The Origins of Rome

Why were the Romans successful

The Secret of the Romans

But what do we say about Rome, the inheritor of the Greek success? Why did Rome succeed in building up a great empire, where the Greeks had failed? To the monetarist, early Rome is a bit of a problem. Rome was slow to adopt money, indeed the very word for money, pecunia, comes from the Latin pecus, a herd of cows, suggesting that cattle were the main form of wealth in early Rome. The first money in Italy was that used by the Greek colonies in the south of Italy: in the north, the Etruscans never really took to money (though there are coins imitating Greek coins at Populonia). The Etruscans were never a monetary economy: that was one of their problems.
In using money, Rome was primitive and late. It began by using, not money, but large bars of bronze. This was known as aes signatum, or signed bronze, but it was not until around 300 that hoards of this money are found around Rome. These are large bronze bars or bricks measuring 16 x 9 cms, that is 6 inches by 3, and weighing 1.5 kilos, that is 3 lbs – not exactly the sort of currency that you could carry around in your pocket.

This was accompanied by aes grave or heavy bronze, that is large bronze disks in a number of denominations. At first sight this looks like crude coins, but it was cast not struck, that is it was cast into moulds rather than being produced in molten blanks which could be struck by a hammer to imprint the images, a technique that is the basis of all coinage. True coinage also began to appear spasmodically, some of it circulating mainly in southern Italy, but only in very small quantities, - Naples and Tarentum issued far more. It was only after the war with Hannibal ( 218 – 201) that Rome really acquired a monetary system that really worked, with the adoption of a new currency the denarius – a silver coin worth ten bronze asses – which would continue as the main Roman currency for the next 400 years, and which continued down into the 20th century as the d in LSD. The old coinage was called in, and recoined into the new coins, which soon appeared in much greater amounts than ever before. In the second century, Rome rapidly became a monetary economy.

For the secrets of Rome success we need to look elsewhere, and as with other countries that make the leap to a full market economy successfully, the changes in society that make a monetary economy successful had taken place before the adoption of money. We need to look in particular at Rome’s relations with its conquered territories, which were very successfully drawn into being part of Rome.

Rome emerged as a small town in a favourable position on the lower reaches of the River Tiber, set between two larger neighbours. To the south were the Greek colonies, sent out from Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries. They were extremely successful, and because they were part of the literate Greek world, we know a lot about them and their histories; archaeology is only just beginning to throw light on the other side of the story, the natives, the non-Greek inhabitants.

To the north, were the mysterious Etruscans. Like the ancient Egyptians before them, they were obsessed by death, and the finest part of their civilisation are their tombs. But their rise paralleled that of the Greek city states, but with the major difference that they did not use money: they were not part of the market economy. Like the Greek states, they were arranged as city states – supposedly twelve of them - but though they achieved notable success in their engineering, they were eventually overrun, first by the Gauls to the north, who overwhelmed the outlying cities of Bologna and Marzabotto in the fourth century, and then by the Romans to the south.

In the 6th century, when Rome was ruled by kings, these appear to have been Etruscan kings, and it was only in 510 BC that Rome ejected its kings – though the date is highly suspicious, this being the same date as the Athenians ejected their kings.

For much of its early history, life at Rome was dominated by the Struggle of the Orders: it was still a fairly rigid kinship society, divided between the Patricians, the upper classes, and the Plebs, a term that should really be translated as the middle classes. But already the genius (if that is the right word) of Rome is beginning to emerge in that a compromise was reached: the plebs began to hold their own meetings, and chose their own spokesmen, – the tribune of the plebs – to plead their cause. A crucial stage was reached with the insistence of the plebs that the law should be written down: a commission was established who eventually in 451 promulgated the Twelve Tables of the law. There is a distinction in law between primitive law, where disputes were brought before the magistrates who adjudicated on the basis of what seemed to them to be right: and the rule of law, a term often loosely used, but which implies the promulgation of a fairly defined set of laws: if you abide by the laws you are innocent (even if ‘morally’ wrong) , if you transgress them, you are guilty (even if ‘morally’ right). (The current belief in ‘human rights’ is in fact a call for a reversion to primitive law, where judgements are made on what seems ‘right’ (in effect fashionable) and not on the basis of a written law). The Twelve Tables of the law, in effect parallel the law codes of Greece, such as that laid down by Solon in Athens in the sixth century. But they, and the establishment of the councils of the plebs laid the foundation for the future success of Rome.

