Download PDF | [Routledge Worlds] John Wacher (Ed.). - The Roman World, Volume 1, Routledge_ Ashgate 2002.
938 Pages
PREFACE
This book has been designed to bring together the best of both ancient historians and archaeologists on the Roman Empire. All contributors were allowed complete freedom, within only the broadest set limits, to treat their subjects as they wished; editorial action was restricted to the minimum required to produce some degree of uniformity in presentation. Consequently, each contribution has retained its individuality while no attempts have been made to remove overlaps of subject interest between them. Equally, some contributors required few or no illustrations while others asked for the maximum number, so that their distribution, although uneven, is intentional; some subjects needed such support for their proper understanding, while others did not. It was also decided that, for the sake of brevity and to avoid numerous repetitions, consolidated bibliographies would be provided for each part and not for each chapter. The editor wishes to state, though, that all opinions expressed are those of individual contributors, with which he may, or may not, agree.
INTRODUCTION
John Wacher
The influence of the Roman world in antiquity was immense, stretching far beyond the Empire's boundaries. The latter, at their greatest extent, included the entire Mediterranean basin from the fringes of the Sahara in the south to beyond the Rhine and Danube in the north, eastwards to the head of the Persian Gulf, Syrian and Arabian deserts, and westwards to the Atlantic and North and Irish Seas. Beyond lay contacts, mainly through trade, with China and India, east Africa and trans-Saharan tribes, central Europe up to the Baltic, Scotland and Ireland; Roman coins have reputedly been found in Manchuria. It took time to grow and was not constant; it had its roots in the Roman Republic, Hellenistic East, Carthaginian Africa and Celtic Europe (Part 2).
The principal agency for the expansion from city-state to world-wide empire was the army (Part 3), which both followed and was followed by traders and merchants. The Roman army began as a citizen army under the Republic which was called out when need arose. As the needs grew and service lengthened, it developed into a permanent, professional army, trained and organized to a very high standard; providing it could choose its battleground, there were few other contemporary forces which could withstand its onslaught. Yet despite the extent of the Empire, the army never possessed more than thirty legions, although this number was considerably augmented with, at first non-citizen, auxiliaries of infantry and cavalry; even then its total manpower, at the height of the Principate, probably never exceeded much more than 350,000 men.
At that same time, the frontiers, where almost all the army was ultimately stationed, stretched for nearly 10,000 km (6,000 miles), which, averaging out at about thirty-five men per kilometre, was no great concentration, especially since there was no central reserve; if one area was threatened, it could only be reinforced from another which was peaceful. Consequently, the chief external danger to the empire lay in one or more simultaneous attacks, which happened with increasing frequency in the fourth and fifth centuries, and led to marked changes in strategy and organization. But even the frontiers (Part 4) were slow to develop and subsequently to decline.
The concept of a fortified, linear barrier was at first anathema to the Roman ideal of unlimited conquest. But gradually, as the ideal lost its momentum, caused by setbacks and the increasing strains which its pursuit placed upon the Empire's reserves of manpower, a more pragmatic approach was adopted by successive emperors towards the boundaries. This led ultimately to the construction of linear barriers to supplement natural features such as rivers, mountains or deserts, with garrisons strung out along them. A great deal of argument has been caused by the remarkable diversity presented by these barriers, which range in type from little more than a stout fence in parts of Germany, through modest walls in Numidia to the massive structure of Hadrian's Wall, with its implied degree of 'overkill'. Only in the east, where Rome faced a potential enemy of approximately equal strength, were little or no supplementary barriers erected, so providing an important clue to the solution of the problem argued by many that there was no such thing as a Roman frontier policy. The inherent weaknesses of all such barriers were twofold: they were only as strong as the fighting garrisons made them, and, once punctured, there was nothing then left to hold an advancing enemy.
Hence the uselessness of providing any real barriers in the east against a power of equivalent strength: Parthia. Once this is appreciated, it can then be argued that the nature of the barriers, upon erection, was in each case nicely adjusted to meet the specific needs, at a certain time and at any given point, on the imperial boundaries. The nature of the needs and threats changed with the times, and it is not surprising therefore to find that the Late Empire required defences of a very different character from those deemed adequate in the second century. The core of the Empire had for long been familiar with all levels of urban development, inheriting and adapting ideas from Greece, the East and from Africa (Part 5). But in the north and west lay areas which were either in a state of urban infancy, or altogether unfamiliar with its way of life. Into these areas marched the army, bringing with it, even if diluted, all forms of Roman cultural achievement, which included the urban ideal. It founded fortresses and forts, which, because of the spending power wielded by each soldier, attracted local, and sometimes not-so-Iocal, traders.
