Rome?

[L.C.Cinna]

- 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

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?

- 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.

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:

- 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)