How did the Romans get to subjugate all the Italic civilizations?

[twgamer20197]

Of course in order to achieve subjugating other tribes and civilizations you need to defeat them militarily or at least dissuading them from fighting you off ( But you can't defeat or dissuade them if both your army and your economy is weaker than them ). But what did the Romans do in order to be both militarily and economically stronger than the Etruscans, the Volsci, the Hernici, the Sabines, the Frentani, the Samnites and more? What did the Romans have what those civilizations didn't have?

[Common Soldier]

A couple of the things the Romans did

1. They conquered Italy one city at a time, allowinng the Romans to incorporate their conquered cities before conquering the next batch of cities.

2. They made their conquer cities allies, who shared a lot of priveledges with the Romans. These allies share many of the benefits of future Roman conquest along with the Romans.

[Cyclops]

A couple of the things the Romans did

1. They conquered Italy one city at a time, allowinng the Romans to incorporate their conquered cities before conquering the next batch of cities.

2. They made their conquer cities allies, who shared a lot of priveledges with the Romans. These allies share many of the benefits of future Roman conquest along with the Romans.

Well said.

Rome was a messy bastard child of Latin and Sabine cultures, with an Hellenic polis structure imposed by "superior" Etruscan interlopers. There was room for a variety of cultures from the start and they readily adapted this model to new peoples they encountered. Old mate Conon likes to say they Borged all over the Med and its a good metaphor. Resistance was generally useless, they absorbed most of the neighbourhood and they were foiled by Picards Picts.

[antaeus]

I don't think the Romans intended to conquer Italy. Like all other city states and tribes across the peninsula they sought on a case by case basis to succeed in crises as they came up. One after another. There were certainly deliberate acquisitions and plenty of political figures who sought to use expansion as a pathway to enrichment, and those who sought for Rome to be the leading Latin state, or later central Italian state or Italian state... but the conquest of neighbours occurred over decades and centuries, and it only looks like a pathway of conquest for us with hindsight.

A better way to look at it is that Italy was a melting pot of competing tribes and states, all vying for gains. Rome just happened to be the state that survived.

Over time, surviving states all refine their domestic structures to better manage their growing power - they compete at increasing size and complexity. There is a snowball effect, not just for Rome, but for it's competitors to be better organised, better managed, better trained. Certainly the competition between say the Samnites and Rome was on a different scale to the tribal warband battles of the early centuries, and the battles with the Greek communities became bigger yet,- reaching beyond Italy.

To sum up, Rome didn't do anything special that other states and tribes weren't also doing. It grew, became more complex and organised, then grew again. The specific things that allowed Rome to be victorious each time were specific to each conflict. Rome just flipped a whole lot of coins and guessed right one more time than their previous competitor.

[twgamer20197]

1. They conquered Italy one city at a time, allowinng the Romans to incorporate their conquered cities before conquering the next batch of cities.

So that way they for example would gain access to new trade routes or more money collected from taxes to increase their money income. The bigger your funds, the more men you can recruit, the more war equipment/weapons you can make, etc

2. They made their conquer cities allies, who shared a lot of priveledges with the Romans. These allies share many of the benefits of future Roman conquest along with the Romans.

That seems to me like a good idea for preventing future revolts

[twgamer20197]

hey were foiled by Picards Picts.

Maybe we'd have to research why. Let me explain what I mean:

When there is corruption in the political or economical administration, that affects the army. You know what happens when polititians care more about their personal ambitions ( such as taking advantage of opportunities to be richer ) or when they tend to think more of themselves than thinking of the Empire or the army's good.

[Cyclops]

Maybe we'd have to research why. Let me explain what I mean:

When there is corruption in the political or economical administration, that affects the army. You know what happens when polititians care more about their personal ambitions ( such as taking advantage of opportunities to be richer ) or when they tend to think more of themselves than thinking of the Empire or the army's good.

Rome wasn't really an empire for most of the period yu;re discussing (I guess c. 700-220 BCE? Foundation to conquest of Cisalpinine Gaul, or maybe it ends with the Social War in the 90's?), in that it didn't have provinces etc until the end of the first Punic War when it establish its first province in Sicily and shortly afterwards the Islands. As Antaeus pointed at, at a certain point Rome was just one more player in a gaggle of Poleis, tribes and alliances expanding more by establishing friendly leagues and allies.

