Armstrong’s new monograph is an excellent addition to a vibrant and growing literature on the subject of early Rome—a subject to which Armstrong has been an important contributor to for over a decade.[1] It is part of OUP’s Ancient Warfare and Civilisation Series in which ‘leading historians offer compelling new narratives’, aimed seemingly as much to general readers of history as scholars. Armstrong is also up-front about the fact that he is not offering a ‘middle path’, but presents throughout the whole narrative ‘one possible interpretation’ (p. xvi). Armstrong’s argument might crudely be broken down into two parts. First, he argues that the early Republic was not really a state but a federation of elite families collectively pooling their resources to pursue their own goals through the conduit of a state apparatus centred on the physical space of Rome. Although an unintended consequence of this was the slow formation of a distinctly Roman identity, elite families continued to pursue by means of it their self-aggrandisement, including the expansion of their own land, wealth and reputation in Italy. This argument will be familiar to those who have read Armstrong’s previous works, and it builds on a wider historiographical trend which challenges the traditional narrative of early Roman history presented in later written sources.[2] In broad terms this reimagining is persuasive. The second part of the argument is much more controversial and, if true, would have significant consequences for our understanding of Republican history. For Armstrong extends this model into the 3rd century BCE and beyond. The status quo remained throughout the Republic ‘a power-sharing arrangement among a collection of powerful elite families’ which he sees as closer in character to NATO than a single state (p. 189). The only exception to this was the period between c. 200-170 when the huge demographic change amongst the elite during the Hannibalic War led to a more cohesive and collective pursuit of state goals and thus to the rapid imperial expansion into the Mediterranean. I will return to discuss this argument in detail but will first provide an overview of each chapter, which progress chronologically through Rome’s early history.
Chapter 1 (Sons of Venus and Mars) argues that there is little point in trying to find a historical reality in Rome’s origin stories but that the stories are important in framing how the Romans thought about their own development and origins in the historical period. Armstrong emphasises that Rome’s early history shows that a collective identity was probably built not around the urban community of Rome itself or even a shared language or culture, but a sense of brotherhood created by fighting together, and the centrality of warfare becomes evident in the very political structures of the early state. Armstrong also emphasises throughout this chapter that the stories reveal the role of powerful families and clan leaders in the early history of Rome, of which the early reges were likely the most powerful. He argues that the transformation of Rome from monarchy to republic might have hardly registered for most at the time since it was merely a change from one form of military dictatorship to another which was now shared between clan leaders rather than monopolised by one man. Here we have the beginnings of a power-sharing agreement between a group of families rather than the monopolisation of power by a single family with imperium and auspicium changing hands frequently.
Chapter 2 (Veii, the Gauls and Rome Reborn) reaffirms Armstrong’s view that clans of a few hundred members were at the centre of warfare and early Italian society, with these warbands gathering and working together for extended periods. The Roman ‘federal framework’ became a longer lasting ‘grand bargain’ between a group of clans through which they pursued their own aggrandisement (p. 64). This federated community became larger, more institutionalised and permanent, and increasingly centred on the physical space of Rome because of a set of different threats in the 5th and 4th centuries which made it beneficial for clans to band together. First, it was the need to defend against the raiding by the highland mountain peoples of the Apennines, then the need to remove a rival federated system based at the city of Veii and finally, the attack on Rome of the Gauls in c. 390 which was reflective of a more general problem of Gallic attacks into the lands of those connected to the Roman political network. The consequence of these threats and the need to overcome them was the fortification of Rome itself as a defensive outpost (note the building of the Servian Walls in the period after the Gallic Sack), the pursuit of land through war rather than just raiding and consequently the expansion of territory covered by the “Roman” clan-coalition, and the reform of the military forces to create a larger and stronger army. All of this requires the rejection of the literary tradition that portrays Rome as a cohesive and unified community whose citizens fought together against other communities in the pursuit of various collective goals (security, land for citizens, wealth etc.). Armstrong acknowledges that there was the growth of a “Roman state” (the establishment of tributum and stipendium, the institution of the consulship, the formation of ager publicus) with the forced cooperation with other clans and accountability to a public restraining the independent actions of the clans. But this restraint was limited.
Chapter 3 (The Romans, the Latins, and the Samnites) argues that the Roman clan-coalition had developed one of the best military systems which could pursue grander ambitions than other federated systems—becoming a consul provided an individual with significant military force that could then be used for their own ends. This both fuelled greater competition between the clans of the coalition and prompted the Latin system to resist Roman expansion. After victory in the Latin War (340-338), the Latins became incorporated into the federation which massively increased the military manpower from which armies could be summoned each year. The different statuses given to communities after the war (full citizenship, citizenship without the vote or allied status) was determined by the military structures of these groups and the extent to which they could be integrated with Rome. The Samnite Wars were, in turn, a result of the growth of the Roman federated system. Areas in Latium were in the hands of now members of the military group, elites from further afield had joined the Roman federation and so had territorial ambitions outside of Latium and the military forces that could be brought to bear were now larger allowing clans to pursue grander imperial aims. In other words, Armstrong does not think the Samnite Wars were a watershed moment in Roman imperialism as the Roman state continued to be a federated power-sharing system between powerful clan leaders, and the ambitions of warfare remained very consistent with the gentes’ pursuit of their own gloria and wealth combined with a recognition of the benefits of collaboration. The result of this military expansion, the Italian empire of the “Romans”, was actually the broadening of the federal system as defeated states were incorporated into it as socii, providing yet more manpower that could be used for further expansion.
