apart from the old alliance with isolated Massilia, and was uninterested in the East: during the
Hannibalic War her treaty with the Aetolians in northern Greece claimed only the movable booty from
joint operations, the real estate being left to the Aetolians, and she campaigned without energy, making
few, if any, other formal alliances. She was slow to annex, for example setting up in 167 four artificial
'independent' republics in Macedon. She sometimes refused lands bequeathed by will-notably Egypt in
the early first century B.C.-while it took her twenty years to get round to organizing Cyrenaica, left to
her in 96. It was further argued that the historians always showed Rome to have declared war for
defensive reasons, or to assist allies to whom she had obligations and a reputation for fides (good faith)
to keep up. For the idea of the helium iustum, just war', undertaken in self-defence or to aid allies,
obsessed her. Rome perhaps sometimes believed wrongly that she was under threat; there has been
argument over whether there was, or Rome thought there was, a secret pact between Philip and
Antiochus III in 200, and whether Perseus was really preparing war in the 170s. But if Rome's fears
were mistaken, this showed her ignorance of the outside world. Polybius' belief that Rome aimed at
world dominion was dismissed as the opinion of a Greek theorist, influenced by Thucydides on
Athenian imperialism or by the career of Alexander; his own narrative refuted his general interpretation.
It was also argued that Rome rarely acted from economic motives. Policy was made by senators, and
they were forbidden by the Lex Claudia of 218 to own ships over a certain size, and barred from the
lucrative public contracts which included supplying the armies and in time collecting provincial taxes.
(Anyway such activities were thought low.) There soon came to be tension between the Senate and the
contractors, publicani, who were mostly of the wealthy class later known as equites or knights, whose
interests the Senate would oppose; some of the mines of Macedon were shut after 167 to prevent
exploitation by the publicani. In addition, many of the negotiators ('men of affairs'), engaged in money-
lending, banking, trade, and even agriculture, whom we know from literary and epigraphic sources to
have settled all over the Mediterranean world in the second century, were mostly, so it was held, until
the Social War not citizens, but Italian allies, for whom Rome felt little responsibility. The names indeed
of many are not Latin, and point to Oscan-speaking southern Italy, especially Campania (for instance,
Stlaccius, found on the island mart of Delos). It has even been argued that most of what trade there was
(it is still often minimized) was designed to supply Roman armies and Roman settlers, not to make a
profit from the natives, though it had to be admitted that in the first century generals and publicani
influenced policy, and Roman rule was detested for its greed.
This picture will not altogether do. Rome was in touch with the Greek world from an early date. And
Roman society was militaristic. Polybius paints the Romans as above all soldiers of great discipline and
ferocity: sacking a city, they even kill the animals. The Senate liked to keep the army in training. Young
aristocrats were expected in Polybius' time to serve ten campaigns before standing for office; the top
offices were basically military ones. Military prowess was valued above all things-uirtus meant
primarily valour. The highest ambition was for a triumph, the pompous celebration of a major victory by
a grand procession exhibiting the spoils of war, in which the victor was for a day almost equated with a
god. (Triumphs proliferated in the second century and had to be regulated.) Only less regarded was the
thanksgiving to the gods decreed by the Senate in the name of a victorious commander. Campaigns
provoked by generals to earn a triumph undoubtedly occurred, even before the first century when the
Senate lost control. A correspondent wished the unwarlike Cicero, then governor of Cilicia, 'enough