The Roman Republic 264-44BC

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By 264 B.C. Rome had, by war and diplomacy, become the most powerful state in Italy. That year saw her first military adventure overseas: a controversial intervention in Sicily quickly led to full scale war with the Carthage, the major western Mediterranean power, based in north Africa. Victory in Sicily set in train the creation of an empire which by 44 B.C. controlled most of the Mediterranean and much of continental Europe. This is a familiar story, as is the flip-side: the profits and power to be gained on the stage of this vast empire corroded the consensual ethos by which the Roman aristocracy had limited its natural competitive urges. Competition for political office and military command led to political corruption aimed at a city populace of voters now unable effectively to exercise its sovereignty over the vast empire, and increasingly unrepresentative of the Roman citizen body. The populace, rural and urban, was subjected to increasing socio-economic stresses, as continual recruitment for war and the unbalancing of the economy through imperial revenues ate at the traditional fabric of politics and society. Political polarisation set in, between the champions of the status quo, the representatives (sometimes self-styled) of the popular will, and over-mighty generals. The Republic was overthrown in Civil war, and Caesar set himself up as dictator; within a few years he himself was assassinated. Further civil wars were eventually ended by the emergence of a sole victor, Augustus, who became the first emperor.This project seeks to tell another story, however. The familiar tale just told is essentially a retelling of the histories written by Greeks and Romans themselves, during and just after the events; and this has been the case since the Renaissance. This project seeks to give a voice to two other categories of evidence: Roman documents inscribed on stone, and the evidence from archaeological enquiry. Some of this material is brand new; some has been known since the Renaissance. Until now no historical narrative has allowed either voice to occupy centre-stage alongside the main protagonist, the textual material which has traditionally been the study of classicists, and has exercised a dominant role in interpretations of the late Republic for this reason. One consequence of this change of emphasis will be increased light shed on new groups of actors throughout the story. Three groups are very important here: the inhabitants of the countryside and the small towns, as opposed to the urban poor and nobility of Rome; Italians as opposed to Romans (that is the half to two-thirds of the the population of the peninsula who did not have the Roman citizenship until about 90 B.C.); and the elites and populations of other peoples subjected by Rome across the empire. With the exception of the Greeks, their explicit testimonies are few, and we are often reliant on interpretations of archaeological remains to allow them to speak. But that is not a reason for not making the effort. The end result ought to be a narrative which seeks to explain the uniqueness of the rise of Rome from an Italian viewpoint, a viewpoint with which the Romans were deeply engaged, and which influenced their own sense of who they were, and where they thought they were going. The traditional leading actor in this drama, the account based on literary sources, will not be banished from the stage, but his words will now be heard within a real dialogue: this role and those of the former supporting actors will have to take account of each other; the result ought to be a better representation, of how the growth and failure of the Roman Republic were experienced by a greater number of players, in more locations, than has previously been achieved.