Here emerges the antipathetic Roman practice of using war to prepare for peace, and peace to prepare for war. Employing this method as well as divide-and-conquer, Rome subjected the last independent peoples of Italy and those of Gaul and Hispania, roughly modern France and Spain, making limited partners of the conquered where this could be done and annihilating them when not. These principles are the basis of the historian Tacitus’ (c. 56 -117) statement, centuries later, that Roman leaders “create desolation and they call it pax (peace).”44
Etymologically, the Latin word pax is linked with pacisci, to conclude a pact. But whereas for Greeks pact-making at least aspired towards isonomic convergences of free people, for Romans it was from the start either synonymous with the unconditional surrender of the defeated to their will or a means to this end. Conquered lands and peoples were “Romanized” by victorious governors, soldiers and settlers to which they were granted as plunder. At best, Romanization meant “assimilation to Roman customs and habits and promotion of an identification with Roman interests,” and at worse the militarily manageable animosity of the enslaved. Either way, it was Romanization that gave Europeans of the future, both as individual nations and as a whole, their identities and interests. The flipside of Rome and the Latin League’s foreign policies is made clear in the case of Pyrrhus (c. 318–272), the last Greek general to seek control over southern Italy. After defeating the Romans several times, his peace proposals were rejected. Following another series of battles, he is said to have exclaimed: “Another such victory and I shall be lost!” hence the expression Pyrrhic victory, by which the vanquished (in this case, the Romans) reverse their losses by dictating peace terms. Pyrrhus’ capitulation led directly to Latin League control over Greece and so brought the Romans to the attention of the Eastern Mediterranean powers from Persia to Egypt and vice versa.
A powerful city in northern Africa, Carthage, tried to replace Greeks in Italy as their control waned. Rome, always recovering from or preparing for local wars, signed trade and cooperation treaties with Carthage, stalling a regional war it could not yet win. These strategic peace tactics outlived their usefulness when Pyrrhus fell, and Rome took Carthage head on. Janus’ temple doors were closed at the end of the First Punic War (264–241) between them, for a few days. By the third and last Punic War (149–146), Carthage was ruined. Ending its League, a nearly ruined Rome now ruled the Western Mediterranean. “At one time bringing their wars to rapid conclusion by invasion and actual defeat, at another wearing out an enemy by protracted hostilities, and again by concluding peace on advantageous terms, the Romans continually grew richer and more powerful,” praised Machiavelli centuries later.45
The Roman Republic, despite its many shortcomings, is the second longest-lasting form of government in world history. Understanding the dynamics of domestic peace during this era requires reviewing republican socio-political structures because they were often the causes of recurring class struggles and civil wars, as well as used in their resolutions. Pax thus evolved from being an asymmetrical pact-making process to a social condition devoid of violence. With this redefinition of peace came a re-characterization of war. The Rex or king, like Romus, had been granted lifelong imperium: absolute authority over and immunity from his actions or inactions as chief legislator, executive and adjudicator. These powers were at first divided between two elected Consuls in the Republic for one-year terms and imperium lasted only while they held office. Consular duties were later subdivided into judicial posts (Praetors), legislative assemblies and an extensive network of administrators for tax collection and other tasks, with the Consuls acting as appointers and overseers. The primary assembly, the Senate, was a patrician body that controlled state finances, passed laws and elected officials among its ranks. Finally, the Pontifex Maximus was high priest of Rome, conducting as augur the auspices required for nearly every undertaking, especially war-and peacemaking. Consuls levied the military’s legendary legions and conducted their campaigns, a mandate they came to share with provincial Governors. By these martial powers and the revenues they raised, Governors later became threats to the central government. The legions were initially not a standing army, but one composed of landed citizens called on seasonally by Consuls to carry out foreign expeditions or as necessary for defense. Only after the Consul Gaius Marius’ reforms of 107 BCE did the legions become permanent conscripted bodies of landless citizens and slaves, somewhat separating military and civilian life, making the Pax Romana possible. In emergencies or in gratitude for services rendered, the Senate could elect a Dictator who could wield all the powers just described for a strictly limited six-month term, at least by the letter.
