Comprehensive Notes on Rome and Imperialism

Rome and Imperialism

Rome's Central Place in Imperialism Theory

• Rome holds a significant position in the theory of imperialism due to:
  • Its imperial symbols and language (eagles, fasces, laurel wreaths, Latin titles) were adopted by Western powers.
  • Examples of appropriation:
    • Charlemagne crowned emperor in Rome in 800.
    • German emperors using the title Kaisar (Caesar).
    • Eastern European powers, including Russia, using the title Czar.
  • Medieval appropriations related to the emperors of Byzantium who continued to rule a Roman Empire into the 15th century.
  • Increased interest in the classical past across Europe from the early modern period repeatedly used Rome as a model.
  • Following the French Revolution and Napoleon's abolition of the Holy Roman (German) Empire, Roman titles were adopted by French, Austrian, and British rulers.
  • Many titles and symbols of Roman origin remained current until the middle of the 20th century.

Challenges in Studying Ancient Rome

• The reception history of Rome has been a mixed blessing due to:
  • Closer attention compared to other early empires (e.g., Achaemenid Persia, Hellenistic kingdoms).
  • Introduction of anachronisms, like debates over economic motivations and civilizing effects.
  • Contemporary comparisons with America and post-colonial interpretations sometimes influenced by post-colonial guilt.
  • The most useful comparisons have highlighted contrasts between ancient Roman and modern European imperialism, exposing ideological components.
• Some scholars suggest avoiding the term 'imperialism' for Roman expansion to avoid connotations of modern nation-states and competing hegemonies.
  • Those following Lenin's view of imperialism as a stage of capitalism would disagree with applying the label to Rome.
• Dispensing with 'empire' and 'imperialism' is impractical due to similar issues with alternative terminology.
• The most recent approaches consider Rome as one of similar political entities termed early empires.
  • These are qualified as tributary empires (political economy) or pre-capitalist/pre-industrial (economic life/technology).
• Empires similar to Rome:
  • Chinese empires (from 221 BCE, Qin dynasty).
  • Empires on the Iranian plateau (Achaemenid, Parthian, Sassanian dynasties).
  • Neo-Assyrian Empire (Mesopotamia).
  • Empires on the Indo-Gangetic plain (Maurya dynasty, from 322–185 BCE).
  • Macedonian-ruled kingdoms (former Achaemenid Empire).
  • New World empires (Aztec, Inka).

Characteristics of Early Empires

• Political domination by one group through conquest and intimidation.
• Absorption of earlier states.
• Sustained by labor exactions, agricultural produce, and metals.
• Resources used to reward privileged populations/classes and support military forces.
• Investment in infrastructure (roads, canals, fortifications, storehouses, ports), ceremonies, and monuments.
• Ruled by autocrats.
• Most had iron metallurgy and writing.
• Imperial systems of weights and measures.
• Energy sources limited to human and animal labor.
• Communication limited to sailing vessels or relays of riders/runners.

Analytical Boundaries and Comparative Studies

• Disagreement exists on the boundaries of this analytical category.
  • Some include smaller, earlier expansionist states from the Bronze Age Near East (e.g. New Kingdom Egypt) and analogous states in Central and South America (e.g. Wari).
  • Some include short-lived hegemonies exercised by powerful city states over their neighbors.
  • Whether medieval and early modern empires were similar is debated.
• Recent synoptic studies address these questions, drawing on historical sociologies of empire.
• Comparative analysis provides a useful perspective on Roman imperialism.
  • Reveals unique solutions Romans adopted for common problems faced by early imperial powers (e.g., revolts, integration of minorities, communication limitations).

