CLASSICS 1M03 Lecture 15: Classics 1M03 - Lecture 15 - Roman Expansion
28 Jul 2018
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Document Summary
In the first couple of centuries of the republic, one thing that helped create consensus between the orders, easing conflict within roman society, was conflict abroad, the waging of external war. By the fourth century, the city was undertaking campaigns almost every year: a level of intensity and regularity unique among ancient city-states. The chief office of the chief officers of state, the consuls, was to wage war as commanders of rome"s armies. Success in an aristocratic career required leading armies and winning victories. And the soldiers in those armies were the ordinary citizens. As in greece, the army was a militia, with citizens called up to fight for one season a year - the campaign season - after which they returned to their ordinary civilian lives. And as the elite stood to win glory, status, and office from military victory, so the ordinary citizenry stood to gain too, gaining plots of captured land, for example.
