Pax Romana Read online

  The main aim of terrorists is to gain publicity, spreading fear and enhancing their own reputation. They cannot win a military victory on their own and hope only to shake the countries they attack, changing opinion and achieving some political end. Terrorist movements are very hard to defeat, making it probable that attacks will continue for a long time, more or less sporadically. However effective the security services are in limiting opportunities and making it ever harder for the terrorists to operate, it is doubtful that they will be able to prevent every plot. Statistically the risk of falling victim will remain low, for modern populations are very large, and people will adapt, perhaps more nervous than they were before the threat emerged, but still far more occupied with the concerns of living their lives. The odds are that such attacks generate as much or more anger than fear in the wider population. The vast majority of people in Western countries will continue to feel that they live in peacetime. Most will take the stability, security, wealth and much higher life expectancy of the post-war world as both natural and normal – even as a right. It requires effort to remind ourselves that it is merely a matter of chance when and where we are born.

  This is a book about the Roman world and the Roman Empire. I have spoken at such length about my own life and the present day as a reminder that peace is not an absolute, but relative. People can feel that they live in a peaceful world even when organised violence and even large-scale operations are going on. Distance has a great influence on perspective. Anyone serving in the Forces, and especially the combat arms, is likely to have a very different sense of these decades, as will their families. It is vital to remember this when we look at the evidence for the Roman period. We should not be surprised to find evidence for fighting and warfare somewhere in the empire even at the height of the presumed Pax Romana. What matters is understanding its scale and frequency, and trying to judge how far it impinged on the lives of the wider population. The answers are unlikely to be simple, but this is the very heart of the question. Even in the modern world peace is a rare and precious thing. If the Romans really did create conditions where most of the provinces lived in peace for long periods, then it is well worth studying this achievement.

  I am an historian, and this book is an attempt to understand one aspect of the past on its own terms. It is not meant either as a justification for or condemnation of the Roman or any other empire, but to explain what happened and why. Nor do I intend detailed comparison between the Romans and other imperial powers, still less to draw lessons for the current day. Others are far better qualified to speak of such things – and plenty of people who know little about history or the present day will no doubt make strident assertions that the Roman experience proves this or that. Lessons can be learned from history, but it is wise to take great care to understand a period before drawing any conclusions. This book is intended for that purpose.

  INTRODUCTION

  A GLORY GREATER THAN WAR

  ‘For these [the Romans) I set no bounds in space or time; but have given empire without end.’ – the pronouncement of Jupiter in Virgil’s Aeneid, 20s BC.1

  THE PAX ROMANA

  ‘If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus [i.e. AD 96–180]. The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom.’2

  Edward Gibbon’s judgement on the Roman Empire at its height was generous and reinforced the importance of his main theme tracing its decline and fall. From the perspective of the late eighteenth century it was not altogether unreasonable. Europe in Gibbon’s day was divided between kingdoms great and small, always competing for power and often at war, while – fairly or not – North Africa and Asia appeared primitive. Under Rome all this area had been united, sharing the same sophisticated Greco-Roman culture. It was a monarchy, lightly veiled by ‘the image of liberty’, but of universal good when the monarch was a decent, capable man. Monuments to its prosperity – temples, roads, aqueducts, circuses and arches – survived into Gibbon’s day. Most remain today, and centuries of archaeology have added greatly to their number and provided many other objects great and small. The empire was prosperous because it was peaceful, warfare banished to the frontiers which were protected by the army. This was the Pax Romana or Roman Peace, which allowed the greater part of the known world to flourish.

  Many people today are still struck by the technical skill of the Romans, and the apparent modernity of their world. This image of sophistication runs alongside one of decadence, of the underlying cruelty of mass slavery and brutal gladiatorial entertainments, and the whimsical and very personal cruelty of mad and bad emperors. In spite of this there is a sense that the world beyond Rome’s frontiers was a bleak, grim place. Rome was the civilized world, its boundaries marked by barriers such as Hadrian’s Wall, another great monument which still snakes across the Northumbrian hills as a reminder of a lost empire. In fact Hadrian’s Wall was unusual, and such linear boundaries were rare. When Rome collapsed Europe sank into the Dark Ages, literacy and learning all but forgotten, and there was warfare and violence of every sort where once there had been peace.

  Peace is almost as rare today as it was for Gibbon and his contemporaries, and if the Romans truly did create a long period of peace over such a wide area then this deserves to be explained. Praise of peace was commonplace for authors in the ancient world, Greek as well as Roman, but they also readily accepted that war would be frequent. The word pax came to mean something very close to our ‘peace’ by the first century BC. Peace was celebrated by poets, and often held up as the most desirable state. Roman emperors boasted of preserving peace, and sometimes the expression ‘Roman Peace’ was used when speaking of the good brought by the empire. They also spoke a good deal of the glory of victory. Imperator, the word from which we get our ‘emperor’, meant ‘victorious general’, and an emperor’s reputation was badly damaged if his troops suffered serious defeats, whether or not he was personally in command.

