CONCLUSION
PEACE AND WAR
The Romans were aggressive. Under the Republic they fought war after war, which over time allowed them to dominate an ever wider area. During concerted campaigning under Augustus and periodic wars of conquest under succeeding emperors, this process culminated in the creation of an empire encompassing by far the greater part of the known world. People after people and state after state suffered military defeat or accepted Roman domination because they realised that they could not match Rome’s might.
There was no concerted, systematic plan to create this empire, which took centuries, but nor were the Romans secretive about what they were doing. Warfare played a central role in public life, and victories were celebrated with praise, public thanksgiving and permanent monuments. Wars provide one of the central themes of every history written by Romans or Greeks about Rome. On the whole, the Romans were able to persuade themselves that almost all of the wars they fought were just – near-continuous victory offered them proof of their special relationship with the gods.
This was a society comfortable with the idea of ‘pacifying’ peoples in distant lands and which did not accept any other state as an equal. It was important to act justly and with fides, because this was the correct thing to do and maintained a proper relationship with the gods, not because others had rights. The views of outsiders mattered only to the extent that they made it easier or more difficult for the Romans to achieve their objectives. This was a world without international law or any sense of an international community watching and judging. The Romans’ attitude to atrocity was just as pragmatic as their attitude to the opinions of other leaders and states. Mass enslavement, execution or mutilation – Caesar had the hands cut off warriors who surrendered to him in 51 BC – and the devastation of lands and settlements were acceptable if they helped to achieve victory. Mercy and generosity to those who submitted were equally appropriate if they achieved the same end. Brutal force and willingness to negotiate went hand in hand in every war against a foreign enemy – ‘spare the conquered and overcome the proud in war’. What mattered was winning.1
The Romans were very good at winning wars, and whatever else we say about them we cannot doubt this basic truth. Their empire was created and then maintained by the frequent use and ever-present threat of military force. The circumstances in which each community became part of the empire varied, and these helped to determine the details of their relationship with Rome, but all were expected to give something to the Romans, whether they had been beaten into submission by the legions or had submitted to Roman power without fighting. Just as they admitted their willingness to wage war and ‘overcome the proud’, the Romans were equally open in their admission that they exploited and profited from their empire. Reluctance to undertake further conquests was justified on the basis that the costs would outbalance profits, rather than any thought that expansion in itself might be wrong.
For all the talk of pacification, the Romans did not pretend that they carved out their empire for any reason other than to benefit Rome. Roman strength and dominance were good things in their own right, which gave them greater security and made them richer. Provinces and allies were not acquired for their own good, but for the good of Rome. Once they were established, then it was in Rome’s interest to maintain them in order to preserve both her prestige and her profits. This meant dealing with rebellion, curbing civil war or other inter-communal violence within the province, and securing it from outside attack. These requirements were in origin self-serving, but in the longer term led to the development of the Pax Romana.
I hope that the preceding chapters have shown that the Roman Peace was a reality. The Romans did not conquer their empire to create it, nor was it instant, and instead it grew slowly. Under the Principate, and certainly by the later first century AD, the greater part of Rome’s empire was very lightly garrisoned and the prospect of rebellion was remote or non-existent. Considerable resources were devoted to maintaining Roman dominance in the frontier areas, making successful attacks on the rest of the empire very rare. The Pax Romana was not perfect, and it took far longer for the risk of revolt to die away in some areas than in others. The risk of banditry never wholly vanished. In some parts of the provinces, usually in mountainous or other inaccessible country, it was always a problem, often necessitating a permanent military presence. Elsewhere it existed on the fringes of society and rapidly increased in scale whenever local, provincial and imperial authorities grew weak. Yet most of the time, over most of the empire, it was kept under control – a fact of life, but not a constant and serious danger to most of the population.
Qualifying the completeness of the Pax Romana should not make us forget just what a remarkable achievement it was. There is no doubt that the areas under Roman rule experienced considerably less war and organised violence during this period than they did in the centuries before or since. Peace was not absolute, but the era of the Principate was more peaceful, which meant that it was more stable. Prosperity was more widespread, even if it did not reach everyone, and goods, people and ideas were able to travel further and more often than ever before, which in itself is one of the greatest proofs of the success of the Pax Romana. This was the world created by the Roman Empire, even if its creation was a consequence rather than a cause of Roman imperialism. Just as the Romans saw it, it was the peace brought by military victory and strength, something achieved by prolonged, large-scale violence that was costly to the Romans and even more costly to the victims of Roman warfare.
