Why Rome?

[Modder_Mode]

While at my Grandpas the other day we got into talking about Rome, as the discussion continued he went and got an old book titled "Monuments Of Civilization: ROME" by Filippo Coarelli, Foreword by Pier Luigi Nervi. It's a fantastic read, but what caught my eye the most, and something I actually never really thought of, and it has been superbly written, I will quote it:

The factors that transformed a poor shepherds' village in Latium into the greatest military power of ancient timed and led to the growth, in a relatively short time, of the most grandiose empire the Western world has ever known, are many, and they are complex as well. No full explanation of these events will be attempted by this book; that is not its intention. Yet for a book dealing with the monuments of Roman civilization, a brief discussion of one factor seems worthwhile: the situation of Italy in the Mediterranean, the historical and geographical framework that was the setting for the birth and expansion of Roman power.

So what are peoples thoughts on why Rome became such a powerhouse?

 

[sophie]

While at my Grandpas the other day we got into talking about Rome, as the discussion continued he went and got an old book titled "Monuments Of Civilization: ROME" by Filippo Coarelli, Foreword by Pier Luigi Nervi. It's a fantastic read, but what caught my eye the most, and something I actually never really thought of, and it has been superbly written, I will quote it:



So what are peoples thoughts on why Rome became such a powerhouse?

Different reasons at different times. For the republic though, it was largely: diplomatic acumen, the ability to command a seemingly endless pool of troops to throw at their problems and a whoooooooole lotta luck.

 

[Modder_Mode]

Different reasons at different times. For the republic though, it was largely: diplomatic acumen, the ability to command a seemingly endless pool of troops to throw at their problems and a whoooooooole lotta luck.

Good points, but that initial "start up"? Was it trade, we know that trade plays a massive part in any Nations/Civilizations history, why was Rome so different?

 

[cav scout]

Rome was at a crossroads at a ford on Tiber so that must have been good for trade. They also did the occassional cattle rustling and raids against their neighbors and eventually came out on top over Veii.

 

[Kyriakos]

Rome could have been destroyed a number of times, of which the most known one is during Hannibal's counter-attack. Hannibal had no ability to conquer Rome by himself, despite being able to keep on defeating its armies. He had asked for assistance, most notably from the Hellenistic Empires, but the reply was negative. I suppose this was partly due to the old Sicilean wars between Greek states and Carthage, partly due to the belief in Seleukia and Ptolemaic Egypt that they were invinsible anyway, and, lastly, because prior to the rise of Rome the Greek world considered it pretty much another type of barbarian people and would not have treaties with it between equals or any similar notion.

This all changed with the gradual collapse of the Macedonian kingdom, and the will of southern confederations/leagues to ask Rome for intervention. After the final Roman-Macedonian war the situation was way too messed up to turn the tide back, moreso considering the same high-brow attitude of the Ptolemies and Seleucids.

 

[Dachs]

A lot of this stuff has already been touched on.

People have emphasized contingency, and that's valid. Rome's ultimate success relied on a very many things going right that might not otherwise have gone right. It fought several wars that it might have lost so badly as to fragment its Italian hegemony; losing any one of them might have ended Rome's shot at Mediterranean domination. Losing some of them, like the Hannibalic War or the war against Antiochos the Great, might have ended Rome's existence as a regional power.

At the same time, military success isn't wholly a matter of contingent events. Some scholars have emphasized Rome's alliance-making as a key aspect of its military success. Rome, it's often noted, usually opened its wars with a successful of lost battles before finally winning later on and overwhelming its enemies with manpower. The Romans had a lot of disposable manpower, the argument goes, because they successfully co-opted the cities and regional associations of Italy into a stable alliance network that was built on more than just force majeure. Cities would be willing to supply Rome with large quantities of soldiers because Roman hegemony was less intrusive and more cooperative than any of the other major alternatives. The citizens of those cities, then, provided a much larger manpower base than almost any other competing state possessed. This was clearly an advantage; it did not intrinsically decide the outcome of wars, but it weighted the scales more heavily in Rome's favor.