The basis of early Republican law, the famed Twelve Tables (c. 450 BCE), do provide specifically for the pacific settlement of disputes:
When the litigants settle their case by compromise, let the magistrate announce it. If they do not compromise, let each state their own side of the case. . . before noon. Afterwards let them talk it out together, while both are present. After noon, in case either party has failed to appear, let the magistrate pronounce judgment in favor of the one who is present. If both are present the trial may last until sunset but no later.46
However, the legal tradition the Twelve Tables represent and the early Republic’s socio-political structures distinguish between patricians and plebs, openly discriminating against the latter. As the number and wealth of plebs grew, so did their contribution to the state. Their dissatisfaction became the first of two major threats to domestic peace. Within twenty years of the Republic’s founding, the plebs led the first known successful campaign of non-cooperation against the patricians, refusing to work for or pay them taxes. A compromise was reached when a Plebeian Council was formed, led by two elected Tribunes who could overturn patrician magistrates’ discriminatory pronouncements. But this Council’s legislation was binding only on the plebs. A quarter-century later, the plebeian cause was furthered by a similar campaign, after which ten Tribunes with wider powers were elected. Only after a third campaign (c. 287 BCE), this time more violent, did the Council’s decrees (plebiscites) become binding on all the people of the Republic, including patricians and non-citizen residents. In these ways, the Republic’s socio-political structures were modified over time to mitigate civil wars.
The historian Polybius (c. 205–125 BCE) captured the plebs’ isonomic impulse for peace and highlighted its flaws: “Peace is a blessing for which we all pray to the gods; we submit every suffering from the desire to attain it, and it is the only one of the so-called good things in life to which no man refuses this title.”47 Some Senators began bribing the Council to achieve their goals, creating rifts among plebs’ and patricians’ factions. The Senate’s continued control over finances and individual Senators’ over most of the land led to mob violence instigated by the Tribune Gracchus (c. 133), the first of two major internal forces that prevented domestic peace in the late Republic and in contrast to the intransigence Romans displayed in external affairs. Shortly after the plebeian uprising came that of non-citizen residents, whose numbers increased exponentially from early Roman expansion onwards. Their plight was similar to the plebs in that they were excluded from socio-political structures of a state in which they played essential economic roles. Since defeating Carthage, Romans tried to alleviate their dissatisfaction by selectively granting citizenship to conquered peoples as an incentive for Romanization and for them to compete among themselves instead of turning against Rome’s authority. The Social War (91–88 BCE), the Civil War (88–83 BCE) and the Cataline Conspiracy (65–63 BCE) show these policies failed, but also redefined what it meant to be Roman, and what Rome itself meant.
The main antagonists of the Social War were Marcus Drusus and Lucius Sulla. Drusus, a Tribune, was murdered as he was preparing to pass a law granting citizenship to all Socii, Roman allies of the Italian peninsula, which incited a social revolution among the depraved. Now, citizenship was used as a bargaining chip during the Roma
n’s peace negotiations with the Socii. Most accepted it gratefully, and Senator Sulla’s legions crushed the rest; he was elected Consul the next year. The Senate demanded that Sulla revenge the ravages Rome suffered, but as he was raising legions in the south his military powers were revoked by the retired Consul Gaius Marius, who bribed the Plebian Council for this purpose. This time, Sulla led his legions against Rome itself, bringing Civil War battles to city streets and the countryside. As wealth became a greater determinant of power than the pedigree of one’s social and citizen status, Senators whose strength rested on the nobility of their names and whose fortunes had waned feared for their families’ future. One of these, Cataline, led a conspiracy to kill the Consuls after he was denied the right to run for the office once, losing a second time. Had it not been for Cicero (106–43 BCE), the great orator to whom Cataline had lost, the conspiracy may have succeeded. In a series of brilliant speeches, which he was given dictatorial powers to implement, Cicero expressed ideas about war and peace that were to dominate the last oligarchic rulers of the Republic, the first Emperors and many Western leaders ever since. Coining the term “peace with honor,” he articulated the principles of just wars and their rules of engagement.48 “Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can actually be just. . . No war is considered just unless it is has been proclaimed or declared, or unless reparation has first been demanded.”49