The real expansion of Rome began in 396 when Rome conquered Veii, an Etruscan town just 12 miles to the north which had long been vying with Rome for the control of the left bank of the Tiber. But one step forward was followed by one step back, and in 390 Rome itself was sacked by the Gauls, the fierce warriors from France who had crossed the Alps and established themselves in along the whole of the Po valley, in northern Italy. The defending Roman army was defeated at the battle of Allia and Rome itself was sacked, the Capitol alone being saved. Those of the elders who were unable to flee, dressed themselves in their finest array, and sat on their ivory chairs in the front of their houses, till the Gauls, having discovered they were not statues by stroking the beard of one of them, slaughtered the lot.

Following the sack, the Romans defended their city with a strong defensive wall, known as the Servian Wall, but for the next generation or so, expansion ceased, with a chaotic history of battles won, battles lost. Life again was dominated by the struggle of the orders, where a compromise was reached that plebeians could be elected to the consulship and other high offices of state. There was also the constant problem of debt. It is always difficult to understand precisely what was meant by debt in such cases, for debt is essentially a monetary concept and to the purist cannot therefore exist before the advent of money. One suspects that the basic problem was over the ownership of land: how far could land be ‘owned’ by an individual? Again it seems that the solution to the problem was a further distribution of public lands to the plebs, and perhaps the new concept that loans were secured on the land, rather than on the person of the debtor, so that land could be taken in case of default, but the debtor could not be enslaved. (Though this interpretation, like much of the other discussion of ‘debt’, is a little murky).

But perhaps the most important stage of all in the development of the ‘secret’ of Rome came in the 330s. The next substantial expansion came to the south. Here there was the Latin League, a loose confederation of small towns that hemmed Rome in to the south as the Etruscans had done to the north. They were closely related to Rome, and of course they both spoke the same language. But in 338 Rome finally defeated the Latins. This is surely the crucial date in the story of the rise of Rome for it was the settlement with the Latins that formed the basis for the glue with which Rome was to bind its future empire together.

The Latin League consisted of a number of small towns each bound to each other by a series of treaties. Henceforward each would be bound to Rome by a similar treaty and were forbidden to make treaties with each other. There were three main parts to these treaties. There was the Ius Conubii or the right of intermarriage, the right to contract a legal marriage with a partner from another Latin community. Probably this is a relic of a traditional kin-based society in which the upper ranks of each town or mini state felt more kinship with the upper ranks of neighbouring states than they did with the lower ranks of their own society. Indeed, according to Livy (4,1) intermarriage between patricians and plebeians was not allowed until it was formalised by a Lex Canuleia in 445.

Then there was the Ius Commercii, the right to do commerce with persons from other Latin communities and to make legally binding contacts (especially important was the right to own real property within the territory of another Latin state); and then there was the Ius Migrationis, the right of migration, so that it was possible for the citizen of one state to migrate to another treaty state and claim the right of citizenship; though later it was necessary to leave at least one son behind in the original state.

But in many respects, the towns remained under their own control. They could elect their own magistrates, retain their town councils and popular assemblies: one of the unexpected features of Pompeii are the election slogans – a fierce election for the town council was taking place when the town was overwhelmed by Vesuvius. The administration of justice was divided: the allies could keep their own magistrates, and to a large extent their own laws, though Rome had a system of circuit judges - a praetor or his junior the prefect, who would preside over the hard cases; gradually, local laws tended to align themselves with Roman law.