The savagery inherent in Rome’s rise, which was also required to maintain her dominance of the world and her prolonged exploitation of the provinces, is difficult for many to reconcile with the stable and secure Pax Romana. The author of one study of Roman Britain suggested that from AD 43 to AD 84, the Roman invaders killed somewhere between 100,000 to 250,000 people from a population of perhaps 2,000,000. Like almost all numbers for this period, these are highly conjectural and impossible to prove or disprove. One reviewer commented that, if right, this represented less than ‘one-third of one per cent’ per annum, and wondered ‘how many Britons died annually in the intertribal warfare that preceded the Roman invasion?’ apart from the ones who did fall victim to Boudicca’s rebels in AD 60. In a reply written in a subsequent book, the original author criticised the reviewer for trying ‘to deflect criticism of Rome by implying that things might have been just as violent or bad if the Romans had never come to Britain’.2
There is something to be said for both sides of the argument. While there is little point in plucking a number out of the air, it is safe to say that during the Roman conquest of Britain a considerable number of human beings on the island were killed or wounded, while others were enslaved or mistreated. The flogging of Boudicca and the rape of her daughters was surely not the only instance of such abuse, although it is also worth noting that Tacitus did not consider these acts as justified and blamed them on the misconduct of the procurator and his staff. Yet they happened, and the arrival of foreign soldiers and officials and the power they held over the tribes inevitably created opportunities for abuse and cruelty quite apart from any punishment or reprisals sanctioned by the authorities. The Roman conquest of Britain, like Rome’s conquests elsewhere, involved considerable use of violence and intimidation. Some leaders and communities welcomed the invaders and suffered little or no harm, but for many the experience can only have been awful.
On the other hand it is equally clear that, in Britain as in the wider world, the period before the Romans arrived was not peaceful. Intertribal warfare was common and people were killed, enslaved, injured and mistreated in these conflicts. This does not in any way exonerate the Romans from their own acts of violence and cruelty, but it does put them into context. Rome was uniquely successful at war-making and empire-building, but other contemporary states and peoples time and again proved themselves every bit as aggressive and savage. It is possible that the Romans’ highly organised, large-sca
le and determined war-making inflicted significantly greater violence on its victims than past conflicts, but this is not at all certain. It is true that, in Britain and elsewhere, the consequence of Roman conquest was ultimately the eradication of intertribal warfare. Once again it is worth repeating that there is no evidence for any rebellion or serious disturbance in lowland Britain after Boudicca. The Pax Romana was established, and communities and tribes lived in peace, no longer raiding and head-hunting. While it is impossible to know what would have happened if the Romans had not invaded, nothing suggests that this peace and stability was inevitable and would have emerged anyway. The probability is that wars between the tribes would have continued.
One of the main themes of this book has been the active role played in events by the leaders of the peoples with whom the Romans came into contact. From the earliest periods, when some chose to fight against Rome there were as many who instead allied with the Romans. Sometimes this was a recognition of Rome’s overwhelming might, and sometimes they hoped to exploit this strength for their own benefit. These men – and occasionally women – were every bit as capable of showing ambition, skill, ruthlessness, treachery, selfishness, greed, competitiveness, cynicism, fear and courage as the Romans. One of the greatest mistakes we can make is to assume that such leaders acted primarily because their instincts were pro- or anti-Roman. Instead the presence of Rome as more or less distant neighbour or as an occupying power was just one of the many factors determining their behaviour. Often Rome could not be ignored, but even then local rivalries were of more direct concern. Roman rule simply changed the way these contests were conducted.
The Pax Romana came after conquest and was imposed whether or not the populations of the provinces wanted it. In the longer run, rebellions against Roman rule ceased. Fear of the terrible reprisals inflicted on rebels was one reason for this, but the absence of native revolts during the civil wars and chaos of the third century AD suggests that it eventually ceased to be the main factor. For most provincials, and especially the local aristocracies, the loss of independence and exploitation by the imperial authorities were tolerable. Over time Roman rule became normal, and any alternative either unrealistic or unappealing. This does not mean that some people did not suffer great hardships under Roman rule, but no doubt some also lived lives of miserable hardship before the Romans arrived, which again does not excuse the Romans. Yet we should not assume that being exploited by foreigners was automatically worse than being exploited by a local elite.
There is a risk, when we look back on the Roman Empire and stress the primitiveness of this society and economy in comparison with our own day and age and the harshness of life in this era, that we forget to adopt a similar approach when considering the other peoples and cultures of the ancient world. Even more importantly, we must never forget that the experience of the Western world in the post-war era is untypical in almost every way of wider human history. It should not surprise us that the Romans differed in many ways from us. Many things we take for granted are actually fairly recent innovations – from permanent diplomatic contacts between states, to detailed maps, newspapers and the media or ideas of international law, which remains very difficult to enforce.
At the start I wrote that I did not intend this book to give lessons for the modern world based on the Roman experience, and my view has not changed. It would be foolish to advise policy-makers to do things in a certain way because the Romans found that it worked. The combination of military and civil power in the person of a Roman provincial governor offered a clarity of purpose and implementation in marked contrast to the confused and conflicting command structures seen recently in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the armed forces and numerous civilian agencies worked in parallel, all in direct, real-time communication with their governments. Yet it is impossible to imagine any modern democracy entrusting so much authority to one person, let alone to a military commander. More obviously, Roman pragmatism about the use of atrocity to achieve an end could not – and obviously should not – be contemplated. It should have been obvious from the start that the vast majority of people and leaders in these and other countries were not fundamentally pro- or anti-Western or American, but far more caught up with local politics, friendships and rivalries. There again, the Romans never attempted to invade a country with the intention of establishing a functioning democracy and then withdrawing. The Romans tended to stay, which in the end meant that most of the population had to make an accommodation with them.
