Paul

Chapter 1

The Rise of Rome

1. Rome through eastern eyes

I n these days of world super powers, it is not easy to envisage how a single city could have acquired an adequate power base to extend its authority over a wide area and establish a large empire. Yet in world history many cities have in their day become imperial states. There were several at various times in the Euphrates-Tigris valley. The best known of these was Babylon, which in the eighteenth century b.c. achieved this kind of power under the great Hammurabi and later, in the sixth century b.c., dominated not only its Mesopotamian neighbors but the lands to the west as far as the Mediterranean and the Egyptian frontier. The Mediterranean Sea itself has witnessed the rise and fall of a succession of imperial cities. In the fifth century b.c. the Athenian Empire held sway not only over the Aegean Sea but over a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean and as far west as Sicily, while for three centuries Carthage - itself a colony of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre - controlled the Western Mediterranean until her rival, Rome, compelled her to relinquish all her overseas dominions after defeating her in the Second Punic War at the end of the third century b.c. During the Christian era the city of Venice was able to "hold the gorgeous East in fee" from Crusading times until the seventeenth century.

But of all the cities which have dominated the Mediterranean lands none has exercised such an abiding influence on them, and on others far removed from the Mediterranean, as Rome. Rome's swift rise to power made a deep impression on men's minds in antiquity. A Greek politician named Polybius, who was taken to Rome as a hostage in 167 b.c. and had the good fortune to win the friendship of Scipio Aemilianus, the leading Roman general of his day, wrote a historical work (still of exceptional value, in so far as it survives) in order to trace the steps by which the city of Rome, in a period of fifty-three years (221-168 b.c.), became mistress of the Mediterranean world - a thing unique in history.9 Less accurate, but informative because of its vivid reflection of the idealized image of Rome current in the Near East towards 100 b.c., is the picture given in 1 Maccabees 8:1-16, where we are told how Judas Maccabaeus, seeking what support he could find in his struggle against the Seleucids, sent an embassy to Rome:

Now Judas heard of the fame of the Romans, that they were . . . well-disposed toward all who made an alliance with them, and that they were very strong. Men told him of their wars and of the brave deeds which they were doing among the Gauls, how they had defeated them and forced them to pay tribute, and what they had done in the land of Spain to get control of the silver and gold mines there, and how they had gained control of the whole region by their planning and patience, even though the place was far distant from them. They also subdued the kings who came against them from the ends of the earth, until they crushed them and inflicted great disaster upon them; the rest paid them tribute every year. Philip,10 and Perseus11 king of the Macedonians, and the others who rose up against them, they crushed in battle and conquered. They also defeated Antiochus the Great, king of Asia,12 who went to fight against them with a hundred and twenty elephants and with cavalry and chariots and a very large army. He was crushed by them; they took him alive and decreed that he and those who should reign after him should pay a heavy tribute and give hostages and surrender some of their best provinces, the country of India and Media and Lydia. These they took from him and gave to Eumenes the king [of Pergamum]. The Greeks planned to come and destroy them, but this became known to them, and they sent a general against the Greeks and attacked them. Many of them were wounded and fell, and the Romans took captive their wives and children; they plundered them, conquered the land, tore down their strongholds, and enslaved them to this day.13 The remaining kingdoms and islands, as many as ever opposed them, they destroyed and enslaved; but with their friends and those who rely on them they have kept friendship. They have subdued kings far and near, and as many as have heard of their fame have feared them. Those whom they wish to help and to make kings, they make kings, and those whom they wish they depose; and they have been greatly exalted. Yet for all this not one of them has put on a crown or worn purple as a mark of pride, but they have built for themselves a senate chamber, and every day three hundred and twenty senators14 constantly deliberate concerning the people, to govern them well. They trust one man each year to rule over them and to control all their land; they all heed the one man, and there is no envy or jealousy among them.

This account has many detailed inaccuracies, the most astonishing of which is the statement at the end that they entrust supreme power to one man each year: in fact, to prevent the concentration of power in one man's hands they elected two collegiate chief magistrates (consuls) year by year, each of whom had the right of veto over the other's proceedings. Nevertheless, it does give us a fair idea of what was thought of the Romans in Western Asia at the time; experience of their oppressiveness at close quarters gave currency to a much less favorable picture after two or three decades.15

2. From hill settlements to world empire

Rome was originally a group of pastoral and agricultural hill settlements in the Latin plain, on the left bank of the Tiber. At an early stage in her history she fell under Etruscan control, but after a generation or two succeeded in shaking off this yoke. The Etruscans retired to the right bank of the Tiber. Rome's career of world conquest began with her crossing of the Tiber to besiege and storm the Etruscan city of Veii (c. 400 b.c.). From that time on Rome became first the mistress of Latium and then of Italy. Intervention in a Sicilian quarrel in 264 b.c. brought her into conflict with the Carthaginians, who had substantial commercial interests in Sicily. The result was the two Punic Wars (264-241 and 218-202 b.c.), in the second of which Rome came within an ace of annihilation; but after the decisive defeat of Hannibal at Zama, in North Africa, she emerged as undisputed mistress of the Western Mediterranean.

Rome was to have no respite after her exhausting struggle against Hannibal and his forces: the Second Punic War was scarcely over when she found herself engaged in war with Macedonia, one of the states which inherited part of Alexander's empire. In 195 b.c. she restored to the city-states of Greece the freedom which they had lost to Philip, Alexander's father, nearly a century and a half before. This restored freedom, indeed, was strictly limited, as Rome constituted herself the protector of the liberated cities. But no other power could intervene in their affairs with impunity. When the Seleucid kingdom (another of the succession states to Alexander's empire) attempted to do so in 192 b.c., it was not only repulsed but invaded by the Roman legionaries, and found itself incurably crippled and impoverished. Rome lost no opportunity of encouraging opposition to Seleucid interests, whether in Ptolemaic Egypt (yet another of the succession states) or among the Jewish insurgents led by Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers (from 168 b.c. onwards).

These moves led to Rome's increasing involvement in the Near East. In 133 b.c. the last king of Pergamum, an ally of Rome, died and bequeathed his territory (the western part of Asia Minor) to the Roman senate and people. The bequest was accepted, and the territory became the Roman province of Asia. Roman rule was not universally popular, and in 88 b.c. an anti-Roman rising was fomented in the province by Mithridates VI, king of Pontus (on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor), who himself cherished imperial ambitions in that area. The result was a war between Rome and Pontus which dragged on for a quarter of a century. When, at the end of that period, Roman arms triumphed under the generalship of Pompey, Pompey was faced with the task of reconstructing the whole political order of Western Asia. He occupied Judea in 63 b.c., having given Syria the status of a Roman province in the preceding year.

For thirty years and more after Pompey's settlement, the Roman world was torn between rival aspirants to supreme power. But the naval victory of Actium (31 b.c.), which meant the downfall of Cleopatra, the last sovereign of Ptolemaic Egypt, with her Roman ally Antony, left Octavian, adopted son and political heir of Julius Caesar, master of the Roman world. With consummate statesmanship Octavian, who in 27 b.c. assumed the style Augustus, preserved the republican framework of the Roman state but concentrated the reality of power in his own hands. In Rome he was content with the title princeps, first citizen of the republic. But in the eastern provinces he and his successors were recognized for what they were in fact - the heirs to the dominion of Alexander and the dynasties among which his empire was partitioned - kings of kings, like the great oriental potentates of old.

Under the control of Rome, then -...