The Storm Before the Storm

But though tension between patrician and pleb helped define the early Republic, Roman politics was not a class affair. Roman families organized themselves into complex client-patron networks that worked down from the elite patrician patrons through an array of interconnected plebeian clients. Patrons could expect political and military support from their clients, and clients could expect financial and legal assistance from their patrons. So though the conflict between patricians and plebs occasionally led to explosive clashes, the client-patron bonds meant Roman politics was more a clash of rival clans than a class war.

What truly bound all Romans together, though, were unspoken rules of social and political conduct. The Romans never had a written constitution or extensive body of written law—they needed neither. Instead the Romans surrounded themselves with unwritten rules, traditions, and mutual expectations collectively known as mos maiorum, which meant “the way of the elders.” Even as political rivals competed for wealth and power, their shared respect for the strength of the client-patron relationship, the sovereignty of the Assemblies, and wisdom of the Senate kept them from going too far. When the Republic began to break down in the late second century it was not the letter of Roman law that eroded, but respect for the mutually accepted bonds of mos maiorum.¹⁰

THOUGH SOMETIMES DIVIDED internally, the Romans always fought as one when faced with a foreign threat. Romulus stamped the Romans early with a martial spirit and rarely did a year go by without some kind of conflict with a neighbor. Occasionally these seasonal skirmishes erupted into full-blown wars. Starting in 343, the Romans became locked in a long war with the Samnites, a nomadic people who populated the hills and mountains of central Italy. Waged over the next fifty years, the Samnite Wars eventually sucked the rest of Italy into an anti-Roman coalition. When Rome defeated this coalition in 295 they became undisputed masters of the peninsula.¹¹

But that victory only led to an even greater conflict: the Punic Wars. As Rome grew in strength during the 300s, the prosperous merchant city of Carthage had been rising in North Africa. By the time the Romans conquered Italy, the Carthaginians had pushed their way onto the island of Sicily and would soon be moving over to Spain. The two budding empires inevitably clashed, and for the next hundred years Rome and Carthage battled for control of the western Mediterranean.¹²

Rome was nearly defeated in 218 when the great Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy, but the stubborn Romans refused to surrender. In fact, they were soon able to spread the conflict throughout the Mediterranean. In an attempt to shut down Hannibal’s supply lines, the Senate sent legions to attack Carthaginian lands in Spain. When they discovered Hannibal sought an alliance with King Philip V of Macedon, the Senate ordered a fleet to Greece. Finally the great hero of the war, Scipio Africanus, led an invasion of the Carthaginian homeland in North Africa. There he defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202. Carthage surrendered.¹³

Emerging from the crucible of the Punic Wars, Rome was no longer merely a regional power—it had become the dominant power in the Mediterranean. But the Senate resisted taking direct imperial control over the territories they now commanded. The final treaty with Carthage was surprisingly lenient. It stipulated a number of punitive clauses—the Carthaginians owed an annual cash indemnity and were forbidden from fielding an army or a navy—but other than that, Carthage retained its traditional domains in Africa and was free to govern itself.¹⁴

The Senate also wanted no part of ruling the Greeks and Macedonians. Having successfully kept Macedon out of the war, the Roman fleet withdrew back across the Adriatic. The plan was to leave Greece to the Greeks but, much to the Senate’s consternation, King Philip V of Macedon intentionally violated a treaty obligation and Rome was obliged to send legions east again. In 197, Philip paid for his provocative miscalculation when the legions crushed him at the decisive Battle of Cynoscephalae. Philip agreed to confine himself to Macedon and not make further trouble. But though Greece was now at their mercy, the victorious Romans declared in 196: “The Senate of Rome and T. Quinctius, their general, having conquered King Philip and the Macedonians do now decree and ordain that these states shall be free, shall be released from the payment of tribute, and shall live under their own laws.” The Romans had not come to conquer the Greeks, but to set them free.¹⁵