Day of Empire

by Amy Chua

  Thus, if Alexander harbored hopes for the eventual “unity of mankind,” as some have suggested, he did not let these hopes get in the way of his overriding ambition. As Peter Green writes, Alexander's “all-absorbing obsession” was “war and conquest. It is idle … to pretend that he dreamed, in some mysterious fashion, of wading through rivers of blood and violence to achieve the Brotherhood of Man by raping an entire continent. He spent his life, with legendary success, in the pursuit of personal glory.” The fact remains that in his achievement of glory, tolerance played an indispensable role.

  By 324 BC, world dominance had passed from the Persians to the Greeks. Alexander was, and remains, the ruler of the largest empire in Greek or Macedonian history. Indeed, he was arguably “the richest and most powerful man in the history of the world up to that point in time.” He held court on a throne of pure gold, and his retinue included five hundred Persian “Apple Bearer” guards clad in purple and yellow; a thousand bowmen wearing mantles of crimson and dark blue; and five hundred “Silver Shields,” elite Greek infantry warriors.50

  With Alexander's conquests, the Greek language and Greek literature, art, architecture, and philosophy spread across the Mediterranean, across the continents—and ultimately across the centuries. At the same time, in the city-states Alexander established from Egypt to India, “barbarian” ideas were translated into Greek and absorbed into the empire, creating a cultural hybrid—known as Hellenism—that would profoundly influence Christianity and the Western world. For all his military feats, Alexander's greatest legacy was a degree of transcontinental cultural unity that the Persian kings never achieved.

  But political unity of the region died with Alexander. Before he could conquer his next targets—Arabia, the western Mediterranean, and Europe—Alexander, at the age of just thirty-two, succumbed to a mysterious fatal fever. Alexander's empire immediately fragmented into warring kingdoms torn by internal rebellions. Tellingly, after his death, all but one of Alexander's co-bridegrooms from Susa divorced their Persian wives.51 Reunification would have to await the coming of Rome.

  TWO

  Gladiators, Togas, and Imperial “Glue”

  [Rome] alone received the conquered to her bosom and cherished the human race with a common name, in the fashion of a mother, not of an empress; and she called “citizens” those whom she subdued and bound with her far-reaching and pious embrace. To her pacifying customs we owe everything:…that we are all of us one race.

  — CLAUDIAN, FOURTH-CENTURY POET

  They are all right, they no longer wear trousers.

  — EMPEROR CLAUDIUS, CIRCA AD 48,

  REFERRING

  TO THE CONQUERED GAULS

  If there is an iconic empire in the West, it is Rome. Territorially, it fell just short of the Achaemenid Empire. But the Roman hyperpower outshone its predecessor in virtually every other way. Whereas Achaemenid Persia was essentially just a war machine, Rome was also an idea.1 Inhabitants from the farthest reaches of the empire wanted to be—and became—“Roman.” Along the empire's remarkable 53,000-mile network of paved roads and bridges that linked Britons to Berbers, one could find thousands of Roman baths, amphitheaters, and temples, built roughly to the same specifications and filled with toga-clad Roman citizens. Two languages, Greek and Latin, sufficed to allow communication among hundreds of thousands of merchants, legionnaires, and imperial officials throughout the orbis terrarum, or “the world,” as the Roman Empire was known to its inhabitants.

  At its height, the Roman Empire counted perhaps 60 million inhabitants within its borders. The empire was so vast that Romans liked to believe that it stretched to the limits of the inhabitable world. Terminus, the god of boundaries, had supposedly been absent at Rome's birth.2

  According to the historian Anthony Pagden, the Romans consciously “aimed at world domination.” As early as 75 BC, the republic struck coins “with images of a sceptre, a globe, a wreath, and a rudder”—symbols of Rome's hegemony over all the world. The empire's global reach was evident even to the average citizen, who saw lions from Syria, bulls from Greece, leopards from Tunisia, and bears from England all compete against gladiators in the empire's great amphitheaters such as the Colosseum in Rome, which packed in nearly 50,000 people for regular events. In the words of Seneca, playwright and philosopher of the first century, “[Romans] measure the boundaries of our nation by the sun.” In the mid-second century, the emperor Antoninus Pius took the title Dominus Totius Orbis—Lord of All the World.3

