Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Contents -- Tables and Figures -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: Agriculture in Italy from Hannibal to Tiberius Gracchus -- Notes -- 2. War and Agriculture: A Critique of the Conventional View -- Notes -- 3. War and the Life Cycles of Families: Three Models -- Notes -- 4. Mortality in War -- Notes -- 5. Military Mortality and Agrarian Crisis -- Notes -- Appendix 1. The Number of Roman Slaves in 168 B.C. -- Notes -- Appendix 2. The Accuracy of the Roman Calendar before 218 B.C. -- Notes -- Appendix 3. Tenancy -- Notes -- Appendix 4. The Minimum Age for Military Service -- Notes -- Appendix 5. The Proportion of Assidui in the Roman Population -- Notes -- Appendix 6. The Duration of Military Service in the Second Century B.C. -- Notes -- Appendix 7. The Number of Citizen Deaths as a Result of Military Service between 203 and 168 B.C. -- Notes -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B-C -- D -- E-F -- G-H -- I-L -- M -- N-P -- Q-S -- T-U -- V-W -- Y-Z.

The government that led Rome's rise to world power in the middle and late Republic was founded on aristocratic competition. What drew men to the struggle was the prospect of personal honor and political authority. Entry into the highest stratum of Roman society came with victory at the polls: for most of the history of the Republic those who won a curule magistracy could expect enrollment in the senate at the next census, but even before that date they enjoyed a senator's prerogatives. They perhaps also earned a place among the nobilitas and passed this distinction on to their sons.Furthermore, winning public office was inseparably bound up with the moral imperatives of aristocratic status.

Given the intense competition among aristocrats seeking public office in the middle and late Roman Republic, one would expect that their persistent struggles for honor, glory, and power could have seriously undermined the state or damaged the cohesiveness of the ruling class. Rome in fact depended on aristocratic competition, since no professional bureaucracy directed public affairs and no salary was attached to any public office. But as Rosenstein adeptly shows, competition appears to have been surprisingly limited, in ways that curtailed the possible destructive effects of all-out contests between individuals. Imperatores Victi examines one particularly striking case of such checks on competition. Military success at all times represented an abundant source of prestige and political strength at Rome. Generals who led armies to victory enjoyed a better-than-average chance of securing higher office upon their return from the field. Yet this study demonstrates that defeated generals were not barred from public office and in fact went on to win the Republic's most highly coveted and hotly contested offices in numbers virtually identical with those of their undefeated peers. Rosenstein explores how this unexpected limit to competition functions, reviewing beliefs about the religious origins of defeat, assumptions about common soldiers' duties in battle, and definitions of honorable behavior of an aristocrat during a crisis. These perspectives were instrumental in shifting the onus of failure away from a general's person and in offering positive strategies a general might use to win glory and respect even in defeat and to silence potential critics among a failed general's peers. Such limits to competition had an impact on the larger problems of stability and coherence in the Republic and its political elite; these larger problems are discussed

Illustrations; Tables; Acknowledgements; Series editor's preface; Abbreviations; Maps; Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: Rome, Pyrrhus, and Carthage; Chapter 3: The imperium and the army; Chapter 4: Hannibal; Chapter 5: The conquest of Gaul, Greece, and Spain; Chapter 6: The new brutality; Chapter 7: The impact of imperium; Chronology; Guide to further reading; Bibliography; Index

A compelling account of how Rome became supreme power in Europe and the Mediterranean world. The book highlights the significance of Rome's success in the wars against Pyrrhys, Carhage, the Hellenistic kingdoms and in Spain that led to empire, and it shows how the Republic's success in conquering an empire changed the conquerors. It is unusual in focusing on a discrete, vital period in Roman history rather than attempting to cover all of it or even just the Republic