Rome: An Empire's Story (13 page)

For Rome’s greatest rivals during the second century
BC
were the rich monarchies of the eastern Mediterranean. It was the humbling of the great kingdoms of Antigonid Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt that Polybius had in mind when he wrote of Rome’s takeover of the entire civilized world. Those kingdoms had squabbled since the death of Alexander the Great for control of the Greek world and its Balkan, Asian, and African hinterlands. The defeat of Carthage in 202 left Rome free to join—and end—this competition.

Two years after Scipio’s victory over Hannibal at Zama, Roman armies crossed the Adriatic to take on Philip II, King of Macedon. The reasons remain a matter of controversy. One provocation was a treaty made between Philip and Hannibal when the latter was still a threat to Rome. Another may have been earlier attempts by Philip to expand his interests at Roman expense in the Adriatic, although this was really a minor part of his wider ambitions in the Balkans and beyond. A number of Greek states were anxious about Philip, and Rome’s status as a world power was now clearer than ever. Embassies came to Rome from Attalus of Pergamum, from Rhodes, and from Athens, and Roman ambassadors were sent to other parts of Greece. But the Romans could certainly have safely ignored these requests and left Macedon alone had they wished for peace. Clearly they did not. Or at least a majority did not, since the first time the Roman assembly was asked to approve war it refused. That decision was rapidly reversed. What arguments were used to persuade the people to assent? Were they terrorized
with stories of Philip’s aggression, reminded of his past hostility as Hannibal’s ally, or just encouraged with the hope of more booty? During the Hannibalic war Rome had fought a brief war with Macedon: in 211 the Romans had made an alliance with the Aetolians of north-west Greece agreeing that in any joint actions the Aetolians should keep any territory captured, while Rome would take any slaves and booty. Not much had come of this in practice, but perhaps Macedon was still looked on as a good place to plunder. And perhaps a generation of warfare had actually accustomed Rome to conflict, inspiring a new generation of Roman leaders to seek conflicts in which to distinguish themselves, and a new generation of soldiers to seek their fortune in wars of conquest?

Whatever the reasons, the vote for war was won in 200. The next year a Roman army invaded Macedonia, once again in alliance with the Aetolians. The command passed to Titus Quinctius Flamininus in 199. Hard fighting in the Balkans and tough diplomacy gave him the advantage over Philip and made allies of the Achaean League, to which most of the important cities of southern Greece belonged. Philip rejected terms and Flamininus pushed on to defeat him decisively early in 197 at the battle of Cynoscephalae. Rome’s new allies the Achaeans were delighted. But the Aetolians felt they had not received all the rewards they deserved. Macedon was left intact, but compelled to stay out of southern Greece, and a heavy indemnity was imposed as in fact it had been on Carthage. At the Isthmian Games in 196 Flamininus declared the freedom of the Greeks. The language of his proclamation and its location echoed Alexander’s proclamations at Corinth in 337
BC
, and also much subsequent Hellenistic diplomacy. Romans had evidently learned the diplomatic manners of the Greek east. Their ambitions were different but they were not about to let any other power replace Macedon. The Seleucid King Antiochus III was warned off and Flamininus fought another campaign against Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, before in 194 Roman armies returned home.

Diplomacy did not keep Antiochus at bay. In 192 he crossed into Greece, now in alliance with the Aetolians. The Roman response was immediate. Antiochus was met and defeated at Thermopylae in 191 and retreated to Asia, pursued by the consul Scipio (the brother of Africanus the conqueror of Carthage) who would take the title Asiaticus after this campaign. Antiochus was defeated at Magnesia, sued for peace, and by the Treaty of Apamea signed in 188 renounced all Seleucid claims of territory in Asia Minor. Like Macedon, the Seleucid kingdom was permitted to survive on
condition it paid an indemnity, and like Macedon its sphere of influence had been limited. The western Balkans, southern Greece, and Anatolia were now no longer dominated by any of the great powers.