Phases of Roman Expansion

• A brief overview of the growth, stabilization, and collapse of Roman political domination.
• Foundation of Rome traditionally dated to the mid-8th century BCE, archaeological evidence supports occupation by then.
• City-state institutions emerged around the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, slightly later than in Etruria and Greek cities to the south.
• Urban settlements and archaic states developed around the Mediterranean and Black Seas during the first half of the last millennium BCE.
• By the 5th century BCE, larger states (Athens, Sparta, Syracuse, Carthage) dominated neighbors.
• Rome was expanding at the expense of immediate neighbors.
• 4th century BCE: Rome defeated Veii and extended control over Latin-speaking neighbors and hill tribes of central Italy.
• Wars fought almost every year, supported by defeated 'allies,' extended hegemony over most of Italy south of the Apennines.
  • This wasn't expressed in regular tribute extraction.
  • Most cities/people remained autonomous but lost control of foreign relations.
• 280–275 BCE: Tarentum persuaded Pyrrhus of Epirus to challenge Rome, solidifying Roman control after Pyrrhus' retreat.
• This was the period in which Greek writers noticed the rise of Rome, allowing for a more precise history.
• The Mediterranean world in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE was dominated by a few political hegemonies.
  • In the east, Alexander the Great divided the Achaemenid Empire between Seleukid Syria, Ptolemaic Egypt, and Antigonid Macedon, as well as smaller states.
  • These states included Bithynia, Pontus, Pergamum (Asia Minor), and Epirus (Balkans).
  • Cities, leagues of cities, and tribal peoples (e.g. Thracians) were variously allies, mercenaries, and victims of wars.
  • Some cities (Cyrene, Corinth, Athens, Rhodes) were larger players.
    *West of the Adriatic, Rome's rival was Carthage, which controlled Phoenician foundations in north Africa, western Sicily, and southern Spain.
  • Sardinia, Corsica, Mediterranean Spain, and southern France were settled by tribal peoples.
  • By the mid-2nd century BCE, Rome had hegemony over these regions.

Punic Wars and Roman Expansion

• Series of wars with Carthage (Punic Wars) in $264-241$ BCE, $218-201$ BCE and $149-146$ BCE gave Rome control of the western Mediterranean.
  • The First Punic War was fought largely over Sicily. Because of it, Rome became a naval power and it resulted in the creation of the first overseas provinces in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.
  • The Second Punic War saw Hannibal cross the Alps, but then be driven out of Italy, and Rome assert control over the entirety of Mediterranean Spain.
  • Carthage was destroyed in $146$ BCE, and Rome established a foothold in north Africa; the Macedonian kingdom was defeated in $197$ BCE, and the Syrian kingdom in $188$ BCE.
  • Rome did not immediately annex territory east of the Adriatic, initially content with plunder and disrupting local hegemonies.

Instability and Re-establishment of Control

• Macedon was defeated again in $168$ BCE, the kingdom abolished and replaced with four city-states.
• Rome's relations with east Mediterranean allies deteriorated.
• The last king of Pergamum bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, leading to Roman provinces in the Balkans and western Asia Minor.
• Corinth was destroyed as an example to defiant allies.
• Greek historian Polybius viewed Rome as the undisputed ruler of the civilized world.
• Rome's control was inefficient, relying on public contractors for revenue extraction with few troops/officials stationed in the east.
• Conquered territories and other powers (like Egypt) were expected to obey Roman envoys.
• Mithradates, King of Pontus, exploited Rome's unpopularity by invading the Roman province of Asia and southern Greece.
• This crisis coincided with a major rebellion by Rome's Italian allies.
• The first half of the last century BCE was dedicated to re-establishing Roman control.

Republican Instruments of Empire

• Armies serving long periods overseas.
• Emerging tributary structure.
• Concentration of power in the hands of a few generals.
• Generals extended Roman control beyond the Mediterranean.
• Pompey coordinated Mediterranean-wide elimination of piracy and campaigned throughout the Near East between $67$ and $62$ BCE.
• Julius Caesar took control of non-Mediterranean France between $58$ and $52$ BCE, campaigning up to and beyond the English Channel and the Rhine.
• Civil wars fueled competition for glory and booty, leading to the acquisition of Egypt in $30$ BCE.
• Augustus extended Roman control to the Rhine and Danube between $15$ BCE and $9$ CE.
• Campaigns also occurred in Armenia, Spain, Africa, and Arabia.
• By Augustus' death in $14$ CE, the Mediterranean basin and hinterlands were controlled by provinces or client kings.
• Some kingdoms became provinces during the 1st century CE.
• Wars of conquest in Britain began in $43$ CE, but never permanently controlled more than the Scottish lowlands.
• The German frontier advanced to the Neckar at the end of the 1st century AD, and most of modern Romania (Roman Dacia) was conquered soon after.
• The early 2nd century CE marked the peak of Roman power.
• Attempts to conquer Mesopotamia were made through the end of the fourth century, but a permanent presence was never established.

