Fourth, the regular military campaigns brought together Romans and Italians of all classes under the command of Roman magistrates. The Italian troops appear to have been levied in a fashion similar to the one used for the Romans, which would have required a Roman-style census as a means of organizing the local citizenries. In the absence of direct administration, military service was the context in which Italians most regularly experienced Roman authority.
Fifth, Rome occasionally deployed its troops in Italy to maintain social order. Rome suppressed an uprising of serfs in Etruscan Volsinii in 265 and a sedition in Patavium in 175. When the massive influx of slaves raised the spectre of rebellions across Italy, Roman troops were deployed to put down uprisings: in 195, 5,000 slaves were executed in Latin Setia; in 196 the praetor was sent with his urban legion to Etruria to fight a pitched battle in which many slaves were killed; and the praetor of 185 dealt with rebellious slaves in Apulia, condemning 7,000 to death. The later slave revolt in Sicily (c. 135–132) was not contained so effectively and grew to include perhaps 70,000. The slaves defeated the first consular army sent in 134; the efforts of two more consuls were required to restore order. The revolts, unusual for their frequency and size, are not to be explained by abolitionist programs (nonexistent in antiquity) nor by maltreatment. The causes lay in the enslavement and importation of entire communities with their native leadership and in the free reign given to slave shepherds who roamed armed around the countryside serving as communication lines between slave plantations. These uprisings made it clear that the social fabric of Italy, put under stress by the transformations brought about by conquest, had to be protected by Roman force.
While the exercise of Roman authority and force was sometimes resented by Italians, Rome’s power made its mores and culture worthy of imitation. The Latin language and Roman political institutions slowly spread. A request from the old Campanian city of Cumae in 180 that it be allowed to change its official language from Oscan to Latin was a sign of things to come. Richard P. Saller The Late Republic (133–31 bc) The aftermath of the victories
The fall of Carthage and Corinth did not even mark a temporary end to warfare. War and military glory were an essential part of the Roman aristocratic ethos and, hence, of Roman political life. Apart from major wars still to come, small wars on the frontiers of Roman power—never precisely fixed—continued to provide an essential motive in Roman history: in Spain, Sardinia, Illyria, and Macedonia, barbarians could be defeated and triumphs won. Thus the limits of Roman power were gradually extended and the territories within them pacified, while men of noble stock rivaled the virtus of their ancestors and new men staked their own competing claims, winning glory essential to political advancement and sharing the booty with their officers and soldiers. Cicero could still depict it as a major disgrace for Lucius Piso (consul; 58 bc) that he had won no triumph in the traditionally “triumphal” province of Macedonia. Nonetheless, the coincidence of the capture of Corinth and Carthage was even in antiquity regarded as a turning point in Roman history: it was the end (for the time being) of warfare against civilized powers, in which the danger was felt to be greater and the glory and the booty were superior to those won against barbarian tribes. Changes in provincial administration
The first immediate effect was on the administration of the empire. The military basis of provincial administration remained: the governor (as he is called) was in Roman eyes a commander with absolute and unappealable powers over all except Roman citizens, within the limits of the territory (his provincia) assigned to him (normally) by the Senate. He was always prepared—and in some provinces expected—to fight and win. But it had been found that those unlimited powers were often abused and that Senate control could not easily be asserted at increasing distances from Rome. For political and perhaps for moral reasons, excessive abuse without hope of a remedy could not be permitted. Hence, when the decision to annex Carthage and Macedonia had been made in principle (149 bc), a permanent court (the quaestio repetundarum) was established at Rome to hear complaints against former commanders and, where necessary, to assure repayment of illegal exactions. No penalty for offenders was provided, and there was no derogation from the commander’s powers during his tenure; nevertheless, the step was a landmark in the recognition of imperial responsibility, and it was also to have important effects on Roman politics.
Another result of the new conquests was a major administrative departure. When Africa and Macedonia became provinciae to be regularly assigned to commanders, it was decided to break with precedent by not increasing the number of senior magistrates (praetors). Instead, prorogation—the device of leaving a magistrate in office pro magistratu (“in place of a magistrate”) after his term had expired, which had hitherto been freely used when emergencies had led to shortages of regular commanders—was established as part of the administrative system: thenceforth, every year at least two praetors would have to be retained as promagistrates. This was the beginning of the dissociation between urban magistracy and foreign command that was to become a cardinal principle of the system of Sulla and of the developed Roman Empire. Social and economic ills
It is not clear to what extent the temporary end of the age of major wars helped to produce the crisis of the Roman Republic. The general view of thinking Romans was that the relaxation of external pressures led to internal disintegration. (This has happened in other states, and the view is not to be lightly dismissed.) Moreover, the end of large-scale booty led to economic recession in Rome, thus intensifying poverty and discontent. But the underlying crisis had been building up over a long period. The reform movement of the Gracchi (133–121 bc)
From the state’s point of view, the chief effect was a decline in military manpower. The minimum property qualification for service was lowered and the minimum age (17) ignored; resistance became frequent, especially to the distant and unending guerrilla war in Spain. The program and career of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus
Tiberius Gracchus, grandson of Scipio Africanus and son of the Gracchus who had conquered the Celtiberi and treated them well, was quaestor in Mancinus’ army when it faced annihilation; on the strength of his family name, he personally negotiated the peace that saved it. When the Senate—on the motion of his cousin Scipio Aemilianus, who later finished the war—renounced the peace, Tiberius felt aggrieved; he joined a group of senior senators hostile to Aemilianus and with ideas on reform. Elected tribune for 133, in Scipio’s absence, Tiberius attempted to find a solution for the social and military crisis, with the political credit to go to himself and his backers. Tiberius had no intention of touching private property; his idea was to enforce the legal but widely ignored limit of 500 iugera (309 acres) on occupation of public land and to use the land thus retrieved for settling landless citizens, who would both regain a secure living and be liable for service. The slave war in Sicily, which had lasted several years and had threatened to spread to Italy, had underlined both the danger of using large numbers of slaves on the land and the need for a major increase in military citizen manpower.