Chapter 6
The previous chapter alluded to the wars that the Roman Republic faced at critical junctures in its constitutional development. These wars are important for several reasons. First, the officers and manpower arrangements of the army created to fight them were the bases of the magistracies and popular assemblies of the civil community. Second, the critical role of the infantry in these wars gave a large number of those citizens referred to as plebeians leverage in demanding rights and privileges from the reluctant patrician elite who initially dominated the community. Third, the need to maintain internal unity in the face of external threats prevented social and political tensions from destroying the community. Fourth, the Romans of the early Republic expanded their community by incorporating allies and defeated enemies into it. Each rise in the number of citizens and closely bound allies increased the Republic’s military might and caused the desire to use it to expand even more. Therefore, Rome continued to expand until it had brought all of peninsular Italy under its control, with significant consequences for itself, Italy, and the wider Mediterranean world.
Conflicts with immediate neighbors
The wars of the fifth century b.c.e. make up a large part of Livy’s narrative from the beginning of Book 2 until well past the middle of Book 5. Many of them are probably glorified plundering raids or border skirmishes over the possession of small amounts of land. Such fights often occurred between Rome and its close neighbors: the Latins, Sabines, Hernici, Aequi, Volsci, and Etruscans (map, p. 11). Patriotic Roman historians, of course, claimed that Rome fought others only in self-defense. Hardly any nation ever believes that it is the aggressor, and even fewer admit it. The Romans were as often to blame as their neighbors, and for the same reasons.
The early Romans and other peoples of Italy were mostly subsistence farmers and pastoralists. Shortage of land was chronic as populations expanded. Moreover, since wealth and status were based on land, wealthy leaders wanted more land just as much as the common people did. The only way to obtain more for everyone in any community was to take it from another group.
Plunder, glory, prestige, and revenge were additional objects of war. Common soldiers and aristocratic leaders alike anticipated sharing what they could carry away in victory. Both would also want their shares of the glory and prestige accruing from successful armed exploits, which counted heavily in the warrior ethos of Rome and its neighbors.
Rome’s first attackers after the overthrow of Tarquin supposedly were the Etruscan cities of Veii and Tarquinia (see map on p. i), which backed Tarquin’s bid to regain his throne. After they were defeated, the Etruscan Lars Porsenna of Clusium mounted an attack (p. 78). Apparently, he succeeded in capturing the city, despite the heroic legend of Horatius preventing Rome’s fall by single-handedly holding off the attackers at the Sublician Bridge (Pons Sublicius) until it could be destroyed.
Porsenna attempted to use Rome to expand his control of Latium. The Greeks of Cumae and some Latin allies defeated him at the Battle of Aricia in 504 b.c.e. Conflict between Rome and its Latin neighbors continued. That merely invited the neighboring hill tribes, such as the Sabines, the Aequi, and the Volsci, to encroach on both the Latins and the Romans. It may also have encouraged the poorer citizens and leading nonpatricians at Rome to press for more rights.
Faced with common enemies, the Romans and the Latin League—the modern designation for the loose organization Latin communities other than Rome—settled their differences in 493 b.c.e. The Roman Spurius Cassius negotiated the treaty, which bears his name, foedus Cassianum. Rome’s position in the alliance was equal to that of the Latin League as a whole. The Romans contributed half the forces used for common defense; the League, the other half. Any spoils were to be split evenly—half to Rome and half to the members of the League. It also seems that the Romans always commanded the joint forces of the league. Roman power was bound to increase at the Latins’ expense. Rome by itself could decide to summon the common army to suit its own needs. The League needed a reason satisfactory to individual members before it could do so. The single city of Rome enriched itself with half of any spoils. Several cities split the other half.
Skillful Roman diplomacy also gained another advantage. The territories of the Aequi and the Volsci were separated by that of the Hernici, who feared those tribes more than they feared Rome. Around 485 b.c.e., the Romans made a treaty with the Hernici similar to the foedus Cassianum. Thus, they isolated the Aequi and the Volsci from each other. That made it easier to defeat them in the long run. The principle evident here, divide and rule (divide et impera), aided Roman expansion for centuries.
Struggles with the Aequi and the Volsci
Having earlier seized Mount Algidus near Tusculum, southeast of Rome, the Aequi almost annihilated a Roman army in 458 b.c.e. According to tradition, the situation was so alarming that a delegation from the senate went to L. Quinctius Cincinnatus. He was plowing a field on his four-acre farm. At the delegation’s insistence, he accepted the offer of a dictatorship and decisively defeated the Aequi. Afterward, he resigned his dictatorship, went back home, and yoked up his ox. Still, the Romans did not drive the Aequi off Mount Algidus until 431 b.c.e.
The Volsci were even more troublesome. According to Roman legend, a Roman patrician named Cn. Marcius Coriolanus, exiled through plebeian hostility, led a Volscian army toward Rome in 491 until his brave mother and wife persuaded him to turn back. Whatever the truth of the story, the Volsci did penetrate as far north as the Alban Mount. Not until the end of the fifth century did Rome and the Latin allies initially push the Volsci out of Latium and guard the border with a series of colonies.
While the Latin League and the Romans successfully fought the Aequi and the Volsci, the Sabines pressed Rome from the northeast. In 460 b.c.e., the Sabine Appius Herdonius even captured the Capitol in Rome. After a few days, Latin neighbors from Tusculum aided the Romans in crushing the Sabine forces. By 449 b.c.e., the Sabine threat had been eliminated.
The war with Veii
Roman aggression during the fifth century was directed particularly against the Etruscan city of Veii. Located about ten miles north of Rome on the Cremera River, a western tributary of the Tiber, Veii was large, rich, and well fortified. It was also Rome’s chief rival for control of the lower Tiber valley and had a garrison across the Tiber at Fidenae. The Romans fought on and off during seventy years (495–ca. 426 b.c.e.) to secure control of Fidenae. Twenty years or more later, they attacked Veii itself. They finally captured it in 396 after a ten-year siege, according to Livy, whose epic account too neatly echoes the Iliad.
