Rome Creates a Mediterranean Empire

In the 130 years following the end of the war with Pyrrhus, the Roman Republic became the dominant state in the Mediterranean. In the city itself, moreover, a new elite group, the nobility, emerged to take the lead in Rome’s political structure; at the same time its foremost members became some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the Mediterranean world. Participation in wars over a far wider geographical span, together with the consequent expansion of Roman power beyond the Italian peninsula, would now put major strains on the Republic’s tradi-tional structure and on its customary ways of making war and forging alliances. No single continuous narrative survives for the entire period, but from the last two decades of the third century through the first third of the second century, the evidence is reasonably full and some of it is contemporary. The surviving books of Livy’s history of Rome break off in 290 and resume with a full account only in 218; from this point, they run without interruption until 167, when the surviving text comes to an end. The biographer Plutarch wrote lives of five Roman com¬manders of the period: Quintus Fabius Maximus, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder, and Lucius Aemilius Paullus. Finally, the Greek author Polybius wrote a “universal history,” in which the theme of Rome’s expansion from the middle of the third century to his own day was central; extensive portions of this work survive. As a young man, Polybius was active in Greek political and military matters, but after he lived mostly in Rome, where he became closely acquainted with important members of the Roman elite. At the same time, inscriptions (Greek as well as Latin) offer us insights and information about a range of Roman practices both in Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

The opening of offices and priesthoods to plebeians that occurred during the fourth and third centuries resulted in the formation of a new governing elite in Rome with a distinctive way of life. This elite, collectively known as the “nobles” or nobiles, would govern Rome and its empire throughout the period of expansion in the third, second, and first centuries. Archaic Rome had been governed by relatively few individuals from a small group of families. However, the city’s new leadership, also a group of limited size, would differ from the old in significant ways. The patriciate was always an aristocracy of birth: Membership in certain families itself sufficed to grant patricians their place in the city and the associated privileges. In addition, especially prominent leaders of the archaic period possessed personal military followings that gave them a political importance irre-spective of whether or not they held any formal political office. Although some patrician families would achieve prominent places in the new elite too, this elite was not an aristocracy of birth, nor did its leading members possess significant military forces of their own. Instead, individuals and families had to establish and maintain their place in the city within a framework of elective offices, priesthoods, and formal religious and political institutions.

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