How did Rome become so powerful? It was just one city.
Printable View
How did Rome become so powerful? It was just one city.
Wow, that's a rather broad question.
I think a lot of factors came into play, not least of which was sheer luck. The samnites were actually much more expansionistic then rome in the beginning.
The romans were rather lucky to beat them....once italy was under their control, it was probably similiar to Rome:Total War....something of a steamroller effect. Especially once Qarthadastim was gone....their was really no major power in the western med then.
Not to mention, in the east, there were several powerful empires (which you already know from playing EB, obviously), but they were constantly at each others throats, and Rome was free in the western med to do what she saw fit.
Once greece fell and pergamon volunteered itself, it was almost inevitable.
Not that taking gaul was easy by any standards.
They were lucky, very lucky.
...and very, very good at organising and fielding an army. A lot of their early successes stemmed from the fact that they would retreat in an organised fashion to their fortified camp from which they could defend and even counterattack if need be.
Other armies of the time, if they would lose, they would run away and be hacked to pieces on the way. Not so the Romani. Very rarely was one of their armies completely annihilated. The reason you know about Teutoburg and the death of 3 legions in there, is well, because it was one of those few occurences.
Some book i read said Rome became powerful because Rome made other countries they conquered part of Romans if that make sense (Not very good at English sorry)
Athens and Spartans only gave their citizen ship to true Athenians and Spartans. But Romans gave their citizenship to everybody. So all the Roman allied state were soo close together and rarely betrayed the Romans.
Also Roman military were great because they adapted any tactic they thought its useful (Pilas from Samnite, Celtic formation, Gladius sword from spain) Also Scipio Africanus adapted Hannibals tactic which was also great fighting falanx baced Easterns and fanatic barbarians. Also Rome had one of the greatest infantry (especially after Marian reform) and had access to greatest cavarly after Punic war (Numidian cavarly and Gallic mercenaries)
Their republican system worked well in the first half and some of the emperors was great.
If that helps.. I got a crappy grammer i know.
I always figured it was like Keravnos said; they generally knew how to get there the fastest with the mostest, and if things did hit the proverbial fan, they generally retreated in good order.
It has a lot to do with their geographical position in the middle of the mediterranean. this is why the war with carthage became so important too, as both cities had the same advantage in this respect.
Without a doubt the main factor that made them so great was simply their ability to adapt. Almost everything the Romans used was someone elses idea. But it was the Romans that perfected everything. They improved the aquaduct and made them huge. They had the largest ports because they engineered a waterproof concrete. They were the only ones to make the first true highways. They werent afraid of seeing a good idea and deciding to use it. Before Rome Italy was full of all different Italian races, and basically they came together to form the Romans. And by this logic we are wrong to call the inhabitants of Italy Italian. Sure there used to be Italians but in my opinion it would seem more logical to call them all Romans. To me it seems like all the efforts of the ancestors of the Italian lands go to waste if they start calling themselvs Italian again. They should be called Roman like they truly are, after all they made the effort to combine everyone to become united. Anyway, Rome started as simply a village full of bandits and runaway slaves, all different Italians. So they didnt feel the need to stick to any particular form of anything, but instead to take anything that was better than theirs and take it further. This included everything from buildings to military weapons and formations. So it is clear then why they became so great, and why luck had absolutely nothing to do with it.
And when did they start calling it italy?
Well, Rome was Latium, and the 'boot', to quote Napoleon, was called Italicus/Italica.
I'll come back to this thread in a sec!
I understand the Romans and other Italic peoples themselves were long quite conscious of their different identitites - and the Samnites in due form some of the most stubborn. Being part of Rome and being a Roman were not the same things; case in point, the Social War.Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman7291
that the romans were able to adapt is a common thesis, although you might question wether adapting isnt a common phenomenon and hard to define in detail.Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman7291
the thesis about all italians being roman cant stand like that.
I have to say that from what little I've read on the subject, and from watching the discussions of our Roman team members, I agree with none of this.Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman7291
Firstly, the people living on the Italic peninsular were not Italians. Italian is a name for members of the national state of Italy. The tribes are rightly termed Italic.
Secondly the ancient tribes who lived on the italic peninsular would never have called themselves italian, so it is impossible for the current people of that same peninsular to call themselves Italian again. See above.
Thirdly, the formation of the Roman state was not a collaborative effort by the different italic tribes. Rome herself was the main city of one such Italic tribe, who named themselves after the city and later won against their closest rivals for land.