Decline of the Roman Empire

• Pressure increased from the late second century CE.
• A 50-year period of chaos in the third century included invasions, rebellions, fragmentation, and rapid turnover of emperors.
• The empire survived, losing the most recently conquered northern territories.
• Large numbers of Goths crossed the Danube at the end of the fourth century, followed by more tribes across the Rhine.
• Control over Britain and northern Gaul was lost during the fifth century, followed by Spain and Africa.
• By the sixth century, all territories west of the Adriatic were controlled by Germanic kingdoms that used Roman institutions and bureaucrats.
• An attempt by the eastern emperor (based in Constantinople) to reconquer the west had limited success.
• Roman frontiers in the east faced intermittent Persian pressure.
• Around the mid-6th century, Persians sacked Antioch in Syria.
• New invasions of Italy and the Balkans from the north followed.
• In the early seventh century, Rome lost Jerusalem and Egypt to Persia.
• The Persians did not maintain control of the Near East for long.
• In $636$, Arab armies defeated the Romans at the battle of Yarmuk.
• By $651$, they had destroyed the Persian Empire.
• By $711$, they had conquered all of north Africa and invaded Visigothic Spain.
• Byzantium survived as a micro-empire surrounding the Aegean Sea.

Stages of Roman Expansion

1. c.$500-275$ BCE: Slow incremental extension of power within the Italian peninsula.
2. $275-73$ BCE: Progressive elimination of rival hegemonies within the Mediterranean basin.
3. $73$ BCE – $9$ CE: Period of accelerating expansion, including conquest of half of temperate Europe, Egypt, and most of the Near East.
4. $9-132$ CE: Period of general consolidation with limited conquests and absorption of client states into provinces.
5. $132-378$ CE: Period of pressure largely survived with some territorial losses.
6. $378-717$ CE: Period of accelerating contraction.

Comparison to Other Empires

• The pattern of Roman expansion closely resembles other empires:
  • The rise of Qin was slow until the last generation, then accelerated rapidly, followed by institutional consolidation.
  • The creation of the Achaemenid Empire began with a slow rise of the Medes and Persians, followed by rapid conquest and institutionalization under Darius.
  • The Inka created their empire in less than a century by absorbing polities and connecting them with new infrastructure.
• Historical sociologists describe this as a shift from 'conquest state' to 'tributary empire'.
  • Institutions supporting expansion are replaced with institutions focused on sustainable dominion.
• Current scholarly focus is on the expansion-bearing structures of the Republican period and the means by which consent was secured during the Principate.
• These emphases have replaced earlier approaches that sought to explain Roman expansion in terms of the motivations of political actors or institutional/cultural exceptionalism.
• Earlier approaches reflected ancient understandings of the rise of Rome.

Ancient Understandings of Roman Expansion

• Ancient explanations invoked Roman virtue, piety, civic institutions, and divine favor.
• Ennius: “Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque” (“The Roman state depends on ancient customs and on its men”).
  • This means that the Roman state depends on ancient customs and its manhood.
• This was understood in terms of the cumulative virtue of individual Romans, especially propertied classes.
• Augustus represented this tradition by filling the forum with images of great Romans who extended Roman power (imperium).
  • Each statue listed the individual's magistracies, priesthoods, and victories.
  • Alongside these were statues of Romulus, Aeneas, divine ancestors, Augustus' family, and Augustus himself.
• A monument in the forum Romanum listed all Romans who had held the consulship and those who had celebrated a triumph.
• The family tomb of the Scipiones included sarcophagi listing military achievements.
• Augustus proclaimed that the deeds of great Romans would be a model for his successors.
  • Young male aristocrats underwent rites of passage against the backdrop of these monuments.

The Relationship Between Romans and Their Gods

• The relationship between the Romans and their gods was collective.
  • Prodigies and omens were reported to the senate.
  • Senatorial priests devised rituals to ensure divine support.
  • Wars were declared according to rituals.
  • Generals consulted the heavens before war, made vows for success, and built temples to acknowledge divine help.
  • The triumph ceremony brought the city together to restore peaceful order and honor the general, army, and gods.
• Even in collective ceremonies, individuals asserted themselves.
  • Successful generals added names of defeated peoples/places to their own.
  • Republican Rome was filled with victory temples, often built by generals from their share of booty and decorated with art commemorating Roman triumphs.
  • Temples were maintained by aristocratic descendants.
  • Noble funerals featured actors portraying ancestors and speeches rehearsing military exploits.

