Far left Julius Caesar ‘the greatest Roman of them all’ personifies the murderous violence that characterised the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC, when it was expanding faster than ever before, to achieve dominance over the Mediterranean basin and much of continental Europe. Yet, in the perspective of history’s longue durée, the Roman Empire was but an interlude unstable and unsustainable, for it defied the logic of Europe’s distinctive geography.

The Land between the Oceans: The Making of Modern Europe (Part Three)

Geography made a unitary empire embracing the Mediterranean and temperate Europe inherently unstable; but the wreckage of the Roman Empire contained the building blocks of modern Europe. In the third and final part of our series based on Cunliffe’s new book, Europe between the Oceans, we chart the changes from Caesar to Charlemagne.

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Published: • View live issue
Period: Roman Empire
Location: Europe › Italy › Lazio › Rome

Click to read parts one and two.

In the Punic Wars of the mid-late 3rd century BC, Roman imperialism erupted out of the Italian peninsula and won dominance over the Western Mediterranean. In the Macedonian Wars of the early-mid 2nd century BC, Rome established dominance over the Balkans and became a threat to the old Hellenistic kingdoms of Anatolia and Syria. By 140 BC, the Mediterranean was, for the Romans, mare nostrum – ‘our sea’.

An imperial interlude

Roman imperialism was self-feeding. Foreign wars generated huge wealth in the form of booty; and, as the empire expanded, the income streams to the central state from provincial taxation swelled. War captives provided slave labour for the estates of Italian aristocrats and the building projects of Roman warlords. Above all, ‘it was revenue from war that funded new wars. Rome was now inextricably caught up in the momentum of unlimited empire-building: this was to drive the state until the early 2nd century AD, when the emperor Hadrian decided to call a halt and begin to stabilise the frontiers.’

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