Bret Devereaux (PhD in ancient history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Teaching Assistant Professor) says that the extraordinary success of the Roman Empire was in considerable part due to the diversity of its citizens, and that accepting all kinds of people strengthened it:
Every sort of evidence we have for early Rome, from the legends of the Romans themselves to the geographic, linguistic and archaeological evidence of the site, points to early Rome as a sort of ‘frontier town’ – a place defined as the meeting point of many quite different cultural groups.
Understanding how Rome went from just one of Italy’s many self-governing cities to the dominant power in the Mediterranean requires understanding how the Romans handled all of those different Italian people as citizens and allies.
It turns out, by ancient standards, Roman citizenship was radically expansionary.
As the Romans slowly absorbed pre-Roman Italy into the Roman Italy of the Republic, that meant managing the truly wild variety of different peoples in their alliance system…
In short, Roman Italy under the Republic was preposterously multicultural (in the literal meaning of that word)…and it turns out that’s why they won.
https://acoup.blog/2021/06/25/collections-the-queens-latin-or-who-were-the-romans-part-ii-citizens-and-allies/. 9,900 words but well worth it.
Laugh / learn links log 