Roman Republic Accomplishments

[soibean]

I never hear anything about the military or social accomplishments of the roman republic. How did the take over of Greece go? and the expansion into the west and eventually Ibera. The Punic wars and movement into Africa.
Anyone throw out a source for some info or if youd like feel free to type it up.

[Romanus]

Rise of the roman empire by Polybius is a very good source for the punic wars, the situation in greece and the near east, and Iberia.

[AntiochusIII]

for summary of the entire Roman history, go to www.roman-empire.net (http://www.roman-empire.net)

It is not the most detailed of sources, but a good starting point and a good compliment to sources of more specific nature. http://www.livius.org/ is also an excellent site, referring to the primary sources themselves: authors and historians of Antiquity.

They accomplished a lot; in fact, their most impressive military feats are of the Republic's era and not the Empire's.

I suggest you find Greek sources, or read Hellenistic (Alexander's death-Cleopatra's death, roughly) history, for detailed information on the Roman conquest in the Greek world together with the Roman point-of-view.

[Red Peasant]

~:eek: Don't want to know much there fella!

Go to the library and read volumes 7-9 of the Cambridge Ancient History (latest edition recommended). :coffeenews:

[Glaucus]

Good book to read if your interested: Pride of Carthage, by David Anthony Durham. Covers second punic war, from the point of veiw of hannibal and sometimes Pulius Scpio. I found it a great read, very relevant to RTW.

[soibean]

Thanks for the suggestions

[Avicenna]

Gah, the Empire was rubbish. Apart from Augustus and the five good emperors, all the rest were pretty much useless and incapable of conquering more places. If it wasn't for the victories of the Republic against the Carthaginian threat, Rome might not have survived to see the birth of Christianity, much less be in a position to condemn Christians.

As for the Greeks, I think it wasn't much of a problem, seeing how they were always divided and squabbling amongst themselves.

[Watchman]

The Hellenics pretty much bled each other dry in their spate of succession wars. And the biggest of the bunch, the Seleucids, partly got eaten alive by the expanding Parthians, civil strife and secessions (I understand Pontus, one of the break-aways, damn near gave the Romans more trouble than the Seleucids...).


Gah, the Empire was rubbish. Apart from Augustus and the five good emperors, all the rest were pretty much useless and incapable of conquering more places.Not really. It's just that by that point the whole thing had already started reaching the "critical mass" where maintenance of what was already conquered absorbed so much resources it was very difficult, if not downright impossible, to muster the strenght for further lasting conquests. The shift from citizen-soldiers to paid professionals also imposed certain slightly surprising problems. Apparently in the Late Antiquity period the Roman Empire at its maximum size only actually had about twice the number of soldiers at its disposal as the Republic had had around the time it had dealt with Carthage and was busily expanding into Greece and the Balkans. When you consider the size and manpower base of the two phases, that ought to tell something.

Plus, after Gaul, Britain and what they managed to grab of the Diadochi before Parthia ate the rest, the Romans were actually kind of short of good places to expand into. To the north were the Germanic lands - poor, with little existing political infrastructure that could be taken over (as partly happened in the rather comparatively sophisticated Gaul and Iberia), and full of nasty barbarians with uncomfortable degree of competence in a very frustrating guerilla-style warfare. Ditto, mutatis mutandis, for Central Europe where at least in parts there were also highly troublesome steppe peoples to contend with; I've read the Romans mainly settled to fortify the Danube line as a natural barrier againt the buggers. Beyond the Black Sea was pretty much Right Out - too many nomads, not much worth taking over anyway, seriously far away. The wild lands of northern Britain were more or less the same story; extremely far of, poor and underdeveloped, and full of uncooperative residents who knew the terrain a bit too well for comfort - remember, much later it'd take the English many centuries to finally subdue that region too and they were using much more sophisticated military and adminstrational systems by the later phases...

Essentially, strategic and logistical dead ends.

The East had the powerful Parthians, and the geography of the Asia Minor and Central Asia to contend with. The Romans were never able to make much lasting headway on this front, but then the same went for the Parthians and their Sassanid successors.

Another dead end.

