rome was now undisputed master of the bottom three quarters of the Italian peninsula.

But as happened with Sparta following its winning the Peloponnesian War, Rome's success would be followed by vain foolishness.

The First Punic War and a New Spirit for Empire

The greatest power near Rome was Carthage, 240 kilometers (150 miles) southwest from Sicily, on the coast of North Africa, a city founded around 815 BCE by Phoenicians from the city of Tyre. It was a commercial power surrounded by rich farmland and ruled by an oligarchy of men of wealth. It dominated the coast of North Africa as far as Egypt, the southern coast of Spain and the western half ofSicily. And it dominated the islands of Corsica and Sardinia.

While Rome had been expanding on the Italian mainland, it had made an agreement with Carthage, acknowledging that Carthage was the dominant power in Sicily. Carthage, in turn, promised Rome that it would stay off the Italian mainland. Rome abided by its treaty during its wars for the domination of Italy.

On the island of Sicily just across the channel from the toe of the Italian peninsula, the city of Messana felt threatened by another city on the island: Syracuse. One faction in Messana requested help from Carthage. Another faction, apparently distrusting or disliking Carthage, requested help from Rome. Respecting its treaty with Carthage, Rome's Senate chose not to send help to Messana. But one of Rome's two consuls was eager for action that would give him distinction. He spoke of reluctance to send help to Messana as weakness. He aroused the people of Rome, many of whom were filled with pride over Rome's power. The Senate gave in to the aroused emotions of the public, and it sent a force to Messana, violating ithe spirit of its treaty with Carthage. The world was turning – as it would in the twentieth century – on demagoguery and the passions of common people.

At Messana the force from Rome came face to face with a force from Carthage. Carthage saw Rome's move as a threat to its interests in Sicily but it attempted conciliation. Carthage asked that Rome withdraw its troops. But proud Romans called on their city to stand up to Carthage. Some claimed that Carthage's control over the strait between Italy and Sicily was a danger to Rome's security. And, as with the Athenians at the outbreak of the Great Peloponnesian War, there was little reluctance and caution about going to war, including among the civilian farmer-soldiers who would fight the war. With this swagger and willingness to war, a new era was beginning.

Rome chose war, and it brought a number of Italian allies into the war on its side. And, shortly into the war, Rome extended its war goals beyond securing the strait between Italy and Sicily – the "mission creep" that would be common in history. The contest against Carthage became a war for plunder. Then it became a war for driving Carthage out of Sicily, and then a war for all of Sicily. And Rome's enlarged goals would create a war that was to last twenty-three years.

Many of those who fought for Carthage were Greek mercenaries, and the unreliability of these men led Carthage to wage war with minimum risks and half measures. Rome was more aggressive. During the war it built its first great navy, which won spectacular victories, first in 260 and then in 241. With Rome as master of the Mediterranean, Carthage decided that the price it had to pay for ending the war was better than the cost of continuing it. Carthage agreed to pay Rome a huge sum of money and to give Rome the islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia

Despite Rome's heavy losses in treasure and life, its citizens fantasized that they had won a great victory. Many were pleased by the additional prestige their city had gained, and for many Romans victory confirmed that their city had been called on by the gods for a special destiny.

Romans emerged from this first Punic War also with an enhanced concern for national security, and some saw added security in their city having won control over Corsica and Sardinia. It was an early step in creation of the Roman Empire. Roman soldiers were sent to Corsica and Sardinia, and people there resisted. Some of the islanders retreated inland, but Roman soldiers with trained dogs hunted them down and carted great numbers of them to Italy for sale as slaves.

Romans were also concerned about the security of their northern border. They had heard a prophecy that the Gauls would come south again and overrun their city. City authorities allayed the fears of the public by reviving an old religious ritual. In the city's Forum they publicly buried alive a Gallic man and woman. Rome sent forces north to secure a barrier against the Gauls, and these forces extended Roman authority across Cisalpine Gaul as far as the Alps.

