Sublime

Human property

The other side of the story

Aeneas and more

In practical terms the Romans directed enormous resources to warfare and, even as victors, paid a huge price in human life. Throughout this period, somewhere between 10 and 25 per cent of the Roman adult male population would have served in the legions each year, a greater proportion than in any other pre-industrial state and, on the higher estimat

Cicero versus Catiline

But the underlying pattern is clear. Caracalla in 212 CE completed a process that in Roman myth Romulus had started a thousand years earlier – that is, according to the conventional date, in 753 BCE. Rome’s founding father had been able to establish his new city only by offering citizenship to all comers, by turning foreigners into Romans.

The Gang of Three

Romanisation and resistance

By enrolling all comers, Marius cut through that, but in the process he created a dependent, quasi-professional Roman army, which destabilised domestic politics for eighty years or so. These new-style legions increasingly relied on their commanders not only for a share of the booty but also for a settlement package, preferably of land, at the end o