In time, they tended to settle down in nucleated settlements outside the forts, and indeed were often encouraged to do so by the military authorities. In time also many of these settlements grew and developed the full functions of urban centres, which were further augmented by the Roman policy of settling retired legionaries in model towns, or coloniae. Some native settlements, though, did not grow to this level, usually for economic reasons, and so provided a whole range of villages to match those in other, more developed parts of the Empire, where similar forces prevailed. Binding all together within the provincial system were the forces of the law. The central laws of the Empire, as with so many of its aspects, were firmly rooted in the Republic, and produced in time a system where much of the burden of administration was placed on the shoulders of local leaders, and interference by, or recourse to, the provincial governors, must at first have been the exception rather than the norm (Part 6); the path was eased by allowing acceptable local native law to continue in existence alongside Roman law in many provinces. Gradually, though, changes brought about by the difficulties of the Late Empire tied more and more people ever more tightly to the state, as it interfered, for good or ill, in their affairs.
Taxes increased, as did the number of civil servants or those dependent on the bounty of the government. Indeed it has been suggested that the increase in the official class was so enormous that the receivers of public money seemed to outnumber the tax payers, while, in the end, taxcollectors were demanding the means for an administration which ruled but could no longer protect. Despite the growth of urban and semi-urban settlements throughout the Empire, it is probably true to say that by far and away the greater proportion of the population dwelt in the country and engaged in rural activities (Part 7). The Empire's economy was firmly linked to agriculture and the provision of food for the army and for the inhabitants of the cities always remained a prime objective.
The existence of a permanent and profitable food market enabled many landowners, whose earliest interests had lain almost entirely in subsistence farming, to increase their holdings and to build substantial residences. Agricultural methods were also improved - up to a point; some occurred in both farm animals and cultivated crops, by selective breeding, while many of the outlying provinces gained by the introduction of better implement technology. Primarily the Empire depended on adequate grain production, but wine, olive oil, wool, leather and meat were all important to the economy. But the economy of the Empire depended on more than just agricultural produce, important though it was (Part 8). One of the principal benefits which the Empire conferred upon its inhabitants was a comparatively stable monetary system of a trimetallic nature with ample low-value coins for small change, so that even the meanest transactions could take place.
The monetary system in turn depended on the supply of necessary metals, gold, silver and copper, while iron and tin also formed part of the mining economy, which was vital for the Empire's survival. Exhaustion of many of the primary metal sources in the Late Empire was to cause a crippling inflation. It was not only a common and convenient currency throughout the Empire which facilitated trade, but also the establishment of better means of communication. Roads, rivers and the sea, augmented in a few places by canals, provided the arteries down which flowed, not only the necessary supplies to the army, but also a greatly increased volume of trade. It was in this that the Roman world reached out to its fullest extent, sending its manufactured goods far beyond the frontiers and receiving raw materials often of an exotic nature in return. Ideas travelled with the goods, bringing new religions which mingled with the cults of the Empire (Part 10) ; in most cases, the inhabitants were far too superstitious to ignore them, and, by means of the interpretatio Romana, gave many a place in the pantheon of Roman deities.
The society which made up the Empire was diverse, cosmopolitan, often muchtravelled and multi-lingual (Part 9); Greeks and Syrians are found in northern Britain, while Britons served in the army and retired in Dacia and Germany. Undoubtedly troop movements stirred the mixture. There were divisions between social classes, primarily between Roman citizen and non-citizen, just as there were between freeborn, freedman and slave. Equally there was a good deal of social mobility: the non-citizen aspired to the citizenship, as a slave did to his freedom; the son of a freedman might be freeborn and so heir to much that had passed by his father.
The extension of the citizenship to all freeborn in the early third century removed some of these divisions, but at the same time caused others to be created. It is important, though, to remember that, as a slave-owning society, there was normally an abundance of cheap labour, supplemented by condemned criminals for the really nasty jobs, such as mining and sewer-cleaning. The number of slaves probably increased in the later Empire, and there must also have been a rise in the number of freeborn 'peasant' class, bound to the land they worked by their tenancy agreements, and so little better than slaves. Society was also reflected by its art, from the rich patrons to the practitioners who executed their commissions.
As with many other things in the Empire, some remarkable fusions took place between the different artistic styles of its component parts. The endurance of the Roman Empire for five hundred years is one of the success stories of history. That it survived so long is a sign of its principal achievement, whereby a heterogeneous mixture of races and creeds were induced to settle down together in a more or less peaceful way under the Pax Romana.
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