Next, Rome addressed its concern for security eastward. Italian traders had been calling on Rome to do something about pirates along the coast of Illyricum on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea. Rome launched a drive against these pirates, and as a part of this campaign they established friendly relations with numerous small, coastal powers. One of these powers, the island of Pharos, was attempting to expand against its neighbors. Rome made itself the protector of the neighbors of Pharos, and it conquered Pharos – the beginning of Roman intervention eastward across the Adriatic

Punic War II – Hannibal's War

As in the twentieth century, one big war was followed by a second big war. The settlement of the first big war had not been thoroughly settled in the minds of some of the defeated, and revenge was sought.

Carthage had expanded its enterprises in Iberia (Spain) in compensation for its losses of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, and Carthage's success in trade and mining operations in Iberia prompted Rome to establish an embassy there. Around the year 220 a prosperous Greek colony on the Mediterranean coast in Iberia, Saguntum, was quarreling with neighboring towns. Lacking friendship with Carthage and desperate for an ally, Saguntum sought help from Rome – a repetition of sorts of what had happened in the 260s. Seeing Rome as becoming involved in the dispute, the leader of Carthage, Hannibal, welcomed the opportunity to launch a war of revenge against Rome. More than twenty years had passed since the end of the first war between Rome and Carthage, and Hannibal felt that Carthage could now challenge Rome and that he could succeed where others before him had failed.

Hannibal was as aggressive as Hitler would be in opening the Second World War in Europe. While Rome was negotiating with Carthage, Hannibal sent an army against Saguntum, with orders to spare no male of military age. Saguntum fell, leaving Rome's Senate and the public enraged and regretting that they had not responded in time to help Saguntum. The Romans saw Carthage's attack on Saguntum as a challenge to their prestige, and they matched Hannibal's willingness for war.

The war against Hannibal would be a new kind of war for Rome. Previously, Romans fought only summer campaigns. Against Hannibal, the number of Romans fighting would increase ten fold and they would fight through the entire year. This was to be Rome's most intense war.

Hannibal sent armies to Sicily and Italy by sea. He and a force with cavalry and elephants moved north from Saguntum, across the coast of France, through the Alps and in October 218 down into the Po River valley in northern Italy.

Hannibal won Gauls to his side away from the Romans. He rallied his forces describing the Romans as "a pernicious and rapacious race intent on enslaving the world." Hannibal won at Trebbia in late December 218, his 30,000 men and 37 elephants against Rome's 42,000 and a incompetent general.

Hannibal and his army pushed south, living off the land as they went. Rather than try to win allies among the Italians, he burned and destroyed as he went, and not one Italian city joined him against Rome. He tried to keep himself informed about the Roman leaders sent against him, and occasionally he found weaknesses in these Romans. He took advantage of the untalented consul, Flaminius, who wanted to prove himself to his fellow Romans. Flaminius allowed Hannibal to choose where the battle between them would be fought, and in June 217 Flaminius marched his army into a trap at Lake Trasimenus (see map), where all but the few who were captured were cut down. In the wake of this disaster, in the depressing month of December, Rome introduced a festival called Saturnalia associated with the god Saturn, to spread cheer and lift the morale of its citizens. There were feasts, an exchanging of presents, gambling, games that involved role-switching between masters and slaves, and sacrifices were performed at the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum.

Hannibal had another great success in August, 216, at Cannae (see map). There, Rome lost five out of every six soldiers it sent into battle. It seemed that Rome was on the verge of defeat, and now some Italian cities, wishing to be on the winning side, opened their gates to Hannibal. In Sicily, Syracuse went over to the side of Carthage. Macedonia's king, Philip V, offered Carthage an alliance.

Hannibal was trying to wear Rome down – a war of attrition. He continued to destroy Italian lands and to destroy villages that his forces could not hold. To starve Hannibal's forces the Romans scorched the earth in front of his advancing army, and they moved people from the countryside to towns. The Romans plundered towns they believed had befriended Hannibal and beheaded men they believed had fought on the side of Carthage.

Avoiding a direct clash with Hannibal in Italy, Rome moved a force to Sicily. There the Roman general Marcellus beheaded 2,000 of his troops whom he claimed had been deserters. Other soldiers under his command pillaged Syracuse, destroying and plundering treasures that had accumulated there for centuries. A soldier in Syracuse came upon the philosopher Archimedes and ran a sword through him.

