"Glory belongs to Greece, greatness belongs to Rome" is well known, so why did the Romans become the masters of the whole Mediterranean and even the whole of Europe?
In fact, the early histories of the Greeks and Romans have many similarities.
Both originated from the same race, just as the Indo-European Achaeans and Dorians entered Greece along the Balkans, and the Indo-European Latins arrived along the Italian Peninsula on the south bank of the Tiber River.
Rome was one of the Latin community that formed at that time, located at the lowest point of the Tiber River where it was easy to wade across the river and the highest part of the terrain that could be reached by boat.
Its strategic location, similar to London on the river Thames, made Rome more suitable for business and external influence than other Latin settlements in the first place.
The main external influence came from two civilized peoples who had previously emigrated to Italy from abroad, the Etruscans and the Greeks.
The Etruscans may have come from Asia Minor, migrated north to the Tiber River around 800 BC, and then conquered the Latins to the south. Before their rule was overthrown, they passed on to the Romans their beliefs in the gods and goddesses, their knowledge of arches and vaults, and the typical Eastern custom of divination by examining the internal organs of animals.
The Greeks appeared shortly after the arrival of the Etruscans, who established several colonies in southern Italy and Sicily, including Tarentine, Syracuse, and Naples. Their contributions to the Latins included the alphabet, a number of arts and myths, certain religious ideas and customs, including the Roman gods whose ontology was taken from Greek mythology. Zeus, Hermes, and Artemis in Greek mythology became Jupiter, Mercury, and Diana in Roman mythology.
Around 500 BC, Rome expelled its last Etruscan king and began to become an independent city-state.
In just a few years, it conquered the surrounding peoples and controlled the entire Latin plain from the Apennine Mountains to the coast.
The system of the Formation of the Roman city-states is similar to that of the early Greek city-states.
Initially, the king had imperial power, i.e. supreme power
Only advisory committees composed of nobles and popular assemblies that could only express approval or opposition to legislation were binding on the king.
Later, as in Greece, the monarchy was abolished and the nobility became the rulers of society
。 The imperial power previously held by the king was now transferred to the hands of two consuls; Consuls are elected for a one-year term, always by the nobility.
The Senate was the main legislature and an aristocratic body
, even after the admission of a number of civilians, its nature remains unchanged.
When Rome accomplished what the Greek city-states could not do, that is, to conquer and unify the entire peninsula, the development of Rome and the Greek city-states was very different. Why was rome able to conquer the Italian peninsula, but none of the Greek city-states could unify The Greek mainland, let alone the entire Balkan Peninsula?
One reason is that the terrain is significantly different
。 The Balkans overlap mountains, and in fact, the name "Balkans" is derived from the Turkish word for "mountain". Greece is full of overlapping mountains, while Italy has only a north-south direction, no transverse mountains in the middle, and it is not difficult to cross the Apennine Mountains. Thus, the Italian peninsula was not divided into small areas, which were correspondingly easier to unify and maintain. And, in the absence of mountains like the Balkans, the Roman road network—for example, the famous Apostle appio, which runs down the boot-shaped Italian peninsula from Rome to the Blondission at the heel of the boots—unites all of Italy. In fact, the Via appio still exists and was used in 1943 when British and American troops landed in southern Italy.
Another reason for the success of the Romans was their open-minded approach to the rest of Italy
。 Earlier, Athens levied tributes from its Greek companions and never granted them citizenship. Rome, on the other hand, granted about a quarter of the peninsula's inhabitants full citizenship, and the rest enjoyed Latin citizenship, a large but not sufficient privilege. All people enjoy personal freedom, and the only disadvantage thus created is that they cannot control foreign relations and cannot force people for military service. This policy saved Rome, because during the crucial years when Hannibal of Carthage was victorious on the peninsula, Rome's Italian allies remained loyal to Rome.
In the end, the Romans also won because they had superior troops and invented clever strategies.
In fighting their neighbors, they recognized that the traditional 8,000-man phalanx was too large to command, especially when fighting in mountainous areas. So, they organized the army into "detachments" of 120 people; 30 detachments, or 3600 men, formed a corps. The legion was also equipped with cavalry to protect its flanks. In addition to the traditional helmets, shields, spears, and swords, the Romans equipped their legions with effective offensive weapons, the iron-tipped javelin. In combat, legionnaires first throw javelins at the enemy from a distance, then cleverly use the gaps in the enemy formation to attack the escapees.
By 295 BC, the Romans had captured central Italy and advanced southward, under the prosperous Greek colonial city of Tarentine, "on the back" of the peninsula. The Tarantines appealed to Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus in Greece, who was hailed by Hannibal as his general second only to Alexander. Pyrrhus won two "Pyrrhus victories", but he could not afford to pay heavy losses, while the Romans, although more severely damaged, had 750,000 Italian combatants as their backup. So, when Pyrrhus retreated in 272 B.C., before leaving, he said with great insight: "What a good battlefield I have left for Rome and Carthage!" Only eight years later, in 264 BC, Rome and Carthage fought in Sicily.
Before discussing the Punic Wars—the Phoenician Latin term for the Punics, hence the name—it is necessary to mention certain democratization tendencies of the Roman system. Civilians had provided manpower to the victorious legions, so they were in a good position to demand political concessions. When their demands were rejected, they resorted to the novel and effective method of striking, i.e., withdrawing from the cities together until all the demands were met. One of the first benefits of the civilians in using this approach was the right to choose officials known as the protectors to protect their own interests. The Conservator is elected by a new civilian assembly, which is also concerned with other matters related to the masses. Other political concessions include writing the letter of the law and making it public; Limit the amount of land any individual can own.
Thus, by 265 BC, The Italian overlord Rome was undergoing a process of democratization
。
It is conceivable that this process of democratization would have made Rome the first democratic nation-state in world history. However, this possibility, if it did exist, would have been forcefully eliminated by the series of overseas wars in which Rome was drawn at this time.
The war transformed Rome into a great empire, but it also profoundly changed the domestic system of Rome, and the premature death of the democratization trend was one of many disasters.
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The opinion data comes from
A General History of the World