  Warfare played a central role in Rome’s history. The Romans fought many wars, and thus conquered an empire that stretched from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, and from the Sahara desert to northern Britain. Its sheer extent remains impressive even today – no other power has ever controlled all the lands around the Mediterranean – and was even more remarkable in an age before modern communication and transport. More striking still was its longevity. Sicily was Rome’s first province, and remained under Roman control for more than 800 years. Britain, one of the last acquisitions, was Roman for three and half centuries. An eastern empire that considered itself Roman survived even longer, and some regions there were ‘Roman’ for one and a half millennia. Other leaders and powers, most notably Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, have expanded faster than the Romans, and a handful have controlled more territory – roughly a quarter of the globe in the case of Britain’s own empire. Yet none have lasted anything like so long, and it is arguable whether or not any have had so great an impact on subsequent history.

  The Romans were warlike and aggressive, but that scarcely requires saying for empires are not created or maintained without violence. Precision is impossible, but we can confidently state that over the centuries millions died in the course of the wars fought by Rome, millions more were enslaved, and still more would live under Roman rule whether they liked it or not. The Romans were imperialists – the word, just like ‘empire’, comes from the Latin imperium, although the Romans used it in a slightly different sense. Once again, to say this is merely stating the obvious. The Romans were highly successful, which in itself suggests that they were good at waging war and skilled in the politics of dominating others. Other empires have done much the same, although none have matched Rome’s talent for absorbing others. When the empire finally collapsed in the western Mediterranean there was no tra
ce of independence movements in any of the provinces, a stark contrast to the crumbling of the twentieth century’s imperial powers after 1945. As the system decayed around them, the people in the provinces still wanted to be Roman. A world without Rome was very hard to imagine and does not seem to have held much appeal.

  Rome’s power lasted so long that memories of a time before Roman domination can only have been faint. Rebellions appear surprisingly rare, and nearly always occurred within a generation or two of conquest. When the empire was at its height, the greater part of the Roman army was stationed on its fringes in the frontier zones – a second-century AD Greek orator compared the soldiers to a protective wall surrounding the empire as if it were a single city. Warfare continued, but it was waged mainly on these frontiers. The provinces of the interior contained tiny garrisons, and many areas rarely saw formed bodies of Roman soldiers. For periods of a century or more, large swathes of the empire were entirely free of warfare.

  This at least is the traditional view, and is generally reflected in the popular perception of Rome. Scholarly opinion changes far more often, and any historian or archaeologist working on this period would qualify much of this overview, and some would reject it altogether. For the moment, let us just say that the truth is a good deal more complicated than this sweeping summary. Yet there can be no doubt about the enduring power of Rome, or that its domination did mean that large parts of the empire experienced no major military activity, let alone open warfare for long periods of time.

  It is important to remember just how rare this has been in recorded history, most of all in the areas controlled by Rome. At no other period since then has Western Europe, North Africa or the Near East experienced a single century without major conflict, and usually it has been a good deal more common than this. Those of us living in the Western world in the last half-century or so all too readily take peace for granted, assuming it to be the natural order – we are too prosperous, too well educated, simply too advanced to permit this ever to be shattered by war – and foreign affairs in general, let alone decisions about military commitments, play scarcely any role in deciding the outcome of elections.3

  In a sense, this may not be too far removed from the experience of many living in the Roman Empire. If so, then this was at first almost accidental. Rome did not conquer the greater part of the known world to create a golden age of peace. Expansion came from the desire to benefit, and Romans were quite open in talking of the wealth and glory brought by empire. They also spoke a good deal about peace as the most desirable condition. At the start of the first century AD, the poet Ovid spoke of a monument to peace – specifically the peace brought by the Emperor Augustus. He hoped that the goddess of Peace would let her ‘gentle presence abide in the whole world’ so that there would be ‘neither foes nor food for triumphs, thou shalt be unto our chiefs a glory greater than war. May the soldier bear arms only to check the armed aggressor . . . ! May the world near and far dread the sons of Aeneas, and if there be land that feared not Rome, may it love Rome instead!’4

  Ovid was one of the least martial of Roman poets, and yet even so his peace was the peace that came from Roman victory, where enemies were either defeated or persuaded to accept Roman dominance and ‘love’ Rome. It was not the peace between equals, each respecting the other. A little earlier, the poet Virgil told his countrymen, ‘Remember, Roman, – for these are your arts – that you have to rule the nations by your power, to add good custom to peace, to spare the conquered and overcome the proud in war’.5 The Latin verb pacare had the same root as pax and meant ‘to pacify’, and was often used to describe aggressive warfare against a foreign people. Pax Romana came from Roman victory and conquest. Wars were fought because they benefited Rome and – at least as Romans saw it – for the sake of their own security, and only then, with dominance achieved, was there some sense that there was a duty to govern the conquered well, to establish peace and security within the provinces. This did not alter the open desire to profit from their dominance, but complemented it. Peace promoted prosperity, which meant that the yield of tax and other revenue could be higher.

