Hello, History students. I hope everyone is doing well. This is your professor Steve again coming to you from my office as always.
I hope everyone's staying safe. I hope your families are safe. As always, of course, if you have any questions, please email me. Any questions about the lecture you're about to hear or any of the readings you've been doing or any questions about exams, you get the idea. Please email me or stop by Zoom office hours.
Okay, don't forget that. Zoom office hours. Last time, of course, we talked about Phases 1 and 2 in the Roman conquest of Italy.
Today, we're going to talk about Phases 3, 4, and 5, which means the Romans are going to complete the conquest of Italy and complete the development of what has been known to historians as the Roman Confederation. It was a brilliant system devised by the Romans which provided them with maximum manpower from Italy, yet at the same time did not require a massive outlay of imperial administration or money. So it really was a singular accomplishment in history.
We don't see any examples like this, at least in early history. Similar examples come much later, but nothing from ancient history that is similar to what the Romans did in Italy. And remember that the Roman...
establishment in Italy, the setup the Romans established in Italy, is the basis, is the foundation for everything that comes later, namely the conquests of the Mediterranean world and even the conquests of enormous territories beyond. So there is no Roman Empire without this specific system, the Roman Confederation, that was established in Italy. So today what we're going to do is...
complete the story, talk about what happened during phases 3, 4, and 5. So basically from 393 down to 264 in the beginning of the First Punic War, talk about how the Romans went from controlling just central Italy, which is what we left off at, to controlling all of Italy. So today, phases 3, 4, and 5, the Roman conquest of the rest of Italy. Now...
When we left off, of course, we'd gone through phases one and two, which means the Romans had completed the securing of Latium, which means they'd driven away all enemies from Latium for the most part. We're going to see a major exception in a second here. But they'd driven away most of their potential enemies back up into the hills, which means they had dealt one way or another with the Sabines, the Volsci, the Aequi.
They had allied themselves, of course, with the Latins and the Hernici. But they've been able to secure themselves in Latium for the most part. Again, we're going to see a major exception in a second here.
But it also meant that the Latins would survive. The Latin would become a language, for example, that's going to spread over much of the known world, thanks to the success the Romans had during this period. Now, during Phase III, which begins in 393 and lasts down to 338, the Romans are going to complete the development of this... Roman Confederation.
However, things did not start off very auspiciously. In 390 BC, the Romans suffered one of the greatest disasters in their history, what has been called a Black Day of the Roman army, almost as bleak or as bad as what happened at the Battle of Cannae in 216 or the Battle of Aegeanople in 378. This was the Battle of the River Allia, and at this battle the Romans faced a large number of Gauls, led by Brennus, who had come down from the north. And remember, the Gauls had come across the Alps way back in 500 BC, roughly, and had displaced the Etruscans in northern Italy.
They had then begun filtering into the Apennine Mountains, which is why the Sibelians, the Ascan Umbrians, had been causing the Romans so many problems because they had been pushed by the Gauls into the plains of Latium amongst others. So in 390, Brennus led a branch of the Gallic tribes. And by the way, we'll talk more about this when we get to Caesar, but when you say Gauls, that actually is kind of a blanket label for a whole bunch of different tribes. So the tribe that Brennus was leading was called the Sinones.
That's the specific tribe, but they're all Gauls basically. So anyway, he leads a... contingent of Gauls through the Apennine Mountains and down into central Italy. Altogether about 30,000 these Gauls came and this was not one of those mass movements of the Gallic people but instead was an army right so 30,000 soldiers come with Brennus and sorry about that got interrupted uh 30,000 Gauls faced 15,000 Roman soldiers probably the largest army ever put into the field by Rome up until this time at the battle of the river Alia And unfortunately, though we don't know many of the details, it resulted in a huge disaster for Rome.
The Roman army was defeated by the Gauls. Many of the soldiers were killed. The survivors fled elsewhere, including to Veii for refuge and a number of the other Etruscan cities.
Three days later, the Gauls sacked, captured the city of Rome itself. And we know now in hindsight, this was the last time. For 800 years, a foreign army took the city of Rome.
Unfortunately, lots of Roman armies are going to do it. But this is going to be the last time for eight centuries exactly that a foreign army conquered Rome itself. The Romans were eventually forced to pay a huge ransom to get the Gauls to leave. The Roman legend developed the story that the Romans never were actually conquered. and that they were somehow saved by the dramatic arrival of Marcus Furius Camillus, the hero of Vey.
But whatever the case, the Gauls were successful in conquering Rome, and then as these pastoralist tribes often did, the Gauls just kind of wandered off. Now, this had a huge impact on the Romans, because the city, to a large extent, had been destroyed. Unfortunately, that also meant... guessing a lot of the records from the previous period had been destroyed as well which is why more information survives from the period following the Gallic sack of the city one of the first things the Romans do as a result is build a new wall for the city of Rome 387 what was wrongly called the Servian wall was built Servian wall because legend said it had been built by this the king Servius Tullius back during the monarchy period. But 387, the new wall is built 24 feet high, 12 feet thick, five and a half miles long, right, encompassing over a thousand acres, meaning that Rome at this time, even after the sack by the Gauls, was maybe the biggest city in Italy.
