SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

Twelve Tables into the relatively complex world of the year 300 BCE, the most influential factor would surely be the sheer size of Rome’s dominion and the organisational demands of fighting on a large scale. Simply the logistics of transport, supply and equipment entailed in mounting a campaign of 16,000 Romans (to use Livy’s estimate), plus allies, would have demanded an infrastructure unthinkable in the mid fifth century BCE. Although I have tried to avoid such modernising terms as ‘alliance’ and ‘treaty’ when referring to Roman activity in the fifth century BCE, the network of Roman connections throughout the peninsula and the different definitions of Rome’s relations with different communities by the end of the following century make those terms much less inappropriate. Roman military expansion drove Roman sophistication.