  Rome seized control of the greater part of the three continents known to it, Europe, Africa and Asia. Virgil has Jupiter promise the Romans imperium sine fine – empire or power without end or limit. The conquered were given ‘Roman Peace’ whether they liked it or not, and the method was through the use or threat of military force, wielded ruthlessly and savagely – Tacitus’ desolation called peace. The Romans were fully aware that others may not wish to be ruled by them, but that did not mean that they ever seriously doubted that it was the right thing to expand their power.

  The Romans were warlike, aggressive imperialists, who exploited their conquests for their own benefit. These days empires are not widely admired, least of all by academics in the West. Britain’s own imperial past is largely ignored (as indeed is history in general, apart from a few narrow topics and periods), or viewed with a bitterly hostile eye. Attempts in the USA to draw comparisons between their own situation and historical empires whether British, Roman or anyone else, tend to be controversial, reflecting very different views of the role that America ought to play in the world. A century or so ago most – though not all – people in the West had a vague sense that empires could be, and often were, good things. Nowadays the opposite is true. Moves to intervene overseas by the USA and its allies are readily criticised as imperialism, not just by the targets and their allies, but domestically.

  The danger is that we have simply replaced one over-simplification with another. Dislike of empire tends to encourage scepticism over its achievements. Much recent scholarship has doubted the efficiency of the Roman state, whether as a republic or under the rule of the emperors. Archaeologists who used to talk enthusiastically of a process of Romanisation of the provinces have almost all rejected the term and the concept behind it, often with surprising passion. The influence and impact of Roman rule is questioned, and any sign of resistance – whether political or cultural – seen as more significant, and centuries of imperial rule viewed as aberrations. The Romans are depicted as brutal and exploitative rather than a civilising influence on the world, and as part of this wider scepticism the reality of any Pax Romana is questioned. Boasts of peace throughout the world become little more than propaganda to justify imperial rule, veiling endemic and frequent banditry, resistance and acts of oppression by the authorities. Many modern views of the Roman world are grim indeed. One characterised the history of the Roman Empire as simply ‘robbery with violence’. Less extreme, but still critical:

  Roman claims that the provincials enjoyed unbroken peace were an exaggeration, and some Romans knew it. Quite apart from the routine violence that characterized life in all ancient societies, the provinces also suffered revolts and civil conflicts of a more serious nature than emperors were prepared officially to admit. The provinces were pacified, but pacified repeatedly, rather than once for all, and they were not peaceful.6

  Here something of the Pax Romana remains, but its extent is severely limited, although importantly the alleged ‘routine violence’ is not specifically Roman. Another approach is to admit that there was widespread peace over much of the empire, but to see it as coming at far too high a price for the provincial population: ‘Roman peace – even if, for the vast majority of the population, this was the peace enjoyed by a domesticated animal, kept solely for what it could produce – was an enduring reality.’7

  Yet the size and longevity of Rome’s empire cannot be argued away, which means that such views assume either prolonged oppression or disturbances and large-scale bloodshed to be a feature of the stories of many or most provinces for much of the time, and make this long-term survival hard to explain. This interpretation implies that the Romans were even more skilled at domination than we would expect and, if true, would have a profound impact on our understanding of the period. Other scholars tentatively suggest that the long-term survival of the empire was the outcome of
chance, of wider factors encouraging so much of the world to unite at this time around a common Mediterranean economic model. Yet so many centuries of success do not suggest mere coincidence, and still beg the question of why it was Rome and not some other state that dominated.

  The signs of prosperity in large parts of the empire are obvious, which does not mean that this comfort and wealth was spread equally or at all fairly. It does mean that the provinces were not so heavily exploited as to ruin them and impoverish all of their inhabitants – which is not to say that some did not suffer. Nor is there clear evidence of warfare over large parts of the Roman world for long periods of time, and its presence has to be taken from hints, or simply the assumption that imperial propaganda must contain plenty of untruths. The claim that revolts happened is not easy to justify in the case of most provinces and periods. There is also the question of lower levels of violence and whether these were tolerated by Rome – or considered impossible to eradicate. It is common for scholars to assert that banditry was endemic in the empire, but the evidence is far from straightforward.

  The period of Roman domination and empire represents a large chunk of the histories of the lands included within it, and it is clear that in many ways the experience of it was very different to the periods before and after the imposition of Roman rule. It is well worth looking again at the Pax Romana, and attempting to understand what it really meant and whether or not the Romans did preside over a peaceful and stable empire where war was rare and mainly banished to the fringes of the world. To answer this broad question we must look at how the empire was created and how it was run. Most importantly, in spite of all the problems of evidence overwhelmingly generated by the imperial power, we must consider the experience of the conquered peoples as much as that of the Romans.