  More than just an immense military power, Rome represented a new pinnacle of Western civilization, achieving heights in science, literature, and the arts that would not be surpassed for more than a thousand years. In addition to classical poets and philosophers such as Virgil and Seneca, Roman civilization produced Galen, doctor to the gladiators, whose medical textbooks were widely used in Europe until the fifteenth century, and the astronomer Ptolemy. Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, wrote Natural History, one of the world's first encyclopedias, and the ten books by the Roman architect Vitruvius inspired the builders of the Italian Renaissance more than a millennium after their author died. Rome also set new global standards of representative government. In the year AD 212, Emperor Cara-calla extended citizenship to every freeborn male inhabitant of the Roman Empire. This mass enfranchisement catapulted Rome far beyond Greece or any other ancient civilization in terms of individual participation in the political process.

  The “glory of Rome” spanned more than two millennia, from the city's fabled founding by Romulus in 753 BC to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in AD 1453. Rome's rulers are among the most famous in history, whether for their conquests or cruelty. The names of Julius and Augustus Caesar give us two of the months of the calendar; the name of Caligula is practically synonymous with despotism and depravity. But most historians agree that the High Empire, from AD 70-192, represented the apogee of Roman civilization.

  The High Empire roughly tracks the reign of four successive emperors: Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aureli us, each of whom followed the Roman practice of adopting a son whom they molded into the next emperor. During this period, the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace, prevailed, and Roman provinces from southern Scotland to the agricultural towns of West Africa actively traded with each other. The nineteenth-century German historian Theodor Mommsen captured the essence of the period, writing, “Seldom has the government of the world been conducted for so long a term in an orderly sequence.”4

  This chapter will not even remotely try to offer a history of the Roman Empire. Instead, focusing on its second-century golden age, I will explore the way in which tolerance enabled Rome to pull away from its rivals on a global scale and grow into the hy-perpower of its time. I will also highlight the factors underlying the Roman Empire's extraordinary staying power—a subject of special relevance for the United States, which has been a global hegemon for less than two decades.

  COSMOPOLITAN ROME: “THE SINGLE NATIVE LAND

  OF ALL THE PEOPLES IN THE WORLD”

  Like Achaemenid Persia, imperial Rome incorporated conquered nations by making them “provinces” of the Roman Empire. During the High Empire, there were roughly forty such provinces. Also like the Achaemenids, the Romans marshaled the services of local elites to help rule their vast empire. They kept local governments largely intact, allowing them to continue ruling the day-to-day life of their subjects.

  But unlike in Achaemenid Persia or perhaps any other ancient empire, there was no ceiling on the power that elites from the provinces could achieve in the Roman Empire. Whereas all the Achaemenid Persian kings and virtually all of its governors were Persians, not so in Rome. Rome's highest power holders— all the way up to emperor himself—came from every corner of the empire. As the historian Cornelius Tacitus wrote, “Emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome.” The emperor Trajan, who ruled from AD 98 to 117, was born in Spain. His top advisory included a Greek, a Moor, and G
aius Julius Alexander Bereni-cianus, a descendant of the Israelite king Herod the Great.

  Trajan, whose mother was Spanish, was the first Roman emperor to come from a province, and his rise announced that the empire's highest offices were now “open to all educated men, regardless of race and nationality.” Trajan's successor, Hadrian, also hailed from Spain, and Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, descended from a family of Gallic origin. The father of the next emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was Andalusian, and Septimius Severus, who ruled from AD 193 to 211, was an African with a Syrian wife. People of all colors, backgrounds, and cultural traditions coexisted in the “Eternal City” of Rome.