Warfare and Fame

• Warfare was central to building fame and was the focus of epic poetry and Latin historiography.
• Fulvius Nobilio created a temple and sponsored a play about his victories.
• Individual achievements and the interests of the Roman people were intertwined.
• Failures were attributed to inadequate ritual preparation or moral failings.
• During the civil wars, some blamed military and civil disasters on declining moral standards and corruption.

Institutional Explanations for Roman Success

• Greek historian Polybius attributed Roman success to the comparative advantage of its institutions.
  • The Roman political system blended monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements.
  • Its military and religious institutions were superior to rivals.
  • Polybius' concepts derived from Aristotle and Plato but aligned with Roman ideas about virtue.
  • Political institutions were seen as means to establish ways of life in which humans reached their full potential.
  • Xenophon attributed Spartan success to its institutions, so Polybius linked the Roman constitution and Roman conduct.
• Roman leaders justified their wars to ensure divine favor and win support from popular assemblies.
• The notion that Romans had a general mandate to conquer and rule the world emerged in the last generation of the Republic.

Reasons for Warfare

• Ancient writers spent less time explaining why Romans fought so many wars because most ancient states were warlike and engaged in disputes.
• City-states fielded citizen armies, and military training was key to becoming a citizen.
• Tribal communities embraced a warrior ethos.
• The question was not why they fought, but why some were more successful.
• Thucydides dramatized this debate between Athenians and Melians: the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
• A Roman legend told how a Gallic chief exclaimed, ‘Vae victis!’ (‘Woe to the vanquished!’) when caught using false measures during the extraction of indemnities from the Romans.
• War was normal, and the Romans' success was what was special.

Modern Debate Over the Origins of Republican Imperialism

• Modern debate has taken a more complex path than ancient explanations.
• Based on the Roman notion of just wars and accounts of conflict origins, some argued that Rome expanded accidentally.
  • Similar to Sir John Robert Seeley's quip about the British Empire.
  • Romans practiced 'defensive imperialism,' responding only to external threats and finding themselves surprisingly in command.
  • Support was found in the slowness of Romans to convert victories into provinces or assume imperial responsibilities.
• This view has been refuted by the demonstration that Romans consistently displayed attitudes that supported warfare, celebrated victory, and rewarded successful generals.
• Institutions aligned with expansion included requiring defeated peoples to supply troops, the ritual of the triumph, and expanding citizenship.
• Warfare was not constant, but the Roman Republic was geared for war and dependent on it to satisfy the aristocracy and people.

Economic Activity

• This gearing naturally encompassed economic activity of various kinds.
• Rome had no independent mercantile class lobbying for annexation.
• Annexation reduced opportunities for profiteering (e.g., the slave trade).
• Provincials had some recourse to Roman justice.
• There were no ancient equivalents of chartered joint-stock companies.
• Corporations had little place in Roman law; the closest was short-lived societates for public contracts.
• The economic basis of pre-capitalist and capitalist imperialism was very different.

Benefits of Expansion

• Most sectors of Roman society benefited from expansion.
• Successful generals brought back booty, including spoils for gods, triumphal feasts, and games.
  • Citizen soldiers and allies also received shares of the booty.
• Defeat of Macedon in $168$ BCE was followed by the abandonment of direct taxation of Roman citizens in Italy.
• The sacks of Carthage and Corinth in $146$ BCE were followed by aqueduct building projects, and monuments were set up in Italian allied cities as well as in Rome.
• Army supply, revenue extraction, and expenditure in building projects relied on public contracts issued by censors in Rome.
• Contracts included construction of public basilicas, paved forums, and roads in Roman colonies and the city itself.
• Only citizens could take public contracts, and senators were forbidden to be principals, so behind the main contractors (publicani) there were senatorial backers.
• During that time, Polybius claimed that everyone in Rome was involved.
• Briefly, some contracts were very large and these bids and their five-yearly renewals did have political ramifications.

