08d: Rome Becomes A Superpower

Rome's victory over Carthage in the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) was final. Combined with Rome's victory over King Philip V of Macedon, it made Rome the major power in the Mediterranean world. Roman was now master of locations such as Sicily, Corsica, Illyria, and Transpadane Gaul. Yet the Roman aristocracy's passiveness in fighting Hannibal suggests that Rome had no clear-cut imperialistic mission. The Romans never forgot how close Hannibal had come to beating them and the cry Hannibal ad portas sent little Roman children running for centuries afterward. But as the superpower in the Mediterranean, the Romans were now responsible for maintaining order in the territory they now ruled. Rome needed a workable plan for ensuring it would never again come so close to defeat. Up until the Second Punic War, most of Rome's wars had in fact been defensive. Since this satisifed the ius fetialis, the Romans found this a comfortable way to operate. But Rome's new responsibilities as a superpower brought on a period of aggressive imperialism, in which the Romans picked fights in order to stabilize the Greek-speaking Eastern Mediterranean world.

We've already seen that Rome had no coherent plan for assimilating its Italian conquests and alliances. Some towns got citizenship, some got Latin Rights, and some got the shaft. The mos maiorum had no provision for assigning ager publicus - that is, captured land belonging to the Roman state. But the experience of the Second Punic War  proved that a workable plan was desperately needed. So the Romans invented a system of "provinces." The provinces of Sicily (241 BC), Sardinia and Corsica (231 BC), Nearer Spain (197 BC), Farther Spain (197 BC) and Illyricum (167 BC) were established, and overseen by "promagistrates." Promagistrates were former consuls and/or former praetors who served a year governing one of these provinces. The Roman provinces were ruled for Rome's benefit alone. The proconsuls and propraetors themselves were accountable only to the Roman Senate, of which they were already influential members. In his own province, the proconsul or propraetor possessed imperium, dispensing justice (for a price), protecting Roman business interests, and making sure that the locals (either inside or outside the province) obeyed Rome. The promagistracies soon became seen as another perk of high political office. Ruling a province for a year was not just fun and profitable. A lucky promagistrate might even start a war, add new land to the Roman Empire, and win the glory of a Scipio Africanus. Indeed, Africanus's grandson later won the name "Scipio of Numantia" for his outstanding generalship in Spain. Of course, Rome's new system of provincial government offered nothing the natives of the provinces nothing, but nobody cared what they thought anyway.

In the second century BC, Rome went over to the offensive and began building its empire. The first target was Rome's old enemy King Philip V of Macedon. When the Second Macedonian War ended in 197 BC, all Greece was under Roman "influence" if not under Rome's actual command.  At first Rome had hoped to maintain Greece as a "buffer state" or protectorate against eastern enemies such as King Antiochus of Syria. Two millenia later, the Soviet Union did the same thing by setting up a group of "satellite states" between themselves and Western Europe: the so-called Iron Curtain. In 196 BC, the conquering general Titus Quinctius Flamininus nobly announced that he would allow the Greeks their freedom. Of course, this "freedom" was hardly more extensive than that granted to the countries behind the Iron Curtain. The freedom was in name only, since the Greeks hadto  pay Roman taxes and help defend Roman interests by contributing troops during wartime. This was basically the same raw deal many of Rome's Italian allies got; small wonder that the Greeks soon refused to play along. After finishing off King Antiochus III of Syria in 189 BC, Rome again fought with Macedon. By 167 BC, Macedon too had joined the list of Eastern Mediterranean powers rumphed by Rome. It seemed to the Romans that even pretend freedom was too much for the Greeks. Between 148 and 146 BC, Greece was added to the Roman empire for good. As a warning to for those tempted to resist Romans, the famous old Greek city of Corinth was razed to the ground.

Knocking off Eastern Mediterranean superpowers was in fact conducive to Roman security interests. Not so the destruction of Carthage in the Third Punic War, which lasted from 149 to 146 BC. By 151 BC, Carthage had paid off its debts to Rome and was becoming commercially viable once more. To Carthage's west, the kingdom of Numidia made an alliance with Rome and began to raid Carthaginian territory. When Carthage retaliated against Numidia, it gave the war party at Rome, led by Cato the Elder, an excuse to attack under the ius fetialis. But in fact, the Third Punic War was aggressive imperialism plain and simple. Carthage was no longer a danger to anyone, and Rome had no justification to attack. But Cato the Elder relied on his immense personal authority by ending one and all of his public utterances with Karthago delenda est, or "Carthage MUST be destroyed." And destroyed it was, by none other than the future "Scipio of Numantia." The site of Carthage was supposedly sown with sea salt and its remaining possessions became the province of Africa. The cruel sack of two great old cities, Carthage and Corinth, marked Rome's control of the Mediterranean world, and its determination to hold what it had captured.

Yet Rome herself was on the verge of being captured. From Romulus's day on, Romans had always been in contact with Greek civilization, either through the Etruscans or the Greeks themselves. But the good old mos maiorum was about to be challenged by the advanced learning and luxurious lifestyles Romans encountered on the Greek mainland. Suddenly the ways of the Roman ancestiors weren't quite as appealing as before. How Rome rose to this challenge is no less impressive than its victories over Carthage and the Greeks.