  The provinces produced Roman elites in every walk of life. The playwright and poet Seneca was Spanish. Tacitus was probably from Gaul. Fronto, the orator and tutor of Marcus Aurelius, was an African. During the height of the empire, “Roman” was a cultural identity that allowed citizens—even those, in Cicero's words, from “savage and barbarous nations”—to participate in the political process and share in the power and prestige of the empire.5

  In adopting this tolerant outlook, Rome learned from the history of ancient Greece, where bigotry and ethnic division often caused resentment that led to war. The logic of Roman toleration was best explained by Emperor Claudius, who argued in a speech to the Roman Senate in AD 48 that the recently defeated tribes of Gaul should be allowed to stand for public office. Speaking to the Senate, Claudius reflected:

  What else was the downfall of Sparta and Athens, than that they held the conquered in contempt as foreigners? But our founder Romulus’ wisdom made him on several occasions both fight against and naturalize a people on the same day! We have had strangers as kings; granting high offices on sons of freedmen is not a rarity, as is commonly and mistakenly thought, but rather a commonplace in the old Roman state…And yet, if you examine the whole of our wars, none was finished in a shorter time than that against the Gauls; from then on there has been continuous and loyal peace. Now that customs, culture, and marriage ties have blended them with us, let them also bring their gold and riches instead of holding them apart.

  The Senate was convinced. Thereafter, as Edward Gibbon put it, “the grandsons of the Gauls, who had besieged Julius Caesar in Alesia, commanded legions, governed provinces, and were admitted into the senate of Rome. Their ambition, instead of disturbing the tranquility of the State, was intimately connected with its safety and greatness.”

  The Roman Empire set a new standard for toleration. As the U.S. Supreme Court justice James Wilson, one of the drafters of the Constitution, observed in 1790, “It might be said, not that the Romans extended themselves over the whole globe, but that the inhabitants of the globe poured themselves upon the Romans.” For Wilson, Rome's strategie tolerance was plainly “the most secure method of enlarging an empire.”6

  Of course, there were limits to Rome's famed toleration and inclusion. Women were almost entirely excluded from public life; they were not allowed to vote, hold office, or wear the toga. Moreover, even when citizenship was extended to nearly every freeborn male in the empire, only a tiny fraction of the population qualified as citizens. Slaves were far more numerous, often condemned to labor in the fields to feed the great Roman cities.

  The avenues to slavery were many. Among those who found themselves being auctioned off were prisoners of war, wives and children of prisoners of war, victims of pirates and kidnappers, children of slaves, children whose parents had sold them into slavery, men seized for debt by tax collectors, and even free adults who put themselves up for sale. The plight of slaves varied as well. Some were purchased to herd cattle. Others performed sexual services. Still others worked in households, where they were carefully trained and taught Latin. The unluckiest of the lot were sent to the gladiator games—and not as spectators. Along with common criminals, thousands of slaves were shredded by wild beasts as roaring crowds watched with glee. “So many victims were tied to stakes and then cut open that doctors used to attend the games in order to study anatomy.” Men and women alike were beaten, skewered, flogged, and gutted. Children were strung up by their feet while hyenas were unleashed upon them.

  Still, it would be wrong to suggest that the benefits of the Roman Empire never extended beyond the base of Roman citizens. As long as subjects paid their taxes, which were relatively light, Rome essentially left local communities with their local customs alone. Imperial subjects from Britain to Mesopotamia benefited from the Pax Romana and the spread of Roman law, which brought order and stability on a scale never before seen.7

  HOW TO GROW AN EMPIRE

  According to the Roman myth, the twin brothers Romulus and Remus founded Rome in 753 BC on the site near the Tiber River where they had been found in a basket and suckled by a she-wolf. Romulus was apparently a little defensive; he supposedly killed Remus for joking that the city walls Romulus had built were too short. Nevertheless, Rome became known for its generosity, particularly toward refugees from all across Italy. According to historical legend, the early Romans agreed to incorporate the neighboring Sabines into the city in order to avoid a conflict over Roman abduction of Sabine women. The orator Cicero wrote in 56 BC, “What is most responsible for the establishment of the Roman Empire and the fame of the Roman people is that Romulus, the founder of the city, instructed us by his treaty with the Sabines that the state should be increased even by the admission of enemies to the Roman citizenship. Our ancestors through his authority and example never ceased to grant and bestow the citizenship.”