Fourthly, I see no reason why to state that the Roman state was massively more adaptive than any other state. The Achaemenid Empire's military was largely a mix of many different traditions. What the Romans had was a winning combination of formation, armour design and sword design. It certainly wasn't luck, but it certainly wasn't some innate characteristic of the Roman people and a cultural fostering of adaptiveness that was unique in the ancient world.
Foot
Well yes and no.
The Roman treatment of others was pretty nice compared to contemporary practice, one of the reasons the Italic Allies stayed loyal to Rome during Hannibal's invasion. The Roman empire was formed by a series of treaties much more than by the army. The contract partner was usually (during the early and mid-republic) keeping his customs, his government, his income, Rome recieved a piece of the land (or some landbased tax) and some allied soldiers and therefore offered protection and the establishment of an infrastructure.
Most of the republican Roman expansions were not planned or driven by any kind of "imperialism" (except for that really bad episode in spain), when you look at their politics towards the Punic towns or the Greeks you can see that they'd rather not control the area themselves but in the end more or less have to. You will notice that Greece was never conquered, neither were the Punic towns in Africa (except Carthago herself), others like Lepcis were declared an independant citystate, sealed a contract with Rome as friends and trade partners until about a 100 years later they, like other African towns (because of Roman colonists and other factors) became part of the Roman empire by contract.
Unlike the Hellenistic or Persian kings the connection was between the people of Rome and the other free towns and did not depend on the greatness, prejudice, whatever of a single person.
An idea put forward by Goldsworthy in "The Fall of Carthage" was that Rome simply refused to admit defeat. Hannibal/Carthage inflicted the sort of defeats on Rome that, if they had been fighting say a hellenistic kingdom, said kingdom would have rolled up and sued for peace. Rome never did, and treated war as a "to the death" sort of matter, only finally decided by the utter destruction or subjugation of one party or the other - hence the final fate of Carthage. Part of the cause of the Third Punic War was the stringent terms imposed by Rome after the Second, which Carthage - not having been seriously defeated in battle - felt were unjustified. In short, Rome didn't fight wars according to the established "rules" of the era, which had largely arisen from the seasonal nature of hoplite warfare in the Greek-dominated world.
There were quite a few cases where Roman armies were utterly annihilated - Cannae & Lake Trasimene spring instantly to mind - but another big factor in Rome's favour, militarily, was manpower. They had a large citizen body to call upon, although after a few major defeats by Hannibal this was beginning to feel the strain, as the decreasing property qualifications for the army attest, even to the point of enlisting freed slaves and criminals.
Rome's decision during the First Punic War to build a large fleet was probably also a very decisive point in her rise to dominance. Until that point, Carthage could pretty much treat the western med as their private pond, but afterwards Rome was able to use her maritime advantage to great effect. I believe the transition to naval power was a major leap forward, as it has been for so many other empires, not to mention the benefits of increased trade potential.
I'd definitely second the point that "Italians" means people who live in Italy, as opposed to Italics, which was the group that the Latins/Romans originated with. However, Italics were by no means the sole occupants of Italy during Rome's rise to power. The Etruscans, famously, were a non-italic people, accepted as "indigenes" by the Romans (ie pre-dating Roman self-identity), in the south there were of course the various Greek cities, in the east the Messapians, an Illyrian tribe, and to the north were various Celtic/Gallic tribes such as the Boii and Insubres. Without the rise of Rome we probably would have very little knowledge of the Italic peoples at all.
Rome's Republican consular system also would have played a role in her expansion - with only a year in office, each consul would be eager to "make his name" quickly, which led many to conquests that might not have been considered by someone holding office for a longer term.
So, yeah, Rome had various unique features, all of which will have contributed in some respect to her growth.
- military: legions were easy to handle. Rome had tons of imbecils in command, but that didn't hurt them that much as the command of Perseus hurted Macedonia at Pydna. A phalanx army is a complicated thing, a legion with its manipular warfare style is easy to handle, basically each troop-body can act on his own if needed.
- technique: steel from Noricum, gladii from Spain, javelins from celts, etc. etc.
- will: they wanted to expand, they wanted to "defend", they wanted to take out their rivals, they wanted "revenge" for defeats, etc. etc. And they did everything they wanted, nothing stopped them.
- civilian competition: everyone wanted to be the best, to achieve the ius imaginum (sp), defend the honor of the family etc. etc.
- strong belief in own superiority: they never gave anything away unless forced. See the Roman citizenship, which took ages even to be granted to the italics
- brutality: causing chaos and devastation was their priority. Examples are countless.
Romans were in no way friendly people who gave out "civilization", law and good order to the "barbarians" surrounding them with the goal to all become happy and peaceful and the whole shit. They were slaughters, carnage was their tool, and in the end that was exactly the reason why they became an empire.