I don't think you can go very far with the resources game. It's true that Rome sat on an area well known for its salt mines, and that the city was placed at a reasonably good spot for regional trade. But that only explains why Rome and not, say, Veii, or Clusium, or Praeneste grew to dominate central Italy. Salt and regional trade didn't give Rome an advantage over Capua, Maloenton, or Taras, all of which competed for dominance in Italy at or about Rome's level. And once Rome gained control of the entire peninsula, local resources and local trade became virtually irrelevant to the apocalyptic contests with Qarthadast and with the Hellenistic monarchies.

After the final Roman-Macedonian war the situation was way too messed up to turn the tide back, moreso considering the same high-brow attitude of the Ptolemies and Seleucids.

I don't think "high-brow" means what you think it means.

 

[Kyriakos]

You missed the irony completely.

As made clear before, those empires seemed to believe they were there forever anyway, so they would not deal with plebean matters. Even when Rome started to effectively be itself an enabler of the eastern dynasties to continue existing, the sense of disbelief allows one to imagine that it was intermixed with a delusion that the old Greek empires will remain #1 anyway (and then they were conquered).

 

[Perfection]

Because all the roads led to it.

 

[Dachs]

You missed the irony completely.

As made clear before, those empires seemed to believe they were there forever anyway, so they would not deal with plebean matters. Even when Rome started to effectively be itself an enabler of the eastern dynasties to continue existing, the sense of disbelief allows one to imagine that it was intermixed with a delusion that the old Greek empires will remain #1 anyway (and then they were conquered).

Number one, that's not even correct. There were no plebeians in the Hellenistic states by definition. If you're just using the term to refer to a lower social class generally - a stupefyingly incorrect use of the term, but a popular one in modern parlance for whatever reason - then it's also not true. First of all, the Hellenistic era was the time when kings started to use public munificence and the general idea of having visibly "helped out the little guy" as a selling point. If they wanted to be known as Euergetai, they'd put that stuff on their coins. And then they'd actually follow up on that; the knock that a lot of classicists (Tarn) used to have on the later Hellenistic kings isn't that they ignored the Plight of the People but that they used their wealth to basically buy popular support instead of using it to buy armies worth a damn to fight the Romans (presumably) and reclaim their honor or some similarly pointless Zuko-like thing.

So, number one, ignoring the "plebeians" wasn't a problem that the Hellenistic monarchies had more than any other contemporary states. And then there's the issue of whether that would've mattered even if they had, and it's hard to see how.

Either way, you're still using "high-brow" incorrectly.

 

[Kyriakos]

Getting pointless fast, Dachs, and you even seem to think i meant other Greek states by "plebean" when it was obvious i meant Rome since i rephrased that from a more elaborate sentence in my previous post with the same meaning.

So, moving on i suppose. I have had "high-brow reflection" as part of the grading of my university work, so don't worry, i know what it means.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/highbrow

 

[Wrymouth3]

Getting pointless fast, Dachs, and you even seem to think i meant other Greek states by "plebean" when it was obvious i meant Rome since i rephrased that from a more elaborate sentence in my previous post with the same meaning.

So, moving on i suppose. I have had "high-brow reflection" as part of the grading of my university work, so don't worry, i know what it means.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/highbrow

I really don't think we need to derail the original discussion that was started by the OP to post links to definitions of WORDS. The OP asked a very good question, and I would add to it if I was a classicist, let's get back on topic guys.

 

[cav scout]

I really don't think we need to derail the original discussion that was started by the OP to post links to definitions of WORDS. The OP asked a very good question, and I would add to it if I was a classicist, let's get back on topic guys.

Agreed. Especially because the question posed by the OP is about Rome's initial "start up." Is there anyone wanting to make a germs/steel determinism argument? How about "Cockpit Europe- Italia Edition"?

 

[Louis XXIV]

Since I just read Eckstein's Mediterranean Anarchy recently, I was struck by the unwillingness of ancient states to let others become citizens. In addition, since I had read Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations just prior to it*, the idea of one's identity as Roman is not a minor one. I do think Rome did quite a bit to incorporate other peoples into the Roman identity, which created a more cohesive state that could absorb the blows of defeat and could raise large armies to continue the fight.

