Alternate Roman History

[Bowsling]

What was there in Germania for the Romans to want control over? Surely their conquests had some sort of motivation, be it security or resources?

Don't forget, Roman society was very different in that respect from modern-day society. A successful military expedition or invasion would often be a profit from all the money in looting.

Plus, for any sort of general aspiring to become emperor, invading some barbarian kingdom was one of the best ways to earn public and military support.

 

[Traitorfish]

Don't forget, Roman society was very different in that respect from modern-day society. A successful military expedition or invasion would often be a profit from all the money in looting.

That tends to be exaggerated; from the perspective of a statesman, the real wealth of a territory is in its ability to generate long-term revenue. Egypt, for example, was a great prize not because it had lots of palaces to loot, but because it sat atop some very important and very active trade routes.

 

[Dachs]

Yeah, I alluded to this in a thread earlier today in OT, but Schumpeterian warfare-as-economic motor and the plunder motive in particular have been pretty much discredited in a classical context. Outside of a few very rare examples like Ptolemaios III getting a third of his revenue for one year from the sack of Seleukeia-in-Pieria, economic profit as a motivating force for conquest doesn't hold up in terms of numbers alone.

 

[Karalysia]

That tends to be exaggerated; from the perspective of a statesman, the real wealth of a territory is in its ability to generate long-term revenue. Egypt, for example, was a great prize not because it had lots of palaces to loot, but because it sat atop some very important and very active trade routes.

Ahem...grain.

 

[Traitorfish]

Ahem...grain.

The grain trade, yes. What, you think the Ptolemies were just piling it all up in the back, wondering what on earth they were going to do with ten million spare loaves of bread?

 

[ParkCungHee]

Plus warfare-as-economic-motor tends to conflict with warfare resulting in Conquest. In most places that do see this phenomenon (like some cases in Medievel Irish warfare), it tends to avoid invasion, never mind occupation. If you're going to send the army in to loot, send them in to loot, then bring them home.

 

[Traitorfish]

Case in point, once the Danes started actually conquering parts of England, rather than just raiding it, they began to cut down on the raping-and-pillaging, because their would-be victims became their new tenants.

 

[Plotinus]

Yeah, I alluded to this in a thread earlier today in OT, but Schumpeterian warfare-as-economic motor and the plunder motive in particular have been pretty much discredited in a classical context. Outside of a few very rare examples like Ptolemaios III getting a third of his revenue for one year from the sack of Seleukeia-in-Pieria, economic profit as a motivating force for conquest doesn't hold up in terms of numbers alone.

This is probably a silly question, but does the fact that ancient conquest typically didn't result in great wealth acquisition really show that wealth acquisition couldn't be a motive? Because what if people had unrealistic expectations? Even in a world where invasions almost never result in plunder that covers the costs of mounting the invasion, I can still imagine plenty of rulers - and certainly plenty of military leaders - nevertheless mounting such expeditions in the hope of striking it lucky. Perhaps they don't know how unlikely it is that they'll make any money, or perhaps they know the statistics but think this time it'll pay off.

After all, gambling in casinos is not a very reliable means of accumulating wealth either, but it doesn't follow from that that wealth accumulation is not the primary motive of people who do it.

 

[Dachs]

Well, firstly, from what we know of the internal debates surrounding the entry of classical states into war from textual sources, plunder doesn't really get thrown around a lot. Livy doesn't have the Patres Conscripti saying, "We need to go to war against the Carthaginians in order to gain spoils that will keep our military-agricultural complex going" before any one of the Punic Wars, for instance. There's just not a whole lot of support in favor of that sort of an interpretation.

And classical rulers definitely went to war for territories that were either poor or virtually depopulated, for a variety of reasons (geostrategic gain has been attested, for instance, in the case of Philippos V's invasion of inland Illyria, and then there's prestige, of course) - moves that would be nonsensical if their militaries were so overlarge that they could not be supported by the states that ran them, as the Schumpeterian model goes.

