Mary Beard

Now, what that means is

is that Rome got enormous manpower at its control.

It could call on more soldiers than any other power anywhere could call on.

You know, that's why they lose battles but win wars, that the Romans were defeated quite often in their conflicts with their neighbours and also with the people they were fighting further afield.

But they could always come back home and say, right, OK,

They've got always more boots on the ground.

No, I mean, it's actually quite hard to know how far that's true of many modern empires, you know.

how far that kind of sense of cultural, religious, military, political control, which is part of our idea of what imperialism is, how far that ever worked.

But Rome in its republican empire is miles away from that, absolutely miles away.

And it looks as if

they have very few priorities about what they want from the people they conquer.

I mean, basically it comes down to they want tax, they want some cash, and they want the guys to do what they're told when necessary.

So it's what I sometimes called kind of an empire of obedience, right?

They're not interested in imposing Roman religion.

They're not terribly interested in dressing up these places to look like mini-Romes.

They start to do that a bit later.

What they want is they want people to do what they're told when necessary.

And they have the beginnings of a system in the Republic of provincial governors, but

I have to say the boundaries of these provinces are probably pretty fluid.

And they have all kinds of different deals with different people across the map.