The state and its organs evolved enormously over the period in question. They had Kings, then (probably foreign appointed) Praetors, then Consuls. They had private armies, probably a tribal levy, a typical classical citizen-service military system and then the tweaked Camillan model followed by the familiar sequence of Scipionic, Marian and Augustan armies. They weren't afraid of compromise and reform, excpet when they were and there was actual bloodshed. They accepted foreigners as equals to a degree (eg snooty Hellenes and rough Oscans could be citizens or near-citizen equals in their state) but also enslaved and slaughtered entire tribes. Sometimes they observed a state of internal peace unknown to the Hellenic Poleis riven by stasis, at other times they fought vicious Social and Civil wars.

Sometimes Rome behaved as a good international citizen eg granting "Freedom to the Greeks", at others they took a whizz on treaties for the lulz. They did evolve the cursus honorum and a loosening of the Patrician stranglehold on state offices to widen and direct the torrent of citizen ambitions in service of the state, but some generals turned their armies around and marched on Rome itself.

Foreign policy was extremely variable over the period too, with the solid Carthaginian alliance from at least 500 down to the 270's replaced by predatory hostility ending with the destruction of Carthage.

So there's not one thing, although the cursus honorum and the multi-ethnic state stand out as unusual in the classical era. I think Rome was generally run on a pragmatic business-like model but even in the eras of Italian conquest it evolves a lot.

[EricD]

A lot of good points have been raised already. I would just say in addition to what antaeus and Cyclops have already contributed:

Firstly, the aristocratic culture of the Roman patricians who dominated the ranks of the Roman magistrates in the early to middle Republic generally produced aggressive leaders. The constant social competition of patrician society along the narrow path of the cursus honorum in those days rewarded men for successful and valorous military service, and taught them to be aggressive from the earliest points of their public lives (The ten years service in the cavalry required to be a military tribune, the first step of the cursus honorum). When a consul or praetor was sent on campaign, they had only a year's time to make some glorious contribution to the Republic, and war was the most glorious of all, so they were both inclined to war and had been taught by long military service and by their upbringing in Roman culture to be aggressive. They wouldn't have even had the chance to be elected consul in the first place without some degree of military success in their past.

Now Rome's bellicosity is often spoken of, and often made too much of in my opinion. All the polities of Antiquity were warlike. The Samnites may have even had a more militaristic culture than the Romans did. Even democratic Athens was exceptionally imperialistic and warlike in the days of her glory. The Hellenistic monarchs boasted of ruling over "spear-won land", or said that their rule extended only to the tip of the spear. In this, the Romans were quite normal for their time. The Romans also produced their fair share of military incompetents just like any other culture does. However, with that said, the particular pressures of aristocratic culture and social competition produced in Rome in general reliably produced brave leaders with military experience who thirsted for success on the battlefield and the chance to celebrate a triumph and decorate their names and the names of their family with glory. Such leadership was generally very useful in surviving the harsh competition that was politics in ancient Italy.

Secondly, the Romans seemed to have learned by hard trial and error how best to subjugate and integrate rivals into her own political system such that they became contributors to Roman power. We often speak of "The Roman Republic" when referring to the political entity which fought the Punic Wars and conflicts of that time, but a more accurate term might be "The Roman league", or "the Roman alliance" of which Rome was the leader. For Rome stood as the hegemon of a group of Italian allied cities and peoples, and this was a critical ingredient in her extraordinary period of expansion and success in the 2nd century BC.

It is often forgotten that in her early days, Rome did not have the military edge over her local rivals that they would later gain. Rome had been around for centuries prior to emerging to prominence. If we take the traditional founding of 753 BC as accurate, then Rome had been struggling and fighting her peers for nearly 500 years before the Romans met Pyrrhus of Epirus. Our sources from that early time period of the Republic are pretty hazy and their reliability is uncertain, but as best we can tell the Romans faced repeated hard struggles against the Latins, the Etruscans, the Gauls, the Volsci, and the Samnites. They must have generally survived and prevailed, else they would not have emerged dominant. However, the stories of the Battle of the Allia and the Sack of Rome by the Gauls or the Roman army's surrender to the Samnites at Caudine Forks as told to us by Livy may preserve some indications that Roman victory in those times was not always certain and Rome faced hard opposition.

