The First Punic War (264-241) brought Rome into conflict over territory outside mainland Italy for the first time (entailing Rome’s first serious foray into naval warfare, for which see Chapter 5). The result was Roman rule in Sicily, the first Roman conquest governed, not directly as part of the Roman state or as an ally, but as an imperial province. Aside from the Roman seizure of Sardinia in 238, the war did not immediately draw Rome into a broader conception of its role in the Mediterranean world, nor had it entailed a significant change in the pattern of yearly campaigning by consular armies raised for limited terms of service. It represented, in short, a logical extension of the expansion that had been going on since 400 bce.
The Second Punic War (218-202), however, was a different matter, one that initiated changes in the Roman state, society, and military organization that would have significant consequences. Republican institutions, patterns of war, and culture persisted but were gradually transformed, so that by 31 bce the Roman Republic had ended and the Roman Empire had begun. From 218 to 31 is thus an era of transition from expansionist Republic to early Empire. There is not room to narrate in detail the struggle against Carthage and its great general Hannibal Barca, but a number of the effects of fighting a war that took place simultaneously over much of central and southern Italy, southern Gaul, Iberia, and Africa may be outlined.
Conquests and Provinces
The war drew Roman armies farther afield than ever before, especially with a long-term campaign in Spain as the major second front while Hannibal was contained in Italy. Hannibal’s diplomacy drew Macedon into conflict with Rome; three wars resulted by 167 in Roman rule over Macedon and hegemony over Greece, though conquest had not initially been the Roman aim. War with Macedon drew Rome increasingly into the diplomatic tangle of the Successor States in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Meanwhile, the continued Gallic threat led to the conquest of the Po valley shortly after the Second Punic War ended. By the mid-second century, Roman provinces extended the length of the Mediterranean, though not comprehensively.
The campaigning necessary to prosecute wars in these more distant regions, as well as the garrison troops needed to hold areas that differed significantly from Roman (and even broader Italian) culture, meant that legionary recruits now tended to serve longer terms of service—six to ten years versus the one to three of early Republican times. This had implications for recruitment (see below), and the Romans also had to work out mechanisms for governing their new possessions, which involved questions about economic exploitation of the provinces and the political advantage to be gained from overseas appointments.
The shift to overseas conquest also had a significant impact on the pattern of Roman warfare. Campaigning, conquest, and expansion ceased being such regular activities. The number of foreign wars Rome fought decreased steadily after 202 (and dramatically after 146); conversely, the number of years of peace increased, causing some politicians to worry about the military virtues of the Roman population being lost. In fact, the proportion of the Italian population who served in the army probably did begin to fall as wars became less frequent and as more distant theaters encouraged long-term service by a more select set of recruits.
Conquests therefore now tended to be larger— entire kingdoms or regions at a time—but much more sporadic. Partly, this was a simple practical matter: It took longer to pacify larger, more distant regions, and the troops occupied by garrison and police duties were then not available immediately for another campaign of conquest. Diplomatic opportunities for justifying aggression and conquest probably also became more complicated on the larger stage of the Mediterranean world. But, partly, the decline in the number of wars of conquest Rome fought after 202 reflects the dynamics of elite politics and the raised stakes of glory involved in overseas wars. The reward for bigger conquests was more glory and greater political advantages for the consuls who led the successful campaigns. Ironically, this led to fewer such campaigns, because every potential conquering consul had many rivals in the Senate who were happy to derail the would be conqueror’s ambitions. The stakes of individual wars, in other words, had become high enough that balancing the benefits and spreading the glory had become problematic.
In fact, this pattern of sporadic expansion resembles that of the Empire more than that of the expansionist Republic. What disguises that similarity and makes the Pax Romana (Roman Peace) stand out as an attribute of the Empire is that the level of internal warfare went up steadily in the late Republic. Understanding that requires examining the changing relationship of Roman warfare to social change and elite politics.
Social Change
Perhaps the most important longterm consequence of the shift from Italian expansion to overseas provincial expansion was that conquests stopped adding to the ager publicus, the stock of public land that served the interests of both large estate owners and poorer farmers. Roman colonies within Italy could no longer be established, and in the developing competition for a now-limited resource, the poor inevitably found themselves at a disadvantage against the rich, whose supply of slaves capable of working ever-larger estates did not dry up—in fact, it skyrocketed—with the shift to overseas conquests. Debt rose again, and though debt bondage no longer existed, defaults and sales of small farms to the rich increased the number of landless in the Roman state. Many of these former farmers found their way to Rome itself, where they formed a newly volatile element in popular politics.
These social changes thus intruded into politics. By the middle of the second century bce, land reform had become a major political issue. This issue was raised most forcefully by Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, each elected tribune, in 133 and 123, respectively, on a platform of land redistribution—and both ended up dead at the hands of elite opponents, directly or indirectly. Land use in the form of large estates worked by slaves provoked another sort of opposition: The years 135-132 saw the first of a series of large slave revolts, this one on Sicily; slaves on Sicily rose up again in 104-99, and Spartacus led a third revolt that controlled much of southern Italy in 73-71. Each was suppressed, but at great cost and after initial failures by Roman armies in battles with the rebels. Additionally, as the economic benefits of overseas conquests flowed back disproportionately to Roman citizens, the scope and benefits of Roman citizenship also became a source of conflict that erupted in the Social War of 91-88, in which almost all of Rome’s Italian allies revolted at Rome’s refusal to grant them citizenship. Rome won the war by conceding the point, and citizenship was extended throughout Italy. Gaius Marius, often credited with significant reforms in army organization (see below), emerged as a major leader during these wars.
