Early Rome To 290 Bc

Guy Bradley examines the reasons for Rome's emergence and success within a highly competitive Italian environment, and how much it owed to its neighbours.

Guy Bradley examines the reasons for Rome's emergence and success within a highly competitive Italian environment, and how much it owed to its neighbours.

Nathan Rosenstein charts Rome's incredible journey and command of the Mediterranean over the course of the third and second centuries BC.

In 146 BC the armies of Rome destroyed Carthage and emerged as the decisive victors of the Third Punic War. The Carthaginian population was sold and its territory became the Roman province of Africa. In the same year and on the other side of the Mediterranean Roman troops sacked Corinth, the final blow in the defeat of the Achaean conspiracy: thereafter Greece was effectively administered by Rome. Rome was now supreme in Italy, the Balkans, Greece, Macedonia, Sicily, and North Africa, and its power and influence were advancing in all directions. However, not all was well. The unchecked seizure of huge tracts of land in Italy and its farming by vast numbers of newly imported slaves allowed an elite of usually absentee landlords to amass enormous and conspicuous fortunes. Insecurity and resentment fed the gulf between rich and poor in Rome and erupted in a series of violent upheavals in the politics and institutions of the Republic. These were exacerbated by slave revolts and invasions from the east.

The Roman empire during the period framed by the accession of Septimus Severus in 193 and the rise of Diocletian in 284 has conventionally been regarded as one of 'crisis'. Between 235 and 284, at least eighteen men held the throne of the empire, for an average of less than three years, a reckoning which does not take into account all the relatives and lieutenants with whom those men shared power. Compared to the century between the accession of Nerva and the death of Commodus, this appears to be a period of near unintelligibility. The middle of the century also witnessed catastrophic, if temporary, ruptures in the territorial integrity of the empire. At slightly different times, large portions of the eastern and western halves of the empire passed under the control of powers and principalities who assumed the mantle of Roman government and exercised meaningful and legitimate juridical, political and military power over millions. The success and longevity of those political formations reflected local responses to the collapse of Roman governmental power in the face of extraordinary pressure on its borders. Even those regions that remained Roman were subjected to depredation and pillage by invading armies. The Roman peace, which had become in the last instance the justification for empire, had been shattered. In this pioneering history Clifford Ando describes and integrates the contrasting histories of different parts of the empire and assesses the impacts of administrative, political and religious change.

Centring on the reign of the emperor Augustus, volume four is pivotal to the series, tracing of the changing shape of the entity that was ancient Rome through its political, cultural and economic history. Within this period the Roman world was reconfigured. On a political and constitutional level the patterns of the republic, which sustained an oligarchic regime and a popularist structure, were transformed into a monarchical dictatorship in which the earlier elements continued to function. On an imperial level, the growth in Roman power reached what was virtually its apogee. In literature and the visual arts, new forms of expression, based on those of the previous generations but closely linked to the new regime, showed great achievements. In society and the economy, the effectiveness and dominance of Rome as the centre of world power became increasingly obvious.

Between the deaths of the Emperors Julian (363) and Justinian (565), the Roman Empire underwent momentous changes. Most obviously, control of the west was lost to barbarian groups during the fifth century, and although parts were recovered by Justinian, the empire's centre of gravity shifted irrevocably to the east, with its focal point now the city of Constantinople. Equally important was the increasing dominance of Christianity not only in religious life, but also in politics, society and culture. Doug Lee charts these and other significant developments which contributed to the transformation of ancient Rome and its empire into Byzantium and the early medieval west. By emphasising the resilience of the east during late antiquity and the continuing vitality of urban life and the economy, this volume offers an alternative perspective to the traditional paradigm of decline and fall.