Whatever else may or may not have happened, the Roman dictator M. Furius Camillus defeated and destroyed Veii. The Romans sold some of its inhabitants as slaves, annexed its territory, and imposed Roman citizenship on the remaining free inhabitants. Thus, the Romans almost doubled the area of the ager Romanus (Roman territory) and increased the number of citizens available for military service.
The Gallic sack of Rome
A sudden catastrophe befell Rome a few years after the triumph over Veii. Around 390 b.c.e. (probably 387/386), the Gallic war chief Brennus and his terrifying band of fighters swept down from the Po valley. In Etruria, they struck the city of Clusium, located about seventy-five miles north of Rome. As they continued south, a Roman army tried to intercept them near the Allia River, a small tributary joining the Tiber from the east about eleven miles north of Rome. The half-naked, wildly shouting Gallic warriors routed the Romans, captured the city, and looted it.
In Livy’s highly dramatized account, the Gauls razed virtually the entire city, but part of the Roman army held out on the Capitol until the Gauls negotiated a payment to depart. When a Roman complained that the Gauls were using rigged weights to calculate the negotiated payment, Brennus tossed his sword into the balance and shouted, “Woe to the conquered!” (Livy, Book 5.48.9). However unhistorical the story, those words sum up the bitter lesson that the Romans learned from the Gallic sack. In the future, they would do everything in their power to be the conquerors and not the conquered.
Up from defeat
Livy relates the story that Camillus, the conqueror of Veii, gathered the remnants of Rome’s shattered forces and marched into the Forum just in time to deprive the Gauls of their gold and restore Rome’s honor (Livy, Book 5.49.1–7). That is clearly a patriotic fiction. On the other hand, the devastation suffered by Rome has been exaggerated: archaeologists have not been able to identify evidence for widespread destruction in Rome that can be dated to time the sack is supposed to have happened. The details of the literary accounts, too, contradict the image of complete ruin. Rome’s population and most of its army had survived the debacle. Under Camillus’ leadership, the Romans restored their city and reasserted their power. Having seen the strength of Veii’s walls earlier, the Romans built similar ones of the same grayish-yellow tufa quarried near Veii at Grotto Oscura. The finished wall was about twelve feet thick and, in places, at least thirty high. It extended about six and a half miles around the city and even included the Aventine Hill. Mislabeled the Wall of Servius Tullius, parts of it still stand.
The Romans hastened to shore up their position diplomatically. They seem to have exchanged the private rights of citizenship with the Etruscan city of Caere. It had been an ally against Veii and gave refuge to the Vestal Virgins during the Gallic attack. Rome made a similar arrangement with the Greek colony of Massilia in southern Gaul. Massilia apparently helped the Romans pay the ransom that freed their city and may have sent experts to help build Rome’s walls. In this way, Massilia could hope for Roman help against restless Gallic tribes that threatened it.
A year or so after the sack, Camillus defeated attacks by some Etruscan cities on Rome’s northern border. In turn, the Romans attacked Etruscan Tarquinia and planted strategic colonies on its border. They also aggressively began to extend their control in Latium. They fought against the Volsci to the south in the Pomptine coastal region and the Aequi to the east in the interior.
Rome’s treaties with the Latin League and the Hernici seem to have lapsed. Some of the Latin cities remained loyal to Rome. Others, fearful of its aggressive posture, sided with the Volsci. In 381 b.c.e., the Romans seized control of Latin Tusculum and forcibly absorbed its people into the ranks of Roman citizens, who were subject to taxation and military service. Tusculum thus became the first Roman community known as a municipium (pl. municipia), an internally self-governing local community whose citizens had all of the obligations of Roman citizens. This arrangement became one of the principal means by which Rome eventually united Italy.
By 376 b.c.e., the Romans clearly dominated Latium again. They lived in relative peace until 370, when they undertook a three-year siege of the Latin town of Velitrae. That may have given tribunes the leverage needed to obtain passage of the famous reforms associated with Licinius and Sextius (p. 91). In 362, Rome’s need for more land, perhaps reflecting the conditions associated with the so-called Licinio-Sextian land reforms, led to conflict with the Hernici and the Latins again. In 358, facing new Gallic raids, Rome, the Hernici, and the Latin League revived their old treaties, perhaps on terms even more favorable to Rome. The Latin cities of Tibur and Praeneste, however, never part of the original Latin alliance with Rome, continued to resist Rome. They were not subdued until 354. At the same time, the neighboring Etruscan cities of Tarquinia, Falerii, and even Caere grew alarmed at the growth of Roman power. They embarked on unsuccessful wars that marked the beginning of Rome’s extensive conquest of Italy outside of Latium.
Initial conquests in central Italy
Starting around 350 b.c.e., the Romans began to conquer central Italy. The reforms attributed to Licinius and Sextius in 367 b.c.e. had preserved internal harmony as the Romans reasserted themselves after the Gallic sack. They also had created a government and army capable of handling and promoting Rome’s growing power. The reorganized Roman state easily turned back a new Gallic invasion about 349 b.c.e. Then, in 348 according to Livy (Book 7.27.2), the Romans countered the growing hostility of their Latin and Greek neighbors by renegotiating an earlier treaty with Carthage. Polybius (Book 3.20.9–26.7) says that the original one was made in the first year of the Republic. Allegedly, the Carthaginians received a free hand to attack the Latin coast so long as they avoided Latin cities allied with Rome. They could keep only booty, not territory, from any Latin city not subject to Rome. The Carthaginians could trade in Rome. The Romans, it is said, agreed not to trade or found colonies in Sardinia or Libya and probably Carthaginian territory in Spain. They could trade in Carthaginian-controlled territory on Sicily and at Carthage itself. To counter the Gauls on land, the Romans had already signed an alliance with the warlike Samnite hill people in 354 b.c.e. Both alliances, however, eventually crumbled in the face of Rome’s growing power.
