Product Description
Historians have long asserted that during and after the Hannibalic War, the Roman Republic’s need to conscript men for long-term military service helped bring about the demise of Italy’s small farms and that the misery of impoverished citizens then became fuel for the social and political conflagrations of the late republic. Nathan Rosenstein challenges this claim, showing how Rome reconciled the needs of war and agriculture throughout the middle republic. The key, … More >>
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#1 by G. Glass on May 16, 2010 - 12:47 am
Nathan Rosenstein offers up a well researched view of how ancient Rome mustered and operated its army. The basic starting point is what we have been taught about this time period: Rome would muster armies from its farms and wage war coincident with agrarian cycles. Through various pieces of evidence, Rosenstein argues that this long-held view was not likely the case and that a standing army would have been the more likely. His arguments consider a wide array of data points, and he states his case convincingly.
Though written as an academic work, the book is well written and reasonably easy to follow. Anyone who has a sincere interest in ancient history, and particularly that of Rome, will likely find this book interesting, but the reader who likes good research will enjoy it more. More interestingly for me was the fact that the book takes apart long-held points of view and dissects them methodically — a good model for anyone who wants to read how research is done well and presented.
Rating: 4 / 5
#2 by Newton Ooi on May 16, 2010 - 1:01 am
The home front is always one of the less popular subjects of war histories. Not as heroic, bloody or grand, but just as important, the way families handle the pressures of war economically, politically and socially is often as important in determining the outcome of a war as does battlefield bravery and brinksmanship. This book goes one step deeper and examines how birth rates and death rates in the Italian countryside affected the ability of the nation to war with its neighbors.
Previous accounts of the Roman Empire have viewed Rome’s territorial growth in the following lens. Roman armies took men of their farms for service in foreign quarters. This led to untended farms that needed labor. Subsequently, Rome was more willing than many of its neighbors to take men of their farms for military service. This gave Rome a manpower advantage on the battlefield, and Rome’s military conquests were used to supply slaves and refugee labor to work its own farms.
This book turns this argument on its head by introducing another factor; high birthrates. The conscription of some portion of Roman men into the armies was compensated by high birthrates which proved enough people on the farms to keep them fully functional. Therefore, Roman farms had enough labor to feed its armies year-round, and its armies were fully manned to fight year round. But this process survived as long as Roman soldiers were constantly marching outwards to conquer new lands, and lose some of its men in the process. Eventually, enough kingdoms bowed willingly to Roman rule without minimal bloodshed that overpopulation became the problem. Specifically, there were too many Romans without land, and these would crowd into the cities and fall prey to the wiles of rival politicians who began fielding these landless souls as their own armies to settle contests outside of the legislative arena. Hence the transformation from Republic to Empire was fueled at its base by overpopulation.
All in all a very important book in the study of a very important subject. The work is well referenced and thorough; but alas it is quite boring and academic in writing style. I do not recommend it for the armchair historian.
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Smallchief on May 16, 2010 - 3:11 am
If you’re an expert on the Roman empire you will probably appreciate the fact that Rosenstein gets right to the heart of his subject with no unnecessary explanations. If you’re not an expert, he doesn’t make it easy to read this book. For example, he doesn’t give us many dates, assuming we know when the Punic Wars ended and Sulla and Tiberius ruled Rome. (My level of expertise is that I can guess within about 20 years when these events occured.) Background and context in this book are minimized.
The subject is interesting. What impact did the frequent Roman wars between about 200 and 50 BC have on Roman agriculture? Was there an increase in the number of slaves and large landowners? Were small farms impoverished during this period as a result of Roman wars. How many Roman soldiers died in war? In 190 pages of related essays and 150 pages of appendices, notes, and a vast bibliography the author takes on these subjects. Whew! It was all a bit much. I need a little more background, more of a concession to my ignorance. Suffice it to say that this is not a book for the casual reader.
If you are an expert, however, you will probably find Rosenstein’s exhaustive arguments and questioning of the conventional wisdom to be stimulating. Essentially, the author finds that the growth of slavery and the the destruction of the small landowners of Rome was less important during this period than believed by previous scholars. Along the way are some interesting facts such as (Table 2) a list of Roman battles and battle deaths between 200 and 168 BC. If that sounds like your cup of tea read this book.
Smallchief
Rating: 4 / 5
#4 by Joseph Galascione on May 16, 2010 - 3:46 am
This book has taken the majority of preconceived notions about the time of the Hannibalic War in Rome and it’s affects on the Italian peasantry and turned them on their head. The agrarian crisis which was addressed during the Tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus was always explained as a by product of the turbulent Hannibalic War and the adverse effects the citizenry of the Italian peninsula suffered during these times. However, Nathan Rosenstein, using every single piece of evidence available to him, from the ancient sources to archaeology, genetic testing to demographic studies, shows that not only would the Italian people have been able to generally deal with their current conditions but that their population as a whole was skyrocketing. This, he argues, was the reason for the agrarian crisis, not a large rise in slave staffed estates(which he shows, by ancient evidence that the number of slaves was much lower than generally thought, and the near total lack of archaeological remains of large estates from that time period, never reached the number historians have traditionally believed.). This book has made me look at this time period in a completely different light. I hope Mr. Rosenstein continues to put out books if their quality and research is even half as high as this work.
Rating: 5 / 5