The Romans had to learn how to keep a defeated enemy from rising again to wage war against them again, and need to be put down again. Such repetitive struggles as Rome spent many years on would have exacted a hard cost in blood and treasure. The best way, as it turned out, was to integrate defeated foes into Rome's league of allies, and especially to make them contribute soldiers to Rome's military campaigns. Rome had more flexible categories of citizenship and non-citizenship (Cives, Latini, Socii, et cetera) than many other city-states of the time did, and was much more freely willing to grant partial citizenship in exchange for military service to defeated peoples. Further, Rome settled colonists in the lands of defeated rivals who became socii themselves, gradually Romanizing the other Italian peoples as they spent more time within the confederation system. These colonists also I suspect acted as a sort of civilian garrison, not necessarily kept under arms but available to act as watchdogs for plots against Rome among the conqured. On the part of the socii, Rome guaranteeed their security from other regional rivals both by giving them the protection of the Roman confederate army and by prohibiting the internecine warfare among the socii which was the norm in Italy. In many cases, providing men to the joint army was the only responsibility which Rome demanded of her socii and they were often still allowed to maintain their own laws and customs. For Rome, this system of imperialism generally allowed for them to pacify defeated rivals from rising up to rebel and challenge Rome again (Although such things certainly happened, most devastatingly in the Social War) and gave them access to huge quantities of military manpower no other Mediterranean power could muster.

This system was probably developed over many years of both successes and failures before Rome struck upon "the winning formula" as it were to start to consistently expand. Rome was small for a very, very long time before the Romans learned enough of both politics and war to gain the edge that led to their rapid rise to Mediterranean hegemony after the Second Punic War.

[conon394]

So that way they for example would gain access to new trade routes or more money collected from taxes to increase their money income. The bigger your funds, the more men you can recruit, the more war equipment/weapons you can make, etc

Not till really later - post Punic war v1 does Rome come to that kind of Empire.

Common Soldier..

1. They conquered Italy one city at a time, allowinng the Romans to incorporate their conquered cities before conquering the next batch of cities.

2. They made their conquer cities allies, who shared a lot of privileges with the Romans. These allies share many of the benefits of future Roman conquest along with the Romans.

This is truism but not causality.

Others have touched on things I would have typed but here how I would refine those ideals.

Rome was in some ways lucky. It was not an Other if you will allow. It was a over the period of its expansion in Italy a fairly stable oligarchy and one that was not as narrow as many were. Since by in large it was dealing with other oligarchies this a huge leg up. Nor was it culturally much of an other to various surrounding Italian cultures.

I don't think that can be ignored. consider both Sparta and Athens. They were 'others' in the Greek Polis system. That had allowed them to consolidate uniquely large polis states. And alliances but after that it caused real problems with larger state creation after a point. The Spartan system was simply too closed it added only helots or allies and distrusted venturing far afield. Athens was more open but by in large the deal of democracy was more or less horrifying to the elites in the Arche (outside of a demonstrable minority). The two city states that might have been rivals near about after the Med ended up with something of an East West split - politically if not commercially also had their issues. Carthage got lucky and seems to have more or less netted tacit control of all Phoenician colonies to some extent. Neither Syracuse (or Massilia nor a contender out of Magna Graecia) got so lucky and were but for brief periods always out matched by Carthage or the simple fact they could not reliably hold together the Greek side.

Rome had a nice comfortable oligarchy. Over time it was one that could both add non voting citizens and a few elites as actual citizens but just a few (who largely would never never vote anyway given travel and the iron fist control the Roman oligarchy had on when and where voting would happen). It could thus have allies and even nominal sorta citizens without upsetting either its own elite core nor the locals subjected who were not shoved into a profoundly different system. Syracuse and Carthage never really overcame that. Even with population relocation Syracuse never really seemed to break the local affinity for one's own polis. Carthage well seemed to have always been the outsider at the Greek door.

They did however manage to distract each other quit enough that Rome seemed far away and not of interest and never stuck either as worry till it was too late.

Importantly also Rome's tribute was military service. Not stuff nor taxes. Military service importantly paid for by the subjects. So Rome only benefited by war. Subdue the Latins fine now they are maybe a bit touchy about loss of land and new Roman colonies. Better fight somebody else and the pay forward the system. We only get any use out of the Latins if we are fighting the Etruscans. Sure why not then Latin colonies and Roman ones in Etrusca and so forth.

But to return to distracted Cartage and Syracuse, Rome also had no major out sized enemy in either wealth or military power that cared until it had consolidated its state. Nor did ever really attract a consolidated effort from the East. Pyrrhus for example does not count. A victorious Philip (and then Alexander) who decided freedom of the Greeks in the West was job 1, would likely have been a hammer blow Rome would not have survived vs the feckless engagement of a fleeting adventurer.