The Samnites and Rome
The first to fail was the alliance with the nearby Samnites. For a long time, population pressure and the lack of resources in the Samnites’ homeland had been forcing them to expand their territory at their neighbors’ expense. Constant Samnite pressure behind the Volsci had long been forcing the latter to invade Latium and wage endless wars with the Romans. To the Greek cities like Tarentum (Taranto) in southern Italy, Samnite tribes had been a perennial menace.
Around 350 b.c.e., the Samnites seemed much stronger than the Romans. They had more than four times as much territory and twice the population, but Rome gradually acquired superiority in manpower and resources. At the same time, many of the Samnites who had expanded into Campania and Lucania were willing to safeguard their gains by allying with Rome against their kinsmen. Also, the Romans could exploit weak relations between the Samnite homeland and related tribes on its northern flank.
The Samnite homeland itself was divided among four main tribes. In wartime, they formed a loose confederacy liable to come apart when unity and cohesion were most required. The confederacy lacked a strong national government that might have enabled the Samnites to formulate a clear, long-range war policy. Their most brilliant victories failed to produce any permanent results.
The Samnites could and did give the Romans many painful lessons in mountain fighting. Romans learned that a solid infantry phalanx, though irresistible on level ground, was a distinct liability in mountainous terrain. After a while, the Romans mastered the secret of mountain fighting, but the Samnite slowness to copy Roman political and diplomatic methods spelled the difference between final victory and defeat in a long series of wars with Rome.
The First Samnite War, 343 to 341 b.c.e.
About 343 b.c.e., the Samnites attacked the Sidicini, a small group in Campania on the northern border of Capua. The Capuans became alarmed and appealed to Rome for help. Despite the treaty of 354 with the Samnites, the Romans readily helped because it made them allies of Italy’s second biggest city and gave them a foothold in Campania. The war itself was not a serious one, and the battles recorded are undoubtedly fictitious. But the narrative of the war presents an early instance of a pattern that Rome would repeat many times over the course of the fourth and third centuries: Rome responded to a request for aid from a weaker power, even though that brought Rome into conflict with a more powerful rival. The peace terms of 341 b.c.e. indicate that neither the Romans nor the Samnites won a clear victory. The treaty granted the Samnites the right to occupy the Sidicini’s territory and acknowledged the Roman alliance with Capua.
The Latin war of 340 to 338 b.c.
The Latin and Campanian allies of Rome regarded the treaty of 341 b.c.e. as a shameful betrayal of the Sidicini. Contrary to Rome’s warnings, they took up arms when the Samnite occupation of the Sidicini’s territory began about 340. For years, the Latins had been chafing against their Roman alliance. It seemed to them another form of domination. Since the Gauls were no longer a menace after 349, the Latins saw a chance to make their bid for freedom and independence by defending the Sidicini. The Latins were already at war with Samnium. Their insubordination over the Sidicini now brought war with Rome. With the help of the now-friendly Samnites, the Romans were able to settle the Latin problem before the Samnites became hostile again. The war also created circumstances favorable to the legislation of the dictator Publilius Philo in 339 b.c.e. (p. 96).
By 338 b.c.e., the bitter conflict was over. The Campanians had already accepted the generous terms offered to them and had deserted their allies. The Latins and the Volsci, who had both joined them, were crushed soon afterward. The Volsci never rose up again, and the old Latin League was dissolved. From then on, the future of the Latins would be determined at Rome’s pleasure.
The Roman system of alliances and citizen communities
The dissolution of the Latin League in 338 b.c.e. marked the creation of a flexible, hierarchical system of alliances and citizen communities. That system helped Rome to unite all of Italy under its control (map, p. 114). From there it was able to extend its sway over the entire Mediterranean world.
Latin allies
Under the terms of the foedus Cassianum of 493 b.c.e., the Romans had agreed to share certain rights with their Latin allies. These rights were known collectively as the ius Latii, the “Right Belonging to Latium.” In early times, it was customary among the Romans, Latins, and their neighbors to accept a migrant from one community as a citizen in his new community. Later, Rome imposed limits on this custom in order to ensure that each allied community could supply the number of soldiers stipulated in its treaty. There never was a formal right of migration (ius migrationis, ius migrandi) between Rome and its early Latin allies. The rights that the citizens of Rome and individual Latin communities shared by the foedus Cassianum were only two: the right of intermarriage (conubium) and the right to do business and make legally binding contracts (commercium). The children of mixed marriages could inherit the citizenship of either parent and the property of both. Citizens of one city doing business in the other could sue or be sued in the other city’s courts and could enjoy the benefits of its laws of sale and of succession. All contracts could be enforced only in the courts of the place where they were originally drawn up.
After 338, the Latin League was destroyed. Certain Latin towns received individual treaties. They could continue sharing Latin rights with Rome, but not with each other or anyone else. Gradually, the Romans separated Latin rights from their ethnic restriction and granted them to favored allies regardless of ethnicity.
With Latin allies may also be grouped Latin colonies. They were communities created by Rome or jointly by Rome and its allies for defending strategic locations or to serve some political purpose. The settlers received the Latin rights and allotments of land on which to settle. Latin communities and Latin colonies were, strictly speaking, sovereign states allied to Rome. In that way, they were distinguished from municipia, which were communities of Roman citizens.
Municipia
The first municipium was the Latin town of Tusculum, whose independence the Romans had destroyed in 381 b.c.e. Its free inhabitants received full Roman citizenship (“citizenship with the highest legal right,” civitas optimo iure). In 338, the Romans imposed a similar status on many of the former Latin allies. Later, they extended it to others as they saw fit. In a second class of municipia, inhabitants received all the duties and private rights of Roman citizenship, essentially the Latin rights, but not the right to vote (civitas sine suffragio). In both cases, municipal status allowed people control over strictly local affairs but always under the watchful supervision of a prefect sent out from Rome.
