October 2017
Who is there so feeble-minded or idle that he would not wish to know how and with what constitution almost all the inhabited world was conquered and fell under the single dominion of Rome within fifty-three years?
POLYBIUS1
PROCONSUL PUBLIUS SCIPIO AEMILIANUS STOOD BEFORE the walls of Carthage watching the city burn. After a long, bloody siege, the Romans had breached the walls and pierced the heart of their greatest enemy. The Carthaginians had put up a fight, forcing the Romans to conquer the city street by street, but at the end of a week’s fighting the Romans prevailed. After systematically looting the city, Aemilianus ordered Carthage destroyed and its remaining inhabitants either sold into slavery or resettled further inland—far away from their lucrative harbor on the coast of North Africa. Long one of the great cities of the Mediterranean, Carthage was no more.2
Meanwhile, seven hundred miles to the east, consul Lucius Mummius stood before the walls of the Greek city of Corinth. For fifty years, Rome had attempted to control Greek political life without ruling Greece directly. But persistent unrest, disorder, and rebellion had forced the Romans to intervene repeatedly. Finally, in 146 BC, the Senate dispatched Mummius to end these rebellions once and for all. When he breached the walls of Corinth he made an example of the rebellious city. As with Carthage, the legions stripped the city of its wealth, tore down buildings, and sold its inhabitants into slavery.3
By simultaneously destroying Carthage and Corinth in 146, the Roman Republic took a final decisive step toward its imperial destiny. No longer one power among many, Rome now asserted itself as the power in the Mediterranean world. But as Rome’s imperial power reached maturity, the Republic itself started to rot from within. The triumph of the Roman Republic was also the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic.4
THE ROAD TO Rome’s triumph began in central Italy six centuries earlier. According to the official legend, twin babies Romulus and Remus were found abandoned beside the Tiber River by a she-wolf who suckled them back to life. When they came of age the twins resolved to found a city on the spot where they had been discovered. But an argument over where to place the city’s boundary markers led to a quarrel; Romulus killed Remus and became the sole founder of the new city of Rome. The legendary founding date is April 21, 753 BC.5
The oft-told story of Romulus and Remus is obviously a myth, but that does not mean the story is pure invention. There is archeological evidence that shows human habitation dates back to the 1200s BC with permanent settlements by early 900—roughly corresponding to the legendary timeline. Contrary to the myth, however, the location of Rome has nothing to do with fortuitous encounters with friendly wolves, but rather strategic economics. Rome sits nestled in a cluster of seven hills commanding one of the few stable crossings of the Tiber. Most of the early Romans were farmers, but the location allowed them to control the river, establish a marketplace, and defend themselves in case of attack. Their small community was soon stable and prosperous.6
Rome spent its first 250 years as just another minor kingdom in Italy. As records from these early days were nonexistent, later Roman historians relied on the oral tradition of “The Seven Kings of Rome” to explain the early evolution of their city. Though the evidence was slim, the Romans believed that most of their core public institutions traced their roots to this semimythical monarchy. The first king, Romulus, organized the legions, the Senate, and the popular Assembly. The second king, Numa, introduced priesthoods and religious rituals. The sixth king, Servius Tullius, reformed the Assemblies, conducted the first census, and organized the citizens into regional tribes for voting. But though the later Romans credited the kings with laying the political and social foundations of the city, they also believed that kings were anathema to the Roman character. The Roman Kingdom ended abruptly in 509 when a group of senators chased the last king out of the city and replaced the monarchy with a kingless republic.7
The new Roman Republic was not a freewheeling democracy. Families that could trace their lineage back to the original senators appointed by Romulus were known as the patricians and by both custom and law these families monopolized all political and religious offices. Anyone outside this small aristocratic clique was called plebeian. All plebeians—whether poor farmer, prosperous merchant, or rich landowner—were shut out of power. It did not take long for the plebs to agitate for equal rights. As the historian Appian says: “The plebeians and Senate of Rome were often at strife with each other concerning the enactment of laws, the cancelling of debts, the division of lands, or the election of magistrates.” The running battle between patrician and pleb became known as the Conflict of the Orders.8
About fifteen years after the founding of the Republic, a debt crisis among the lower-class plebeians finally led to a great showdown. Incensed at arbitrary patrician abuse, the plebs refused to muster for military service when called to face a looming foreign threat. Instead the plebs withdrew en masse to a hill outside the city and swore to remain there until they were allowed to elect magistrates of their own. The Senate yielded and created the Plebeian Assembly, a popular assembly closed to patricians. This Assembly would elect tribunes who acted as guardians against patrician abuse. Any citizen could seek sanctuary with a tribune, at any time, for any reason. By sacred oath the tribunes were declared sacrosanct—within the city limits of Rome not even a consul could lay a hand on them. They became sentinels against the tyranny of the senatorial aristocracy.9
But though tension between patrician and pleb helped define the early Republic, Roman politics was not a class affair. Roman families organized themselves into complex client-patron networks that worked down from the elite patrician patrons through an array of interconnected plebeian clients. Patrons could expect political and military support from their clients, and clients could expect financial and legal assistance from their patrons. So though the conflict between patricians and plebs occasionally led to explosive clashes, the client-patron bonds meant Roman politics was more a clash of rival clans than a class war.
What truly bound all Romans together, though, were unspoken rules of social and political conduct. The Romans never had a written constitution or extensive body of written law—they needed neither. Instead the Romans surrounded themselves with unwritten rules, traditions, and mutual expectations collectively known as mos maiorum, which meant “the way of the elders.” Even as political rivals competed for wealth and power, their shared respect for the strength of the client-patron relationship, the sovereignty of the Assemblies, and wisdom of the Senate kept them from going too far. When the Republic began to break down in the late second century it was not the letter of Roman law that eroded, but respect for the mutually accepted bonds of mos maiorum.10
THOUGH SOMETIMES DIVIDED internally, the Romans always fought as one when faced with a foreign threat. Romulus stamped the Romans early with a martial spirit and rarely did a year go by without some kind of conflict with a neighbor. Occasionally these seasonal skirmishes erupted into full-blown wars. Starting in 343, the Romans became locked in a long war with the Samnites, a nomadic people who populated the hills and mountains of central Italy. Waged over the next fifty years, the Samnite Wars eventually sucked the rest of Italy into an anti-Roman coalition. When Rome defeated this coalition in 295 they became undisputed masters of the peninsula.11