In 211, Hannibal was thirty miles from Rome, and Roman women appealed to the gods by sweeping the floors of their temples with their hair. But rather than attack Rome and confront the two armies that Rome had placed before him, Hannibal decided to burn the nearby countryside and withdraw to fight elsewhere. He moved southward, back to Capua. In 209 he had his second battle at Terantum, his 19,000 men against a Roman force of 17,000, has casualities and losses at 9,000, the Romans at 2,300.

Hannibal's war of attrition was a losing strategy. Rome benefited from fighting closer to home and having access to more manpower. Rome also benefited from the egocentricity and shortsightedness of Carthage's oligarchs. For a while at least, the oligarchs feared that Hannibal as a victor and hero would jeopardize their positions of power. They were reluctant to send him reinforcements. But Hannibal was recruiting Gauls into his army, which offended the Italians, who remembered that Rome had been a bulwark against the Gauls.

Rome managed to reconquer Sicily, and it was defeating Carthage in Iberia, at the Battle of Baeti in 211 and at Baecula in 2008. At Baecula the Romans had 30,000 men under a brilliant general: Scipio. Carthage had 25,000 men, most of them were Gauls, led by Hannibal's younger brother by two years: Hasdrubal. After the battle, Hasdrubal led his depleted force over the Pyrenees into Gaul and then into Italy, looking to join forces with his brother. He was defeated on the Italian peninsula's northeast coast, at Metaurus, his 30,000 men losing 10,000 killed and 10,000 wounded according to the historian Polybius. Hasdrubal was beheaded and his head rolled into Hannibal's encampment in the south of the penninsula.

Carthage sent a force to Iberia and another battle was fought there ten miles north of what today is the city of Seville. In 204 Roman transport ships carried no more than 35,000 soldiers to about 35 kilometers from Carthage, alarming that city, while Scipio captured towns and plunder the countryside.

It was the summer of that year that Hannibal was fighting in the far south of Italy around Croton (see map). All of Hannibal's forces were in the far south, hoping to establish a Cartheginian base there that it could trade for a peace treaty. The fighting around Croton continued into 203. Hannibal was ordered to return to Carthage to defend home territory. Ships arrived and he was able to depart safely.

In 203, Scipio, won at Battle of Utica in North Africa, and again in 202 near Carthage he defeated Hannibal. He lost something like 2,500 killed out of 35,100 men, outmaneuvering and slaughtering Hannibal's army of 40,000, plus elephants.

Hannibal escaped to Carthage where he counseled immediate surrender. Carthage sued for peace. A council of twenty Roman priests – which governed treaties with foreigners – went to Carthage to present Rome's demands. The priests called on the god Jupiter to witness that the demands were just. This time, Rome wanted to weaken Carthage substantially. And Carthage agreed to reduce its territory to an area that approximates what today is Tunisia. It agreed to withdraw from participation in the affairs of Iberia, to pay Rome a huge indemnity and to surrender to Rome all but twenty of its warships.

Hannibal's attempt at revenge had failed. Rome wanted Hannibal's head, and he found refuge with the Seleucid king in Syria, Antiochus III.

The Punic Wars Change Rome

The wars against Carthage changed Rome. The Senate had gained in power and prestige relative to the people's assemblies, the Comitias Plebis. The Romans emerged from the Punic wars with the widespread understanding that ultimate authority over the military lay with the Senate, that it was the Senate's job to know, advise and guide, and the Senate's job to decide the question of war or peace and other foreign policy matters.

Rome's second war against Carthage reduced the number of people in the Italian countryside. Men had gone off to war. People had died and people had moved to the cities to escape war. Some people had left the countryside to work in the arms industry, and some had left for Rome looking for subsistence. The new arrivals in Rome enjoyed the festivals and other public entertainment that were created to maintain public morale during the dark days of the war. Newcomers developed a preference for the city over the life of drudgery they had known working on farms. And after the war ended, many veterans from farming families preferred settling in cities, especially Rome, rather than return to the countryside. Cities in Italy became overcrowded, and Rome became the most populous city in Europe and West Asia.

