Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World

Summary

Pax Romana asks what the famous Roman peace actually was, how it was created, and how it was kept. Adrian Goldsworthy's answer begins with conquest. The Roman peace of the first and second centuries AD, he argues, was real and long-lasting across much of the empire, but it was the product of centuries of hard and often brutal warfare, and Romans themselves regarded it as the fruit of victory rather than of compromise. The book is in two parts. Part One, on the Republic, explains how Rome grew from one Italian city among many into the master of the Mediterranean. Goldsworthy describes the Roman way of war and diplomacy, the networks of allies and friendly kings, the Italian traders and settlers who often went ahead of the legions, and the workings of provincial government under annually changing governors, with its opportunities for profit and abuse. The wars with Carthage, the destruction of Corinth and Carthage in 146 BC, the campaigns in Spain and Gaul and Julius Caesar's conquests serve as central examples. Part Two turns to the Principate, the empire under emperors from Augustus onward. Goldsworthy examines how emperors and governors ruled, how often and why provinces rebelled, and how the authorities handled resistance, urban riots and banditry. Rebellions, he argues, tended to come in the first generations after conquest, before local elites had been drawn into Roman life; after that they became rare. He treats famous risings such as those in Pannonia, Germany, Britain under Boudica and Judaea, as well as the less dramatic everyday work of government, illustrated by evidence such as Pliny's letters to Trajan from Bithynia. Chapters on life under Roman rule look at law, taxation, citizenship, cities and the spread of Roman habits among provincial elites. The final chapters consider the army and the frontiers: the location of garrisons, the purpose of works like Hadrian's Wall, the problem of raids, and relations with peoples and powers beyond the empire, above all Parthia. Throughout, Goldsworthy stresses that Rome's reputation for overwhelming retaliation did much of the work of keeping peace, so that diplomacy and the threat of force were often enough. The conclusion, Peace and War, weighs the costs of conquest against the benefits of the order that followed, while warning against both romanticizing Rome and judging it solely by later standards. The book closes with a glossary and a chronology running to AD 476. It was published in 2016 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in Britain and Yale University Press in the United States.

Top Lessons

• Peace made by victory

  Goldsworthy shows that Romans understood peace as the condition that followed defeating an enemy and receiving his submission. The long calm of the second century rested on earlier conquest and on the memory of what Rome could do to those who resisted.

• Why rebellions faded

  Revolts, the book argues, were most likely in the first generation or two after conquest and became rare once local leaders gained a stake in Roman rule through citizenship, office and wealth. The pattern helps explain both the risings of Boudica and the Batavians and the long quiet that followed.

• Ordinary government matters

  Beyond battles, Goldsworthy attends to tax collection, courts, roads, city councils and the letters between governors and emperors. The everyday administration of the provinces was as important to the Roman peace as the legions.

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