Roman armies campaigned in these regions for a little while. During 189 Fulvius Nobilior fought wars in Ambracia on Macedon’s western borders, and Manlius Vulso campaigned against the Galatians of central Anatolia. Both wars were infamously profitable, and Rome swooned before spectacular triumphs and monuments. But when the booty was gone, the Romans left too, abandoning their former allies and defeated enemies to jostle for positions in a new world order. From now on all politics in the eastern Mediterranean was referred to Rome. Embassy after embassy sought the support of the Senate or its envoys in tiny disputes. Rome’s allies, like the kingdom of Pergamum, the Achaeans, and (for a while) Rhodes, grew in influence. Yet often Romans seemed uninterested in what they did. Military attention was diverted to wars in north Italy and Spain. Philip himself died in 179 and was succeeded by Perseus, who cautiously began building up alliances with other kings. His ambitions were denounced to the Senate by Eumenes of Pergamum in 172 and the next year Roman soldiers were back in the Balkans. This third Macedonian war took a little longer to bring to a conclusion, perhaps because Rome’s allies seemed not wholeheartedly in support. But in 168 Aemilius Paullus defeated Perseus at Pydna. The kingdom of Macedon was abolished, its territory divided between four republics. Roman armies sacked city after city; a rumoured 150,000 people were enslaved in Epirus. The king was captured and brought back to march through Rome in the triumphal procession of his victor. Meanwhile the leading members of anti-Roman factions from the cities of Greece were taken into exile in Italy. Polybius was among them.

The same year Antiochus IV tried to restore Seleucid fortunes by invading Egypt. A Roman envoy, Popilius Laenas, met him and his army just outside Alexandria and ordered him back home. Antiochus asked for time to consider his response. Laenas drew the original line in the sand, a circle around the king, and insisted:

Before you step out of that circle give me your reply to bring to the Senate.
⁷

Antiochus had no option but to obey. Livy followed up this anecdote of Antiochus with an account of how the Senate had received embassies from the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, and ambassadors from the kings of Pergamum and Numidia, bringing congratulations on the defeat of Macedon.

Fig 4.
The monument at Delphi that commemorated Aemilius Paullus’ victory at Pydna

Roman hegemony did not, however, ensure political stability. Greek observers were evidently a little puzzled by Roman objectives east of the Adriatic. Rome’s victories in 197, 188, and 168 had each changed the balance of power in the east. Yet, after each campaign, the Roman armies had returned home. Between these wars their diplomacy seemed inconsistent. Even Polybius, who had the best position of all to observe Roman policy-making in action, was caught out, believing a watershed had been reached after the obliteration of Macedon. Beginning with his deportation to Rome in 167
BC
, he spent nearly twenty years as a kind of honoured prisoner in Rome, in the process getting to know some of the leading figures of the day including Cato the Elder and the Scipio brothers. Yet he was not ready for the sequel.

During the aftermath of Pydna, relations between Rome and her allies in the eastern Mediterranean deteriorated rapidly. Rhodes was felt not to have given the support it might have done in the war with Perseus. In 167 it was punished when the Romans declared Delos a free port in a
successful attempt to damage Rhodian commercial interests. Next, Pergamum fell temporarily from grace, and its power in Asia Minor was limited. During the 150s and 140s Rome made sporadic diplomatic interventions in conflicts between the cities and kingdoms of Anatolia, and they kept an interest in succession disputes in Syria and Egypt. But there were no more military expeditions until 149 when a pretender to the throne of Macedon had some brief success before being defeated by a Roman army supported by Pergamese allies. But Roman attention had been attracted. By now Rhodes and Pergamum were back in favour, but the Achaean League was not. To the horror of Polybius, war broke out between Rome and the Achaeans, and this time Roman victory did not simply result in indemnities and loss of territory. The ancient city of Corinth was sacked, its treasures plundered by Mummius and given to his soldiers and as rewards to allied communities, and the city of Corinth was abolished. This was an atrocity not seen in the Greek world since Alexander the Great had destroyed the city of Thebes as a symbol of what he could do if he wished.

