Mary Beard

I will say first that people often think that the fall of the Roman Empire, the fall of Rome's great territorial expansion, is what's the puzzle.

That's not my bag, but I tell you, more puzzling is why this small city in a not very desirable place on the Tiber with a load of bogs and mosquitoes, why they, over the period of the Republic, basically conquered the whole Mediterranean, right?

Now, I need to stop there and say the terminology here is really confusing because there are two senses in Roman history of the word empire.

One is the territorial expanse of the Roman Empire.

What is Roman territory across the Mediterranean?

And the other is the political sense of the period when Rome is governed by one man.

Now...

The puzzle, the really annoying puzzle about this is that the empire, in the sense of the territorial expanse of Rome, was mostly acquired before Rome had an emperor.

That's basic rule.

Emperors did not make the Roman Empire.

They inherited it.

They didn't make it.

So what you find from about the late fourth century B.C.

onwards, during the period of the kind of fully fledged republic, is you find a series of

successful conquests, which don't ever seem to stop until you get to Julius Caesar.

And why were the Romans so successful in conquering other people?

Some people said they were terribly militaristic.

They were terribly militaristic, but there weren't any people in the ancient Mediterranean who weren't militaristic.

So that's not the answer.

People say, oh, they were better at soldiery than other people.