The south and southwest had deserts, and had the Romans somehow pushed the Legions across Sahara they'd most likely all have died of the malaria and other tropical diseases. The Arabian peninsula and the nearby deserts were similarly not exactly worth even trying; indeed, they made themselves quite useful as sources of mercenaries for the Rome-Parthia/Sassanid wars.

Dead end.

To the west there was the ocean. The technology to cross it would not be around for a millenia.

...
...well, duh.

Pretty much they just plain ran out of things their logistical, military and adminstrational base allowed them to take over for good. The fact that for example the mountain regions inside and at the edges of the empire were never fully pacified and forever served as "internal frontiers", havens for rebels and bandits, didn't help any. But to be fair it would take a good long while before any empire would be able to truly pacify such natural trouble spots.

[Atilius]

Gah, the Empire was rubbish
I have to take issue with this too, Tiberius. The Empire, even with its various civil wars, largely preserved the peace throughout the Mediterranean world. Trade expanded and wealth increased.

Watchman makes the point that expansion beyond the boundaries of Augustus' domain was not clearly worth the effort.

There is also the internal political dimension to consider. One of Augustus' reasons for drastically reducing the post-civil war army was to prevent any regional commander from gaining control over a dangerously large army and becoming a rival.

During the Imperial period, offensive actions were constrained by similar considerations. Claudius used only 2 full legions (with auxiliaries and a detachment of Praetorians) in his conquest of Britain. Trajan used a much larger force in his Dacian and Armenian campaigns, but commanded in person.

It is also no coincidence that only members of the imperial family were allowed to celebrate triumphs; this was intended to make it more difficult for anyone outside the imperial family to accumulate the military prestige necessary to challenge the emperor.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Roman Warfare by Adrian Goldsworthy

:2thumbsup:

[Avicenna]

I didn't mean that every aspect of the Empire was a failure, but we're talking about military feats here, which weren't as common in the Empire.

The Empire should have raided Germania and loot, and their leaving it alone was a mistake, I think. They could have set up a puppet government to control, but they left Germania alone, and when the Huns came they became a major threat to the Roman Empire because of that. The Roman Emperors too were not great. They lived a life of luxury, without any fear of threat from the outside. This led to the gradual deterioration of the Roman Legions, and if the military is weakening with worse, inexperienced troops using the worse equipment than a few centuries back and barbarians are knocking at your door, you're in quite a mess.

EDIT: what about Britannia? Dacia was also a good spot to hold on to, with its mines.

[AntiochusIII]

I didn't mean that every aspect of the Empire was a failure, but we're talking about military feats here, which weren't as common in the Empire.Well, I'd rather think it's not because it's the Empire and not the Republic, but as Watchman said, there's really nothing else worth conquering. Except the Mesopotamian East. And they tried there. Hard. Like Trajan and his campaigns. Or even as late as Septimius Severus (the guy averted a massive economic crisis for two whole generations by looting Parthian lands bad :dizzy2: ) and Julian the Apostate later on (supposedly died on a winning campaign that probably wouldn't go far anyway).

The Empire should have raided Germania and loot, and their leaving it alone was a mistake, I think. They could have set up a puppet government to control, but they left Germania alone, and when the Huns came they became a major threat to the Roman Empire because of that. The Roman Emperors too were not great. They lived a life of luxury, without any fear of threat from the outside. This led to the gradual deterioration of the Roman Legions, and if the military is weakening with worse, inexperienced troops using the worse equipment than a few centuries back and barbarians are knocking at your door, you're in quite a mess.Well, the problem is: how do you establish a protectorate out of the unwashed, decentralized, aggressive, independent, rebellious, and warlike barbarians in the forests? That's plain impossible. The Gauls were much more civilized than what they were portrayed as--and even they fought till the bitter end when Caesar basically genocided them down; the Germans? Honest-to-Wotan barbarians. Not that I'm excusing the weaklings on the Imperial throne, but that's upper class for ya. Not too different from the filthy rich arses of today, quite incompetent as a class. It had been since the Senate and the good ol' Republican days, and got worse. :wall: Funny: I think Hannibal was trying to combat that kind of oligarchy in Carthage after the Second Punic War, and got thrown out because the Carthaginian old filthy rich landowning slavers who he was combating appealed to the Roman Senate, made up of similar bastards, and they were naturally concerned, though I think the fact that he had been menacing the Republic and humiliated it a dozen times over throughout the war had more weight to the decision.