Polybius’ world revolved around Greece. But the Romans had a different perspective. The Achaean war was something of a sideshow. During the 150s more Roman eyes had been fixed on the recovery of Carthage. It posed no realistic threat to Rome, even if its offer to pay off its war indemnity early showed its economic recovery. Its political and diplomatic actions were confined to Africa, and seem mostly designed to protect itself from the neighbouring Numidian tribes. But successive Roman embassies returned from Carthage to fuel domestic anxieties. Cato the Elder was among the most influential advocates of striking at Carthage before it could grow any stronger. Eventually the Senate issued an ultimatum requiring them to move their city inland, an impossible demand. The result was a Roman invasion in 149 and the capture of the city in 146. Polybius travelled with Scipio Africanus on the campaign that resulted in the final destruction of Carthage and watched the city burn. Like Corinth it was simply destroyed, and in the same year. The synchronism provides a vital clue to the Roman perspective.
⁸
Greeks inhabited a political world centred on the Aegean Sea, a world of old cities surrounded by new kingdoms—and Rome. They were not used to being on the periphery of politics. Yet Romans were just as interested in Carthage as in Corinth.

Mid-Republican Imperialism

Rome’s expansionist dynamic looks clear enough to us, but maybe did not seem quite so obvious to the Romans. Did they conceive of Mediterranean hegemony as a goal? If not, they would not have been the only nation to discover their imperial vocation only in retrospect. Romans had, after all, no model of empire to follow. Greek writers of the imperial age sometimes set up Alexander as a kind of rival to Rome. But during the last centuries
BC
, Alexander was mostly looked back on as a model king and conquering general. When Roman hegemony
was
thought of as a system, it was compared to the hegemonies of other ‘tyrant cities’, Athens and Sparta above all.

The first attempt to account for the rise of Rome—the first we can read, that is—was that of Polybius. Polybius’ answer was based on the superiority of Rome’s institutions relative to those of her rivals, although it also gave roles to chance and geography, and also to the virtue and foolishness of various individuals. Perhaps his investigations helped the Roman ruling class formulate their own ideas about hegemony. Or perhaps they reflect in part ideas they already had. Fragments of Cato the Elder’s writings sometimes seem to contain some of the same ideas, for example the notion that Roman institutions and public conduct had worked better in the recent past. But then Roman society was still a very small world, and intellectual society smaller still. Perhaps the clearest sign that the Roman elite agreed that the world was now subject to their power alone was the decision to destroy both Carthage and Corinth. Ancient wars typically ended in treaties. The obliteration of two ancient cities is one indication that Romans had come to think of their hegemony as unlike any other.

Roman expansion in the middle Republic was remorseless. No sooner was one war done than another was started. Republican Rome sometimes had several fronts open at the same time, and two years in a row rarely went by between wars. War touched all levels of society. It was difficult to have a successful political career without also holding one or more military command. Between 10 and 25 per cent of the male population were under arms during any one campaigning season. These figures bear comparison with the level of participation in warfare of the general population of European countries during the First World War. During the worst days of the Hannibalic war, between 218 and 215
BC
, one in six adult males
died on the battlefield. But when a campaign went well, the booty was spread widely, if unevenly, among the participants. During the conquest of Italy, some citizens would be allocated grants of land and places in new colonies on spear-won territory. The whole population of the city witnessed the triumphal processions that followed each successful campaign. Prisoners and booty were paraded through the streets in a pageant that might last days. Games and feasts were provided and afterwards temples were built to repay the gods for the favour they had shown Romans during combat.
⁹
Looking back on Rome’s rise to power, it is very tempting to look for some one single force propelling their martial march through history. Many Romans eventually came to believe in a divine mandate, while their enemies saw them as unusually militaristic. The reality is more complex.