By comparison, Sparta was historically jealous of citizenship and suffered greatly from lack of population. The Diadochi likewise seemed to struggle to incorporate non-Greeks into their society. It always seemed to be a Greek veneer on a foreign society (particularly with the Seleucids). Sure, they could levee large armies, but the seem more fragile overall and vulnerable to military defeats. That being said, I could have seen Antiochus III creating the Mediterranean power instead of the Romans. Quite a bit of luck was necessary overall for Rome to end up where they did.

* I feel I'm getting my book recommendations from this forum

 

[Dachs]

Since I just read Eckstein's Mediterranean Anarchy recently, I was struck by the unwillingness of ancient states to let others become citizens. In addition, since I had read Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations just prior to it*, the idea of one's identity as Roman is not a minor one. I do think Rome did quite a bit to incorporate other peoples into the Roman identity, which created a more cohesive state that could absorb the blows of defeat and could raise large armies to continue the fight.

By comparison, Sparta was historically jealous of citizenship and suffered greatly from lack of population. The Diadochi likewise seemed to struggle to incorporate non-Greeks into their society. It always seemed to be a Greek veneer on a foreign society (particularly with the Seleucids). Sure, they could levee large armies, but the seem more fragile overall and vulnerable to military defeats. That being said, I could have seen Antiochus III creating the Mediterranean power instead of the Romans. Quite a bit of luck was necessary overall for Rome to end up where they did.

It's important not to overstate the extent to which Romanness was an identity outside Rome and specifically affiliated colonies. As was seen in the Hannibalic War, plenty of Italian states were dissatisfied with the way Roman hegemony worked. And as the Social War demonstrated, Roman identity and the benefits of being Roman were not distributed across the spectrum of the Italian allies. One can't even begin to speak of the same sort of notion of Romanitas that would become the norm in the fourth and fifth century Empire. Full citizenship with full voting power was essentially confined to Latium up to the final century of the Republic.

I think that Eckstein and others have a point in emphasizing Rome's skill at co-opting allies and keeping them loyal. But the difference between Rome's policy and that of competing states tended to be incremental (a notoriously xenophobic state like Sparta notwithstanding), and the advantages that Rome thereby obtained were similarly incremental.

 

[Louis XXIV]

You have a good point. However, even the integration of Rome's Latin allies was significant. I think it's important that not a single one changed sides when Hannibal was in Italy. Most of those that switched to Hannibal's side were the Greek cities. Even then, many did so under the condition that they not have to give Hannibal troops. Also, the gamesmanship between Greek cities that made it difficult to produce a cohesive alliance was seen even then. I think Richard Miles in "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" that made the argument that, by elevating Capua, the other Greek cities began to fear that a Capuan hegemony would replace a Roman one. Essentially the same Greek power balancing seen famously on the mainland but also seen in Magna Graeca with Syracuse, Tarentum, etc. constantly fighting back and forth and unable to really work together except in rare circumstances.

So, while you make a great point, even the integration of Latin cities was nothing to laugh at as far as a Roman advantage goes.

 

[Kyriakos]

Regarding Antiochos III (The Great), i tried to find accounts of the war with Rome, but only read a few pieces on the battle of Thermopylae, from a Roman perspective. Was there anything else going on?

I noticed the map at the time: why did Antiochos III not march against Pergamon? (or even the small bit in Asia Minor that Rhodes controlled). Also: his expeditionary force in southern Greece seems to have been only mildly larger than ten thousand soldiers. He did have other expansions going on, particularly as far as the Indian lands, but given that he was himself the head of the expedition in Greece, it seemed quite strange to me that the force only totalled this number. So i would like to ask for more context to be given if people here know of it

 

[Louis XXIV]

Well, he probably didn't go after Pergamon because he was invited into Greece by the Aetolian League. Not only would that give him a base of operations and allied troops, but it would allow him to play up his image as liberator of the Greeks.

I wonder what would have happened if he had made an attempt to conquer Egypt proper instead (perhaps a few years earlier when Rome was still fighting Phillip, but at least instead of mainland Greece). The resources of Egypt would have been great for supplying his troops in a later campaign in Greece and it would have delayed provocation of Rome.

As for the sources, I'm honestly surprised Polybius doesn't have an account. That would have at least offered a non-Roman source.

 

[Mouthwash]

Because Rome.