EDIT: what about Britannia? Dacia was also a good spot to hold on to, with its mines.Britannia was held for a long time--the northern part beyond Hadrian's wall was not worth conquering, however, same problem as the Germans and no particular benefit. Efforts were made to keep Dacia--but it was very mountainous, deep inland, surrounded (and inhabited) by "barbarians," and weren't very friendly to the Emperor anyway. So it was the first to go when the barbarians rushed the Empire.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

They did come up with highways across long distances. They perfected the arch.:idea2:

[Kralizec]

I have to take issue with this too, Tiberius. The Empire, even with its various civil wars, largely preserved the peace throughout the Mediterranean world. Trade expanded and wealth increased.

Initially, yes. In the midst of the 3rd century things were not all that peaceful and stable. Invading barbarians, the rich upper class usurping more and more land and wealth, the pressure of upkeeping huge armies guarding the germanic frontier and fighting civil wars...not stable at all, or peaceful.
In the late antiquity, Rome was an almost totalitarian police state in wich the vast majority of people lived a life of poverty, forcibly kept to their land and position and were de facto treated like slaves.

[Kraxis]

Actually the Empire continued to believe that one day it would conquer Germania. Tacitus gives a picture of a military that more less says "yeah, we have tried for 200 years but damn you we will conquer them eventually". So it wasn't as if the Romans just hunkered down on the Rhine-Danube line awaiting the Great Migration.
The simple fact was that the Empire COULDN'T win in Germania.

After the initial conquest, which was actually going pretty well until a Roman citizen chose to rebel, the Romans only managed to raid, ranging from very good with Germanicus to downright lousy. But despite buying off the Germans continually (and thus making them richer and stronger in time) the operational tactic was to conquer. The Empire just wasn't able to.

In the East Parthia was all that strong really. If the army failed the social structure would be shaken. But again, aside from a couple of serious effort later on there was not done much. Not because it wasn't worth it (S. Severus showed that and he only plundered), but because the military means weren't there.

The conquest of Britannia wasn't made because of economic grounds. Britannia was not worth it really, and it was only through luck that the locals proved to be adaptable and in the end got their province to be pretty prosperous (but never really rich). And it wasn't conquered by two legions but four. The II, IX, XIV and XX legions all served there and at the same time, along with about 20,000 auxiliaries. Sure this was after the Triumph in Rome but you can't say Britannia was conquered when Claudius claimed victory. Caratacus kept the Romans guessing and it took time before victory was in hand.
Hardly a sweeping victory.

The Roman Empire just wasn't geared for conquest like the Republic was. The incentive for conquest had vanished as soon as the soldiers were not citizens (you know what I mean).
In the Republic the soldiers got the spoils of war, this meant that they would sign up for war if it looked to be profitable (or if their homes were in danger of course). You can see this by the amount of loot people like Cato (the Elder) and Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus brought home from Sardinia and Hispania. Or for that matter the war with Antiochus III.
They were the wars that made Rome rich... filthy rich in fact.
These armies were comparably cheap (not cheap per se, but much cheaper).

The professional armies of the Empire were expensive, and thus the will for staying in Germania evaporated, while the citizen army had endured centuries of hardship in Hispania, which aside from the initial conquests weren't that wealthy. A similar situation could be imagined in Germania had the armies been of the citizen kind.

The Empire couldn't keep it up. The losses would drain her, which they wouldn't before (2nd Punic and the Teuton War were far more expensive in terms of manpower).

[Atilius]

The conquest of Britannia wasn't made because of economic grounds. Britannia was not worth it really, ...

Yes, this was a prestige-building exercise undertaken by Claudius just two years into his rule.



And it wasn't conquered by two legions but four.

Kraxis is correct here, I misread my source.



They were the wars that made Rome rich... filthy rich in fact.


For instance, the tax on Roman citizens' property (the tributum), had historically provided most of the Roman state's revenues. Upon the conquest of Macedonia in 147 BC, it was abolished and never reimposed.