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Thoughts on the Roman Identity
Feb. 24th, 2010 08:30 pmI've been doing a lot of reading ahead in class, as well as outside reading, and downloading family trees and whatnot, all in an effort to keep all the material straight. The textbook, while interesting and readable, isn't much more than a flying runthrough--understandably, since it's covering over 1000 years. But, as an example, its coverage of Julius Caesar doesn't even mention Cleopatra and all salaciousness aside, his relationship with her was very indicative of how thoroughly effed up the Ptolemaic administration of Egypt was. We had a real rousing discussion section today and this came up--one of the guys in my discussion section, a guy named Scott who's something of an expert in Egypt, was talking about why Rome didn't annex Egypt until much later and he said "because the political situation was such a mess there, it wasn't worth it." I interjected "as Julius Caesar found out!" He was almost killed there. Ptolemaic politics were so sterotypically female and feminine--someone was always getting poisoned or plotted against behind their back. Shakespeare's characterization of Egypt as female was obviously because of Cleopatra but even without that, the characterization is apt.
Columbia has a cool interface with students called Courseworks--you log on and go to your classes, and you can access slide shows and also post online discussions. This is something I posted in response to the book, Harris's War and Imperialism, that we discussed today:
On p. 41, Harris asks: "...whether or not the social ethos I have been describing was created by circumstances external to the Roman state, or whether Rome's distinctive behavior towards foreign states resulted from the social ethos." And that's the big question, isn't it? He starts from 327 BC (in the middle of the Samnite Wars) and ends in 70 BC, after Rome has convincingly conquered all of the Mediterranean. And he makes a strong case for Rome's inherent bellicosity, the militarism that saturated Roman mores and culture. But it's worth looking at how this may have developed, and I can't help but see a watershed moment in the 1st and 2nd Punic Wars, especially the latter. As much war as Rome may have pursued during the 5th and 4th centuries [i.e., with the Samnites, Etruscans, Sabines, and other peoples of the Italian peninsula], these were essentially defensive, a kind of macro-Darwinism, "dominate or be dominated" that perhaps was driven by the Celts' and Samnites' aggressive policies toward them (the latter finally reaching its natural conclusion when Sulla [general-turned-dictator during the chaos of the 1st century BC who basically upended the Roman constitution by marching on Rome--sound familiar?--wiping out most of the Senate and putting in his lackies instead] eradicated them in 83 BC, with Strabo [contemporary writer] remarking "he knew from experience that no Roman would be able to live as long as the Samnites existed").
We first have a change in perspective, a war that is essentially expansionist, with the first Carthaginian War. Though this war was in its execution more or less unremarkable (with the exception of Rome's development of its first navy), the 2nd Punic War must have tested the Romans severely. Not only was the casualty rate extremely high, but the war was fought right there on the peninsula, and some of their allies were even turning against them. There seems to be such an incredibly personal feel to the Hannibalic War, exemplified by the Romans' awareness of the all-conquering opposing general, Hannibal himself, whom even the Alps couldn't keep out. And yet for all that, the Romans came out of that war with their appetite for war seemingly enhanced, rather than subdued. It is after 201 that Rome engages in what are essentially a series of police actions, wars to maintain the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean, conflicts that are the antithesis of defensive, necessary wars. Does this indicate that the pursuit of war was an integral, ingrained feature of Roman culture? Or was the 2nd Punic War the crucible that forged these characteristics permanently in the Roman ethos?
This is something I find I'm pondering more and more--how Rome's initial capacity for war developed into an essential part of its identity, by which its citizens derived their sense of self. I want to examine the development from citizen/soldiers fighting defensive wars of necessity ---> citizen/soldiers fighting wars of conquest for the greater glory of Rome and their own gain ---> de facto professional soldiers whose main loyalty is to their commander (and then only because that commander will get them the goods). My instinct, as I say above, is that something changed in the Roman psyche during the crucible of the 2nd Punic War. I think there was a unique quality to that war that could've either broken them completely or further refined them--as it happens, it was the latter. Something I brought up in class today was the poverty of Rome's culture until Hellenization in the 2nd century--until then, Rome had no theater, no epic poetry, little literature of any kind in fact and no music that survived. This was a culture that had refined itself to one main purpose--war. And yet there was something more to their culture--the Romans were constitutional geniuses, they did improve on the concept of the polis, they topped the Greek world in that respect. And they were not Sparta--Sparta was an extreme example of a society devoted to war. Rome wasn't that extreme, and interestingly, in the mid-2nd century, the national appetite for war apparently started to wane.
