How do we see the Romans?
The Romans today have a bad press. The overwhelming opinion about the Romans in academic – and wider – circles today is hostile. The Romans are seen as militaristic imperialists, who owed their success to their brutality and their militarism. Consider for instance some of these quotations, from the leading scholars on Roman Britain today:
My colleague and friend Neil Faulkner for example sees the Romans as a system of “Robbery with violence“.
Rome was a system of robbery with violence, it was inherently exploitative and oppressive, it was crisis prone, unstable and doomed to collapse.
– Faulkner: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, pages 11-12
Martin Millett, the Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge sees Rome as a ‘truly militaristic society’, where ‘instablility was endemic’
There was a highly competitive system of power within Roman society; a system where instability was endemic and power concentrated in the hands of an oligarchy. . . The whole ethos of Roman society and its economic system came to be reliant upon wars of conquest, so that Rome became a truly militaristic society.
– The Romanization of Britain – Martin Millett
David Mattingly, the doyen of Roman archaeologists is equally damning. In his classic book on Britain in the Roman Empire, provocatively titled An Imperial Possession, he writes:
“Compared to the other ancient Italian peoples, the Roman state was exceptionally aggressive and warlike. . . For the majority of Britons it is clear that in the short term the Romans were very bad news, and even in the medium and long-term, Britain in the Roman Empire was colonised and exploited territory. This was not a Golden Age . . . “
All three writers present a similar view, comparing Rome implicitly with Britain and America and the modern world. The Romans were imperialists and colonisers — and successful ones too, so they must therefore be bad, because imperialism and colonialism are bad.
Yet the Roman system worked and brought peace and prosperity to much of the Mediterranean and Western Europe. It produced a society, like our modern Western society, that much the rest of the world admires. It is timeto examine it without our modern prejudices, and reveal some of its secrets.
On to: The Rise of Rome
Created: 26th January 2009