Wars of Expansion and Economic Structure

Cue (NZERS), 1 June 1944, Page 4

Wars of Expansion and Economic Structure

During the sth4th Century b.c. a succession of wars of expansion were waged against the Volsians, Etruscans, and Sannites whose defeat in 312 b.c. was followed by the construction of the . Appian Way. Other roads such as the Aemelian, Flam* minian and Ostian were commenced about this time and in 316 the first aqueduct; about two kilometres in length' was constructed. '

In the 3rd Century, expanded Rome was in conflict with . the Greek city-states headed by Tarantum which finally fell in 272. to be followed later by the fall of Greek-Sicily, a conquest which brought Rome into direct conflict with Carthage;

s ln 216 b.c., Rome was once again on the point of disaster, but with Hannibal camped outside the city walls the Romans held an auction sale of the enemy camp site. By 202, the danger had passed. /•

Literature was scanty and largely epigraphical, and the fear of emotional writing combined with the Latin love of the hidden verb made it terse and uninteresting at least to us. Religious life arose and was beginning to show the influence of new cults. The Temple of Aes-

culapius arose after a plague and that’ of Ceres and of Castor and Pollux existed, and the Temple of Saturn served both the deity, and the purposes of a public record office. The Temple of Jove and Victory was erected in 295 b.c. and at-the same time sacrifices continued to the old Tiber, agricultural and household gods.

After the conquest .of Carthage in 147 and the suppression of piracy in the Adriatic. Rome, with an expanded fleet, solved the problem of recurrent social unrest in Corinth by the expedient of razing that city to the ground and selling its inhabitants as slaves. The distribution of the artistic wealth of Greece, and the spread of its enslaved population throughout the Roman world led in turn to profound cultural changes.

The quick intelligence of the educated Greek slave was used to advantage by his slower-witted Roman master. , Religion, especially the mystery religions such as the cult of Dionysius received an impetus, and the medical and other arts were stimulated in the less cultivated but more orderly Roman world.

So rapidly did this influence spread that even before the wars of the last Century b.c., it .was becoming the fashion of the elegant Roman world to adopt the public baths and other amenities of the Greeks, previously impossible owing to the lack of water. Roman women imitated the conversational and sumptuary sophistication of the Athenians and Corinthians. Conquered Greece had conquered Rome.

The ’’social” war which commenced with Sulla in 80 b.c. ended with the ultimate triumph of force-in-politics and dictatorship. Julius Caesar, fresh from his

Gallic conquests, had appealed for popular rival Pompey, backed ■by the. plutocrat Crassus.

In 48 B.C;, Pompey was overthrown at Pharsalia—near the site of NZGHin Greece, and on 15 March, 44 b.c., Julius Caesar himself fell to a conspiracy, the dramatic details of which are familiar to all Shakespearians. Thirteen years later, at the Battle of Actium, Augustus Caesar found himself master of the Roman world and assumed the Crown. Imperial Rome had begun.