Provincial Populations and Corruption

• Provincial populations bore the brunt of Roman power, especially during the last century BCE.
• Wealthy Romans extracted cultural products (books, slaves, statues, craftsmen) from the Greek world through plunder and purchase.
• Caesar's campaigns in Gaul removed so much bullion that silver and gold coinages were effectively extinguished north of the Alps.
• Large sums of money were occasionally lent to provincials at extortionate interest rates (the governors would allow Roman soldiers to be used to recover debts).
• All this paid for grand villas, townhouses, and bribery.
• Verres, prosecuted by Cicero, said he needed to extract three fortunes from Sicily: one to repay his voters one to bribe his jurors, and one for himself.
• Cicero's speeches allude to other corruption trials, and laws were passed from $149$ BCE to recover embezzled money.
• Stories of violence and torture circulated, and the cruelty and greed of Roman officials and tax-farmers are a regular part of explanations offered in this period for revolts and anti-Roman movements.
• Tacitus wrote that that the provinces didn't mind the fall of the Republic because they suffered so much and had no faith in legal redress in Rome.

The Free Peasantry of Italy

• The free peasantry of Italy lost out in the process, with small holdings swallowed up by large estates worked by slaves.
• The absence of peasants on long campaigns and the enrichment of the generals are seen as contributory factors, but the scale and timing of these changes are disputed.
• Slaves never completely replaced free peasants, and few subscribe to the thesis that imperial expansion was driven by the demands of a ‘Slave Mode of Production’.

Institutions and Ideologies

• Rome in its expansionist phases had the institutions and ideologies that cohered with expansion.
• A full explanation would need to look at Rome’s rivals and assess differences in institutions and how they fitted with differences in success or policy objectives.
• Multi-state analysis, using political theory, has only just begun.
• Roman institutions and ideas were in constant flux and innovations seem to have been reactions to expansion, not preparations for it.
• Broadening access to citizenship came as a response to crises in Rome's relations with allies.
• The balance of power between magistrates and civil institutions shifted over time as generals served further and for longer periods.
• Romans developed territorial senses of provincia and imperium long after acquiring foreign possessions.
• The same time lag is evident in provincial taxation, the role of governor, and the shift from annual citizen levies to professional armies.
• Changes responded to expansion rather than being designed to facilitate it.

Causes of Fastest Expansion

• The period of fastest expansion was partly driven by the failure of annual campaigns to stabilize Roman hegemony.
• Victories were followed by the return and disbanding of Roman armies.
• No garrisons or administrations were left behind.
• A system of military commands emanating from a competitive political system meant that even with multiple armies and generals, cooperation was not guaranteed.
• Rome depended on embassies sent by allies, who were often rivals.
• Much of the 2nd century BCE history seems driven by competition in the periphery, and disruptions occur when that becomes engaged with factionalism in the centre.
• Intrinsic difficulties existed for any power controlling the Mediterranean world, like piracy and banditry.
• Strong economic and demographic ties existed between Mediterranean societies and mountainous hinterlands.
• It was impossible to control Aegean Turkey without influencing the Anatolian plateau as well.
• From the late 2nd century BCE onwards, Roman armies were repeatedly drawn into the hinterlands, requiring larger armies and greater coordination.
• Beginning with Marius and Sulla, a series of generals showed what one could achieve with large forces and the freedom to make war and peace as they saw fit.
• 'Peripheral imperialism' enabled Pompey to conquer and settle much of Anatolia, the southern Black Sea coast, and the Near East, and allowed Caesar to make similar conquests in the north-west.
• However, these large armies and generals could not be contained within the institutions of the city of Rome.
• The logic of these developments was the shift from Republic to monarchy.
• One of the emperor's first acts was to create an army bound to himself, paid for from tax income and a military treasury.
• The Roman Empire was a product of Roman imperialism.

Initial Success

• None of this explains Rome's initial success, considering it didn't depend on extraordinary institutions or virtue.
• One answer is to set it in the context of broader histories of political growth in the Mediterranean world.
• The size of political systems was increasing, and their number decreasing over the last millennium BCE, because of competition, growth, and communication advancement.
• The question is why Rome was one of the eventual winners.

Geopolitics and Change

• Geopolitics played a role.
• Rome benefitted from a central position first within Italy, and later within the Mediterranean basin.
• Rome's position on the margin of politically plural systems helped but Rome was on the edge of the Etruscan civilization and later on the edge of the Hellenistic kingdoms.
• Complexes of peer-polities often advance together, but sometimes tend to limit the rise of any one polity, through alliances of the others.
• Change or contingency played a part too.
• Roman schoolchildren debated what would have happened had Hannibal marched on Rome after Cannae and Greek writers wondered what if Alexander marched west.
• We might also wonder how close Rome came to defeat in the Mithradatic Wars, or in the third-century crisis.

