From+Republic+to+Empire,+750+BCE+to+468+CE

The empire that Rome eventually built around itself, and that lasted, depending upon where you stood on the ground in what is now Europe, until 468 or 1453 CE, was an accident. It came about as an unintended result of Rome's original and primary activity - trade. The expansion of borders occurred largely as a response to perceived threats and economic necessity. This, of course, meant that Rome, as a republic from 509 to 4 BCE, was both unprepared to rule an empire, and often uninterested in meeting the challenge. Such unpreparedness brought complications that eventually challenged the constitution of the Republic, brought about the change to empire, and finally caused the fall of the empire itself.

Rome had grown up as a loose alliance of several Villages on the Tiber river who shared the area of the seven hills around the Tiber's most important assett: the ford. To make certain that they did not war against each other, these villages set up a common meeting ground where public discussion could take place among them on neutral ground. to make decisions in common. Their first government as a unified city was a monarchy in about 753 BCE. By 509, a conservative revolution had occurred because the business leaders of Rome had thought a king with the power of imperium for life was too powerful, and too able to move the society in directions not suitable for business and trade. They therefore persuaded the last king, Tarquinius the Proud, an Etruscan, to leave Rome, and leave his powers, as well. The Romans immediately made a new tradition, in which two Consuls shared the executive responsibilities, and the same purview. The consuls' terms of service were also limited to one.

The next step in Roman history began aroun 387 BCE. In that year a group of Celts (Gauls, as the Romans called them) surrounded the city of Rome and forced its residents to take refuge in the temples on top of the Capitoline Hill. They looted and pillaged the town, then laid siege to the Capitoline survivors, eventually only leaving after a large ransom was paid which nearly emptied Rome's treasury. This experience led to a determination by Rome never to be conquered again. Military and political reforms followed, and Rome moved out into the world as a conquering power.

One of the first military reforms was the "maniple" form of battlefield maneuver. More flexible than the Greek phalanx, but based on the same principle of foot soldiers operating together in close order drill for mutual support, the maniple was also a smaller unit of organization that could be detached easily from larger groups and operate independently against the enemy. The Roman army came to depend on speed of maneuver and close mutual support to defeat its enemies.

By 300BCE, this once defeated power had become supreme in the plain of Latium, having first joined a defensive alliance of cities on the plain, known as the Latin League, the Romans conquered the cities closes to them, and annexed those within about 2 miles as part of Rome, turning those within a larger radius into dependencies. All of these cities were required to supply garrison forces for defense of the new empire, but not required to do anything else extraordinary.

The genius of the Roman conquest, however, was in not repeating the mistakes make by the Athenians with their empire. The Romans very quickly saw the efficacy of a policy to extend citizenship to all residents of the annexed towns, and to any of those from the dependent cities who moved into Rome or married a Roman citizen. This meant that those people who became Roman citizens could participate in elections, stand for government office, join the Senate or the Plebeian Assembly, and enjoy the benefits of what amounted to a very large free trade zone in the ancient world. Within the plain of Latium, trade by Roman citizens was protected and taxed at the lowest rates.

Of course, there were still many inequities in the Roman system. Slavery was common (and usually arrived at through debt or prisoner of war status). Every Roman male was expected to serve in the army - the patricians as commanders and the plebeians as the foot soldiers. None were paid for their service. Defense of Rome was considered a duty, not a job. Of course, soldiers regularly did come home with money - most often gained by looting their enemies' property after victory. It even became tradition for the consuls to celebrate a victory with a triumph: a sort of official homecoming parade in which the consul would show off all the loot he had taken from his enemies. The more loot, the greater the glory of the consul, and the more he would spend on Roman public works. Such works came to include the famous Appian way, Hadrian's arch, and numerous baths and public buildings and triumphal arches that came to populate the Forum over the years. This was political spending.

By 264, the trading activities of the Romans had sent them far afield. Roman trade was one of the most successful in the Mediterranean Sea area. Only Carthage, in North Africa, surpassed the Romans when it came to control of market share in the Mediterranean world. Carthage possessed Sicily, and it became clear to the Romans that the island was the center of a trade web that covered the entire region. Rome sent a naval force to blockade the island and force the Carthaginians off. By 241, this led to a negotiated peace in which Carthage agreed to hand over Sicily, but Rome agreed to keep its hands off other Carthaginian outposts and territories in the region. Carthage, while shorn of its trade hub, was able to maintain its dominant trade position, and continued to compete with the Romans.