All right, so the new foundation, the new walls were built, and this wall, by the way, is still in many places intact. Because, as I said before, no foreign army is going to conquer the city for eight centuries afterwards. So, for the most part, there's still parts of this wall that still exist. Now, the sack by the Gauls did weaken Rome, which meant almost another century of warfare between Rome and its neighbors.
Which means all those peoples we talked about before, the Etruscans, the Hernici revolt, the Aequi, the Volsci. The Gauls raided seven times. Again, these things go on forever. And I'll read to you just a couple things here.
We've got Latin revolts throughout the period. The Aequi rising up in rebellion against Rome. Defeats of the Aequi and the Volsci. Whole lists of battles going on and on and on.
But luckily, Rome was able to survive. Now, a number of important things did happen during this period. First and foremost, in 380 BC, during a period the Romans were worried that some of the Latin tribes were thinking about rebelling against Rome, the Romans decided to preemptively bestow full Roman citizenship on the city of Tusculum. And Tusculum was one of the Latin cities that neighboring Rome, which means the people of Tusculum would still run their own internal affairs, but they were also...
at the same time, full citizens of Rome. So really we're talking about dual citizens here. And that meant the people of Rome were eligible to go to Rome and vote in the assemblies, which means vote for city officials or vote on legislation or decisions like war.
It also meant wealthier citizens of Tusculum were now able to go to Rome and run for office. And in fact, in 322, the first non-Roman consul was elected, and he, not surprisingly, was from Tusculum. And this was the first example of something that the Romans are going to do repeatedly down through the centuries.
It shows a willingness to share citizenship, something that, as I know I've said before, just does not happen in human history. This is so rare that the Romans are willing to share power with their neighbors. It seems so obvious, but trust me, it's not something that happens very often, almost never in ancient times. So the people of Tusculum are now full Roman citizens while still maintaining their citizenship within their own. state and this is something the Romans are going to grant to other peoples in Italy and later on during the empire they're going to start granting these types of citizenship rights to peoples throughout the empire in Gaul in Spain in Greece in Africa everywhere and this is really one of the underrated keys underrated factors in Roman success because what happens now is people in The powerful men in Tusculum, for example, are no longer thinking about how are we going to break away from Rome and regain our freedom and power, because they are now part of the Roman state.
So they're not worried about rebelling against Rome, they're worried about helping keep Rome strong, maintain Roman power. And this would be true later on, where you have Gauls and people from Spain or Greece or Africa, who are also made into citizens, powerful men from these regions. who are no longer thinking about rebellion against Rome, but instead are now Romans.
So, Tusculum is the first, a huge precedent for the future. And it is an incredible way for the Romans to reward loyalty to those allies or to those Latin colonies that had been loyal to them throughout these various periods. So, this is a huge step forward for Rome. step forward in the evolution of this Roman Confederacy. Now this period of phase three culminated in the famous Latin Revolt, the Latin Revolt.
Basically the Latins, and when I say the Latins, I mean the Latin cities of Latium, not necessarily the colonies elsewhere, but the Latin cities of Latium finally decided that they too like Tusculum, wanted full equality. Basically, the war cry was equality or independence. They want full citizenship rights.
They want a share, obviously, in the Roman government. They wanted to be part of Roman elections, which means the powerful men in the Latin cities want to run for office in Rome. Not only do the Latins revolt during this period, but they're joined by a number of these other people that the Roman had.
Romans had defeated before, including the Volsci companions, the city of Capua in Campania, and a number of others who had already been defeated by Rome in previous decades. Because again, as I've said before, these wars went on year after year after year. So many saw this as an opportunity to join the Latins against Rome. Now, the key was, though, at this point, Rome had developed this system in Italy that meant Even though that there were some revolts against Roman rule, the Romans still had this incredible reserve of manpower because of the way it had established its control of central Italy, which gave the Romans an incredible advantage even over a number of different enemies.
So a number of big battles are fought, but the Romans are able to win these battles. in part because they have so many soldiers, so they're able to have armies in different parts of Italy at the same time. It's just the whole idea that they have two armies in southern Latium, at the same time they have two armies in northern Latium.
This gives them a distinct advantage, because they're able to fight these different enemies separately, rather than allow them to combine against Rome. So, as is really going to be the case throughout Roman history, the Romans... use this advantage in manpower to win the war.
So 338, the Romans defeat the Latins and their allies. They end the Latin revolt. And it is then that they finally arrive at kind of the finished confederation in Italy, which means a lot of the things that have been taking place already are now set down in a regular system.