Elite Politics and Military Dynasts
Even as these social and servile wars wound down, civil wars between rival individuals and factions within the Roman elite heated up. The senatorial dynamic, outlined above, that tended to limit the ability of consuls to pursue further conquests operated less effectively in times of social and political strife, and internal social conflicts also provided the opportunity for ambitious politicians to gain glory as “saviors of the Republic.” A series of civil wars and power-sharing arrangements extended over three generations, from 88 to 31, until Octavian emerged as the first emperor.
Octavian was the adopted nephew of Julius Caesar, who along with Crassus, victor over Spartacus, and Pompey had formed the first triumvirate. Pompey had risen to prominence under Sulla, victor in the first civil war. All three were thus part of the concentration of military command in the provinces and political leadership in Rome in an increasingly small set of families. The narrowing of military leadership was partly a result of the reduced opportunities for active command in the provinces, noted above, and partly the result of the fact that the riches available through agriculture and trade in an expanding empire led the ambitions of many elites away from military leadership (though no Roman noble would admit openly to investing in mercantile activity). It was not just larger numbers of commoners who were becoming more distanced from war, in other words. This demilitarization of segments of the senatorial class effectively heightened the competition among the remainder. This competition was further intensified and polarized by the class antagonisms that tended, in the last years of the Republic, to divide politics and military conflict between proponents of conservative elites and populists, with both sides purporting to fight for the preservation of the Republic as they understood it.
In hindsight, it is easy to say that the Empire had become too large, complex, and lucrative an enterprise to be run successfully by a collective, especially one such as the Republic, whose culture stressed competition and for whom military leadership (and thus the potential for coercive power that successful command conveyed) remained a central ideal—even if honored less often in practice. Instability was bound to result and could be ended only by the establishment of unified rule or the collapse of the Roman state and dissolution of the empire. Yet the culture and ideals of the Republic were deeply ingrained, and so collective government not only died hard but left its imprint on the form of imperial rule that followed.
The stresses of new sorts of campaigning, both in foreign realms and in civil wars, set against changes in Italian society, affected the Roman army, which underwent its own transformation during this period of transition from Republic to Empire.
Social changes affected recruiting, as noted above. Landownership continued to be a prerequisite for service in the legions into the first century bce—Marius’s famous call-up allowing landless men to join the legions is now seen not as a major and permanent policy change but as a temporary expedient that was not institutionalized fully until Octavian’s reorganization of the army (see below). Still, poorer men tended to serve disproportionately, as successful service in the army remained a route, albeit a limited and dangerous one, to upward social mobility. Terms of service continued to lengthen gradually, and soldiers began to demand rewards at the termination of their service, demands promoted by their commanders, who thereby enhanced the loyalty of their legions to themselves.
Given this more socially limited base of recruitment, not surprisingly, the old formal distinctions based in age and wealth that had been used to assign troops to different lines and troop types in the manipular legions broke down. Now, all legionary infantry tended to conform to a single type, armed with gladius and pilum, wearing a bronze helmet and corselet, and carrying a large, curved rectangular shield. This homogenization of the heavy infantry was reflected organizationally. The cohort, an administrative unit of the manipular legion consisting of a maniple each of hastati, principes, and triarii plus cavalry, now, without the cavalry, became the basic tactical unit of the legion. Ten cohorts of 450-500 men (plus cavalry) thus still made up a legion, which still tended to be arranged in three lines deployed in a version of the old checkerboard formation. But larger cohorts with smaller gaps between them gave the legion a more continuous front without sacrificing much in the way of tactical flexibility.
A Roman Soldier
This depiction of a Roman soldier shows not only the standard equipment of a legionnaire—the pilum, or throwing spear, the gladius, or short stabbing sword, and the scutum, or shield—but also idealizes the soldier as representative and defender of civic virtue.
Thus, aside from the tendency to a more phalanxlike frontage, the tactics of what is sometimes called the Marian legion (as Marius initiated some of the reforms that furthered the evolution of the Republican legion toward the form it assumed institutionally under Augustus) were not vastly different from its predecessor. Standards of discipline, training, and experience varied and were liable to diminish in times of civil strife and crisis. But these legions achieved some of the most impressive victories in Roman history because of the increasing professionalization of the army and especially of its officer class—above all, the centurions whose bravery and initiative are so praised by Caesar in his accounts of his generalship (see, for example, the Sources box “Caesar on Pharsalus”).
It was probably in the relationship of legions to their overall commanders and thus, indirectly, to the state that the most significant changes occurred in this period. By the first century bce, armies were becoming more often the creation (in terms of training, loyalty, and expectations of future reward) of the great commanders who led them. For example, Pompey got his start at age 23 by being able to bring to Sulla three veteran legions that had essentially “belonged” to his rich father; and Caesar’s armies were his armies, advancing the cause of the Roman state when he led them in Gaul, but advancing his political cause when he led them across the Rubicon and into Italy. Such commanders had longer careers and played much more to the nonmilitary populace in Rome than had the constantly rotating consuls of the early Republic. They also commanded troops who served for longer periods away from home, which now included the whole of Italy. Thus, the tight relationship between citizenship, military service, and Roman civic identity that had launched the city on the road to conquest had been considerably loosened: Roman soldiers and civilians were diverging in identity and interests. This, too, was a legacy of Republican political competition that Augustus had to deal with in constructing an effective imperial government.