Colonies defined as Roman also can be classed as municipia. They had full Roman citizenship. They were founded primarily as garrisons to keep enemies in check. They were generally smaller than Latin colonies, about 300 families as opposed to between 2500 and 6000 families. From about 338 to 288, the Romans founded a number of Roman colonies. Several protected the Latin coast. Some occupied key points in Campania and Apulia to forge a ring of fortresses around Samnium. Others in Umbria and points north kept the Gauls at bay. Around 177 b.c.e., the distinction between Latin and Roman colonies was abandoned. Subsequent colonies had the size of Latin colonies and the full citizenship of Roman ones. Thereafter, all colonies became hard to distinguish from municipia with full citizenship.
Socii
The Romans also made a number of one-on-one defensive pacts with individual Greek and Italian city-states that felt threatened by neighboring peoples. Those alliances were with states considered partners (socii) with Rome. Each treaty differed according to circumstances. All socii, however, were commonly required to place their military forces at Rome’s disposal and to leave the conduct of foreign affairs in its hands. In return, Rome agreed not to impose taxes upon them and to allow each allied city to raise and equip its own troops under native officers. Nevertheless, they would fight under the supreme allied command of a Roman general. Rome would also provide the allied troops with food and would share the spoils of war with them. Furthermore, all allied cities could enjoy some, if not all, of the private rights of Roman citizenship.
The Romans created these various types of alliances and citizen status primarily in response to particular circumstances. At first, turning allies into citizens was more of a punishment than a reward because it deprived people of their highly valued independence. Harsh terms were imposed on those who had been particularly hard to subdue. Gradually, however, a system emerged that was viewed as rewarding the progressive Romanization of allies with more and more rights. Socii might at some point hope to acquire Latin status and eventually be awarded an equal share in the public life of Rome with a grant of full Roman citizenship. This system was especially favorable to local aristocratic elites. In return for keeping their populations loyal, they could look forward to the day when they or their descendants could have successful political careers in the metropolis itself. Thus, the Romans were able to keep increasing their armies with dependable supplies of loyal manpower despite occasional setbacks.
Renewed war and conquests in central Italy
Rome’s system of colonies and alliances was not intended to provoke hostilities with the Samnites. Yet it effectively cut off Samnite expansion westward and was bound to cause friction. The Second (Great) Samnite War (327–304/303 b.c.e.) broke out when the two sides backed different factions in an internal dispute at Naples. This war led to the Third Samnite War (298–290 b.c.e.) and a series of conflicts that ended with the subjugation of the Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls who had sympathized with the Samnites.
Much of the military history of these wars is obscure. Most of the battles recorded by Roman annalists are unimportant even if they did take place. The most famous and important battle of the Second Samnite War took place in 321 b.c.e. The Samnites lured a Roman army into a trap at a pass called the Caudine Forks in the mountains between Campania and Apulia. The Romans had to surrender, give hostages, and agree not to renew the war. Stripped down to single garments, they were driven under a yoke consisting of two spears stuck in the ground and united at the top by a third, a humiliating symbol of complete subjugation and unconditional surrender. Clearly, the Romans needed to learn more about mountain fighting. After making adjustments, they found an excuse for repudiating the peace treaty in 316 and renewing the war.
Continued difficulties
Rome still faced great difficulties. A serious defeat in 315 b.c.e. almost cost the loyalty of its Campanian allies. Strategic alliances and the founding of Latin and Roman colonies managed to contain the Samnites. They hoped to counter by gaining support among the Etruscans and Gauls, but they were foiled. The Romans continued to create a broad buffer zone across central Italy. From it they were able to make devastating raids into the heart of Samnium. By this show of force they also compelled wavering Etruscan allies to renew and honor their treaties.
The man who is thought to have masterminded this astute military and diplomatic strategy was the censor of 312 b.c.e., Appius Claudius Caecus (p. 112). It was also his idea to link Rome with Capua by a highway, the Via Appia, over which troops could swiftly move in any kind of weather. In 311 b.c.e., to protect the coast of Latium, the Romans built a small fleet of twenty triremes (ships with three banks of one-man oars). In 306, they renewed the treaty of 348 with Carthage (p. 104), perhaps with a new clause keeping Carthaginian arms out of Italy and Roman arms out of Sicily.
In spite of these efforts, the Romans gained no clear victory. The peace that ended the Second Samnite War in 304/303 b.c.e. represented basically a draw. The Samnites lost none of their original territory, none of their independence, and none of their capacity to fight again.
Rome’s eventual supremacy
On the other hand, the balance of power in central Italy had gradually shifted in favor of Rome by the time the Third Samnite War broke out in 298 b.c.e. After 338, Rome and its dependents controlled an area of approximately 3400 square miles and a population of some 484,000, as compared with about 4900 square miles and a population of 450,000 for the Samnites. The danger of Rome’s increasing strength even persuaded some among the Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls to join the Samnites. In 295, combined forces of Gauls and Samnites fought the Romans at Sentinum in Umbria. There, so the story goes, the consul Publius Decius Mus inspired the Romans to victory by devoting himself to the gods and exposing himself to death at enemy hands. His death, self-sacrifice or not, made him a hero.
Still, Manius Curius Dentatus, consul of 290, really determined the fight for central Italy. He forced the Samnites to surrender and sue for peace. They were then granted the status of Roman allies (socii). In the same year, Dentatus found reasons to attack the long-dormant Sabines and impose citizenship without the right to vote, civitas sine suffragio.
Some Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls fought on, however. The Gauls asked for peace in 282. Etruscans and Umbrians continued to resist for a number of years but finally surrendered under moderate terms. Of the Etruscan cities, only Caere, the former friend turned foe, lost territory. It was punished by annexation, probably in 273, and received civitas sine suffragio.
