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CHAPTER ONE
From Imperium to Imperialism
WRITING THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The rise and fall of a great empire cannot fail to fascinate us,
for we can all see in such a story something of our own times.
But of all the empires that have come and gone, none has a
more immediate appeal that the Empire of Rome. It pervades
our lives today: its legacy is everywhere to be seen.
—Barry W. Cunliffe, Rome and Her Empire
The endurance of the Roman Empire is one of the success
stories of history. That it survived so long is a sign of its prin-
cipal achievement, whereby a heterogeneous mixture of races
and creeds were induced to settle down together in a more or
less peaceful way under the Pax Romana .
—J.S. Wacher , The Roman World
Definitions of Empire and Imperialism
It is generally agreed that the Roman Empire was one of the most suc-
cessful and enduring empires in world history. 1 Its reputation was suc-
cessively foretold, celebrated and mourned in classical antiquity. 2 There
has been a long afterlife, creating a linear link between Western society
today and the Roman state, relected in religion, law, political structures,
philosophy, art, and architecture. 3 Perhaps partly in consequence, many
An early version of this chapter was delivered as the 2005 Ronald Syme Lecture at Wolf-
son College, Oxford, on 20 October 2005. It was substantially developed for delivery as
my opening lecture in the Miriam S. Balmuth Lectures in Ancient History and Archaeology
series at Tufts University on 18 April 2006 and has been further revised and expanded for
publication here.
1 Empires seem to be fashionable these days. Visitors to the British Museum in recent
years have been presented with a series of blockbuster exhibitions showcasing an array
of ancient empires, from Babylon (Finkel and Seymour 2008), to China (Portal 2007), to
Persia (Curtis and Tallis 2005) and Hadrian and Rome (Opper 2008). Note also the Royal
Academy Byzantium show (Cormack and Vassilaki 2008). Rome certainly stands up to this
sort of scrutiny as an extraordinary example of a preindustrial superstate.
2 Dalby 2000, 8–20, provides a good introduction to some of the key sources.
3 See Goodman 1997, 3, for an example of this sentiment.
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Chapter 1
people in the United States and Europe are curiously nostalgic about the
Roman Empire in a way that has become deeply unfashionable in studies
of modern empires. 4
There have even been attempts to imagine a world in which the Roman
Empire never ended. Some readers may be familiar with the wonderful
conceit of Robert Silverberg’s novel Roma Eterna , and his imagined epi-
sodes of later Roman history, including the conquest of the Americas and
extending to an attempted “space shot” in the year 2723 AUC ( ab urbe
condita ). The global scope and extreme longevity of Silverberg’s Rome—
still a resolutely pagan state at the end, having averted the rise of both
Christianity and Islam—emphasizes the unedifying aspects of military
dictatorship. 5 Like bald narrative accounts of Roman history, these mod-
ern reimaginings blur into a catalog of wars, coups, attempted revolts,
persecutions, assassinations, and murders. 6 Here, of course, is the great
paradox of the Roman Empire. Lauded in many modern accounts as
an exemplary and beneicent power, 7 it was also a bloody and danger-
ous autocracy. 8 Of course, Rome was not the only human society prone
to war and violence—much debate has been prompted by Lawrence
Keeley’s War before Civilization concerning humanity’s predilection for
intercommunal conlict from prehistory onward. 9 However, the scale, fre-
quency and length of wars in Roman society were undeniably unusual in
a preindustrial age. Despite interesting differences from modern colonial
regimes in the manner in which local elites were integrated into the impe-
rial project, the facade of civil government was underpinned by violence,
both real and latent. 10
4 Notwithstanding Ferguson’s recent efforts to rehabilitate the British Empire (2004), the
strongly expressed proempire sentiments of Wells 1996 are less self-evidently correct to a
postcolonial generation.
5 Silverberg 2003. McDougall 2005 represents another attempt to imagine the Roman
Empire in the modern world, complete with high-tech cruciixion on steel crosses. For all its
imagination (and pretension) neither book depicts the Roman world and power structures
as well as Harris (2006).
6 Potter 2009 is a ine modern example of the grand narrative history, with the wars and
power struggles predominating. Wells 1992 and Woolf 2004a are more rounded accounts
of wars, politics, social institutions, and much more, but presented in an almost entirely
positive manner.