[Roma_Victrix]

A couple of the things the Romans did

1. They conquered Italy one city at a time, allowinng the Romans to incorporate their conquered cities before conquering the next batch of cities.

2. They made their conquer cities allies, who shared a lot of priveledges with the Romans. These allies share many of the benefits of future Roman conquest along with the Romans.

This basically answers it, although to strengthen this point I would advise reading Klaus Bringmann's A History of the Roman Republic (2002, translated 2007), which brilliantly explains how the Romans went about doing this.

Preceding the Punic Wars, the Romans began building a network of alliances with various tribes and cities of the Italian peninsula, but unlike Hellenistic powers that taxed the hell out of their subjects to pay for expensive professional mercenaries, the Romans levied very few financial taxes on their allies. Instead they largely respected local sovereignty and autonomy but demanded that client states and allies provide them with auxiliary troops when they needed to recruit them. This was a generous, respectful and mutually beneficial system to both parties, because the Romans could also provide these allies with protection from their own enemies. With both an economic incentive and one based on mutual aid and survival, it's no wonder that most of Rome's Italian allies stuck with her even when Hannibal was ravaging the Italian peninsula and attempting to cleave Rome away from its allies, especially Capua.

While this original system of alliances eventually spread across the Mediterranean world, it obviously became defunct in Roman Italy following the Social War and citizenship/suffrage offered to all the Italian allied peoples. By the time of Julius Caesar this was extended to all the people of Cisalpine Gaul as well.

[conon394]

Roma_Victrix

I would say tongue in cheek you have been hanging with Livy a bit too much.

the Romans began building a network of alliances with various tribes and cities of the Italian peninsula

That is a bit sanitized. Shall we say not conquered and chose to make a harsh example out of only a few

the Romans levied very few financial taxes on their allies. Instead they largely respected local sovereignty and autonomy

They did tax by confiscation of land and imposition of colonies. You are correct the larger duty of follow in peace and war loss of external political freedom and subject to levy in war did create a particular situation. That being Rome got little use of its new friends if it was not at war and war was more or less the only way its friends could get allied colonies or Latin colonies or gain from the next round of Rome's expansion. So why not be all in for the Samnite wars...

This was a generous, respectful and mutually beneficial system to both parties, because the Romans could also provide these allies with protection from their own enemies. With both an economic incentive and one based on mutual aid and survival, it's no wonder that most of Rome's Italian allies stuck with her even when Hannibal was ravaging the Italian peninsula and attempting to cleave Rome away from its allies, especially Capua.

Sounds warm and fuzzy except for the bit where it starts at sword point. Also not Rome reactionary conservative. The elites of new 'friends' could always count on Rome supporting them over the commons.

Hannibal was simply a bit late to the party. He had no basis for trust, His army was rather small and his own people had a rather poor record of supporting him. I would not have trusted him. Did he ever over a better positive deal? Err no.

[Roma_Victrix]

Roma_Victrix

I would say tongue in cheek you have been hanging with Livy a bit too much.



That is a bit sanitized. Shall we say not conquered and chose to make a harsh example out of only a few



They did tax by confiscation of land and imposition of colonies. You are correct the larger duty of follow in peace and war loss of external political freedom and subject to levy in war did create a particular situation. That being Rome got little use of its new friends if it was not at war and war was more or less the only way its friends could get allied colonies or Latin colonies or gain from the next round of Rome's expansion. So why not be all in for the Samnite wars...



Sounds warm and fuzzy except for the bit where it starts at sword point. Also not Rome reactionary conservative. The elites of new 'friends' could always count on Rome supporting them over the commons.

Hannibal was simply a bit late to the party. He had no basis for trust, His army was rather small and his own people had a rather poor record of supporting him. I would not have trusted him. Did he ever over a better positive deal? Err no.

I thought the sword point thing was more or less basically implied, especially since I did note the Social War where tensions over this erupted into violence long after Rome built their system of alliances in the Italian peninsula. Obviously the Samnite Wars were bloody and brutal, not just for the Samnites but also the Romans at engagements like the Battle of Cranita. My point still stands, even with the caveat that both parties were basically exhausted after fighting each other. The Roman adaptation of manipular tactics among building a stronger system for far-flung logistical control meant it was rather futile for the Samnites to continue resisting Roman encroachment at a certain point, and they benefited economically more as allies than as enemies anyway.