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cursus honorum
and to concentrate on accumulation
through exploitation of existing resources rather than active
dispossession. However, a small number of individuals whose
speculations in power had paid off became ever more powerful,
able to dictate to the senate, demand the ratification of their actions
even if technically illegal (for example, Pompey’s conquests in the
East and the administrative arrangements he put in place without
any consultation) and lead armies against other Roman citizens.
Each of these men was fearful of the power of the others, alternating
between uneasy alliances with one another against the attempts
of members of the senate to place restrictions on their power
(the obvious example is the ‘first triumvirate’, the pact between
Caesar, Pompey and Crassus in 60 BCE) and seeking to counter one
another’s ambitions. Both Pompey and Caesar became immensely
wealthy as the result of their conquests, but it was impossible for
them to leave the competition and give up their armies for fear of
losing everything if prosecuted by their enemies. The interests of
the state were now firmly subordinated to those of a few powerful
individuals, driven to establish their position through military
endeavour – but those individuals were equally trapped in the
dynamics of the cycle of conquest.
Meanwhile, imperial success brought about far-reaching
changes in the economy of Italy, with the growth of the city of
Rome and other major urban centres and the establishment of
slave-run, market-orientated villas in central Italy.
45
New economic
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36
ThE roman EmpIrE
opportunities appeared, subsidised by the proceeds of empire, but
peasant families whose sons were overseas – or who had been killed
in battle – were less able to take advantage of them or to afford the
investment that would take them to a higher level of prosperity.
46
Furthermore, there was now fierce competition for the most fertile
and well-situated land, as members of the land-owning elite sought
to respond to the new market opportunities by taking a more rational
approach to agricultural production. In areas of central Italy, peasant
farms were increasingly put under pressure; not destroyed, as is clear
from the archaeological record, but pushed towards the margins and
disconnected from the networks of markets.
47
Increasingly, families
falling into difficulty through debt or illness preferred to move to
the city, imagining the golden opportunities that might be found
there; to keep this ever-growing urban population quiet and avoid
giving further opportunities to populist politicians, the state needed
to use its revenue to subsidise the city food supply and provide
public services – which attracted further migrants. Faced with an
apparent crisis in the peasantry, the traditional source of soldiers,
the state began to recruit from the
capite censi
, those counted by
head in the census because they failed to meet the lowest wealth
qualification. The result was an increasingly professionalised army,
but one loyal to its commanders rather than to the state because it
was the general who depended on his troops for power and security,
who took responsibility for compelling the senate to allocate land
for veteran settlement and thus provided security for retired soldiers.
Such armies were powerful tools in the hands of individual generals,
but at the same time they placed their commanders in the position
of having to fight further wars in order to maintain their position.
Rome continued to make war because it had no choice; the
alternative seemed to be the collapse of the political system and
the revolutionary redistribution of the rewards of empire in a way
that was unacceptable to those who held power, even though the
stability of society was being undermined by the very processes that
had sustained and driven Roman imperialism. The result, after a
series of civil wars between the remaining dynasts, was twofold:
the replacement of the republican system with a monarchy, albeit
one which retained many of the old forms and titles and professed
itself to be a restoration of the republic, and the end of the cycle
of conquests.
48
The trend towards exploitation rather than violent
appropriation had been developing for some time, but the advent of
the Principate accelerated the process. Social stability now required
the steady stream of revenue that could be gained from exploiting
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ThE dynamIcs of roman ImpErIalIsm
37
existing provinces rather than seizing new ones; Italy was no
longer a reliable source of military recruits, whereas the provinces
were beginning to reveal their potential as a source of manpower.
Emperors were no longer competing directly with anyone (except
their predecessors and the idealised image of the good emperor) and
were more concerned to limit the possibility of anyone else gaining
glory than to win it themselves. The emperor effectively became
the state (not least through a stupendous effort of image creation
and propaganda under Augustus), so that the loyalty of the army
was, generally, focused on his person and thus subordinated to the
interests of the Empire. Above all, the emperor’s claim to legitimacy
was that he brought peace to the Empire, and breaking what had
become a destructive relationship between wealth, power and war
was a prerequisite for that. Of course, the Roman conception of
‘peace’ did not necessarily accord with that of their subjects.
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2
‘They make a desert and call it peace’:
The nature of roman rule
robbers of the world, now that the earth is insufficient for their all-devastating hands
they probe even the sea; if their enemy is rich, they are greedy; if he is poor, they
thirst for dominion; neither east nor west has satisfied them; alone of mankind they
are equally covetous of poverty and wealth. robbery, slaughter and plunder they
falsely name empire; they make a desert and they call it peace.
(Tacitus
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