7 A recent example is the work of British politician Boris Johnson (whose 2006 Dream
of Rome is actually more of a fantasy than a dream).
8 See, most recently, Faulkner 2008 for a blow-by-blow description of Rome’s history as
“a system of robbery with violence” (p. xii).
9 Keeley 1996. See Parker Pearson and Thorpe 2005, and Thorpe 2003, for some of the
ensuing debate.
10 Potter 1999 strikes a good balance between lauding the positives of Roman rule and
acknowledging the effects of the state’s “monopolization of extreme force.”
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From Imperium to Imperialism
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Cinematic visions of Rome have changed over the years, but in general
there is a mismatch between these depictions and the rosier scholarly
consensus on the Roman Empire—typically what has been highlighted
in “sword and sandal epics” has been sex and violence, with the empire
more often than not representing the “dark side.” 11 Occasional rumina-
tions on Rome’s decline and fall, of course, have had as much to tell us
about contemporary unease about the future of the American empire. 12
It remains a paradox to me that cinema has done more to challenge our
preconceptions of Rome than academic study. For instance, I can think
of no darker depiction of life at the sharp end of Roman power than the
scourging scene in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ . 13
Deinitions of imperialism and of empire are varied and controversial,
so I need to make my position clear at the outset. Some commentators
have argued that the imperium Romanum was quite distinct from the
modern term imperialism and, in comparison with modern empires, the
Roman Empire was a product of very different political and economic
forces. 14 A recent study has suggested that Roman expansionism its more
readily into an analytical frame of state building rather than an anach-
ronistic back-projection of imperialism. 15 Yet that seems to ignore much
about Rome that was exceptional in relation to other states of classical
antiquity—the nature of Rome as a cosmopolis or metropolis its more
readily into analysis of imperial systems than of other ancient cities. 16
11 On Rome as the “dark side,” see, e.g., the ilms Ben Hur (1959, dir. William Wyler),
Spartacus (1960, dir. Stanley Kubrick), the TV miniseries Masada (1981, dir. Boris Sagal), or
many a biblical epic. Even in the fabulous comedy of Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979,
dir. Terry Jones) there is much spot-on critical comment on Roman oppression and cruel
punishments. The salacious sexuality of Rome is notably shown off in Federico Fellini’s
Satyricon (1968) and Bob Guccione’s dreadful (what was Helen Mirren thinking?) Caligula
(1979). The highly compulsive HBO TV series Rome (2005–2007) pulled off the neat trick
of combining graphic sex and violence with soap opera characters to present Rome as a
truly cruel and decadent society from top to bottom.
12 See Anthony Mann’s The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and Ridley Scott’s Gladi-
ator (2000).
13 Almost unwatchable for its graphic detail and cruelty, the scourging in Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ (2004) is nonetheless a compelling depiction of the mundane
violence of the Roman Empire.
14 Hobson 1902.
15 Eich and Eich 2005; the deinitional problem is, however, acknowledged on page 5:
“The word imperialism seems to defy any easy deinition.” Their linkage between violence/
warfare and state-building seems reasonable for the early stages of Roman expansionism,
but their analysis seems to elide the transformative effect on Roman society of the “extraor-
dinary success in war” (which they admit distinguishes Rome from contemporary societies).
I would argue that Rome’s success did transform its social, economic, and political struc-
tures in ways that have more in common with other empires than with other nascent states.
16 See various chapters in Edwards and Woolf 2003; also Morley 1996.
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Similarly, the detail of extant Roman treaties with subject and allied
peoples emphasize the extraordinary and unequal nature of these rela-
tions and the mechanisms that Rome adopted to control or to exert
inluence on far-lung territories. 17 Furthermore, I believe that there are
issues relating to the exercise of power and the responses that power
evokes, where it is legitimate to draw comparisons as well as contrasts
between ancient and modern. Current attempts to situate the modern
United States among past empires recognize the relevance of the Roman
So, let us move on to some key deinitions. An empire is the geopolitical
manifestation of relationships of control imposed by a state on the sover-
eignty of others. 19 Empires generally combine a core, often metropolitan-
controlled territory, with peripheral territories and have multiethnic or
multinational dimensions. Empire can thus be deined as rule over very
wide territories and many peoples largely without their consent. While
ancient societies did not have as developed a sense of self-determination
as modern states, the fact that incorporation was often iercely contested
militarily is symptomatic of the fundamentally nonconsensual nature of
imperialism.