And essentially, what the Romans decide to do is divide up Italy, which means divide up the lands they control and have conquered into five separate categories. Five separate categories. And they really decided on a case-by-case basis who gets to be part of which colonies.
Or, which categories, sorry. But here are the five categories. You've got Roman citizens. You have Roman colonies, which are also made up of Roman citizens, of course.
You have the Latin colonies, with Latin rights. You have what were called municipia. municipalities and you have the so she had so five different categories Roman citizens Roman colonies Latin colonies municipia and so she yeah I think what in the world is that on me well first of all you've got Roman citizens and that meant territories that have been directly annexed by Rome actually land directly controlled by Rome and settled by poor Roman citizens, for the most part. And remember we talked about this with Ve, when Ve is conquered, a lot of the land is absorbed into the Roman territory and given to poor citizens to use, to own. It's a big reason, as we talked about before, why these poorer citizens constantly voted for war.
So, of course, all these poorer citizens that had been granted land were still Roman citizens. So they still had to vote. And more importantly, since they'd been granted land, that means they now have enough money to qualify as hoplites.
So it's a pretty good way to expand the size of the Roman army. Also, many of the Latin cities were now granted full Roman citizenship, like Tusculum. So they fought the war, they lost the war, yet they were still granted what they originally had been fighting for. So again, this shows... Rome's enlightened self-interest.
And it's unfortunate that we don't really know who's responsible for all these policies. It is the Senate, of course, but we don't know who in the Senate is making these decisions, who is deciding we're not going to punish the Latins. Instead, we're going to come up with this kind of enlightened system to make them part of the Roman citizen body.
Unfortunately, there's no records of the debates that took place in the Senate behind these decisions. But whatever the case, you now have a situation where like Tusculum, these Latin cities, run their own internal affairs, but at the same time are citizens in Rome. So it's dual citizenship, which is, again, a huge step forward for the Roman Confederation.
It also means, of course, that all of these new Roman citizens have to serve in the Roman army. So this means that Rome's army is getting bigger and bigger. annexing these territories by granting citizenship rights to already existing Latin cities, the Roman army is getting bigger.
So, like I said, this is enlightened self-interest. It's an enlightened way to make the Romans more powerful. Now, the second category, as I mentioned before, Roman colonies. They're still Roman citizens, of course. And there weren't a lot of those, though, because there were only nine colonies along the coast, and they were relatively small.
But nevertheless, those are Roman citizens who had colonized those places. they remain Roman citizens. Also, number three, third category, you have cities and peoples who were given the Latin rights, Latin rights, quote unquote. Now, most of these were no longer actually Latin cities or Latin peoples.
It's no longer an ethnic label or designation. Instead, many different peoples in central Italy, and now even in southern Italy, to some extent, were granted the same rights that the Latin League had once enjoyed. And by the way, the Latin League at this point had been dissolved, so that's kind of gone now.
But these Latin cities had those same rights. Excuse me, these people with the Latin rights enjoyed the same rights that Latin cities had previously. So remember what that means.
They still run their own internal affairs, of course. They still have certain rights in Rome if they decide to go there, which means economic rights, the right to intermarry. And maybe most importantly, if they want to go live in Rome permanently, they can become citizens there, which is a big, important step forward as well.
Because now the Romans are opening this up to people who are not Latins, not ethnically Latins. Kind of the precedent, of course, had been set with the hernike before, as we saw back in 486. Now, these people with Latin rights, though, did not have a vote in Rome or anything like that unless they actually moved there. But they, of course, were also required to serve. in the army. So they're still fighting in their separate units, but nevertheless, they're part of the Roman army.
So the more people that are granted Latin rights, the bigger the Roman army becomes. So this is a very, very big step because every step of the way, as they are expanding the system and they're increasing the number of peoples, even in these various categories, everybody's got to contribute soldiers one way or another. So the army's getting bigger. Next, category four is very similar to category number three, municipias.
Municipia is actually plural, I should note. Municipia, which means the various cities and towns. Italy that were not Latin but were generally given Latin rights and similar rights to the Latin cities or those with Latin rights again they are also required to contribute soldiers but that means they still have the same economic reciprocal rights the right to intermarry the right to move to Rome and become a citizen so needs to say they feel more and more a part of the Roman state last but not least number five you've got the the Societe These are the allies. And allies were more like the typical subjects of the typical empire, which meant they did not enjoy reciprocal rights in Rome. They did not get to have Roman citizenship if they moved to Rome.
They continued to run their own affairs, but they were subordinate to Rome in the sense that Rome determined foreign policy, and they were forced to pay taxes to Rome. And most importantly of all, they're forced to contribute soldiers to Rome. So they are, again, more like typical soldiers of the typical empire. However, keep in mind that they had seen other peoples in Italy get Latin rights or be transformed into municipia, which means they were usually more loyal to Rome than the average subjects of the average empire.