As a result of the war, much farmland in Italy could be bought cheaply. Those with wealth began buying this farmland, some landowners expanding their holdings and some businessmen from the cities looking for a secure investment and a source of social respectability. With the accelerated trend toward larger farms came a greater use of slaves. More lands in the countryside were transformed into pasture, vineyard, and olive orchards – more suited to Italian soil and climate than was the growing of grain. The richest lands were converted to vineyards and the poorer tracts to olive groves, while ranching was the most profitable for capitalist landowners. Holdings that were a mix of ranching and farming grew to more than 300 acres, found mostly in southern and central Italy, the area most heavily devastated by the Second Punic War.

Many small farmers found themselves unable to compete with the larger farms and their more numerous slaves. Moreover, a greater importation of grain from Sicily and North Africa brought a drop in grain prices, and many small farmers gave up, sold their farms and joined the migration to the cities. The wars that began with the minor incident at Messana in the early 260s BCE had brought unintended consequences – as wars often do. Many of Rome's small farmers, who had been the backbone of the Roman Republic, had become city-dwellers living off of free bread and enjoying circuses.

Also, empire had grown. Rome now considered Spain as its possession, and it began what would become a long struggle to conquer Spain's various inhabitants.

Romans had begun investing their money abroad, in mines in Spain, vast tracts of land in Sicily and elsewhere, and they turned these lands into slave plantations. Some of them lent money abroad, at high interest rates, and Roman financial operations became greater than that of the Greeks and Near Easterners. There would be an increase in fraud, against which the Senate would not always be willing to press charges. And those with wealth would import more spices, carpets, perfumes and other luxury goods from the East

Rome's Hegemonic Arrogance

Meanwhile, in Greece popular movements had been raising the old demand that land be redistributed and debts be canceled. Men of wealth in Greece sent representatives to Rome's senate where they appealed for help. Some Romans wanted their city to avoid entanglements in Greece in order to avoid contacts with philosophies they believed would corrupt their fellow Romans. Some believed that rather than go to Greece it would be better to focus on recovery from the war against Hannibal and other problems in Italy and at home. Some others wanted their city to use its power to serve what they described as its interests abroad. A few sought to advance or acquire military reputations. And some believed that Roman military strength backed by their virtues and the power of their gods could improve the world beyond Italy. They saw Romans as the most blessed, capable, wise and honorable of people. They argued for selective intervention beyond Italy as a duty and as a service to humankind and spoke of Rome's destiny and triumphs yet to come.

Rome allied itself with Rhodes, Pergamum and other Greek cities hostile to Antiochus III, who had expanded Seleucid Dynasty rule from Syria and Palestine into Thrace and Asia Minor. Pergamum, since the death of Lysimachus (one of Alexander's generals) in 281 and the breakup of his territory, had become the capital of the Kingdom of Pergamum.

Rome and its allies defeated Antiochus and his allies in December 190 BCE, at the Battle of Magnesia in the far west of Asia Minor, about 40 kilometers north of Smyrna. In the Treaty of Apamea in 188, Antiochus agreed to Rome's demand that he withdraw from Asia Minor. Antiochus agreed to pay a great sum to Rome as tribute; and he agreed to surrender Hannibal.

The Kingdom of Pergamum benefitted territorially from its alliance with Rome and the diminishing empire of Antiochus. Hannibal fled again, a little north to the court of Bithynia, and for Bithynia he won a naval victory against a fleet from Pergamon. Then he was betrayed to the Romans, and in the year 181 rather than let the Romans capture him he committed suicide by poisoning himself.

Those Greek cities that had allied themselves with Antiochus were forced into an alliance with Rome, and they were made to agree to give no aid to forces hostile to Rome or to allow such forces to cross their territory.

Roman diplomacy had been growing devious and self-serving. Rome favored oligarchies against democrats, its Senate never having approved of the authority of the masses. And Rome had begun to create borders abroad that served its interests by being ill-defined – borders that kept various powers at odds with each other and wanting to maintain Rome's favor.

When the people of Sardinia and Corsica rose against Rome in an attempt to re-establish their independence, Rome sent armies against them. Rome did not wish to tolerate any example of defiance. It crushed the uprisings and made slaves of 80,000 Sardinians, glutting its slave market and making "as cheap as a Sardinian" a common expression among the Romans.