The Tributary Empire

• If a conquest state is a polity dependent on constant expansion, a tributary empire is similarly invested in more sustainable and stable institutions.
• Its political economy is based on regular exactions which are largely redistributed to the military, to officials, and to those who occupy privileged positions in the hierarchy of power.
• The rulers of tributary empires seek to reduce their transaction costs, imposing the running costs of empire on local elites, tax farmers, and the like and they have few ambitions beyond retaining and passing on their power.
• Empires of this kind have been among the most stable political in world history, often enduring for centuries.
• They are characterized by universalizing ideologies, and their rulers actively suppress signs of change and information about opposition.
• Rome extracted no revenue from its military supremacy until after it dominated the whole of the Italian peninsula.
• Campaigns paid for themselves, and the defeated contributed levies to future campaigns.
• Hellenistic kingdoms, successor states to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, had complex taxation systems.
• Once Rome extended its power overseas that power encountered and incorporated some of these systems and Rome also started to need/desire greater revenues.
• One of the first fiscal systems taken over by Rome was a tithe levied on the cities of the kingdom of Syracuse by King Hiero II.
• After the second Punic war, the system (the Lex Hieronica) was extended to the whole island province, and its revenues redirected to Rome.
• That same war brought Rome control of much of Mediterranean Spain, including silver mines near Cartagena.
• That conquest, and a need to provision Roman armies based for long periods in Spain, led in the second century to a regular levy on subject communities, the first provincial tax system devised by Rome.
• When the kingdom of Pergamum was acquired in $133$ BCE the royal tax system was incorporated in the same way as the Syracusan one had been.
• The administration of Roman Egypt owed much to Ptolemaic precedents, which in turn drew on a deep sedimentation of Persian and Pharaonic systems.
• Probably there were other similar examples that are less well documented.
• The transition from conquest state to tributary empire was not sudden.
• Roman armies of conquest never stopped extracting booty.
• The Romans' initial response to the defeats of Carthage and Macedon was to impose indemnities to be paid in annual installments over long but not indefinite periods.
• Only when those states were abolished was more regular taxation substituted.
• The tributary empire grew up within the body of a conquest state.
• The reign of Augustus, was when provincial censuses were conducted and permanent tax obligations were fixed.
• Ordering the empire was linked to the creation of a new universalizing ideology of power. It was expressed in poetry and public monuments.
• By 14 CE, most of the empire was subject to taxation, while Italy and a few privileged cities enjoyed exemptions from the land tax.
• Local civic elites collected most of the land tax and this was overseen by imperial ex-slaves and junior aristocrats named procurators. They managed the emperors’ own extensive provincial possessions, and helped supply the army.
• Soldiers assisted the procurators where necessary by escorting tax grain and bullion.
• There were also indirect taxes, for example on freeing slaves and on sales, many of them still managed by tax farmers.
• There were internal tariffs on trade between groups of provinces.
• Over time tax-farmers seem to have been replaced by officials but it was a slow and patchy process, more a sign of a shift in imperial attitudes to government than of any global reorganisation.
• The whole system was coordinated within the emperor’s own household.

Continuing Conquest and Ideology

• If the main lines of a tributary empire had emerged during the penultimate decade of the last millennium BCE with the first great provincial censuses, Rome continued to behave in some ways as a conquest state for some time longer.
• Augustus followed up this reorganization with a long series of campaigns in temperate Europe that consolidated Roman control of Caesar’s conquests and the Balkans and advanced armies up to and temporarily beyond the Rhine and the Danube.
• A series of defeats, culminating in a major disaster in $9$ CE, slowed expansion.
• But there were further wars in Germany under his successor Tiberius and on the English Channel under Gaius, and under Claudius Britain was invaded.
• Later in the first century CE there were campaigns in south-west Germany as well as in Britain, before Trajan’s spectacular wars in metal-rich Dacia in the early second century on the basis of which he created the greatest of the imperial forums in Rome, equipped with libraries, monumental statues, and the column that bears his name.
• Even if Rome’s political economy was no longer geared to war, Roman public ideology could not dispense with the connection between virtue and warfare.
• All emperors were represented on statues, coinage, and on monuments in military dress, all tried to maintain a close relation with the troops, and serious instability occurred only (in the third century) when emperors seemed no longer able to be effective war leaders.
• Another reason was that in many areas there was no obvious natural frontier and expeditions in Britain and Germany were seem to have been designed to find limits that might be more cheaply and efficiently controlled.
• Yet the empire barely expanded beyond its Augustan limits indicates that on some level emperors understood that they had more to lose than gain by reckless and expensive campaigning.
  • Tiberius understood the bottom line when he told one governor that he wanted his sheep shorn, not flayed.