The first sentence is quite true....the rest:dizzy2:Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman7291
Your saying Italy was full of "italians" but to my knowledge, it was the greeks who gave Italy it's ancient name of Italia/Italica (depending on the source), which in the beginning was only really the area centered around Rhegion. The ancient inhabitants called the entire peninsula something else, which has been lost to us AFAIK.
Italy was not full of italians....it was full of estruscans, samnites, kalabrians, etc., so I really don't understand your reasoning that to call the people of present day Italy "italians" is a bad thing which throws away their heritage or whatever.
Rome is still their capital, afterall.
And your last sentence is a crock....I don't mean any disrespect, but I can count 3 or 4 times that the Roman Empire would have never existed had it not been for the blunders of others, not anything Rome herself did. .
Given how much other folk has piled into the peninsula since the Antiquity (eg. where Lombardy gets its name), how much present-day Italians have to do with the inhabitants of the place back then is in any case somewhat questionable. The locale hasn't exactly been isolated.
I've avoided this mainly because of topic fatigue but I have to agree with Goldsworthy on this one. The defining factor in Roman history was sheer bloody-mindedness. Destroy a Roman army? They send another, and another. The Legions also made use of a much wider section of the population than the successors.
When you look at the way the Legions functioned they weren't that impressive, it's a lot to do with just how poor their enemies had become. By the time of the Macedonian wars the phalanx had moved from a highly mobile defensive formation to a pointless and wasteful meatgrinder without any real flexability. The Cavalry were almost utterly degraded and the support troops, including the Shieldbearers, were virtually non-existant.
Perseus failure to have his cavalry in position at the start of the battle is symptomatic of the catastrophic collapse of the Macedonian army.
Philip II and Parmenion were likely spinning in their graves and I'm sure Alexander would too if his body wasn't enbalmed.
At the end of the day though the Romans were just another Philhellenic city State and luck has an awful lot to do with their rise, and their fall.
generally you look too much into aspects like military organization, weapon technology and fighting spirits (no wonder as rtw players). i think the decisive points are of economic, geographical and political matter: wealth and organization were the driving forces. perhaps the punic wars shouldnt be remembered for the good leadership of hannibal but for the poor leadership of most roman commanders. and still they win. fighting spirit? morale? no. population!
I think Emperor Claudius (the emperor after Caligula i think) made a nice speach to sum up the reason why Rome became soo strong.
Italicus, -a, -um is the adjectival form. Italia is the noun.Quote:
Originally Posted by Glenn
Weren't the pilas from Etruscans?Quote:
Originally Posted by Beefy187
I thought its Saminite..
Well I need to go study alot more then :oops:
So, did Romans actually invent anything for themselves?
Not really, hand pumps, water wheels and concrete, technological developements of Greek or Punic ideas probably carried further by those same peoples under Roman rule.
Latium itself is not really good land for farming or raising horses. In the First Punic War the Romans were about matched by the Carthaginians and in many ways the war was really a draw. Hanabal lost because the Carthaginian Senate refused to send him extra soldiers and money to prosecute the war.
A common enough weapon design in Italy at the time AFAIK. I've read they've found early examples in Etruscan contexts too. By what I've read of it it also took a while before the business end of the pilum developed into its best-known slim form in Roman use - the early types could have fairly substantial and often barbed tips, which no doubt also helped them remain stuck in shields.Quote:
Originally Posted by Son of Perun
That's not correct. The majority of allied towns were practically free and as time went by recieved a higher status when they became Roman. The Romans were a bit restrictive when it came to FULL citizenship (which includes the right to vote which was useless for provincials anyway). They did not however believe in any kind of "Roman" superiority, they knew pretty well that the Greeks were culturally more advanced for example and if they would have had such exclusive thoughts (like the Greek citystates had for example) they wouldn't have been able to include so many different tribes and people into "Romanness". Roman is a cultural definition and not an ethinic on, otherwise how would you explain that a freed slave became a citizen?Quote:
Originally Posted by Centurio Nixalsverdrus
They were not more brutal than their contemporaries. I'd even go so far as to say that they were often less brutal than their greek contemporaries. There are 2 things:Quote:
Originally Posted by Centurio Nixalsverdrus
- there is not too much destruction or chaos (Iberia the bad exception). Look at the 3rd Punic war for example: we have ONE town which is destroyed! and that one because it was a symbol, the town was rebuilt a few miles away and MOST of the inhabitants were not in the town when it was destroyed. The punic towns in Africa weren't even touched but declared as "friends of Rome", so you can't really speak of a brutal campain against the punic ppl. Same thing in Greece. I wouldn't take the antique quotes about destroyed towns too serious. most civilians had usually left the towns already, after the destruction and enslavement and killing of "millions" the town is "refounded" (a ritual nothing more), and people settled there. these are usually the same people which had all been "killed ad ensaved" before. you know the math of ancient writers: a town has 100.000 inhabitants and is the "biggest town in the area", of which 150.000 are killed and 200.000 enslaved, the town destroyed. if you read on you often find the same town a year later, still huge with more or less the same ppl (except the leading class)
This is the same as the British Empire. Great Britain is a tiny island in the north atlantic, but it went on to have the largest empire the world has ever seen.