The Romans were very successful at winning wars and absorbing others to create their large and long-lived empire. Yet a closer look at the processes involved shows that all of this took a long time. Along the way the Romans suffered defeats, lost interest in some regions for a while, were inconsistent in their treatment of allies and enemies alike, and made plenty of mistakes. All this occurred when the agents of the Republic and Principate behaved in the way they were supposed to, even before we allow for the incompetence, cruelty and greed of some of the men on the spot. Foreign interventions then as now were often messy and confused. It was rare for Roman conquest to take less than a generation, and quite often several passed before an area was secure.
Our world is very different from the Roman era, for which we should be grateful. In the ancient world warfare was frequent and it took the domination of an empire like Rome to establish peace over such a wide area. Whatever we think of empires in general and the Romans in particular, this was a remarkable achievement and one deserving admiration, whether or not it balances distaste for the savagery of Roman conquest. In the ancient world peace and stability were not the natural and inevitable condition of states left to their own devices. If the situation in the twenty-first century has improved, peace remains elusive over much of the globe, and is not something that simply happens on its own. This is most certainly not a call for a new Roman Empire, and is instead a reminder that so precious a thing as peace must be worked for.
CHRONOLOGY
753 BC Traditional date for foundation of Rome by Romulus.
509 Traditional date for expulsion of Rome’s last king and creation of Republic. First treaty with Carthage.
496 The Romans defeat the Latin League at the Battle of Lake Regillus.
396 Capture of Veii; the Romans introduce pay for their army.
390 Rome sacked by Gauls.
340–338 League of Latin cities rebels against Rome and is defeated.
296 Romans defeat alliance of Samnites, Etruscans and Gauls at Sentinum.
280–275 War against King Pyrrhus of Epirus.
264–241 First Punic War.
225 Invading Gallic army defeated at Telamon.
218–201 Second Punic War.
214–205 First Macedonian War.
200–196 Second Macedonian War.
192–189 The Syrian War against the Seleucid King Antiochus III.
189 Manlius Vulso attacks the Galatians.
172–167 Third Macedonian War.
151–150 Sulpicius Galba governs Further Spain and massacres Lusitanians.
149–146 Third Punic War.
149–147 Fourth Macedonian War.
147–139 Career of Viriathus.
146 Destruction of Carthage and sack of Corinth.
135–132 Major slave rebellion in Sicily.
133 Fall of Numantia in Spain.
118 Colony founded at Narbo in Transalpine Gaul.
113 Romans come to assistance of king of Noricum and are defeated by Cimbri and Teutones.
112–106 War against King Jugurtha of Numidia.
105 Cimbri and Teutones destroy a large Roman army at Arausio.
102–101 Marius defeats Cimbri and Teutones.
91–88 The Social War, the last great rebellion by Rome’s Italian allies.
88 Sulla marches his legions on Rome. Mithridates orders massacre of Romans in Asia.
88–85 First Mithridatic War.
83–82 Civil War won by Sulla.
83–82 Seco
nd Mithridatic War.
74–66 Third Mithridatic War.
74 Cicero quaestor in Sicily.
73–71 Verres governs Sicily.
73–70 Spartacus’ rebellion.
67 Pompey given extraordinary command against the pirates.
66–63 Pompey defeats Mithridates, who commits suicide.
c.61 Ariovistus and the Sequani defeat the Aedui.
59 Ariovistus recognised as king and friend of the Roman people.
58–50 Caesar’s Gallic campaigns.
58 Caesar defeats the Helvetii, and confronts and defeats Ariovistus.
53 Crassus defeated and killed by Parthians under Surenas at Carrhae.
52 Major Gallic rebellion led by Vercingetorix.
51–50 Cicero governs Cilicia as proconsul.
49–45 Civil War between Caesar and Pompey.
44 Caesar assassinated by conspiracy led by Brutus and Cassius.
44–31 Repeated Civil Wars, first between Caesar’s supporters and the conspirators, and then between Antony and Octavian.
41–40 Parthians invade Syria and overrun neighbouring provinces.
38 Parthians expelled from Roman provinces.
36 Mark Antony invades Armenia and is forced into a very costly retreat by the Parthians.
31 Antony defeated by Octavian in naval battle at Actium. Octavian (soon to be given the name Augustus) becomes effectively the sole ruler of the Roman Empire.
27–AD 14 Principate of Augustus.
16–15 Conquest of the Alpine tribes.
12–7 Conquest of Pannonia and Germany.
4 Death of Herod the Great. Varus leads army into Judaea to deal with disturbances.
AD 6 Romans attack Maroboduus, but withdraw when news arrives of trouble in the Balkans.
6–9 Major revolt in Pannonia.
9 Major revolt in Germany. Varus and Legiones XVII, XVIII and XIX ambushed and massacred in the Teutoberg Wald.
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