So think about it. By 338, Rome had treaties with maybe 150 different states. Italy and many of these are city-states but nevertheless 150 different states in Italy and it was something that was imposed to some extent but it's not a harsh peace settlement after they defeated these peoples in battle there was no smoldering resentment against Rome and it meant there weren't many revolts against Rome from this point on and also helps by the way that not everyone was treated alike so it's not like everyone in Italy was put in one group So some Latins have full Roman citizenship now.
Some still have the Latin rights. Some municipias have Latin rights. Some are socii.
So it's kind of confusing in a way, but also it's good because there's no class consciousness amongst these peoples in Italy. And therefore, they don't all feel like they're in the same boat, willing or ready to revolt against Rome. So as time goes on, the people have been made into Roman citizenship. or citizens, excuse me, begin thinking of themselves as Romans. They become Roman citizens participating in Roman politics.
They stopped thinking of themselves as Sabines or Aequi or Volsci. Now they are Romans. And as time goes on, the distinction between these ethnic groups will change, will disappear I should say, and this is all part of a process of Romanization. which means more and more people, for example, learn to speak Latin.
And the other languages of Italy, many of the languages of these different peoples have died out, died out during that time, and instead everybody speaks Latin. So it's a brilliant system because it's easy to expand. It's easy to incorporate new cities and new peoples. There's no need, as I said before, for some sort of elaborate imperial administration.
There's no need for... for this elaborate imperial administration or a long-distance imperial administration. The Romans don't have to set up garrisons or provinces or anything like that in different places. That's not necessary because these people can kind of watch the system themselves.
And maybe most importantly, it was unnecessary to change the Roman republican government. Major changes did not have to be made to the Roman government in Rome itself. power of Rome as a territory, Rome expanded.
So this in many ways was a brilliant system. And it meant that as time went on, Rome now had access to an incredible pool of manpower, as I mentioned before, hundreds of thousands of potential soldiers in Italy. And these are citizens or wannabe citizens.
So they are more loyal to Rome than the average subjects of the average empire would be. And this is all very important because it means Rome is going to be ready to face the... ever greater tests that it faces as time goes on, the more and more powerful enemies that they're forced to fight.
And, as I said, this is the foundation of the Roman Empire. This is why the Romans are going to conquer the world, because they have so many soldiers, because of this brilliant system, this confederation that they set up in Italy. That is the key.
So that represents the end of Phase III. The Roman Confederation has now finally evolved. And from this point on, as the Romans expand beyond that, they're simply going to add more and more people into that confederation.
But for the most part, it's kind of set now, and it will remain this way for about 250 years, basically. It won't be until the last century BC that things change dramatically. Phase 4, the Samnite phase.
This is when Rome faced its greatest enemy in Italy, the Samnites. And the Samnites were actually a federation. also of a number of different tribes. The four most important were the Herpini, the Pentri, the Coricini, and the Caudini.
Don't worry about all that. Just remember the Samnites. And they lived in the Apennine Mountains in central and in southern Italy.
And they controlled most of the Apennine Mountains in those regions and often caused trouble for the peoples living on the plains, like Latium, for example, or especially Campania. southern Italy as well. Now there may have been three Samnite wars, meaning three wars between the Romans and the Samnites.
The first Samnite war though may be myth, may be made up. The second or great Samnite war was not a myth, it was not a legend. It was fought between 326 and 324 BC, so a war that lasted 22 years off and on. We're not exactly sure why the war broke out.
It is possible the Samnites were becoming more and more worried about the growth in Roman power, because the Romans were expanding further and further south, which means they were pushing on the borders of the Apennines, which means Samnite territory. So maybe that's what finally sparked the war between the two peoples. And as a Samnite remarked, a Samnite, a famous quote, was, it's about time that we fight to decide the future of the world. Italy. So 326 the Second or Great Samnite War breaks out.
Things did not go well early on for the Romans. In 321 they suffered another great disaster, the Battle of the Cardine Forks. The Battle of the Cardine Forks. And in this battle, which really wasn't much of a battle, the Roman army was trapped in a valley in the Apennine Mountains. and forced to surrender, which means they were forced to go under the yoke, which was a horrible humiliation.
And basically the yoke was, it's like doing the limbo. You had to kind of go under this yoke and they had to leave behind, all the soldiers had to leave behind all their armor and all their possessions and most of their clothes. And so they just had like one tunic on and that was it. And they were forced to leave. So this was a terrible, terrible humiliation for the Roman army.
However, One amazing thing about Roman history is even when they suffer these disasters, they usually figure out a way to recover. It was true of the River Alia. It's going to be true later on of Cannae, as we shall see.
So they're always able to figure out a way to recover, no matter how bad things look. Now in this case, the Romans decided that it was high time to reform their army. So this represents the third stage in the development of the Roman military. So remember we started off with stage one, that was the Romulan army, which supposedly had been established by Romulus.