Columbia has a cool interface with students called Courseworks--you log on and go to your classes, and you can access slide shows and also post online discussions. This is something I posted in response to the book, Harris's War and Imperialism, that we discussed today:
On p. 41, Harris asks: "...whether or not the social ethos I have been describing was created by circumstances external to the Roman state, or whether Rome's distinctive behavior towards foreign states resulted from the social ethos." And that's the big question, isn't it? He starts from 327 BC (in the middle of the Samnite Wars) and ends in 70 BC, after Rome has convincingly conquered all of the Mediterranean. And he makes a strong case for Rome's inherent bellicosity, the militarism that saturated Roman mores and culture. But it's worth looking at how this may have developed, and I can't help but see a watershed moment in the 1st and 2nd Punic Wars, especially the latter. As much war as Rome may have pursued during the 5th and 4th centuries [i.e., with the Samnites, Etruscans, Sabines, and other peoples of the Italian peninsula], these were essentially defensive, a kind of macro-Darwinism, "dominate or be dominated" that perhaps was driven by the Celts' and Samnites' aggressive policies toward them (the latter finally reaching its natural conclusion when Sulla [general-turned-dictator during the chaos of the 1st century BC who basically upended the Roman constitution by marching on Rome--sound familiar?--wiping out most of the Senate and putting in his lackies instead] eradicated them in 83 BC, with Strabo [contemporary writer] remarking "he knew from experience that no Roman would be able to live as long as the Samnites existed").
We first have a change in perspective, a war that is essentially expansionist, with the first Carthaginian War. Though this war was in its execution more or less unremarkable (with the exception of Rome's development of its first navy), the 2nd Punic War must have tested the Romans severely. Not only was the casualty rate extremely high, but the war was fought right there on the peninsula, and some of their allies were even turning against them. There seems to be such an incredibly personal feel to the Hannibalic War, exemplified by the Romans' awareness of the all-conquering opposing general, Hannibal himself, whom even the Alps couldn't keep out. And yet for all that, the Romans came out of that war with their appetite for war seemingly enhanced, rather than subdued. It is after 201 that Rome engages in what are essentially a series of police actions, wars to maintain the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean, conflicts that are the antithesis of defensive, necessary wars. Does this indicate that the pursuit of war was an integral, ingrained feature of Roman culture? Or was the 2nd Punic War the crucible that forged these characteristics permanently in the Roman ethos?
This is something I find I'm pondering more and more--how Rome's initial capacity for war developed into an essential part of its identity, by which its citizens derived their sense of self. I want to examine the development from citizen/soldiers fighting defensive wars of necessity ---> citizen/soldiers fighting wars of conquest for the greater glory of Rome and their own gain ---> de facto professional soldiers whose main loyalty is to their commander (and then only because that commander will get them the goods). My instinct, as I say above, is that something changed in the Roman psyche during the crucible of the 2nd Punic War. I think there was a unique quality to that war that could've either broken them completely or further refined them--as it happens, it was the latter. Something I brought up in class today was the poverty of Rome's culture until Hellenization in the 2nd century--until then, Rome had no theater, no epic poetry, little literature of any kind in fact and no music that survived. This was a culture that had refined itself to one main purpose--war. And yet there was something more to their culture--the Romans were constitutional geniuses, they did improve on the concept of the polis, they topped the Greek world in that respect. And they were not Sparta--Sparta was an extreme example of a society devoted to war. Rome wasn't that extreme, and interestingly, in the mid-2nd century, the national appetite for war apparently started to wane.
