The key learning from the entire book is that the secret of Rome’s success can be summed up in one word: assimilation. Already, by the 300s BC, Romans had perfected a system which was unprecedented in the ancient world and was to give them unparalleled power and success. It was that they did not conquer and destroy their enemies then retire to their core territory: they assimilated both the people and the territories they defeated into the Roman state. They extended Roman-ness to the conquered peoples, thus extending Roman territory and Roman population, eventually to a vast and unparalleled extent (page 67).
1. An endless supply of soldiers
Instead of setting Roman administrators over a defeated tribe, the only tribute the Romans asked for was for the defeated to provide soldiers for the Roman army, to be funded by local taxation. These soldiers, regardless of tribal affiliation or ethnic origin, were fully assimilated into the Roman army and given the privileges of Roman citizens and, in the later Republic, offered full citizenship at the end of a fixed term of service.
Although military tactics counted for something when it came to winning battles and wars, Beard says that what counted most in 4th, 3rd and 2nd century warfare was sheer numbers of men: the biggest army generally won, and the Romans invented a way of continually augmenting their armies by incorporating soldiers from conquered peoples on conditions of complete equality (p.164).
It became a technique for converting former enemies into part of Rome’s military machine. Unlike almost all other polities in the ancient world, when Rome conquered a people it didn’t increase the number of its enemies, it increased the ranks of its army. And it gave the newly co-opted soldiers ‘a stake in the Roman enterprise’ by promising glory and booty.
2. Extending Roman citizenship
Similarly, all the regional tribes in Italy which the Romans fought and defeated in the 3rd and 2nd centuries were not crushed and sold into slavery etc. Within a short period they were offered inclusion in the Roman state. The precise nature of the deal varied, from full citizen rights and privileges, including the right to vote or stand in elections, to ‘citizenship without the vote’.
Rome also established ‘new towns’ in conquered territory (misleadingly named ‘colonies’) and the inhabitants of these colonies were then given ‘Latin rights’ – rights to intermarry with Romans, to make contracts, free movement around Roman territory (p.165).
Thus Rome was unique in the ancient world in breaking the link between citizenship and a specific city. Obviously Rome remained the capital of the system, but you could live in any one of a growing number of Italian cities and towns and enjoy full Roman legal rights. In his book Blood and Belonging Michael Ignatieff explains the crucial difference between ‘ethnic nationalism’ – where people identify primarily with their town or tribe or race or ethnic group – and ‘civic nationalism’ – where all citizens owe allegiance to a state under whose laws they are all equal regardless of race, creed or gender.
Alone of all polities in the ancient world, the Romans made the decisive step from ethnic to civic nationalism, thus stumbling, as Beard describes it, rather haphazardly, and over a long period of time, upon the winning formula which eventually gave most people living round the Mediterranean a sense that whatever their ethnic origins, they were Roman citizens; that whether they were born in Northumberland or Numibia they could utter the famous tag, civis Romanum sum, ‘I am a Roman citizen’, and expect to be accorded all the rights and liberties of a Roman citizen. The Romans:
redefined the word ‘Latin’ so that it was no longer an ethnic identity but a political status unrelated to race or geography. This set the stage for a model of citizenship and ‘belonging’ that had enormous significance for Roman ideas of government, political rights, ethnicity and ‘nationhood’ (p.166)
Other factors, economic or technological or military, played a part. But just these two constitutional and administrative strategies go a long way to explaining why what started out as just one town among many in central Italy in 400 BC had, by about 50 BC, created and integrated the largest Mediterranean empire that ever existed. And then, of course, during the imperial period (after 30 BC) was to go on and expand it even further.
Map of the Roman Republic in 40 BC
Why end with Caracalla?
This central thread of the ability of Rome to extend its territory, armies and power by incorporating conquered peoples into the state partly explains why Beard decides to end her account, not with a standard end point like the decriminalising of Christianity by the emperor Constantine in 313 AD, but in 212 AD with the decision by the emperor Caracalla to give full citizenship to everyone living in the Roman Empire, an event she references on pages 17, 67, 334 and, in the conclusion, on page 527.
Other examples of assimilation
Never one to let a good idea go unrepeated, Beard repeatedly references two other striking examples of Rome’s openness and inclusivity.
Ethnic emperors
One is that, among the first dozen or so emperors, several were not ethnically Roman at all. The emperor Trajan came from Spain and the emperor Septimius Severus from Africa. Now these guys might have been descended from ethnically Italian settlers in those places or they might have been ethnically Italian and (north) African, but we don’t know because no-one, not even their enemies writing against them, thought it worth commenting on. That itself is a good demonstration of how even the highest levels of Roman society were indifferent to ethnicity (this fact is mentioned on pages 67, 418 and 521).
Claudius defends the Gauls
She also likes the story about the emperor Claudius (ruled 41 to 54 AD) who made a speech to the Senate in which he argued that citizens from the only-recently pacified Gaul should be allowed to become senators. The speech was recorded (written on a bronze plaque which was discovered in Lyons) so we know that Claudius argued that right from the date of its foundation Rome had been open to foreigners so long as they abided by its laws and customs (Beard mentions this story on pages 67, 114, 156 and 522). The result was, by Claudius’s time, a decidedly multicultural population and state (p.67).
Assimilating the gods
Less belaboured but still mentioned quite a few times is the way that Rome was tremendously open about its gods and religion. This had two aspects.
1. One was the free and easy way the Romans assimilated foreign gods into the original Roman pantheon so that by the time of the empire the city was packed with temples not only to Rome’s own original gods and imports from Greece, but to deities borrowed from all over the Mediterranean. Like many of Beard’s points, this one is repeated half a dozen times, on pages 179, 205 and:
The range of deities worshipped in Rome was proudly elastic. (p.207)
Roman religion was not only polytheistic but treated foreign gods much as it treated foreign peoples: by incorporation…As the Roman Empire expanded so did its pantheon of deities. (p.519)
2. The second aspect was the authorities’ relaxed attitude to religious practice in the lands they conquered and assimilated. They Egyptians, the Jews, the Persians, the various peoples of Asia Minor or Gaul were all allowed to continue worshipping their own gods in their own ways, so long as it didn’t break the law or threaten the peace. The druids of Britannia were an exception because they were (misleadingly) reported to practice human sacrifice which the Romans considered beyond the pale of civilised practice. And the Christians ended up being persecuted because they obstinately refused to pay lip service or do simple obeisance to local gods or shrines to the deified emperors i.e. they subverted the very minimal requirements the Romans asked of their subject peoples. This is because, as Beard usefully explains:
Ancient Roman religion [wasn’t] particularly concerned with personal salvation or morality. Instead it mainly focused on the performance of rituals that were intended to keep the relationship between Rome and the gods in good order…It was a religion of doing, not believing. (p.103)
Co-opting, enrolling, enlisting, including and assimilating – these were the techniques which underpinned Rome’s phenomenal success for centuries.
Credit
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard was published in 2015 by Profile Books. All references are to the 2016 paperback edition.
Books & Boots 