The Republic Expands: Rome's Conquest of Italy
How the Roman Republic became the regional power of the Italian peninsula.
Rome was not, as the saying goes, built in one day. In fact, the ancient Romans only gradually became the dominant power of the Mediterranean through a series of wars with their Italian neighbors. In this process, Italy was unified under the auspices of the Eternal City. By the 3rd century BC, the Romans had extended their domain across the entire Italian peninsula.
The Latin League
Rome first began its expansion at the expense of the Etruscans. The Romans seized their arable land, and redistributed it to Roman colonists.
Rome’s immediate neighbors in central Italy were a collection of cities, collectively called the Latin League. In 499 BC, the Romans defeated their Latin enemies. The two sides signed an agreement, which formed an alliance of mutual defense.
With the Latin League as its new ally, the Romans began to fight against various mountain tribes. This included the Aequi, the Hernici, and the Volsci.
The Romans cleverly used a divide-and-conquer strategy. They made temporary alliances with tribes, which they regularly violated and changed. After subduing the tribes, the Romans turned against their ally, the Latin League. By 338 BC, all the Latin cities were in Roman hands. The League was officially dissolved. The various Latin cities were all very similar in terms of language and culture, so they were easy to assimilate into Rome.
Gauls
Having conquered much of central Italy, the Romans turned their attention northward. This brought them into conflict with the Gauls, a Celtic culture based in modern-day France.
As the Romans expanded into old Etruscan territory from the south, the Gauls were making their own conquests from the north. The Gauls crossed over the Alps, and occupied much of the fertile Po River Valley. The two sides were on a collision course.
Things would not turn out good for the Romans. The Gauls crushed their Roman foes at the Battle of the Allia in 390 BC. Then, the Gauls capitalized on their victory by sweeping down into central Italy. This culminated with the Sack of Rome itself. Most Romans were forced to flee the Eternal City, which was defended by only a small contingent of warriors in the fortified Capitoline Hill. These Romans were besieged atop the hill for over 6 months.
Eventually, the Romans came to a settlement. They paid off a bribe of 1,000 pounds of gold. But if the Gauls had been successful, they could have easily vanquished Rome. The Romans would have been nothing but a tiny footnote in history!
The Gallic Sack of Rome had a number of effects. It halted Rome’s expansion northward. For the next several centuries, the Romans did not dare to interfere in Gaul. Traumatized by the attack, the Romans began to build up the fortifications of their capital city. It became known as the Servian Wall. The wall was 30 feet high, and over 6 miles long. The wall enclosed Rome, including the Capitoline, Palatine, and Aventine Hills. The Tiber River, and the Campus Martius, were not yet incorporated into Rome. The Gauls would be the last foreigners to invade Rome for the next 800 years.
Samnites
After the Gauls, the Romans dealt with the Samnites. From 343 to 290 BC, the Romans fought in three major wars against these people.
In the Second Samnite War, the Romans were subjected to a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Caudine Forks in 321 BC. Defeated Roman troops were paraded in yokes, like cattle, in front of their Samnite victors. The Romans were consumed with revenge. War flared up again in 316 BC, lasting until 304 BC.
The third and final conflict broke out in 298 BC. This time, Rome faced a formidable coalition of Etruscans, Umbrians, Gauls, and Samnites, who collectively resisted Roman expansion. The conflict lasted until 290 BC. The key moment was the Battle of Sentinum, in 295 BC. It was the largest battle in Roman history up to that point, consisting of about 30,000 men. The Romans outmaneuvered their foes using clever diversionary tactics, and won a decisive victory. Sentinum was a turning point in Roman history, because it established Rome as the dominant power of the Italian peninsula.
“All roads lead to Rome”
One of the long-enduring effects of the Samnite Wars was the creation of Rome’s famous roads. To facilitate the movement of troops, the Romans constructed their famous roads all across Italy. It linked Rome to the rest of its empire. Many of these masterpieces of engineering are still in use over 2,000 years later. One famous road is the Appian Way, named after the consul Appius Claudius, who also constructed Rome’s first-ever aqueduct.