Among the few popular pacific forces at work in the late Republic were philosophical practices of inner and social peace developed in two schools of Greek lineage: Epicureanism and Stoicism. Their predominance was already established by the early Roman Empire. Epicure (341–270 BCE) was an Athenian philosopher whose gathering place, the Garden, is often mistakenly associated with debauchery. He did preach for pleasure and against pain, which were for him and his many Roman followers the moral compass points of individual and social existence. But the psychic rather than physical pleasure they aimed for was limited to fostering freedom from, or indifference to, worldly worries (ataraxia). Epicureans claimed that a total absence of pain (aponia), their version of perfect inner peace, could be brought about by focusing on the everyday, as on mealtime conversations; forestalling in their eyes futile fears, as of death or the gods; and foregoing vainglorious ambition, as for status or glory. Withdrawing from political life, as Epicureanism all but required, was perhaps even less of an option for Romans than for Greeks, so more pragmatic later devotees like Lucretius (94–55 BCE) advocated a more committed Epicureanism. Military societies like Rome, he held, could be reformed by wise individuals, starting by actively uprooting war, the paramount pain. This idea was instituted in the form of Irenarchs (from Irene) an office that began in Hellenistic Greece and spread across the Roman Empire. These minor magistrates, respected elderly members of the communities in which they served, were often the only ones in remote areas and prevented disputes from escalating into conflicts through mediation.
Stoicism, named after the Athenian porticos (stoa) where its founder Zeno (333–264 BCE) taught, is generally seen as the superseding counter-philosophy to Epicureanism. Stoics rejected the passions (lust, greed, anger, etc., later called vices) where Epicureans did pain. They held that the surest path to inner and social peace was not withdrawal but self-discipline, and that solidarity with those who practiced it could bring peace to the world. The effect of Stoic thinking can be traced in the word virtu, originally a quality of manly courageousness in battle, only later being associated with the pacific virtues of moderation and magnanimity. This significant semantic shift took shape with Panaetius (189–109 BCE), who argued that no one can be virtuous as long as they participate in, or even condone, war. In the same vein, Seneca (4–65 CE) assailed fellow Romans for being “mad, not only individually but collectively. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?”50 Stoicism, the former slave Epictetus (50–130 BCE) claimed, could bring “friendship in families, concord in cities and peace in states.”51 The limited extent that it did so is due to the Roman addition of selfless duty to self-discipline, which made Stoicism a favorite pose of the powerful and their staffs’ unofficial code.
A writer who straddled these schools is Marcus Terentius Varros (116– 27 BCE), whose Logistoricus de pace is the earliest known historical study of peace and the model for this book. Based on past and present examples, a logistoricus articulated practicable principles, in this case on peace. By such methods, Varros put forth the concept that individuals are citizens of two societies at once: one universal, embracing humanity and divinities, the other circumstantial, based on birth. In his view, peace is not an exclusive or independent property of either society, but stems from all dual citizens asserting their rights and meeting their responsibilities. The influence of Epicureanism and Stoicism can be discerned in the number of officials, from Irenarchs to Emperors, who adhered to their pacific principles without relinquishing the primacy of mythological practices (until the rise of Christianity), also adapted from the Greeks. Pax thus came to indicate a state of mind as well as a social condition; more precisely, even in the midst of war, inner/internal peace became not only a possibility, but an actuality. Epicureanism and Stoicism were also reflective of the dichotomous basis of peace in the early Roman Empire, internality and externality, established after the high-level power struggles of the First and Second Triumvirates that set the stage for the Pax Romana.
