Mary Beard

Well, sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't.

They lost a lot of battles.

They lost a lot of battles.

They didn't lose wars, but they lost battles.

And they were a standing joke to begin with about their navy.

I mean, the Romans were supposed to be complete rubbish at naval warfare.

So there is something about the kind of way they're governed, which must, I think, provide a kind of baseline from which to explain this.

It is the continual competitiveness of the elite.

You know, I've talked about these guys holding office temporarily, always with someone else.

What that means is that the Roman elite are always going into competitive elections with one another.

There's always winners and losers, and the elite is deeply, deeply committed.

within the power-sharing agreement to getting the most honour and glory for the individual.

And that, in a sense, becomes a big fault line in Roman history.

And so I think you can see that if, as all Mediterranean cultures do, if you put a quite high premium on military success,

In this very odd Roman system, the system itself kind of puts a fire under that because you become consul.

OK, you've got a colleague, but you've only got one year to make your mark.

How do you make your mark?

You make your mark by conquest.

And so there's a whole series of guys as we go from decade to decade whose ambition is in gaining military victory, because that is the kind of the ultimate idea of what a successful Roman is.

But they haven't got long to do it.