The second was the Hoplite army, or Servian army, supposedly developed by Servius Tullius, the Roman king. And that was of course barred from the Greeks, right? The Hoplite army, everyone lines up in a phalanx, shoulder to shoulder, their main weapon is a spear.
Now, as a result of the troubles that they had in the Samnite war, especially because of the difficult terrain that a lot of these campaigns were fought the Romans decided that they needed an army that would be more flexible right the phalanx work fine if you're fighting on a plane a flat wide open area then it works fine but if you're fighting in the hills you're fighting in the mountains then you need something a little better so the Romans developed what was called the manipular manipular which means it would now be based not on the phalanx but on the Manipole. And the Manipole was a much smaller unit of soldiers. And from now on, the Roman army would go into battle with three lines.
lined up like a checkerboard basically so you have the front line and then the big gaps between the mannables in the front line the the mannables in the second line would cover the gaps in the front line and then you'd have the back line that would cover the gaps in the second line so again it's like a checkerboard and the idea is you have these smaller units maybe 200 men depending on what was going on but maybe 200 men so smaller units which would fight in these individual units And they could fight as one big group, like the Thalangs, but if necessary, especially in this mountainous terrain, these maniples could be detached and easily moved from one part of the battlefield to another. So it provided the Romans with a lot of flexibility. Also, at the same time, they changed the nature of their shield from the round hoplite shield to a longer kind of oval shield. They no longer had the spear.
but they did have javelins they would throw at the enemy before they came into contact before the two lines actually converged so the sword would now be their main weapon the main weapon of a roman infantryman and they changed the type of helmets and no longer where they have the hoplite helmets um because for hoplites everybody's in this line shoulder to shoulder you don't really need to know what's going to the right going on to your right or your left because you got you comrades there really need to look straightforward. So it was almost a full helmet with just kind of the eyes and that's it. So now they changed that. From now on, it's just the helmet on the top with flaps. That way they have good peripheral vision.
So they got a lot more vision on the battlefield, which seems like a lot better way to fight, though a little less protection. So a complete overhaul in the way that the Romans would fight their battles. And generally, this new manipular army is going to work quite well.
as we shall see. Now, during the rest of the Second or Great Samnite War, a number of major battles were fought. Generally, the Romans were victorious. They also supplemented their military victories with more colonies.
They established colonies in newly conquered territories, and for the first time, they planted colonies on the other side, the eastern side of the Apennine Mountains in Apulia, as it was called. They also, during this time, began to build the first major roads in Italy, the first Roman highways. And eventually Roman highways would connect the entire empire, from Scotland all the way to the Persian Gulf almost.
But the first road was built, or begun I should say, in 312 BC. It came to be known as the Via Appia, the Appian Way. And it was built by Appius Claudius Caicus, who was... Maybe the first person in Roman history to kind of emerge as a real personality.
He played a big role in Roman history during this time. And the Via Appia stretched from Rome down into Campania, which allowed the Romans to quickly move armies to the south to deal with the Samnite threat. A couple years later, they began the Via Valeria, which crossed the Apennines into Apulia and the Adriatic Sea.
So this was another important... aspect of the Roman expansion in Italy, their efforts to control Italy through colonies and then now through the building of these highways that had a big impact on how Rome controlled this territory. Now, eventually, it takes a little while, but eventually the Romans win the Second or Great Samnite War.
And again, this is fairly typical of Roman history. They lose some battles, and we'll see this happen again and again, but they'll lose battles. But usually have the resources to keep fighting.
They usually have enough men to raise new armies and keep going until they are eventually victorious. So they're eventually able to sign a peace treaty with the Samnites. And the Samnites agree to hand over numerous cities and a lot of territory. So this is definitely a Roman victory. And with this victory, Rome has established itself.
So 306 BC. Rome has established itself for the first time, excuse me, 304 BC, has established itself for the first time as the most powerful state in Italy. So 304 BC, with its victory over the Samnites, Rome was now number one in Italy. And it will remain number one, really, until the fall of the Empire, which means 800 years or so, Rome is number one.
So the peoples generally were happy under Roman rule, and that's really the key. And this is something we also see throughout this period, is when times get tough during emergencies, during crises, most of these people stand by Rome. If they didn't like being a part of this confederation, this would have been their opportunity to break away.
But most of these people stand by Rome, and that allows the Romans to put into the field a superior number of men. And that gives them a big advantage, even though they're fighting all these different people on all these different fronts. Excuse me. So, for example, in 295 BC, the Romans had six separate armies fighting in Italy. Six separate armies on six separate fronts.
No other Italian state could have done that. In fact, few other states anywhere could have done that at this time. So the Romans are able to pin down. Various enemies in their own territory to make sure none of these enemies were able to combine or to threaten Rome itself Meanwhile in 295 two of those armies were led by the consuls right so you have two consuls in the field that too was rare and The Romans had an army which fought the Battle of Sentinels in 295 which was a huge victory over their enemies most notably over the Sam Knights and the Gauls and Again, this demonstrated why Roman manpower was so important, because they're able to put a superior number of men into the Battle of Sentinem, at the same time they still have armies elsewhere, keeping the other allies away from this battle to ensure numerical superiority on the point of contact.