The Pyrrhic wars and the conquest of peninsular Italy
The Romans had granted Etruscan and Umbrian opponents moderate peace terms because Rome was now faced with another serious crisis. Victory against the Samnites in central Italy had removed a powerful buffer between Rome and the most powerful Greek city-state in southern Italy, Tarentum (Taranto). East of the Apennines, the Tarentines had been fighting not only the Samnites but also the Bruttians and Lucanians. In so doing, they had called in a number of Greek military adventurers from across the Adriatic to help them. One was King Alexander of Epirus, uncle of Alexander the Great. Another was Cleonymus, brother to a king of Sparta. They had failed either to make Tarentum a stronger power or to carve out empires for themselves.
Nevertheless, there was an important legacy. Either with Alexander of Epirus between 334 and 331 or with Cleonymus between 303 and 301, the Romans had agreed to a treaty in which they promised not to send ships into the Gulf of Tarentum. After the defeat of the Samnites in 290 b.c.e., Rome’s aristocratic leaders were less well disposed toward democratic Tarentum and its ambitions to be the leading southern Italian Greek city. For the Romans, it was convenient to think that the treaty was dead along with the man who had negotiated it on Tarentum’s behalf. For the Tarentines, there was good reason to fear the growing power of Rome and to claim that a treaty limiting it was still valid.
The Tarentines were already upset because Rome had rejected their attempt to mediate between the two sides in the Second Samnite War and had established the colony of Venusia on their Apulian border after the Third Samnite War. In 285 b.c.e., the southern Italian Greek city of Thurii, near the southwestern corner of the Gulf of Tarentum, was under attack by the Lucanians. Thurii appealed to Rome for help rather than to its strong rival and neighbor, Tarentum. The aristocratic leaders of Thurii probably felt more comfortable dealing with their Roman counterparts. Many Thurians also would have seen an alliance with Rome as a way of tipping the regional balance of power in their favor at the expense of their rival Tarentum. The Romans answered Thurii’s appeal, defeated the Lucanians, and stationed a small garrison in Thurii itself. Other Greek cities in Italy also asked for and received Roman protection.
These actions provoked Tarentum: the pattern of Rome behavior (answering a plea for help from a weaker power against of a genuine rival) once again brought Rome into a major military conflict. Therefore, in 282 b.c.e., when Roman ships entered the Gulf of Tarentum in violation of the earlier treaty, the Tarentines attacked without warning, sank four ships, and killed the commander. Then the Tarentines marched to Thurii, drove out the Roman garrison, and sacked the town. The Romans sent ambassadors to Tarentum to seek redress. They were refused a hearing. According to patriotic Roman writers, they were also publicly insulted in gross and humiliating ways, contrary to the conventions of interstate relations. The Tarentines called in another Epirote King, Pyrrhus, grandnephew of Alexander of Epirus. Although Epirus was only a small mountainous country in northwestern Greece, Pyrrhus had ambitions of being another Alexander the Great, his second cousin. The invitation from Tarentum presented a real opportunity to establish the empire that he craved.
In the spring of 280 b.c.e., Pyrrhus set sail for Italy with a large mercenary army that included twenty war elephants. The Romans had never seen elephants before, nor had they ever faced a professionally trained Hellenistic army. Flexible tactics developed during the previous century enabled the Romans to counter Pyrrhus’ phalanx of spearmen at the Battle of Heraclea, but the elephants wreaked havoc. By the least sensational count, the Romans lost 7000 men, while Pyrrhus lost 4000 in a costly tactical victory.
Encouraged by the Romans’ rebellious Oscan and Samnite allies, Pyrrhus tried to attack Rome itself. The loyalty of its Latin allies, however, stopped him at Praeneste, forty miles away. Urged by Appius Claudius Caecus, now blind (caecus) from age, the Romans refused Pyrrhus’ offers of peace. Buoyed by a defensive alliance with the Carthaginians in 279 b.c.e., they brought him to battle again at Asculum (Ausculum, Ascoli Satriano) in Apulia. After another costly victory, Pyrrhus allegedly declared, “Another such victory and I am lost!” Such an outcome has been known ever since as a Pyrrhic victory.
Pyrrhus’ Sicilian Venture and the fall of Tarentum, 278 to 272 b.c.e.
Stymied, Pyrrhus answered a call from the Greeks of Sicily in 278 b.c.e. to come to their aid against the Carthaginians, who were on the verge of conquering the whole island. He was obliged to leave half of his forces in Italy, however, because the Romans continued to resist. His initial, brilliant successes in Sicily were undone when his Greek allies deserted him and he was forced to return to Italy. He lost part of his fleet in a battle with the Carthaginian navy on the way back to Italy in 276. Continued Roman resistance in 275 caused Pyrrhus to withdraw most of his army to Greece. He left Tarentum a small garrison. The Romans, with continued naval support from Carthage, finally forced him to remove it in 272. He died attacking Argos in Greece later that year.
The victory over Pyrrhus served notice that Rome was now a major power in the Mediterranean world. Rome had already received recognition from Ptolemy II of Egypt, who had asked for a treaty of friendship in 273 b.c.e. Later, in 264, Rome’s destruction of the rebellious Etruscan city of Volsinii (Orvieto) made clear that all of peninsular Italy was under its undisputed control, from Pisa and Ariminum (Rimini) in the North to Brundisium (Brindisi), Tarentum, and Rhegium (Reggio di Calabria) on the Straits of Messana, in the South. Within the same year, even the straits would not be able to restrain Rome’s growing power (map, p. 114).
The manipular army
Rome’s power rested in part on an army utilizing new tactical infantry units called maniples, manipuli (sing. manipulus). A maniple was literally “a handful.” In the army, as opposed to the comitia centuriata, centuries were now groups of only sixty men recruited from the assidui (sing. assiduus), all those landowners able to serve after the state began to supply pay and equipment that offset the expenses of service. One or two of these new centuries made up each maniple.