Design-wise, Roman roads had foundations that went down four feet into the ground. They were graded to drain water. The roads were paved, and almost always were straight. By the end of the second century BC, other Roman roads appeared, such as the Via Flaminia and the Via Aurelia. They were constructed up and down the peninsula. This created a web of cities, united by their Romanized culture.
Roman roads had several functions. They helped the Romans keep military control of their empire. It allowed them to quickly mobilize and move troops. It promoted trade, and sped up communication. Most of all, the presence of roads was a powerful symbol of a city’s Romanness.
Assimilation
The Romans were highly unusual in the ancient world. Unlike most conquerors, Rome often granted various degrees of citizenship to its annexed territories.
While the Romans did resort to massacres and mass slavery, they more often extended their way of life to the conquered peoples. This ensured loyalty and integration. This strategy was essential for Rome’s successful conquest and integration of the other Italian peoples.
Local aristocratic families, and sometimes even entire cities, were given full Roman citizenship. Other times, conquered peoples received half-citizenship. This meant they enjoyed legal protections under Roman law, but were still excluded from Rome’s civic and political life. Many cities were granted the status of socii, or allies of Rome.
Implicit in Rome’s system of assimilation was the idea that non-Roman peoples could eventually become full Roman citizens. To do this, Rome relied on its territories to provide manpower for the Roman army. All Italian military forces were put under the command of the Romans. They were required to rely on Rome for its foreign policy decisions.
Rome was successful, not only because of its aggressive conquests, but because it extended the rights and privileges of their society to vanquished peoples. It supplied Rome with a nearly endless supply of military manpower, which proved crucial for Rome’s geopolitical dominance.
By requiring non-Romans to serve in the Roman military, the Romans found a way to spread their culture. Non-Romans quickly picked up the Latin language and adopted Roman customs. Latin soon became the lingua franca of the entire Italian peninsula.
Pyrrhic War
Having consolidated central Italy, the Romans waged their final campaign of expansion—this time to the south. Slowly but surely, they made their way down the peninsula, where the Romans began to clash with the Greek settlements of southern Italy.
This was yet another turning point in Rome’s history. Once again, as with the Gauls, the Romans were now fighting against people with a radically different culture. The Greek cities of southern Italy were sophisticated and massively wealthy. Chief among them was the powerful city of Tarentum.
When the Romans attacked the city, Tarentum used its wealth to hire some of the most lethal mercenaries in the ancient world. They turned to mainland Greece, particularly a king named Pyrrhus of Epirus. The king believed himself to be the next Alexander the Great, and was even the second cousin of the Macedonian conqueror. He was professional and well-trained.
The Romans fought hard, but Pyrrhus and his professional army were still stronger. Pyrrhus relied on the use of war elephants, which the Romans had never seen before. Pyrrhus won a decisive victory, but at a huge cost. He expected the Romans to sue for peace, but the belligerent Romans refused to back down or even negotiate. Rome relied on its vast manpower reserves to drain out Pyrrhus’ forces. Pyrrhus clashed against the Romans at the Battle of Asculum, a half-way point between Rome and southern Italy, in the year 279 BC.
Pyrrhus kept winning the battles, but his casualties were far too high to sustain his war effort. This is the origin of the term “Pyrrhic victory,” which means a victory that is so costly, that it is the same as a defeat. After winning again at the Battle of Beneventum in 275 BC, Pyrrhus simply gave up. He and his men were just too tired, and left Italy. He won all the battles, but still lost the war.
With Pyrrhus out of the way, Rome was free to expand its territory across the whole of southern Italy. By 264 BC, the Romans had conquered the entire Italian peninsula. Three million people, including one million who enjoyed the rights of Roman citizenship, were at the disposal of Rome’s armed forces.
Having conquered the whole of Italy, the Romans began to set their sights on expanding overseas. This would culminate with the famous Punic Wars against Carthage.
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