So this is huge, and they win a huge victory at Sentinem, which eventually leads to a peace between the Romans the Samnites and all these other allies of the Samnites, which meant for the most part, Roman control of most of Italy. Because the Etruscans, the Gauls, the Umbrians, the Sabines, the Peasantines, all these peoples who had tried one last time to overthrow Rome are now defeated. And Rome, again, treats these people well in the sense that they are all made part of the Roman Confederation, and all are placed in these various categories. So it is not a harsh or vindictive peace, which is one reason why it will last.
And it is pretty amazing the kind of revolts Rome will face during the next 200 years, after they've established this system, and after they've eliminated the Samnites as their main rival. So that ends Phase IV. Last but not least, Phase V, which will last from 290 down to 264. And this period dealt with Magna Graecia, which is the southern coast of Italy, the southern part of Italy, which had been colonized by Greeks. That's what the name Magna Graecia means, Greater Greece.
It had been colonized by Greeks during the Archaic Age. And the Greeks had set up cities all along the coasts of southern Italy and stretching into parts of central Italy as well. And all of these cities were economic powerhouses because they traded with the peoples of Italy. They were also in good position to trade with the Greek mainland to the east, with Sicily and Carthage to the west and to the south. So these were extremely wealthy and powerful cities.
By far the biggest and most powerful was Tarentum, which was a colony established by Sparta. In fact, the only Spartan colony. And it had the best bay on the Gulf of Tarentum, which is the instep of the Italian boot, I guess you'd say. So it had the best harbor, and not surprisingly, was therefore the biggest and wealthiest city. Now these Greeks had been under attack.
by the Sibelians coming out of the mountains and the hills just like the Romans had in Latium. However, despite this outside threat, the Greek states of southern Italy had never unified. There was no unified Greek state of southern Italy.
despite the fact that they shared a language and a culture and a religion. So again, this shows that the Greeks were unable to figure out a way to join together, whereas the Romans did figure out a solution to that problem. So not only did the Greeks have to face attack by these various tribes coming down out of the hills, the Greeks were always fighting amongst themselves, and within individual Greek cities there were constant civil wars. Because you had different groups, specifically Democrats and oligarchs. Democrats and oligarchs.
Oligarchs, meaning oligarchy, rule by the few. Those are the wealthier citizens. Democrats, meaning democracy, rule by the many. So you have two different types of government, and often civil war is to decide which type of government a specific city would have. And it was...
to some extent, class warfare, meaning the poor and the middle classes fighting against the wealthy. Now, the cities of southern Greece would often call in outsiders to help them in their fights, either against the tribes coming down from the hills or against their fellow Greeks. So, Archidemus III of Sparta campaigned in southern Italy.
Alexander of Epirus, a brother-in-law, of Alexander the Great campaigned in southern Italy. Agathocles of Syracuse campaigned in southern Italy. All hoped to combine and conquer some sort of empire in southern Italy.
All eventually failed. Now, with the rise of Rome, some of these Greek cities of the south saw potentially a new savior. So in 285, and again in 282, the southern... Italian city of Thurii asked for Roman help against the Lucanians. And the Lucanians were one of those tribes, one of those mountain tribes that would come down from the north and cause trouble.
So the people of Thurii asked the Romans for help and the Romans were willing to oblige. So they moved an army south and with their help, the people of Thurii and the other Greeks were able to drive the Lucanians back. All of a sudden, that meant, though, that Rome was now involved in what was going on in Magna Graecia.
And they decided to involve themselves for a number of reasons. They didn't want to abandon the Greeks to the Lucanians. They now thought of Italy as a whole, and they thought of themselves, of course, as the predominant power in Italy, so they don't want people to defy them.
They also had to worry about the fact that many of their... allies. Many of the people in their confederation had commercial or economic interests they didn't necessarily share.
The Romans didn't, but nevertheless had commercial interests that they wanted to help protect. They didn't want other foreign rulers coming into Italy and causing trouble. And they also realized that now that they had colonies on the eastern coast of Italy, having allies in southern Italy provided good naval and commercial bases for their ships heading towards the Adriatic Sea.
So, the Romans decided to get involved. Now, this led to trouble with Tarentum, the main city in southern Italy. People of Tarentum wanted to be the predominant power in southern Italy. They didn't want the Romans coming in and causing trouble. Part of it also was internal politics.
Rome, despite the fact the conflict of the orders had ended and had now become more of a democracy, was still, of course, a narrow oligarch. run by the 300 or so wealthy men in the Senate. Therefore, the Romans were generally sympathetic to other oligarchies in Italy, like 30 that had asked for help.