Military might was the two Triumvirates’ origin and end. The First was formed by secret concords between three Consuls in 60 BCE: Pompey, Crassus and Caesar. While Caesar was governing Gaul, enriching himself and his legions, Crassus died invading Parthia, Rome’s main rival in the East. Fearing the end of his imperium in face of a Senate who now feared him, Caesar was blocked from running for Consul again. As he led his legions into Rome in revenge, Pompey was made Dictator to stop him. In the civil war that ensued, Caesar chased Pompey into Egypt then conquered it. Within months of his triumphal return, secured by strategic clemencies and gifts, Caesar was made Dictator-for-life (de facto emperor), assassinated and deified. Caesar named his adopted son Octavian (63 BCE–14 CE) as heir. He formed the Second Triumvirate with Mark Antony and Lepidus, openly dividing control over Rome’s cumulative conquests. Antony took the rich eastern provinces from Greece to Egypt; Octavian the western, where the best legions were levied, from Britain to Italy; and Lepidus the less valuable ones of northern Africa. After bribing Lepidus’ legions away from him, stripping his power, Octavian waged war against Antony, who had moved to the cosmopolitan city Alexandria, married Queen Cleopatra and named their children his heirs. More than an affront to Roman pride, this was a serious threat to a major source of grain. At the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), Octavian’s forces defeated those of Antony and Cleopatra, who committed suicide.
Octavian was elected Dictator upon his return. Calming worries about renewed civil war, he soon reduced the number of legions by almost half. He placed most of the remaining along the borders where invasion was most likely and away from population centers, thus relieved of much of the burden of supporting a standing army that could be turned against them. The rest he used to keep internal order by creating special cohorts. As the poet Ovid wrote in praise of his patron, now the “soldiers bear arms only to check the armed aggressor.”52 Given the unending series of civil wars in the past century, Romans were delighted with the peace Octavian’s reign seemed to be ushering in and did not hesitate in showing their appreciation. By closing the gates of Janus’ temple an unamtched three times, Octavian earned three titles from the Senate: Imperator, from which “emperor” is derived, an honorific for victorious commanders; Princeps, from which “prince” is derived, a deliberately ambiguous noun close to “first-citizen,” which Octavian preferred to Rex; and Augustus, hence the month of August, meaning “revered one,” which he adopted as his everyday name. In the years to come he was also made Tribune,
Praetor and Pontifex Maximus, all for life. Although one wonders how many titled roles it takes not to call a king a king, by ensuring that republican socio-political structures remained intact despite his de facto monarchical powers, Augustus founded both the Roman Empire and the Pax Romana, known to contemporaries as the Pax Augusta.
Augustus made guaranteeing internal peace and the rule of law the purpose of the state. His far-reaching reforms ranged from revitalizing the arts by patronage to renovating roads, which made transportation and postal communication the most efficient they would be until the invention of railroads. Making taxes more equitable, he also redirected their flow from the Senate to a Fiscus under his direct control, using funds to foster industries and encourage trade within the Empire. He reorganized the city of Rome’s relations with its provinces, dividing them between rulers who reported to him and others to the Senate, both with higher degrees of administrative autonomy than in earlier times. Peoples having no previous ties were now under a single, effective authority, yet local traditions were allowed to flourish like never before. The Ara Pacis or Temple of Peace, built on the Field of Mars (god of war known in Greek as Ares) at the Senate’s request in honor of Augustus near the end of his life, testifies to the success of his peace policies. As the Pax Romana was coming to a close two centuries later, the Emperor Probus looked forward to when “the soldiers would no longer be necessary.”53 This statement perplexed the historian Falvius Vopiscus, and his retrospections on it are an accurate description of what the Augustan period of the Pax Romana in some ways was, in others tried to be:
It was as if he had said “There will no longer be a Roman army; the state, guaranteed by its own security, will dominate everywhere, will possess everything. Supplies will not be accumulated for war; the oxen will stay harnessed to the plough; the horse will be born for peaceful work. There will be no more wars and no more prisons. Peace will reign everywhere, as will the Roman laws, as will our judges.”54
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