This manipular army had evolved since the Gallic sack ca. 390 b.c.e. It is impossible to trace that evolution in specific detail. Its cumulative effect, however, can be seen probably by the middle of the third century b.c.e. It allowed the Romans to make much greater use of military-age manpower, operate more effectively in hilly terrain, and respond more readily to changing circumstances in the heat of battle.
Formation and size
The army no longer relied on heavily armed spearmen in a single mass formation like the Greek phalanx. The maniples were grouped in three separate lines according to age, experience, and equipment. Each line had ten maniples. Each maniple of the first two contained two sixty-man centuries. Each maniple of the third line had only one. Thus, the three lines had fifty centuries in thirty maniples for a total of 3000 men. In addition, forty light-armed skirmishers were administratively attached to each maniple for a total of 1200 men. With a complement of 300 cavalry, a legion equaled 4500 men. Each consul now regularly commanded two legions plus an equal number of allied infantry and a considerably larger number of allied cavalry.
Men and equipment
The first line of heavy infantry comprised the hastati (sing. hastatus). They were young unmarried men in their late teens and early twenties. If one was killed, the loss to the community was not great. If they survived, they gained skill and experience and became principes (sing. princeps), men in their late twenties and early thirties, who made up the second line. The smaller maniples in the third line contained the triarii (sing. triarius), the fewer grizzled veterans who survived into their late thirties and early forties. The hastati and principes carried light and heavy javelins. The triarii used sturdy thrusting spears. In all three lines of heavy infantry, each soldier carried a scutum (pl. scuta), a large, oval plywood shield with a rim, spine, and central boss of metal. He also had a thrusting sword and a metal helmet. Metal plates strapped to his chest and back or a tunic of chain mail protected his body.
The light-armed skirmishers were called velites (sing. veles). They were often the youngest recruits. They each carried three light javelins, a short sword, and a round wicker shield, a parma (pl. parmae) about three feet in diameter. They wore no body armor, only caps made of thick cloth or leather.
In battle
When the manipular army was drawn up for battle, the cavalry were stationed on the wings to protect the flanks of the heavy infantry from the opposing cavalry. The three lines of maniples were lined up behind a screen of the light-armed velites. The velites would often rush forth and try to disrupt the enemy’s advance and then retreat before the hastati hurled their javelins. The maniples of each heavy infantry line were drawn up to form a checker-board pattern called a quincunx, the arrangement of five dots that represent the number five on dice. That pattern allowed great flexibility of maneuver. The maniples of principes and triarii in the second and third lines could cover the gaps in the line in front of them. The two centuries of each maniple of hastati and principes could be lined up one behind the other or beside each other to create a shorter or longer front. They could be maneuvered to create a solid front or to open up lanes when it was time for the velites or one of the first two heavy-infantry lines to retire to the rear and regroup behind the triarii. If the enemy reached the triarii, the battle was going badly for the Romans. Either the triarii dropped to one knee and thrust forth their spears to break the enemy advance while the regrouped maniples stood behind and hurled javelins, or the army tried to make an orderly retreat.
The economic, social, and cultural impact of Roman expansion in Italy by 264 b.c.e.
The conquest of peninsular Italy made Rome Italy’s leading state not only politically and militarily but also economically and culturally. After the Gallic sack, Rome’s growth as a center of trade and manufacturing and as the largest city in Italy resumed. Between ca. 350 and 300 b.c.e., the urban population doubled from about 30,000 to around 60,000, and by 275 it probably surpassed 90,000.
Trade and manufacturing
To sustain such a large population, food already had to be imported from sources easily reached by water transport along the western Mediterranean coast. Evidence to that effect appears in the treaty that Rome made with Carthage in 348 b.c.e. and, according to Livy (Book 9.43.26), renewed in 306. To obtain what they wanted, the Romans had to agree not to found colonies in Sardinia or North Africa and not to trade in Carthaginian territory except through Carthage itself or its ports in Sicily. That provision presupposes Roman interest in such activities. Indeed, Diodorus Siculus (Book 15.27.4) reports that the Romans had sent a colony to Sardinia in 386, and archaeological evidence indicates that they founded Ostia between 380 and 350 b.c.e. to protect the mouth of the Tiber. Further archaeological evidence indicates that these moves were not just to provide physical security but reflect Rome’s interest in securing maritime trade.
In the last decade or so of the fourth century, the Portus (the harbor facilities along the bend of the Tiber) and the market area (Forum Boarium) just behind it underwent major redevelopment and expansion. On the tip of Tiber Island, the healing god Aesculapius (Asclepius), himself a Greek import, became the object of a cult about the same time and received a major temple in 291. By the beginning of the third century, Rome had become a major manufacturer and exporter of pottery that has been found throughout the very regions from which Rome must have been drawing grain to support its burgeoning population.
Another major product of Roman workshops was high-quality bronzes. For example, the magnificently engraved Ficoroni Cista, a large, finely engraved bronze container with cast bronze figures for the feet and lid handle, was produced in Rome around 315 b.c.e. (Figure 6.2, p. 115). At the same time, major pieces of bronze statuary began to be cast and set up in temples and in public places around the city. Other workshops were producing furniture, terra-cotta sculptures, and large and small carved-stone monuments, such as funeral altars and sarcophagi.
Major construction projects
The wealth that poured into Rome from the conquest of central and southern Italy produced a major building boom. From 302 to 264 b.c.e., numerous temples arose in the city. In 312, the censor Appius Claudius Caecus had inaugurated not only the construction of Rome’s first major paved road, the Appian Way, but also Rome’s first aqueduct, which supplied clean water for Rome’s growing population. In 272, an even bigger aqueduct, the Anio Vetus, was needed to keep up with demand.
Development of coinage
The public works and wars in the late fourth and early third centuries made it increasingly necessary for Rome to finance them with coined money. During the fifth and much of the fourth centuries b.c.e., irregular lumps of bronze, aes rude, were the measure of value in economic transactions. They took the place of the actual cattle or sheep from which pecunia, the Roman word for money, was derived. Later, rectangular pieces of cast bronze replaced the irregular lumps. The state guaranteed the purity of the bronze by a distinctive sign stamped into the metal. The stamped bronze was called aes signatum. It was not true coinage, because only its purity, not weight or value, was indicated by the stamp.