Tarentum was a democracy, so the people of Tarentum were worried that the Romans might use their power to overthrow democracies in southern Italy, including theirs. So the people of Tarentum were worried about the sudden growth of Roman power. So this led to trouble between Rome and Tarentum.
In 282, a small Roman fleet of ten naval vessels sailed around the toe of Italy into the Gulf of Tarentum and suddenly appeared outside the harbor of the city of Tarentum. The people of Tarentum took this as a horrible... a front to their dignitas and power.
So the navy of Tarentum attacked the Roman fleet. Half the Roman fleet was sunk. The Romans sent an ambassador to Tarentum to demand restitution or face a war.
And it's actually, well, it's kind of funny. The Roman ambassador met with the people of Tarentum in a theater. And he knew some Greek, but his Greek wasn't very good.
And unfortunately, the people of Tarentum weren't very nice about it. So they heckled him and they made fun of his bad accent. And they made fun of all the mistakes he was making in that language, in their language. So rather than try to figure out a way to avoid war with Rome, they basically forced Rome into it by being so mean to the Roman ambassador. So 281, Rome declares war on Tarentum.
The people of Tarentum knew they would need help in this war, so they called for outside assistance. Specifically, they called to Greece and begged one of the Greek kings to come help. His name was Pyrrhus. of Epirus, Pyrrhus of Epirus, king of the Mausoleans, or Maulasoleans, excuse me. Pyrrhus was a descendant of Achilles.
He was a cousin of Alexander the Great. He was a son-in-law of Ptolemy I, king of Egypt. And as you probably know, just before the time we're talking about now, Alexander had gone east and conquered the greatest empire in the history of the world, in part because he was able to defeat the Persian Empire. So Pyrrhus was inspired by Alexander's great success. He wants to do great things.
He had not done very well in the Epigone Wars, the successor wars following Alexander's death. So now he decides he's going to go west. Maybe he can do in the west what Alexander had done in the east. And he believed that he could defeat the Romans, who he considered to be barbarians.
Since the Romans were the descendants of Aeneas and the Trojans, as the descendant of Achilles, basically what's going to happen is a repeat of the Trojan War. So in 280 BC, Pyrrhus brought to Italy an army of 25,000 infantrymen, which means basically the Macedonian phalanx with the long spears, 3,000 cavalry, 2,000 archers, 500 slingers, and, last but not least, 20 elephants. 20 elephants.
And as far as we know, this might have been the longest sea voyage that included elephants in ancient history. Taking the elephants on board ships from Greece all the way to Italy is a long ways. Now, the Macedonians, of course, had conquered much of the world with this type of army. This would be the first time the Romans would face an army from the east, a first-class professional army from the Greek world, and basically face one of the...
Mediterranean powers. And not only was the army good, but Pyrrhus was considered to be one of the greatest generals of the ancient world. Hannibal believed that Pyrrhus was in fact the second greatest general in ancient history. Now, Pyrrhus arrives in Italy, and in 280 and 279, Pyrrhus fought two major battles against the Romans, the Battle of Heraclea and the Battle of Ascalum, both were victories for Pyrrhus.
He won these two victories in large part because of the elephants, because the Roman soldiers and especially the Roman horses had never seen elephants before and were terrified by elephants. They were unable to stop the elephants on the battlefield. However, the Romans had fought bravely, which means even though Pyrrhus had won the battles, he suffered.
extremely high casualties. And when you get right down to it, he does not have a lot of soldiers, so any casualties are going to reduce the size of his army. And supposedly he said, you know, if I win another battle like this, I'm going to be done. I'm going to be finished, which is the origin of the famous phrase, a Pyrrhic victory. Now, when Pyrrhus realized the Romans would not be easy to defeat, 279, after a second victory, he goes off to Sicily.
and tries to conquer the island there. When that doesn't work, 275, he comes back to Italy and tries again against the Romans. And in 275, a big battle was fought, the Battle of Malventum. And this is so important, again, because the Romans have suffered those two big defeats, yet they are able to replenish their army with more soldiers. They can keep fighting.
Paris is winning these battles, yet he's suffering losses, which means his armies are getting smaller and smaller. So again, this demonstrates the superiority of the Roman system. Now in the Battle of Malventum, the Romans win a big victory.
They're finally able to overcome the elephants on the battlefield, in part because they shot flaming arrows into the eyes of the elephants, which kind of sounds sad for the poor elephants. And what happened, what sometimes happened when elephants were in battle, is if they were wounded, they would panic. They'd freak out and they'd start charging their own guys.
They'd just panic and start running around. So they would no longer go forward against the enemy. They'd go back.
against their own army which is what happened at Malventum so the Romans are able to overcome the elephants they're able to win the battle this forces Pyrrhus out of Italy once and for all and he goes back to Greece with only 8,000 infantry soldiers and 500 cavalry all right so he came there with what 25,000 infantry now he's down to 8,000 so a pretty dramatic defeat of Pyrrhus the victorious general was Manius Curius Dentatus. So he gets to celebrate this huge triumph because he defeated this professional first-rank Greek army from the east. He got to celebrate a triumph and maybe most importantly he got to bring elephants into Rome to march along in his triumph.
