Part of Rome’s weakness may be traceable to internal dissension, though it is difficult to trace through the layers of later exaggeration. Roman sources paint this period as one of conflict between two hereditary orders, or groupings: patricians, who were generally wealthier and were viewed as Rome’s aristocracy, and plebeians, the lower classes who comprised the great mass of the populace. Stories from this period revolve around the plebeians’ struggle to gain a measure of political power from which they were initially excluded; modern historians call this the Struggle of the Orders. Their standard technique was known as the Secession of the Plebs: the plebeians would abandon the city of Rome and take up residence outside the city, sometimes even on the Aventine hill just across the valley where the Circus Maximus would one day be (Figure 2.2). Because the plebeians made up the bulk of the fighting men in the army, a war with one of Rome’s neighbors would force the patricians to recognize how much they needed the plebeians, and so they would make some concession to their demands. At first the concessions involved the creation of ten Tribunes of the Plebs, who were given the authority to intervene in deliberations of the patrician Senate and prevent any proposal from even being discussed, let alone becoming law. Later secessions brought the plebeians the right to have one of the two consuls come from the plebeian class, and eventually all political offices were opened to the plebeians. Modern historians typically place the end of the Struggle of the Orders in 287 BCE, when the lex Hortensia declared that any proposal passed by the assembly comprised of the plebeians alone would be binding upon all Romans, plebeian and patrician alike. More recent studies have seen this process not as the gradual empowerment of the entire plebeian class, but as the gradual empowerment of rich and successful plebeian individuals, who had previously been barred from political influence no matter how rich and successful they became.
Figure 2.2 Map of Republican Rome.
One milestone that the Romans often connected with the Struggle of the Orders was their first written legal code, known as the Twelve Tables. It was passed, according to Roman tradition, in 451 and 450 BCE. This lawcode, despite its early date, remained the basis of Roman law all the way through the Republic and into the Empire (see further Chapter 10). The stories surrounding the creation of the legal code bear a similarity to other stories whose moral is to restrain abuses committed by the powerful members of society; one story bears a remarkable resemblance to the sexual assault of Lucretia described above. However, most of the surviving provisions of the Twelve Tables are heavily weighted towards the preservation of property rights, which clearly benefits the wealthy, causing many modern historians to doubt whether the creation of this law code should be seen as a victory for the lower classes. One might see the Twelve Tables as a step forward for the plebeians in the simple fact of engraving laws; in a society without mass communication, it is likely that only the elites would have known what the laws were, making it difficult for plebeians to challenge legal judgments against them. If we understand the Struggle of the Orders as wealthy plebeians fighting for inclusion into the ruling elite of Rome rather than for the rights of the mass of plebeians, provisions benefitting the wealthy make more sense. Wealthy plebeians had no desire to help the poor any more than wealthy patricians did. By the end of the fourth century BCE, the formation of a mixed patrician–plebeian aristocracy based primarily on wealth and family connections had temporarily resolved much of the internal conflict.
The Growth of Rome
Following the Gallic sack, the Romans picked up right where they left off, bringing Italy south of the Po River under their control by the early third century BCE. Two key milestones in the conquest of Italy are worth noting.
In 338 BCE, Rome imposed a settlement on a group of former allies in central Italy who had broken treaty obligations with Rome and banded together to fight the growing power in their midst. In the aftermath of the Latin Revolt, as it is known, different cities received different treatments: some were destroyed or depopulated, some were given Roman citizenship, and some were given civitas sine suffragio, “citizenship without the right to vote.” As citizens, these people had access to the Roman legal system, which enabled them to marry and trade with Roman citizens, but they were not allowed to vote in Rome. This structure became the blueprint for future conquests, with two important consequences: (1) each community, and especially the elites within them, was given incentives for cooperating with Rome, in the hopes that they might earn better privileges in the future and therefore (2) Rome thus did not have to garrison or provide bureaucratic oversight, but left the control of the local population to local elites. These communities were tied directly to Rome with obligations to provide manpower in times of war, and this continual supply of manpower served as one of the strengths of the Roman army through the subsequent years of expansion.
The second milestone came as a result of the first war that Rome fought against an overseas foe. In 280 BCE, King Pyrrhus of Epirus (western Greece), invaded Italy and defeated the Romans in several battles, though in one battle he lost so many soldiers that he remarked: “if we are victorious again, we shall be utterly ruined” (the origin of the phrase “Pyrrhic victory”). Eventually the Romans did defeat Pyrrhus, which gave them control of southern Italy and completed their conquest of the peninsula of Italy. The conquest of southern Italy is significant because the area had previously been settled by colonists from Greece, so many that it was known as Magna Graecia (“Great Greece”) (Figure 2.3). While elements of Greek culture can be found in Rome as far back as c. 500 BCE, this sequence of battles increased the amount of exchange with Greek culture, and also began to acquaint the Romans with the Greek kingdoms that ruled the eastern Mediterranean following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.
Figure 2.3 Map of southern Italy, including Magna Graecia and Sicily.
Key Debates: How Did the Romans Come to Rule the Mediterranean?
In 390 BCE, the Roman state suffered a massive defeat to a marauding band of Gauls, leaving the city in a shambles and perhaps at its lowest point in terms of power. The Romans destroyed the cities of Carthage and Corinth 250 years later, wiping out the only challenge to her power in the western Mediterranean, and cementing her control of the eastern Mediterranean. The rise from nowhere to the sole superpower of the ancient Mediterranean is as remarkable as it was surprising. How did it happen?
One theory has become known to modern historians as “defensive imperialism.” In an effort to avoid a repeat of the Gallic sack, the Romans went to great lengths to protect themselves. As a result, they pushed back on any bordering state that they felt presented a possible threat. By claiming a defensive posture, they could also assure themselves that each war was a just war fought against an aggressor, and therefore they might earn the sanction of the gods for their war effort.
In the 1970s, William Harris began to push back against the theory of defensive imperialism promoted by the Romans and accepted by many modern historians. He argued that the military ethos that ran through Roman society continually led the Romans into new wars. Valor in war was a key sign of being a true Roman man, and military success was seen as the be-all and end-all of a successful politician. The way to electoral success was through success in war, not social programs or just application of the law. Thus almost every member of the elite wanted to see Rome in a state of war that would give them a chance of political advancement.
A third theory, perhaps driven by thinking about modern wars, suggests that Rome’s conquests were driven by economic concerns. There is limited evidence that the Romans fought in order to acquire trade routes and natural resources to exploit. Rather, the Romans may have been driven by individual