How 'Roman' was the Roman Empire?

[Maion Maroneios]

While I agree with some parts, take into mind there are many people who probably disagree with what you say. Saying Roman conquest was an accident and that they abandoned the prospect of conquest upon meeting strong resistance is something I personally disagree with. Carthaginians, Gauls, Britons, Iberians and Dacians are bright examples of people who resisted them but were ultimately conquered. Partly or totally.

Maion

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

That is true, there are always exceptions as there was sometimes a plan to deliberately annex this or that land, but that was not the case many times. It took many battles and two wars before they considered permanently annexing Macedonia, and ditto for Carthage. It was never in the intention of many, including P. Cornelius Scipio, to deliberately erase Carthage off the map after they had been definitely weakened by war - It was only Cato's antics about an external threat that built a respectable following around it, and so much later they conquered Carthage once and for all.

Notice the important part here: whenever there was a visible threat, like in Hannibal or Mithridates, the Romans didn't spare efforts, but conquering merely for the sake of it was often done later and by private individuals seeking fortune, e.g. Caesar in Gaul, Crassus in Parthia, Pompey on the East and so on. If the Gallic resistance to Caesar had been more fierce and succeeded as the German one did later, then it is doubtful on whether Gaul would be a part of the Republic at all.

[Andy1984]

That is true, there are always exceptions as there was sometimes a plan to deliberately annex this or that land, but that was not the case many times. It took many battles and two wars before they considered permanently annexing Macedonia, and ditto for Carthage. It was never in the intention of many, including P. Cornelius Scipio, to deliberately erase Carthage off the map after they had been definitely weakened by war - It was only Cato's antics about an external threat that built a respectable following around it, and so much later they conquered Carthage once and for all.

Notice the important part here: whenever there was a visible threat, like in Hannibal or Mithridates, the Romans didn't spare efforts, but conquering merely for the sake of it was often done later and by private individuals seeking fortune, e.g. Caesar in Gaul, Crassus in Parthia, Pompey on the East and so on. If the Gallic resistance to Caesar had been more fierce and succeeded as the German one did later, then it is doubtful on whether Gaul would be a part of the Republic at all.

True, but then Caesar would probably have led his legions to somewhere else. For as you say: If Roman conquest (after a certain date) was more a matter of individuals seeking to enrich themselves, it wasn't exactly an accident, but rather the logical result of a political system forcing (some already rich) opportunists to further enrich themselves. Whether some of these opportunists failed miserably or not is hardly important, since there would always be more of them than there were (weakened) tribes or people to be conquered.