This, of course, does not mean that individual campaigns might be conducted to make a profit, because we do have clear instances in which this might plausibly be the case (although it's not directly attested; again with Phil, we see his eastern Aegean campaigns generating some revenue, which ended up going to finance a fleet buildup to add to the navy he'd already seized from the Ptolies at Chios). And of course no ruler would ever turn down loot of any kind if he were able to get it in the course of a campaign. But as far as motivation...I guess what's most striking is what's not there about looting.

 

[Bowsling]

No. I wasn't suggesting that it would be a surefire way to get rich if you're a Roman general. But the campaigns weren't these huge money-guzzlers like they are nowadays.

Plus, the glory of conquering some obscure foreign people and parading a bunch of them around in the streets of Rome was a very effective way to earn public support. Crassus is a brilliant example of that. He went and disobeyed Senatorial orders (and unsuccessfully risk his life) to try and invade Parthia, while he is thought to be one of the richest people to have ever lived.

 

[Dachs]

Well, actually, campaigns were huge money-guzzlers, especially in the post-Marian era of perpetual professional armies. Certainly not in proportion to modern times, but you have to understand that the overwhelming majority of the exchequer of any state back then was spent on arms, armor, and the men to use them; since the Romans had a commissary system, campaigns weren't simply predicated on "go here and eat the food the locals have, then rinse and repeat" - entirely separate from campaign pay and so forth, the Romans had to spend on logistics, even if those logistics were nothing like what a modern army would be able to manage.

And the old "general goes off on a glorious mission to conquer Place X and gain glory" is a construct of the late Republic. It doesn't work for the Empire, and certainly doesn't work for the period in which anybody was thinking about going after Germania beyond the Rhine.

 

[Bowsling]

Certainly not under the Julio-Cluadians no, but around times of instability, like the end of the tetrarchs and the Year of Four Emperors, conquering generals were favored over experienced Senators. Vespasian and Titus were successful generals that became successful emperors thanks to their victorious record.

 

[Dachs]

That division may or may not be true (I lean toward "not" due to the sheer amount of non-conquering that was going on after the Iulio-Claudiani) but that's not the point. A general couldn't just go off and conquer whenever he felt like it. Generals conquered at the behest of the sovereign; they couldn't just decide to take their field army and go off and take over Arabia Felix or wherever as a little side project to get themselves in power brokers' good books. Vespasianus didn't participate in the conquest of southern Britain because he thought it was a good idea for his imperial CV fifteen years down the line, he participated in it because he was an imperial general and those were his orders.

 

[Bowsling]

No. But I'm sure it helped if the general actually wanted to go.

Also, the reference to Vespasian was about the revolt in Judea.

 

[Kentharu]

I was under the impression that loot was a benefit of the general of the army, not the state, who would have seen little of it. Not to imply that general's would just go off wtfpwning people left and right but they did extract ransom from captured prisoners (a form of loot I suppose). Foraging which, to my understanding, Hannibal used quite a bit, can be seen as a form of looting, although not in the traditional pillage and burn sense.

As for generals doing what they liked, at least in the Punic war, it seems that the state gave generals broad goals (go take this and this, sometimes not even city specific) and it was up to the generals to pick and choose which city to attack.

 

[Serutan]

A general couldn't just go off and conquer whenever he felt like it. Generals conquered at the behest of the sovereign; they couldn't just decide to take their field army and go off and take over Arabia Felix or wherever as a little side project to get themselves in power brokers' good books.

Unless the general and sovereign were one and the same - to wit, Trajan.

 

[Traitorfish]

Iulio-Claudiani

Oh, now you're just showing off.

 

[Masada]

... You do realise that English is a horrible curse of a language right?

 

[Traitorfish]

Aye, shoor enough, pol. Ahm ainly usin it cos the Sassenach's juss dinnae unnerston ye if ye spaik propairlee.

 

[Lord Baal]

Unless the general and sovereign were one and the same - to wit, Trajan.

And those missions of conquest usually left them wide open to a coup back home, which is why only the exceptional - or exceptionally foolish - sovereigns participated in them.