By the mid-170s, Macedonia had recovered from its defeat by Rome two decades before, and Macedonia's king, Perseus, allied with Thracian and Illyrian chieftains. He gave refuge to reform-minded exiles and those fleeing debt, and across Greece he became known as a champion of the poor. Rome's Senate decided that it was in Rome's interest to destroy him. In the autumn of 172 Rome deceived Perseus by granting him a truce. As planned, Rome spent the winter preparing for war. And early in 171, on the pretext that Perseus had attacked some allies of Rome in the Balkans, the Senate declared war against him. As before, Rome had complete control of the seas, and its troops slightly outnumbered those of Macedonia. Rome's elastic military formations and forged steel swords proved superior to Macedonia's rigid formations of pikemen and its cast iron swords. In one great battle, in 168, Rome destroyed Perseus' army, and Perseus died in a Roman prison three years later.

The Republic of Epirus had given Perseus no effective help during the war, but because it had allied itself with Perseus, the Romans attacked its towns and villages and carried away 150,000 people whom they sold into slavery. Rome attempted to eliminate Macedonian kings and to weaken Macedonia by dividing it into four republics. Rome forbade the divided areas to have contacts with each other. It demanded half of what the four republics collected in taxes, and Rome took possession of Macedonia's mines and forests. It was the beginning of Roman annexations east of the Adriatic.

With cooperation from wealthy Greeks, Rome moved to extend its authority over Greece. Roman sympathizers among the Greeks gave the Romans reports as to who was anti-Roman, and the Romans deported the denounced people in great number. In helping conservative politicians in one city, Roman soldiers invaded an assembly and murdered five hundred office holders who had been reported to be anti-Roman. From Perseus' archives, the Romans discovered letters disclosing that he had had secret support from high-ranking officials in the Achaean League cities in Peloponnesus. In response, the Romans rounded up close to nine hundred Achaean leaders and intellectuals, including the historian Polybius, and shipped them back to Italy, keeping them for a trial that was never held.

Rhodes and Pergamum also suffered. Unhappy with Rhodes and Pergamum for having made a deal with Perseus, Rome let Pergamum's neighbors attack and harass it. And, from Rhodes, Rome took Caria, Lycia and the island ofDelos. For Rhodes trade fell as much as eighty-five percent, which benefited Italian competitors. And the sea-going piracy that Rhodes had successfully repressed as a naval power started rising again.

Roman entrepreneurs, meanwhile, were gathering new wealth from war contracts, with Rome spending as much as 80 percent of its budget on its military.

Rome Destroys Carthage and Conquers from Hispania to Greece

In 157 a Roman senator, Cato, visited North Africa and became aware that prosperity had returned to Carthage – forty-four years after the Rome's last war with Carthage had ended. He assumed that this made Carthage a menace and an enemy to Rome. Not wanting to put aside old conflicts, he postured with overwhelming righteousness concerning Rome's two wars against Carthage, and he began ending his speeches in the Senate with the words "Carthage must be destroyed."

A neighbor of Carthage, Numidia, took advantage of Rome's hostility to Carthage by making encroachments on Carthaginian territory and then asking Rome for arbitration. Rome failed to act with the impartiality that might have inhibited Numidia from making further encroachments. And after suffering a number of aggressions by Numidia, Carthage lost its patience and retaliated against Numidia. Rome in its bias saw this as a breach of peace by Carthage, and, in the year 150, Rome's Senate mustered its arrogance and voted for another war against Carthage.

Believing that war against Rome was hopeless, a delegation that Carthage sent to Rome offered surrender in the form of a commitment to "the faith of Rome" – understood to mean that Rome could take possession of Carthage but that the lives of the people of Carthage would be spared and that they would not be taken as slaves. Rome's Senate responded by granting Carthage self-rule and the right of the city and its people to keep all their possessions on condition that Carthage send to Rome three hundred of its leading citizens as hostages. Hoping to save their city from destruction, amid much grieving, the Carthaginians sent their leading citizens to Rome as hostages.

