Western democracy traces its roots to Rome and its antecedent the Greek city states. While many cultures, including the traditions of the Iroquois confederation, influenced the US constitution, the founding fathers were most inspired by the Roman Republic. In mythology, Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, who were suckled by a wolf. Borrowing heavily from Homer, the Roman poet Virgil’s Aenid created a new backstory. Written at the end of the republic, the poem tells the tale of Aeneas. Fleeing the fall of Troy, his odyssey eventually leads him to the founding of Rome.
History
In reality Rome was a non-descript Italian city initially ruled by a king elected from among the senate which was composed of the Roman elites. In 509 BCE the senate expelled the Tarquin and established the republican system of two consuls sharing executive power. Guided by tradition and plagued by rivalry among the leading families, the republic lasted almost 500 years. During its last century a series of civil wars and revolts overwhelmed the republican tradition resulting in the empire. As an empire, Rome continued to grow and eventually dominated the entire Mediterranean Basin. During the second century CE, more than a quarter of the world’s humans lived within the Roman Empire’s 1.9 million square miles.
Roman Military
Using the Mediterranean Sea and an extensive road network (see Map Monday, Roman Roads) Rome deployed a formidable military to defend the empire. With a strength of nearly 5,500 men, the legion formed the backbone of the Roman army. To support the legions, Rome conscripted troops into the auxillia. During the reign of Septimus Severus Rome deployed 33 legions with roughly 181,500 men. The auxillia, who outnumbered the legionaries roughly 4:3, add another 242,000. Additionally, the Praetorian Guard numbered roughly 10,000. Serving as the emperor’s personal bodyguard, they actively participated in many assassination plots. Rome also maintained a small navy of around 35,000. In sum the Roman military totaled ~468,500 men.
Comparison to US
FWIW, the US military consists of 1,358,500 active duty personnel. With a population of 331.9M, roughly 0.41% of Americans serve in the military. Estmates for the population of the Roman empire vary from 50 to 90 million. Splitting the difference at 70M, the Roman military consumed ~0.67% of the total population. As a pre-industrial agrarian society with significantly higher rates of child mortality, this burden proved too much for the empire to sustain. The solution, bribing barbarian tribes to defend the borders bought time, but eventually failed.
Deployment of Roman legions at the height of the empire ~211 CE, courtesy of Jack Keilo, 2014 Universite Paris IV Sorbonne:
As always thanks for reading.
Armen
Note to pay the bills: The Warders, a secret group of hightly trained operatives, strives to protect the small kingdom of Eridan from the predations of its larger neighbors. Filled with magic and adventure, the series is a James Bond-like thriller set in a high fantasy world. Why not give take a look? You can find a summary of the six book series here or find links to purchase books here.
Additionally, consider signing up for my FREE newsletter. It contains announcements about new books, early notification of sales, and opportunities to participate in the creative process, e.g., being a beta reader. I promise that it will not overwhelm your inbox – I’m thinking once a month or less depending on news.
If you have subscribed, but haven’t received a newsletter, please check your spam folder. Moving the newsletter to your inbox should fix the issue.
Armen: Thanks for another interesting piece. The East Roman Empire (the Byzantines) had the same problem (“Bribing barbarian tribes to defend the borders bought time, but eventually failed.”) They hired mercenaries to defend their borders and other outsiders as their personal guards because they could not trust their own. In the early 1300s, when the Seljuk Sultanate went into decline, a second wave of Turkic invaders, the followers of Osman, the Ottomans, took the long journey in small bands from the northern borders of the Islamic world in Central Asia to the Anatolian heartland. They initially worked as mercenaries for the Byzantines. As often happened with mercenaries, if the service they provided was not lucrative enough for them, they turned on their employer. Osman’s band set out on its own, expanded deep into Asia Minor and pushed west into the Balkans as far as Serbia. Their actions culminated with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 which put an end to the East Roman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was conceived on the idea of constantly expanding borders. The sultans justified their conquests by their desire to bring Islam to the world, control the eastern Mediterranean and increase the number of taxpayers. Their ability to conquer new lands and cover the exorbitant costs of maintaining land and sea forces depended on plunder and the tax revenues from their non-Muslim subjects. By keeping their Christian subjects alive and granting them a degree of autonomous rule by allowing power-hungry priests and collaborators to run their own communities’ affairs, the Ottomans were assured of tax revenues to finance their perpetual wars. The heavy tax burden pushed some Christians to convert to Islam or migrate, most notably the Armenians. Since villages were collectively responsible for their taxes, the Christian villagers who stayed put were obliged to offset the shortfall created by the conversion of their neighbors. Sometimes, entire villages decided to convert. The wave of massive conversions in the 17th century reduced tax revenues and brought the Ottoman Empire to financial collapse. Come the 19th century, the technologically inferior Ottoman Army was repeatedly defeated by Imperial Russia. The Ottomans lost large swathes of territory. The empire which had instilled fear in all of Europe for four centuries was already on its last legs.