I'm sure there are similar reasons as to Rome's expansion.
Sorry, but those are three of the most ridiculous statements I've ever come across as a Roman historian. I meant to stay out of this topic but I cant let misconceptions like that go unchecked..:yes:Quote:
Originally Posted by L.C.Cinna
well the statements are oversimplified (like most of the statements in here)
but would you please explain what is so redicolous about my statements? YOu have to take a closer look at how the Roman empire was built up, especially the contracts between Rome and other towns as well as the scheme of Roman conquests.
About Roman superiority: depends on the time we're talking about. what we have is a feeling of cultural superiority but this only appears after the changes in the 2nd century and becomes stronger during the principate.
please explain instead of calling something "the most ridiculous statements"
thank you
Well for starters Rome only made treaties when they were very much to her advantage. If they couldn't negotiate good terms then they usually took what they wanted by force. The Latin and Itallic towns were governed by Roman foriegn policy and obligated to Rome. Things could have been a lot worse, true, but it was still a shoddy deal.
The Romans had the Assyrian brand of "object lesson" policies down right well far as I know. How about the intentional brutality they engaged during the capture of Greek cities for the purpose of intimidating the rest into submission ? Hardly an uncommon practice of course, but that sort of stuff was the standard Roman policy. Or the "cautionary example" mass executions à la the crucification of the survivors of Spartacus' bunch, or the assorted ghastly masscres inflicted on the Celts ?
Sheer brutality was a tool they had not the slightest compunction about using as a weapon.
As for the culture thing, one gets the impression they had the same kind of inferiority complex towards the Hellenics as the Hellenics had towards the Persians and other Near Eastern high cultures - they admitted the undeniable and readily observable achievements easily enough, but claimed moral superiority.
Well, while you are speaking of the Roman Empire, we have to consider that Roman history covers a more than 1,000 year period and generalizations cannot be made that pertain to the entire cultural record for starters.
As EB is concerned with the Age of Overseas Expansion and the Middle/Late Republic, we should keep our observations in this area, I think.
The Romans as a people were nothing if not sure of their superiority among other Oscan, Italic, and Hellenic peoples. Roman propaganda, poetry, letters, annals, and histories are replete with evidence of this. Roman culture was a culture of the state and advancment within the hierarchy of the state in service of Rome herself, and if one was not Roman he or she was practically worthless. Roman citizens had no misconceptions about their own social, moral, and physical prowess over other peoples that inhabited Italia and the rest of the Meditteranean, for that matter.
Latin rights communities "civitas sine suffragio" were granted some measure of inclusion into the Roman state, certainly. most notably Romes absorbtion of Campania led by Capua to share citizenship and manpower early on, but this was an exception not the rule. Even the other Latin communities had no great influence or social standing within Rome itself, and the other socii even less so. They were dominated by Rome out of fear of reprisal, but held no love for the Roman state. The Social War is just the boiling point of centuries of simmering grievances.
The other point I wanted to make in this thread, was that of the Allies in Rome's armies. You cannot underestimate the value of the socii in Rome's military expansion. Rome's ability to incorporate multiple ethnicities and military traditions into a coherent force willing to fight loyally for another state is one of the primary reason's for Rome's conquest of Italy which served as the springboard for its own power. Rome's military by itself was not very impressive as far as the Italic standards went, nor was its manpower any greater than some of the other great city-states of the period of the Italic conquest.
As far as evaluating the Roman military prowess, we must look at a few key factors. The bellicosity of the Romans and their willingness to undertake frequent wars of relatively large scales meant that despite the endemic nature of warfare across Italia, the citizen body as a whole was generally more battle-hardened and experienced than most of their enemies. On the other hand, Roman legionaries were far from professional soldiers in this period, but rather common militia men who at the end of campaign returned to their farm or homestead. Consequently, despite the almost yearly wars, their weapons proficiency and tactical maneuverabilty was limited. The manipular formation somehow accomodated these militia features.