So this was the most stunning display that the Romans had ever seen before and as you can imagine This provided Dentatus with an incredible amount of glory. Now, this victory over a Hellenistic army, a Greek army from the east, as I said a couple times already, a professional, first-rate army from the east, demonstrated clearly that Rome was now one of the great powers of the Mediterranean world. And the king of Egypt, Ptolemy II, the son of one of Alexander's generals, even made an alliance with Rome. The first alliance Rome had signed with one of the great powers of the East. So it becomes clear that Rome is no longer just a local Italian power.
Now it is one of the great powers of the Mediterranean world. Pyrrhus, unfortunately, was the one who found that out, and he had to suffer for it. And just in case you're wondering what happened to Pyrrhus, he goes back to Greece and...
He's still fighting. He's still trying to conquer land. He was in the city of Argos, and as he's marching through the city, an old lady on top of a building threw a tile off, hit him in the head, and he died in 272. So such was the sad fate of Pyrrhus.
So this marked the completion of Phase 5, because once Pyrrhus is out, the Romans are able to complete the conquest of Magna Graecia, of southern Italy. which means basically everything south of the Po River, basically most of Italy, is now under Roman control. And the Romans have placed all these different peoples, all these different states, into one of the five categories I mentioned before. So they either become Roman citizens, in a few cases, or they can't become part of the Roman colonies, but Latin colonies, municipia, or socii, allies. What this all means...
is that by the time this phase is completed, phase 5, in 264 BC, Rome has conquered most of Italy. They have established this Roman Confederation, which includes all these different states, literally hundreds of different states and different ethnic groups. Everyone, one way or the other, is required, as part of this system, to contribute soldiers to Rome's armies. That meant... maybe a third to a half of Italy, is now made up of Roman citizens.
They, of course, must contribute soldiers to Rome's armies. The rest, made up of the Latin rights holders, or the Missipia, or the Socii, they too must contribute soldiers to Rome's armies. And I know I've said this 50 times already, but just to make sure everybody gets it, this is the secret of Roman success. Because now Rome has a huge army. It's guesstimated Rome had maybe 500,000 soldiers in 264 BC.
500,000. A half million soldiers. That means Rome had by far, it's not even close, by far the biggest army anywhere in the Mediterranean world. And just to give you an idea, Alexander invaded Persia with 50,000 soldiers. So Rome has 10 times that number.
And this is why the Romans would always be able to keep fighting, even when they suffered disasters like the River Allia. or later on can i rome would never give up They would never have to give up because they had the soldiers that would allow them to keep fighting until they eventually won the war. Now, more importantly, this is not just a big army, but it's made up of citizens or wannabe citizens.
People who are loyal to Rome, which means people who are going to stand by the Romans even when things get bad. And they will, as we'll see later on when we talk about the Second Punic War. Most of these people stand by Rome no matter what, how bad things get. And that allows Rome to keep fighting year after year until they're eventually able to force their enemies to surrender one way or another.
So one last time. The Romans did not have a superior infantry. They didn't have necessarily better soldiers than the people they'd fight against. These were not professional soldiers. Roman soldiers are citizen soldiers who have regular jobs and only march out to fight when there's some sort of crisis.
Rome did not have a technological superiority. They had hoplite armor, but so did everybody else. So that's not really a big advantage.
Rome never had a great cavalry. And later on, they wouldn't even use Roman cavalry. Instead, they would hire auxiliaries from amongst their subjects to provide their cavalry. So Rome never had a big cavalry or a good cavalry like the Carthaginians did or Alexander did.
And remember that Roman generals are politicians. They get the job because they are good politicians, not because they necessarily are good generals. And often these guys would lead their Roman armies to disaster.
So to understand why the Romans are so successful, you have to understand this confederacy that they established in Italy. Because this is what provides them with the manpower to keep fighting, even when they suffer disaster after disaster. Rome would never give up. And this system allows them.
to keep fighting even when they suffer setbacks on the battlefield all right so that's it all right so we talked about the five phases of roman expansion in italy we talked about the establishment of the roman confederation uh we talked about the evolution of the roman army at least the first three stages of that from romulan to servian to manipular um so now rome is ready they've conquered most of italy they're one of the five great powers of the mediterranean world which means they're all set to take the next step, which means, first of all, Carthage, and then later the great Greek kingdoms of the East. So now they're ready to conquer the Mediterranean world. Italy was merely the first step. All right, so that's it.
If you have any questions about all that, please. I know we ripped through a lot of stuff very quickly, so if you have any questions about all that, please email me or stop by Zoom office hours. If not... We will see you next time.