FIGURE 6.1 Italy about 256 b.c.e.
FIGURE 6.2 The Ficoroni Cista.
During the fourth century, Rome’s fiscal needs, particularly pay for soldiers, increased. As early as 289 b.c.e., the Romans created a mint and a board of three moneyers, triumviri (tresviri) monetales, to run it. It was located on the Capitoline Hill in the temple of Juno Moneta. From it are ultimately derived the words “mint” and “money.” Rome’s first real coins were called asses (sing. as) or aes grave (heavy bronze). These coins were cast and circular in shape. They were issued in units of one Roman pound (libra) or fractions thereof, as indicated by a standard mark. The libra equaled twelve Roman ounces (unciae). The Roman ounce (uncia) was slightly less than the U.S. ounce avoirdupois (27.2875 grams versus 28.3850 grams). Therefore, the libra weighed 11.536 ounces avoirdupois (327.45 grams).
Gradually reduced in size, the bronze as remained the common coin used throughout the republican period. Nevertheless, as the Romans became more deeply involved with the Greeks of southern Italy, especially during the war with Pyrrhus, they found it necessary to mint silver coins comparable to the silver coins commonly used by the Greeks. Therefore, the earliest Roman silver coins were two-drachma pieces, didrachms, and were clearly modeled on the silver coinage of Campania.
The agricultural sector
The Roman conquest of Italy was already reshaping Italian agriculture by 264 b.c.e. From 338 to 264, the ager Romanus (Rome’s own land) increased from about 2200 square miles to over 10,000, about 20 percent of peninsular Italy’s surface area, with a total population estimated at 900,000. In the process, much land had been confiscated to make room for poor Roman farmers. The original owners were often left without anything, deported, enslaved, or killed. Between 20,000 and 30,000 Roman men received allotments from this land. Moreover, another 70,000 Romans and Latins received allotments in nineteen Latin colonies established on conquered land between 334 and 263.
Confiscating other peoples’ land and enslaving them not only satisfied the land hunger of poor Romans but also allowed rich Romans to amass larger holdings and farm them with slaves. Indeed, the enslavement of numerous war captives during the fourth century may have created the conditions favorable to passing the lex Poetilia and the virtual elimination of debt slavery for Roman citizens (p. 85). That, in turn, may have stimulated greater demand for chattel slaves captured in war, but the trend toward large slave-run estates in parts of Italy began later than was once thought. Near Rome itself, however, a growing urban market approaching 100,000 people in 264 was already stimulating the kinds of specialized and commercialized agriculture in which the upper classes increasingly invested the profits of imperialism during the next 130 years.
Social developments
The expansion of Roman power brought many social changes at Rome and in defeated and allied communities. The citizen population of the countryside around Rome in Latium declined. Many small farmers sought better economic opportunities and amenities in the city itself. Others took up allotments of land confiscated from defeated communities elsewhere in Italy. People who were defeated and had their lands confiscated were often enslaved to work for Roman masters.
The urban population of Rome not only increased but also changed socially. Many slaves as well as citizens from the country swelled its ranks. Slaves served in the growing households of the urban elite, and they labored in workshops and the building trades. As the number of slaves grew, so did the number of freedmen, with significant political ramifications (p. 96). Also, ambitious members of local elites from the allied and municipal towns of Italy moved to Rome and sought to achieve social and political status as equals with Rome’s leading families. They, in turn, strengthened ties between Roman elites and those of their home towns.
Social conflict and war produced changes in the lives of women as well as men. Most of the surviving evidence relates to upper-class women. It seems that in the context of events surrounding the lex Publilia of 339 b.c.e. (p. 96), a girl named Minucia became the first plebeian Vestal. Her subsequent trial and execution by being buried alive two years later may reflect continued resistance by some patricians to plebeian advancement. In 296 b.c.e. Verginia, the patrician wife of a plebeian who was serving his second consulship in that same year, was denied the right to participate in the cult of Pudicitia Patricia (Patrician Chastity). In retaliation, she founded a cult of Pudicitia Plebeia (Plebeian Chastity).
Impressive art and architecture
By 300 b.c.e., the growing wealth and power of the Roman elite were creating a market for high-quality arts and crafts, fine terracotta and bronze statuary, and elaborate fresco paintings. Proud aristocrats proclaimed their success in war by building temples vowed in return for victory and decorating them with the finest workmanship.
Upper-class Romans also decorated their private homes with Hellenized art and architectural motifs. Ever since the late sixth century, the wealthy had enjoyed substantial town houses built on stone foundations in the neighborhood of the Palatine. The basic plan was centered on the traditional Italic atrium open to the sky, where the open hearth would have been in earlier times (Figure 2.9, p. 34). Here would be the family’s Lares (p. 66) and the funerary masks and busts (imagines) of famous ancestors. Across the atrium from the front door was the tablinum, an office for the family’s records, where the master of the house conducted business. Off the other sides would be several rooms that might function as bedrooms (cubicula) or dining rooms (triclinia) as the seasons or need required. In the back would be kitchens, storerooms, and slaves’ quarters.
Rome’s new temples were conservative in that they still reflected the influence of an already archaic Greek style that was commonly used in central Italy (Figure 2.10, P. 35). In less-tradition-bound circumstances, however, the impact of Classical Greek art was becoming more and more evident by 300. The scene from the tale of the Argonauts engraved on the Ficoroni Cista (facing page) rivals anything in late Classical Greek art, as did the bronze statuary of the time.
