M. Cary D.Litt’s research while affiliated with University of London and other places

The stormy opening of the first century b.c. was followed by an interval of calm, or rather of stagnation, in which the senatorial aristocracy let its new lease of power run itself out without any serious attempt to set its house in order. The only notable reform of this period was a resolution passed by the Senate in 97 against human sacrifices, by which it strengthened its hands against a recurrence of popular outcries such as that of 114 (p. 213). While the government was taking its siesta a crisis which had been gathering in the last thirty years came upon it unawares. The demand of the Italian allies for the Roman franchise, which the Senate had eluded but by no means silenced in the days of Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius Gracchus, was raised again in a more menacing tone. In the Jugurthan and Cimbric Wars the allies had contributed their full share to the Roman victories, and the career of Marius, who came from an obscure country town — albeit from one which happened to have been raised to full Roman status — showed once for all that Italians were no less fit to exercise high command than Romans in the narrow sense. In 100 their expectations had been raised by Saturninus’s colonial act (p. 220), and large numbers of Italian stalwarts had flocked to Rome to clamour or to scuffle on behalf of this measure. But Saturninus’s law was allowed to lapse, and those of his followers who stayed on in the capital to continue the campaign of intimidation were condemned under a law brought forward in 95 by the consuls L. Licinius Crassus and Q. Mucius Scaevola, which set up a quaestio on aliens who were claiming to be citizens.

After the civil wars Augustus had a free hand to reshape the foreign policy of Rome as thoroughly as he had reconstructed its internal administration. With all the armed forces of the Empire at his permanent disposal, he had ample means to resume and to extend Caesar’s schemes of conquest. Public opinion at Rome, which had but recently hailed him as the bringer of internal peace, presently urged him to fresh wars against foreign enemies, including Britain and Parthia. The emperor perceived that by advancing the Roman frontiers he might strengthen the defences of empire at some points and open new avenues of trade at others. He realised the need of finding employment for the troops, so as to turn their thoughts from fresh civil wars, and he was not loth to provide opportunities of military distinction for the younger members of his family On the other hand Augustus could not be blind to what the Senate of the later Republic had clearly seen, that foreign expeditions were a seed-bed of military usurpations.

Latium, the cradle of Rome, consisted originally of the coastal plain from the mouth of the Tiber to the Circeian promontory, and its adjacent foothills. In the south its habitable zone was narrowed by the Pomptine marshes and by the Mons Lepinus, a spur from the Apennines extending toward the sea. On its northern and western border the lower valleys of the Tiber and of its tributary the Anio — the ‘Roman Campagna’ of the present day — formed a wider belt of open land. The centre of the region consisted of a group of volcanic hills, the principal of which, the Mons Albanus, rose to a little above 3000 feet.1

The conquests of the Romans in the third and second centuries left as profound a mark on their private life as on their political institutions.

With the notable exception of Claudius the successors of Augustus complied with his advice not to extend the Roman Empire beyond its existing boundaries. Tiberius, who had given ample proof of his military ability under the direction of Augustus, would not trust himself to wage war on his own responsibility, and the next three emperors were unfit to assume command of armies. But emperors who did not take the field in person had reason to fear that conquests achieved by other generals might lead to military usurpations, like those which had destroyed the rule of the republican Senate. Accordingly the warfare of the first half-century after the death of Augustus was mainly of a defensive character; in this period the Roman army began its transformation from a field force into a border garrison.

From the political standpoint the century following the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus was the most revolutionary in Roman history. From the economic point of view it was a period of gradual development rather than of abrupt transitions.1

The last notable extension of the Roman boundaries beyond the limits fixed by Augustus took place in the reign of the warrior-prince Trajan. Under his successors the frontiers underwent rectifications here and there, but the further additions to Roman territory were insignificant. The area of the Roman Empire in the middle of the second century may be estimated at about 1,700,000 square miles. Before looking in more detail at the various changes that were made we may consider broader outlines of policy.

At the same time as the Romans were rounding off their possessions in the western half of the Mediterranean they were laying the foundations of a dominion in its eastern basin. Their principal antagonists in the eastern Mediterranean were the Greeks. Between 800 and 500 b.c. the Greek people had occupied by sporadic colonisation the greater part of the Aegean seaboard and of the Black Sea coast. Their inability to combine their numerous city-states into a durable confederacy had been a bar to further expansion, and in the fourth century it had facilitated their conquest by king Philip II of Macedon. But by virtue of their superior culture the Greeks soon absorbed their half-civilised masters, and in the political sphere they came to play the part of allies rather than of subjects to the Macedonians. It was in partnership with the Greeks that Philip’s son Alexander overthrew the Persian Empire (334–325); and although the principal dynasties established on the ruins of that dominion were Macedonian, yet as a soldier of adventure, as an administrator, as a civilian settler, it was the Greek that reaped the chief fruits of Alexander’s campaigns.

Although the Second Punic War was fought by the Romans in defence of past conquests it brought them extensive new acquisitions, and finally established their supremacy in the western Mediterranean. At the same time their copious man-power and military efficiency led them, often somewhat reluctantly, to action in the eastern Mediterranean. The result was that in little more than half a century they were the dominant power throughout the whole Mediterranean area, into which they introduced a unifying ecumenical influence for the first time in history, a process on which the contemporary Greek historian Polybius pondered with amazement.

The expansion of the Roman Empire in the third and second centuries b.c. was not only rapid and continuous, it was also unpremeditated and to some extent undesired. The Romans were carried along without any clear perception of the responsibilities involved in their new acquisitions, and they were slow to observe and control the inevitable reactions of their conquests upon their domestic affairs. In fact they were caught unprepared in much the same way as the modern world has been taken by surprise by the Industrial Revolution and by the changes of the last hundred years in methods of communication. The domestic history of the later Republic is largely a record of successive crises resulting from this failure of adaptation to a quickly changing environment.