But Rome had already decided to wipe Carthage from the map. Rome demanded that Carthage surrender all its weapons, and Carthage did so, including two hundred thousands suits of mail and two thousand catapults. Then Rome demanded that the people of Carthage surrender their city and move ten miles inland. For the Carthaginians this meant leaving behind their homes, their docks and quays and their ability to carry on their sea-going trade. The people of Carthage preferred war and refused. Rome responded as it had planned, with military operations, which began in the year 149, the year that Cato, at 85, died.

The war against Carthage was delayed as people in what today is Portugal – the Lusitani – were again attempting to free themselves from Roman domination, and so too were peoples in central Hispania (today Spain). Roman legions overwhelmed the Lusitani. Rome offered them peace and land, trapped them, slaughtered 9,000 of them and enslaved 20,000. A new leader arose among the outraged Lusitani and renewed his people's war against the Romans, the Lusitani achieving their first success in the year 147, killing 10,000 Roman soldiers.


One response by Rome to the new trouble in Spain was a change in the calendar.  To give one of its generals a longer season for campaigning, the Senate moved the date of the New Year from March 15 to January 1.

While Rome was busy against the Lusitani and was continuing its war against the Cartheginians, in Macedonia someone who claimed to be the son of Perseus, Andricus, defied Rome by reuniting that country politically. Rome sent an army to Macedonia that arrived in 148 and drove out Andricus.

Rome decided that its presence would be needed in Macedonia to keep the Macedonians in line, and it began a permanent rule and military occupation there, Macedonia becoming the first Roman province east of the Adriatic Sea.

Some in the city of Corinth saw the continuing war between Rome and Carthage and the continuing rebellion in Spain as an opportune time to stand up against Rome's pretensions of authority over Greek cities. If the various people opposed to Rome, from the Lusitani, the Carthaginians to the Greeks, had united in a simultaneous effort to defeat Rome militarily, it might have been too much for Rome. But this had not happened.


A leader form the city of Corinth traveled from town to town in Greece calling for debt reform and opposition to Rome. He described the real enemies of the Greeks as those among them who called for conciliation with Rome. Moderate opinion in Corinth was silenced. In the spring of 146 the Achaean League was persuaded to declare war against Rome's presence in their part of the world. The city of Thebes, resenting Roman interference in their affairs, allied itself with the Achaean League. Across Greece, patriotic clubs appeared and denounced Rome. Athens and Sparta stayed out of the war, but elsewhere across Greece men eagerly joined armies and prepared to fight Rome. Slaves were freed and recruited for the fight, and wealthy Greeks who favored Rome were frightened into contributing jewelry and money to the cause.


Meanwhile, Rome's legions were in control of the countryside around Carthage, and in the spring of 146 Roman soldiers were finally able to penetrate Carthage's walls. They swarmed into the city and began fighting street by street. First Carthage's harbor area fell to the Romans, then the market area, and finally the citadel in the city-center. Amid suicides and carnage, the Romans demolished and burned the city. They carried off survivors, selling the women and children into slavery and throwing the men into prison, where they were to perish. Then the Romans spread salt across what had been Carthage's farmlands. Carthage was no more.


Also in 146, a Roman army went against its enemies in Greece. An army of 23,000 infantry and 3,500 cavalry attacked a leading member of the Achaean League, the city of Corinth, defended by 14,000 infantry and 300 cavalry. To warn others, the Romans slaughtered all the men they found in Corinth. They enslaved the city's women and children, and they shipped Corinth's treasures to Italy and burned the city to the ground

Greek cities hostile to Rome had their walls demolished and their people disarmed. The Romans found Thebes entirely empty of people, its inhabitants having fled to wander through mountains and wilderness. According to the Greek historian Polybius, people everywhere were throwing themselves "down wells and over precipices."

Rome dissolved the Achaean League and had its leaders put to death. Rome's governor to Macedonia became governor also of the entire Greek peninsula. In Greece, Rome would now allow only local city politics dominated by wealthy elites. Any border disputes were to be settled by the Romans. It was the beginning of domination of Greece by foreigners that was last two thousand years.

he Romans emerged from their oppressions as had other conquerors, as agents of their gods and therefore as righteous and honorable