Imperialism refers to both the process and attitudes by which an em-
pire is established and maintained. Some have argued that imperialism
is essentially a modern phenomenon, though I would counter that the
process existed in antiquity even if less explicitly developed in conceptual
terms. 20 However, just as empires evolve over time, imperialism need not
be static or uniform. When we look at the dynamics of the Roman Em-
pire, we perhaps need to look beyond the rather monolithic deinitions of
most accounts and to consider several distinctive phases of imperialism.
We also need to beware of the tendency of both modern and ancient com-
mentators to explain earlier phases in the light of institutions and ideolo-
gies that developed only in later phases. Imperialism should be seen as a
dynamic and shape-shifting process.
17 See Mitchell 2005 for a detailed study of a recently recognized treaty of 46 BC between
Rome and Lycia, with accompanying discussion of other treaties. Mitchell notes (2005,
185) that there were “fundamental instruments of Roman policy. Countless bilateral agree-
ments with nominally independent partners created a complex network of reciprocal legal
relationships which underpinned Rome’s imperial authority.”
18 Hardt and Negri 2000; James 2006; Maier 2006. Vidal 1989 is perceptive on the
inluence of Rome on the formative years of American imperialism, with the irst chapter
alone containing numerous allusions by the protagonists to classical mythology and speciic
references to Julius Caesar (twice), Augustus, and Cicero.
19 For a range of deinitions see Doyle 1986; Hardt and Negri 2000; Kieran 1995; Lieven
2000; Said 1993; and Webster 1996b.
20 For a variety of views on imperialism, see Doyle 1986, 19; Howe 2002, 30; Lichtheim
1971, 4; Reynolds 1981, vii; and Said 1993, 8.
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Colonialism is a more restricted term that deines the system of rule
of one people over another, in which sovereignty is operated over the
colonized at a distance, often through the installation of settlements of
colonists in the related process of colonization . 21 Both words, of course,
derive from the Roman term colonia , initially deinable as a settlement of
citizens in conquered territory. 22 In recent years there has been increasing
interest in the diverse nature of colonialism and colonization through the
ages and the archaeological manifestations of these processes. 23 We shall
look in more detail at colonialism later on.
Explaining empire is much more tricky than deining it, but I think the
key approach must be to explore the networks of power that sustain it.
What unites all types and ages of empires is the combination of the “will
to power” and the large scale at which it is expressed. The domination
of others is a characteristic of human societies, but empires very often
achieve the step change of effecting rule over vast areas and huge popu-
lations by comparatively small numbers of imperial servants. 24 For this
reason alone, I do not accept that the ancient land empires can have noth-
ing in common with the capitalist sea empires of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries or the American airstrip and aircraft carrier empire
of the later twentieth and twenty-irst centuries. 25 Even a modern account
attempting to rehabilitate the reputation of the British Empire reveals
telling structural similarities with the themes of this book—the changing
realities of any speciic empire as it went through phases of (d)evolu-
tion, globalization, the shrinking of the world though improved com-
munications and infrastructure, the construction of power around the
acquisition of knowledge, resource exploitation as driver or consequence
of expansion, and the smoke-and-mirrors realities of minute provincial
administrations ruling huge territories and millions of subjects. 26
21 Ashcroft, Grifiths, and Tifin 1998, 45–51; Howe 2002, 30; Maier 2006, 44.
22 Gosden 2004, 1.
23 Given 2004; Gosden 2004; Hodos 2006; Hurst and Owen 2005; Lyons and Papa-
dopoulos 2002; Stein 2005; Van Dommelen 1997; 1998; Van Dommelen and Terrenato
2007a.
24 See Mitchell 2004 for a brilliant literary exploration of the Nietzschean view of power.
For summary accounts of the relative economy of imperial rule in British India, see James
1997; Morris 1979.
25 For similar arguments, see Webster 1997a. The work of international relations special-
ists such as Fitzpatrick (1992, 2005) relects a similar preference for broad-based compara-
tive study of empires.
26 Ferguson 2004, xi–xxviii. While I disagree with many of his conclusions about the
positive balance sheet of the British Empire (characterized on xxvii as the triumph of capi-
talism, the Anglicization of North America and Australasia, the predominance of Protes-
tantism and the survival of parliamentary institutions), the analysis does not duck the issue
of the negative impacts as well.

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