  Over the following centuries, the Romans adopted similar tactics to incorporate other Italian tribes such as the Etruscans and the Umbrians under the umbrella of Rome. Rather than pillaging or looting the cities of defeated foes, Rome offered them treaties of peace that were rarely refused. In most cases, the basic terms of these treaties were simple. The conquered cities could continue to be ruled by their own leaders under their own laws, with two conditions. First, each could trade freely with Rome but not with each other; in this way, the smaller city-states quickly became economically dependent on Rome. Second, each was required to provide Rome with troops.8

  These alliances helped Rome grow dramatically in military and economic strength. By 275 BC, Rome had become the largest state in Europe, covering 50,000 square miles from the Rubicon in northern Italy to the Straits of Messina off Italy's southern coast. A decade later, Rome began consolidating its control of the entire western Mediterranean. The Punic Wars, which lasted more than a century, resulted in Rome's conquest of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The wars culminated with Rome's defeat of Hannibal's legendary elephant corps at Zama in modern Tunisia in 202 BC.

  The Punic Wars demonstrated the success of Rome's strategic tolerance. Hannibal's military strategy was based on the belief that after several Carthaginian victories, Rome's Italian allies would rush to defect. To Hannibal's surprise, however, despite a number of hard-fought battles, every one of Rome's alliances held firm and Rome prevailed.

  Of course, Rome was also prepared to deal brutally with enemy cities that would not yield. For example, with Carthage itself, Cato famously declared, “Carthage must be destroyed.” Three years after the Third Punic War began in 149 BC, the city of Carthage was razed, most of its population slaughtered, and Carthage's territory annexed as a new Roman province.9

  The conquest of Carthage marked a significant shift in Roman policy that would permanently change the direction of the empire. For most of its early expansion, Rome refrained from direct annexations. Instead, the early Roman emperors expanded the empire by establishing dependent states and spheres of influence and by using offensive armies to intimidate potential enemies. Thus, at the time of the Punic Wars, it would have been difficult to determine the exact borders of the Roman Empire with any precision.

  Around the first century AD, however, Roman strategy changed. Emperors like Augustus and Trajan led military campaigns to annex already conquered territories—from Wales to Armenia, from Switzerland to Jordan—gradua
lly bringing them all under Rome's direct rule. Rome's borders came to be clearly defined, usually tracking major waterways. Once the empire's boundaries were set, Rome's emperors poured enormous resources into building border fortifications like Hadrian's Wall in northern England. At the same time, they dramatically expanded the Roman network of paved roads, allowing imperial legions to move quickly when there were revolts to be suppressed or barbarian invaders to be repelled.

  Even under direct control, however, the Roman emperors interfered very little with the lives of their subjects, imposing virtually no major economic or social reforms. Indeed, one source describes the Roman Empire as “government without bureaucracy.” Certainly, it was undergoverned by comparison to the contemporaneous Han Chinese Empire, which, proportionately, employed a bureaucracy perhaps twenty times as large.

  From 150 BC to AD 70, Rome expanded at a startling pace, engulfing most of continental Europe, Asia Minor (now Turkey), and much of the Middle East, including Palestine, Syria, and Egypt. Throughout these military campaigns, Rome extended the right of citizenship to defeated elites while harshly punishing states that resisted Roman rule. Six centuries after its founding, Rome had grown from a tiny city-state to a global empire that surrounded the Mediterranean on all sides, turning the famed sea into a Roman lake.10

  THE GOLDEN AGE OF ROME

  Historians disagree about the exact timing of Rome's golden age or High Empire, but the general consensus is that it stretched roughly over the reign of four emperors, beginning with Trajan, who ruled from AD 98 to 117 and was known as the optimus princeps (best ruler) by later generations of Romans.” Charismatic, popular, and remarkably accessible for an emperor, Trajan is equally famous for his spectacular military conquests and the excellence of his governance. Under Trajan, the borders of the empire expanded all the way to the Persian Gulf; no other Roman commander ever marched so far. He apparently returned from conquered Dacia (now Romania) with millions of pounds of gold and silver—the last time Rome's treasury would reap large profits from a war.