Early Imperial Tax Systems

• Much remains unclear about early imperial tax systems.
• Taxes might be levied in cash or kind, and although kind presumably mostly meant agricultural produce examples are known of levies of other materials such as hides.
• But it is difficult to estimate the scale of monetized taxation.
• There was certainly wise variation in taxes and in mechanisms for their extraction with wherever we can see local arrangements in detail that are peculiar to that province or region.
• Everywhere the burden fell disproportionately on the poor and on those who were not Roman citizens.
• Evidently the emperors had no interest in creating empire-wide systems, standards, or even tax rates.
• To the end of the third century CE, the tax system was really an agglomeration of local systems designed in different periods according to different principles, subsequently emended and supplemented, and run in a range of traditional ways.
• A number of inscriptions which stated exactly which taxes were current show that the system confused contemporaries as much as it does us.
• Even if the emperors were not interested in rationalising systems there were nevertheless some consistencies in the kind of order they created through this mixture of violence and institutional bricolage.

Methods of Control

• They enlisted the help in all parts of their empire of the local ruling classes.
• Tribal chiefs in Gaul and Palestine, the priests of Egyptian temples, the wealthier members of Greek cities, kings in the Alps, the Atlas, and Anatolia, all were brought into a great coalition of interest, and tied through marriage, ceremony, and honors to the rulers of Rome.
• This pattern is familiar from other imperial systems.
• This was a key difference from the Republican empire, which first in Italy and then around the Mediterranean had failed to include local rulers among the beneficiaries of empire.

Control and its Limits

• The Roman Empire at its peak contained around 60 million people, perhaps 20 per cent of the global population.
• The army never exceeded 500,000 men and was usually much smaller.
• It is evident that control could not depend on coercion alone.
• It is widely agreed that it served the propertied classes of societies within it (the empire was stabilized by that fact).
• Not only were they partners in extracting revenue, many enjoyed the status of citizens, and by the second century the ‘better sort of people’ (termed honestiores) enjoyed privileged legal status too, being treated better than others in investigations and, if found guilty, in terms of penalty.
• Many found it easy to participate in the governance of the empire, becoming auxiliary commanders, members of the equestrian order, and even members of the senate.
• A few enjoyed the friendship and patronage of prominent Romans and even the emperor.
• Interest was converted, at least among some of them, into a sense of membership and adherence to the imperial order. When dynasties collapsed new ones were put into place by alliances of courtiers, senators, and soldiers, all of whom had vested interests in the status quo.
• Beyond the wealthy it is difficult to gauge allegiances or opinion.
• Ceremony, ideology, monumentality, and governmentality together formed willing subjects in many places.
• Urban populations, especially those of Italy, are those about which we know the most, but in those locations at least there are no real signs of disaffection.
• Urban populations, and not just their rulers, participated with enthusiasm in ruler cults of all sorts.
• A set of empire-wide cultural practices, styles, and habits became routine.
• How often participation in this was experienced consciously as political adherence is very difficult to say.

Episodes of Unrest

• The alternative is to concentrate on episodes of unrest.
• Relatively few are well documented, and although this probably partly reflects deliberate under-reporting, those that are mentioned occurred in broadly similar circumstances.
• A number of conflicts took place in the generation immediately after conquest, and seem to have been fuelled in part by the social convulsions and transformations that affected many societies.
• Areas close to the edge of the empire, whether the northern frontier or the Romano-Parthian borderlands, were more likely to experience revolts than other regions.
• Revolts were more common in time of Roman civil war.
• Mountainous areas were more difficult to control than plains or coasts.
• Attempts to link these outbreaks of opposition to cultural differences have not convinced many.
• A number of local disturbances seem to have had mainly local roots.
• Few were serious and the main threats to the authority of emperors came either from their intimate circle (from which assassinations emerged) or from armies led by their rivals.
• There were surprisingly few military revolts of that kind before the early third century CE.
• In all these respects Roman imperialism seems very like that of other early empires.