This led, prior to 218 BCE, to a series of conflicts as Roman consuls eager to win popularity sent armies to harass Carthaginian traders and garrisons in Saguntum (Barcelona), in what is now Spain. Angry, Carthage recruited a large army that included elephants, and sent it overland to Rome under the command of a famous general known as Hannibal. Hannibal's army was so effective that for most of the Second Punic War (218-202BCE) Roman armies had given up fighting it face-on, and instead were reduced to conducting guerilla actions against its supply lines and stragglers. For nearly 10 years, the peninsula of Italy north of the plain of Latium was open to Hannibal and his army.

Hannibal eventually invited the conquered Latin cities to join him, and rise up against Rome. This was how he eventually planned to capture the city. Because of the beneficial relationships created by Rome for citizens and trade, however, these cities surprised Hannibal and remained loyal to Rome, even after many defeats. As Hannibal then tried to surround Rome and starve its citizens, the Roman snuck an army out of Italy and across the Mediterranean to Carthage and surrounded their great enemy. Hannibal was forced to take his army home quickly to defend against this surprise attack. Doing so, he lost many men, and much morale. He was defeated, and Carthage was eventually razed to the foundation stones in order that the Romans would have no competition for control of the Mediterranean Basin and its lucrative trade. The Punic wars were over in 204 BCE.

This did not make life easier for the Romans. They were now quite shocked to find themselves the masters of an ever increasing empire. Roman policy came to be one of expansion in the direction of its enemies. Once threatened, Rome's response was to conquer the area where the threat originated, thus eliminating future disturbance. This, however, was a serious administrative problem.

Roman policy was, of course, intended to make conquered territories beneficial to the Roman citizenry. This meant that they were incorporated into the Roman trade network, becoming a part of an increasingly large free trade zone in which citizens and privileged others paid little or no taxes on trade, and non-Romans paid large import duties. It was also part of a growing market, and so attractive to traders both within and outside of the empire - leading to a greater availability of goods and more attractive prices. However, it was not Roman policy to extend citizenship to the areas it conquered after Latium, except by special dispensation of a consul (this usually happened for political reasons, such as granting a town citizenship in exchange for electoral support of a client of a consul). So by the time of Caesar Augustus, (27 BCE - 12CE) just over four million people were Roman citizens in an empire that had a total population of about fifty two million. It is clear, then, that the benefits of citizenship were not enjoyed by all, and this encouraged a certain amount of civil strife.

Combined with that was another serious social ill. The veterans who had returned home from the Punic Wars had found that, while away serving Rome and defeating the Carthaginians, the Romans who had remained had usurped their land. The young men, away at war, had been unable to work their land, and so families had subsisted as best they could, and eventually often had to borrow from local patricians. When they were unable to pay back those loans, their small farms became the property of the patricians who had loaned them the money. Thus, many patriots came home from North Africa to a situation of homelessness. They also came home to find that there were no agricultural or urban jobs to help them earn money to support their newly homeless families. Those jobs had been taken by slaves.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The slaves were in fact prisoners of war - members of Hannibal's army, and normal Carthaginians who had agreed to become chattel in exchange for their lives. These people were brought home in record numbers, mostly by patricians, from Carthage. They took all the jobs, and took no pay for their work, thus making their masters even richer than they had been, while the class of Romans who had really fought and won the war were left to fend for themselves. This also led to some social discontent.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">At this point, two astute patrician politicians, members of the Senate and brothers, began to champion the goals of this unrepresented proletarian class of disenfranchized and disenchanted Romans. Gaius & Tiberius Gracchus between 160 and 140 BCE, both proposed political changes including land reform (what amounted to the Roman government forcing the patricians to return without compensation the land they had gained through unfair foreclosure on loans). They also proposed the creation of colonies outside of the Latin Peninsula made up of the disenfranchised. They could be given land, and their existence in far-flung parts of the empire could serve as an example to others in the empire of the benevolence and power of Rome. Both brothers were murdered by the Senate for their views on land reform.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">All of these controversies lead to some re-thinking on the role of the Roman constitution, and to the meaning of the traditional institution of Roman Government which had lasted since 509 BCE. This re-thinking, and the action required to deal with the social problems set in place by winning the war would challenge, and eventually destroy, the constitution, and the Roman Republic.