The hoplites of the early republican army had been selected principally on wealth and property, but the manipular army came to be organized by age. According to Livy and Polybius, the younger troops like hastati undertook the intial work in battle but were stiffened by increasingly older and more experienced veterans.
Moreover, formal training or drills, though a feature of later Roman service, was not essential in this early republic army, that naturally placed the battle in to a fragmentation of battle-lines, small handfuls of men from the outset and made it a military virtue.
Resilience in the relatively amorphous swarms of men raining missles on their enemies was sustained through the use of soldier's oaths to one another and fear of punishment that the consul might inflict after battle. Maniples were commanded by their own officers, which increased control, but also allowed for local battlefield initiative which is just as important. We know from soldier's oaths that soldiers were permitted to go beyond the battle-lines in this period, and individual maniples would conduct indpendent operations during battle.
It is not clear when standards became an integral feature of the legions, but they would have acted as invaluable rallying points on a fluid, manipular battlefield, while the pilani (triarii) stationed in a dense mass behind the standards, ultimately gave the formation a backbone.
Finally, regardless of any shortfalls in the system, the Roman and allied manpower increasingly gave the Romans the edge over their neighbors and enemies, so that their armies were, by Italic standards, quite large. Even when confronted with a well drilled and tactically superior army like Pyrrhus, the Romans would recover from defeat and send yet another legion to recoup their losses.
Zaknafien has spoken. :bow:
...........time to learn :book:
being an italian myself (italic, whatever the hell you wanna call me) i dont quite understand this conception of calling italians Romans. Germans aren't called the tribes they once were, French aren't called Franks (apart from maybe some crazy people.) Romans are part of our history, and a history we take pride in, but it doesn't mean we still are Roman. Times have changed, and unfortuanetly, so has our luck in war:furious3:
Well spoken, for myself I have always thought of those who live in Rome and it's suberbs as Romans and I think it was always thus.
We are talking about a brutal era however. Where communications were limited and the best way a centralised institution could control a large empire was not to be everywhere at once [which they couldnt be], but to have local allies indebted to them and most importantly to ensure that no one ever wanted to attract their wrath - hence the examples they made of Spartacus and conquered cities.Quote:
Sheer brutality was a tool they had not the slightest compunction about using as a weapon.
I wouldnt consider the Romans to be especially brutal - they simply ran a large, expansionist empire in a brutal era. Should a citystate be defeated, their families would be enslaved, their lands and riches taken from them and they would vanish from history as an independant people. The Romans fought every war realising that this is what was at stake for them. Their Hellenistic enemies often did not truly grasp that. Romes manpower and wealth was only a factor in their rise, their true strength was that they were willing to expend them in great quantities to achieve victory. Their enemies often only wished to avoid defeat.
In terms of the era, when Alexander the Great caught up with Bessus, the pretender king who slew Darius he had him stripped, put in a halter and flogged whilst the entire army marched by, before he was mutilated [ears and nose cut off]. Then, still alive though clearly in agony he was sent to Hamadan for show trial and execution. This is a cultured Hellenistic monarch dealing with the realities of running an anceint empire.
Look at how Syracuse treated the captured Athenian prisoners after the defeat of their disastrous expedition to Sicilly - left in a quarry to die of exposure and thirst.
It wasnt a pleasant era.
True, but even when Rome was at its weakest point against Hannibal the bulk of its allies remained loyal even though it was routine for cities in Sicily to switch sides depending on which appeared the stronger currently. Obviously fear of Roman reprisal played a part, but cities that went over the Hannibal usually only went over upon the approach of his army, so the fear works both ways.Quote:
They were dominated by Rome out of fear of reprisal, but held no love for the Roman state. The Social War is just the boiling point of centuries of simmering grievances.
The Romans dealt harshly with subjects that went over to Hannibal but they also put effort into praising and rewarding the loyalty of those who remained solid - at least one unit of Italic allies were offered Roman citizenship for their efforts but turned it down, Capuan equites who refused to return to rebel Capua via a prisoner exchange deal were also rewarded. There was also their probably deliberate flattery of allies through the use of extraordinarii which can only have helped ensure the loyalty of those allies. Those who returned to the fold were also reprimanded, but often not punished as a captured city might expect to be.
Rome put an immense amount of manpower onto the field during the Hannibalic war, putting a real strain on their subjects and allies so in my opinion its not remarkable that some cities and some Roman troops went over to Hannibal but that so few did even when Rome was at its weakest.