Self-conscious upper-class Hellenism
Prior to ca. 300 b.c.e., the influence of Greek culture in Italy had been the natural and inevitable result of general contact by non-Greeks with Greek trade goods and colonists. By the time the Romans captured Tarentum in 272, however, the importation of Classical Greek culture was part of a self-conscious attempt by Roman aristocrats to appropriate the aristocratic Greek cultural heritage for themselves. Indeed, Romans expropriated Greek or Hellenized art wherever they found it as they conquered Italy and carted off local treasures to decorate Rome. Thus, in 264, the Roman conqueror of Volsinii brought back 2000 fine statues to erect in the Forum Boarium.
By the mid-fourth century b.c.e., Roman aristocrats even began to adopt Greek cognomina such as Philo (Lover), Sophus (Wise), and Philippus (Lover of Horses). The cults of the new temples that they built often resembled Hellenistic victory cults. Not content with only those signs of Hellenization, many Romans appropriated Greek literature, too.
In early Rome, literature in any significant sense of the word did not exist. Writing, like most everything else, was primarily for practical, mundane purposes such as keeping financial accounts, recording laws and treaties, noting important yearly secular and religious events, and preserving oracles and religious rituals. Beginning in the third century b.c.e., however, the Romans were increasingly influenced by the advanced literary culture of the Greeks, especially those living in southern Italy and Sicily.
Greek literature had a certain practical and social value for the Roman upper classes. Greek allowed for the formulation and expression of far more complex concepts and ideas than did early Latin. It could provide a model for expanding the expressiveness of Latin itself in an increasingly complex world. Greek orators had perfected the principles of persuasive rhetoric, which were very useful to Roman aristocrats in senatorial debates, speeches at trials, and addresses to Roman voters in the Forum. Furthermore, knowledge of Greek and the appreciation of Greek literature were marks of social distinction. They helped the upper classes set themselves apart from the lower and gave them the sense of their own superiority that all elites crave. Soon, there would be a demand for teachers of Greek. It was supplied in the form of educated Greek captives serving as tutors in the homes of the wealthy. Those who were later freed often set up grammar schools, where they dispensed their wisdom to the sons of aspiring nonaristocrats for a fee.
Rome’s rise surveyed and explained
For about 250 years, the Romans of the early Republic waged wars of varying intensity in peninsular Italy. Allied with their Latin neighbors, they pushed back the surrounding land-hungry hill tribes. They overcame their Etruscan rivals. They survived the Gallic sack to rebuild Rome’s defenses, government, and alliances and emerge more united and stronger than ever. Subsequent wars with the Latins and Samnites led to a stronger system of alliances and a better equipped and tactically organized army and left the Romans firmly in control of central Italy and Campania. Afterwards, they took on Pyrrhus and his elephants and eventually prevailed. By 264 b.c.e., they had established their dominion over all peninsular Italy. In the process, they reshaped Rome and Italy economically, socially, and culturally and brought them into the mainstream of the Hellenistic Mediterranean world.
Many have sought some particular reason for Rome’s rise to dominance in peninsular Italy. There is, of course, no single cause or motive to explain it. Various factors, many of which Rome shared with its rivals, were at work. The crucial point is that none shared Rome’s unique combination of them.
Veii and Rome started out with roughly the same advantages in size and central location in Italy. Rome was no different from many of its neighbors in regard to its hierarchical social structure, moral values, warrior ethos, and willingness to accept as members of the community immigrants from other communities. Its initial size, however, enabled it to become the dominant partner in defending its smaller Latin neighbors. It absorbed them into the Roman state as it used their resources to conquer rivals like Veii, absorb more peoples, and become bigger and more powerful still as it shared the spoils of conquest with those who remained loyal to it.
External pressure from hostile neighbors would have been a force for internal unity in other cities as well as Rome. Combining internal unity and size, however, made a big difference. Again, as in Rome’s case, many other states probably had their origin in the populus, namely, the army and its officers, so that military service and citizenship were synonymous and civil offices grew out of military ones. Therefore, there is no reason to think that Romans started out any more bellicose or aggressive than many of their neighbors. They all lived in a world permeated with a warrior ethos and sought wealth, security, and glory through conquest. As Rome grew, however, it also had to become a state better organized for the wars that enabled it to grow bigger. Military and executive functions were more efficiently distributed among a growing number of magistrates, so that the censors, for example, kept a comprehensive registry of every adult male citizen according to where he lived and the type of military service that he could render. During the conquest of Italy, 9–16 percent of those citizens regularly saw military service in a given year, and as many as 25 percent in a major crisis, extraordinarily high numbers in a preindustrial society.
That was possible in part because reforms protected the basic rights and economic interests of those who served in the ranks. At the same time, the magistracies were opened up to all citizens wealthy enough to hold them and strive for the honor and glory that they bestowed. The senate became a reservoir of talent and experience made up of ex-magistrates who crafted the military and diplomatic policies that created Rome’s powerful system of alliances.
Still, one cannot ignore the irrational factor of sheer luck, Fortuna, a potent goddess. She did, perhaps, bestow more favor on the Romans than others in Italy. They were lucky that their potentially strongest enemies, the highly developed Etruscan and Greek city-states, were both rent by jealousies and rivalries that prevented either group from mounting strongly unified opposition. How fortunate it was that the Gauls who sacked Rome around 390 were not in a position to occupy their conquest permanently and left before the Romans had lost heart. It was fortuitous that the brilliant military adventurers from Greece who sought Italian empires were less accomplished politically and diplomatically. It was even more fortuitous that the Greeks of Sicily kept Carthage at bay while the Romans took over Italy with occasional Carthaginian cooperativeness.
Suggested reading
Bradley , G. Ancient Umbria: State, Culture and Identity in Central Italy from the Iron Age to the Augustan Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
David , J.-M. The Roman Conquest of Italy. Trans. A. Nevill . Corrected ed. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1997.
Eckstein , A. M. Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2006.
Stek , T. D. Cult Places and Cultural Change in Republican Italy: A Contextual Approach to Religious Aspects of Rural Society after the Roman Conquest. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.