There was the downside of course, first and foremost the demand to provide troops for the Roman army – indeed rather under half of the Roman army consists of allied troops; though for the soldiers, the harshness of the service was to some extent alleviated by the prospect of bringing home booty and plunder – which the Romans normally shared with their allies. A solder could return home rich. And there were taxes to pay, though these were light. The Romans alone paid tributum, the property tax; allied taxes were limited to the customs duties and the rent paid for farming on the public lands: the Romans had the habit of confiscating much of the best land, and then renting it back - at a price. Against this were the benefits: there was the pax romana the Roman peace: wars with neighbours were no longer permitted. The ius commercii permitted trade, the Roman roads encouraged it, and the combination of peace and free trade allowed the Roman allies to grew rich: they soon felt themselves to be ‘Roman’.

Some were even allowed to participate in the elections in Rome – they could be enrolled in a tribe – several tribes were set aside for this. In practical terms the effects would be minimal – the Roman upper classes packed the main tribes – but it was also possible to stand for office – and in this way, the provincial voice could be heard. A distinction was made between the best allies who had this privilege, and the allies sine suffragio – without the vote – who did not receive this privilege.

But after this, the Roman expansion continued. Was it because the Romans were inherently warlike? Did they need to conquer fresh territories to provide fresh land to distribute to the plebs? Or was it because the prestige of the patricians was geared to war and to success in war? Or was it that the Romans were no different to any other state at the time, that war with one’s neighbours was to some extent the norm – the only difference being that the Romans were rather more successful at it?

But the expansion continued. First it was against the Sabines, the hill people who lived in the Apennines behind and to the south of Rome. It took three successive wars to defeat them, but their defeat gave Rome the mastery of Central Italy.

Then there was the war with Pyrrhus, King of Epirus in the part of Greece that faced Italy, who in 280 crossed over to support the Greek colonies against Rome. He was a commander of genius, and he brought a secrete weapon - 20 elephants with him. He won several ‘Pyrrhic’ victories, where he won the battle but with enormous losses of his troops. He marched on Rome, but the Roman allies failed to support him: this was the first demonstration of the success of the Roman system, that allies and colonists were beginning to feel that they were part of Rome, and that being part of Rome was preferable to joining a foreign enemy. But when in 275, Pyrrhus withdrew from Italy, Rome emerged as the leader: it was after this that the Etruscan states virtually disintegrate, and the Roman empire extended up to the broad plain of the Po, where by now the Gauls were firmly ensconced.

But the real turning point were the two wars with Carthage, the first and second Punic wars, the second being the best known, because this was fought against one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, Hannibal.

But in all this, Rome remained outside the true monetary economy. True, a few coins were issued in the Roman name, but they were mostly issued from the Greek cities of Southern Italy, notably Naples. And they were issued in very small quantities. The amount of coins issued is generally judged by the number of dies used to strike the coins. Every die is slightly different, and it is assumed that each die could be used to strike approximately the same number of coins. It is possible to estimate the number of dies by studying the minute various in coins, and from this to estimate the total extent of the coinage.

On this basis it has been estimated that the mints at Naples and Tarentum issued many more coins that did early Rome; indeed Carthage issued 70 times the amount of coins. The reason for this is interesting. These early coins were mostly minted to pay soldiers, and the armies of the Greek states and indeed Carthage were mainly mercenaries, who needed to be paid. The Roman armies were citizen armies who did not need to be paid, at least not in money; it is recorded that Roman soldiers were paid from 340 onwards, if not indeed earlier; but since money did not exist at that date, they could not have been paid in money – presumably they were paid in kind, as an agreed measure of corn to recompense them for the loss of their harvests in their absence. But is it perhaps this citizen army both of Rome’s own citizens and those of their allies, that gave Rome its formidable fighting strength?

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First draft, 27th December 2006