The Roman Republic 146 44 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.

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.

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

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.

This is the gripping story of the rise and fall of the Roman Republic: meteoric imperial expansion enriched and corrupted the ruling aristocracy, which was then unable either to rule the vast empire effectively or to resist the challenge of popular power within Rome itself. Political tensions, enormous wealth and imperial ambition fuelled a vicious circle of competition, in which the number of players decreased as the stakes rose, until two military dynasts, Caesar and Pompeius, went to war for control of the commonwealth. This book traces these processes in detail, but also gives more space than has been traditional to the impact of Rome's military, cultural and economic expansion on her subjects, both in Italy and in the provinces. Historians rightly depend on the narrative histories and other writings of the Greeks and Romans themselves. But these give us largely the view from Rome, and of the upper classes; and some were written later and with hindsight. This evidence is important and is given proper consideration in this volume; but other viewpoints, those of Italian elites and provincial communities are also considered, primarily though documentary evidence. Further, the latest archaeological research is drawn on to illustrate developments in society, religion and culture which affected much larger sections of the Mediterranean under Rome. The volume seeks to show what changes flowed from Roman rule, and how Rome itself was transformed: although the Republic failed, late republican society was a vibrant and fertile intellectual and cultural community in a phase of rapid transition, painful but brilliant.

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.

This second edition examines all aspects of Roman history, and contains a new introduction, three new chapters and updated bibliographies.