Thus far Armstrong presents a challenging, thought-provoking and in many cases persuasive vision of early Rome. Chapter 4 (Rome and the Mediterranean) carries the narrative and clan-model down into the 3rd century. This is by far the most significant and controversial part of the book and if Armstrong’s arguments are correct, it would considerably change our understanding of the Middle Republic. However, the interpretation here is much harder to accept. In the first place, Armstrong argues (and this is given further elucidation in an Appendix on ‘The Nature of the Early Roman Army’) that the Roman army was an extremely heterogeneous and decentralised military force in which the different units (the maniples, cohorts, ordines, vexillia) were all different clan-based warbands. Yet this directly contradicts Polybius’ discussion of the Roman dilectus in which men from different tribes were mixed together in the formation of the legions.[3] Polybius is an imperfect source, and his description might not apply to earlier periods, but can his presentation credibly be turned on its head? Further, Armstrong shows how the Roman state, through road-building, coin-minting, navy-building and the undertaking of foreign wars was an increasingly centralised, cohesive and organised body in which the political institutions (the senate and popular assemblies) dictated collective goals. Yet he continues to insist that the Roman state was a loose association through which clan-leaders pursued clan goals. Pushing this line produces difficulties. For example, in the First Punic War Armstrong writes that the ‘Romans were predominantly focused on raiding’ which explains the length of the war (p. 175). Yet even a cursory reading of Polybius contradicts this, showing that the war consisted of a concerted and strategic decades-long campaign to dominate Sicily post-261, as well as involving attempts to carry the war to Libya, full of sieges, land battles and major naval encounters.[4] Raiding is hardly reported and when it is, it was as part of larger campaigns. Moreover, the Roman navy—evidence of a centralised state—did not disappear after the First Punic War as Armstrong states (p. 175): it was utilised in the Illyrian Wars, the Hannibalic and First Macedonian Wars and again against Antiochus in the early-2nd century. Finally, Armstrong argues that the huge number of deaths amongst the senate substantially changed the political dynamics of Rome. The old clan-leaders died away and the new senators (labelled as novi homines on p. 184) who replaced them relied on the authority of the senate rather than the social bonds of clan-leadership. This produced the exceptional expansion of the early-2nd century as the new elites worked together to pursue a collective interest of the Roman state. Yet there is no proof that clan-leaders and the whole model of federated power-sharing survived the growth of a Roman collective identity and state power in the 3rd century. Nor does he offer a study of the demography or prosopography of those who died or those who replaced them, to substantiate claims of a fundamental difference in the character of senators before or after the war. I am left wondering in what respect men from distinguished families (for example, the Cornelii Scipiones, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Marcus Claudius Marcellus or Lucius Valerius Flaccus) were any different from their fathers and grandfathers. Although Armstrong is limited here by the purpose of the book, I fear that without serious empirical discussions to substantiate these suggestions they will fail to persuade, as thought-provoking and interesting as they are.
Overall, Children of Mars is an insightful and significant contribution to the debate about early Rome. It continues to solidify a model based on elite families/clans and makes a strong case for understanding what traditionally has been thought of as the actions of a Roman state fundamentally of a similar character to how it is viewed in later periods as actually the action of a federated network of clans who built a war-making coalition in pursuit of their own ends. The key question is then, at what point does the community identity, political institutions, laws, economic structures, military organisation and social hierarchy displace the clan as the dominant force of “Roman” society; or, to put it another way, when, when did families, while still attempting to elevate themselves vis-à-vis other families, acquire a fundamentally Roman identity, loyalty to the state and undertaking of collective goals. In this Armstrong pushes the clan-model much further than other historians, suggesting that it continued to prevail even against the growing Roman identity and state throughout the 3rd century and beyond. This is an exciting and thought-provoking suggestion, forcing the reader to interrogate what we think of as the Roman state and the Roman identity and actively construct a defence of what has for so long been taken as a given. But ultimately Armstrong pushes his model too far.
Bibliography
Armstrong, J. (2016a), War and Society in Early Rome: From Warlords to Generals (Cambridge)
Armstrong, J. (2016b), Early Roman Warfare: From the Regal Period to the First Punic War (Barnsley)
Armstrong, J. (2017), ‘The Consulship of 367 BC and the Evolution of Roman Military Authority’, Antichthon 51: 124-148
Bradley, G. (2020), Early Rome to 290 BC: The Beginnings of the City and the Rise of the Republic (Edinburgh)
Drogula, F. (2015), Commanders and Command in the Roman Republic and Early Empire (Chapel Hill, NC)
Terrenato, N. (2019), The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas (Cambridge)
Notes
[1] For example, Armstrong (2016a), (2016b), (2017).
[2] Notably, Drogula (2015), Terrenato (2019), Bradley (2020).
[3] Polyb. 6.20.1-7.
[4] Polyb. 1.11-12, 1.16-64.