In the Name of Empire
The history of Europe can be reduced to two sentences: Rome unified most of the continent and ruled it for the better part of 500 years. Since the collapse of Roman political power in the late fifth century, a number of people have tried and failed to re-establish that type of central authority over Europe.
This failure prompts an obvious question: How did the Romans do it? How did a pre-industrial, pre-mechanized, pre-digital society manage to establish control over an entire continent? Michael Kulikowski sets out to offer an explanation behind this domination in "The Triumph of Empire: The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine" (Harvard, 2016).
This book is a political history of Rome. When Augustus overthrew the republic, he had no difficulty in establishing his authority. He had won a civil war against Marc Antony and the people were tired of a decade-plus of strife. One man's domination gave the public what it wanted, stability. Augustus, though, struggled in establishing the rules for his succession. Primogeniture—the inheritance of wealth and power to the first born son—would not work for a man who had no boys of his own. Complicating things was the fact that Augustus had maintained the senate, more as a legal fiction than official structure, to hide how much political power he wielded. As a result, the senate would get some type of say in who became emperor in future years. Augustus solved his immediate problem through adoption, which to the Romans was not a way to bring children into a family, but a way to bind one clan to another.
The result was an unclear process for transferring political power from one man to another. Sometimes a son would follow a father, but at other times the senate would vote a man into office, or the Praetorian Guard would seize control. Kulikowski notes, “For centuries, some combination of army, senate and people was needed to make a man emperor, but the balance between them was never clear and never subject to transparent or formal rules.” Coups, counter-coups and assassinations played a big role in transferring power. Friends, colleagues, cousins and even siblings would soon attempt to kill one another. Getting anywhere near the top seems to have been hazardous to one's longevity. Given this political process, it is a wonder that the empire lasted as long as it did, and makes Roman imperial authority all the more impressive.
The Romans dominated Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa and western Asia through a variety of means. The empire had well-established borders and walls. The army was strong and external enemies were weak. They never really challenged Roman authority beyond small, minor attacks on the periphery. Rome had a complex economy that allowed for specialization, and made many people wealthy. The monetary system survived the various civil wars. In an ironic twist, the Roman economy took a real hit during a period of political stability when the Emperor Aurelian tried to centralize the minting of coins and debase the currency. Surviving Egyptian papyri show that prices soared, the banking system collapsed and bartering was the preferred method of commercial exchange. It took Emperor Diocletian years to fix the damage.
Diocletian implemented other reforms of his own. He divided Roman provinces into smaller territories and enlarged the bureaucracy. Smaller territories and a professional civil service made it more difficult for senators and generals to build independent sources of power to challenge his reign.
The empire, despite blood sport politics at the top, was a meritocracy. Many emperors were from regions other than Italy. At first, they were from Latin settlements in the far-flung provinces, but with time they came from the Romanized subjects of the empire. The Emperor Constantine came from the Balkan Peninsula and built Constantinople as a second capitol, instituting numerous reforms that transformed the empire. As Kulikowski puts it, “We have moved from an empire ruled by Romans to an empire filled with Romans.”
This book is an enjoyable read. Kulikowski covers roughly 250 years in 309 pages of text, which is no easy thing. Needless to say, there are issues and topics that he must omit or cover lightly. No author is perfect, though. An examination of events in Asia seems less than necessary, and a discussion about the beginnings of early globalization are less than convincing. What is worth remembering is that the Roman world is very different from our own, and Kulikowski manages to explain this difference to his readers. If you want a short but informative introduction to the world of imperial Rome, then this book is a good place to start.
