Antigonid, centered in the Macedonian heartland. Th eir
armies were direct descendants of Philip’s and Alexander’s.
Th ere were changes in scale; armies were now much larger,
and cavalry declined in importance. An innovation of the
period was the institution of an elephant corps. Europeans
had fi rst met the elephant in battle in northwestern India and
were quick to adopt it for their own use. Elephants were used
to screen against cavalry, to attack infantry, and to break into
fortifi cations. Aft er 300 b.c.e. they were equipped with tow-
ers manned by troops armed with missile weapons. Little is
known of how these elephants were organized. Diffi culties in
breeding as well as the general ineff ectiveness of elephants in
European warfare led to their disappearance from Western
battlefi elds by the middle of the second century b.c.e.
Th e major Hellenistic armies, except for the Macedonian,
which relied on its own population for its main military forces,
used mercenaries. Greeks serving as mercenaries in the Near
East are known as early as the seventh century b.c.e. However,
in Greece the use of a militia as the main military force meant
that mercenaries appear infrequently. Th e fi rst large-scale use
of such forces dates from the Peloponnesian War and contin-
ues into the fourth century c.e. Economic troubles caused by
the war and by the growing need for specialist troops whose
fi ghting techniques required extensive training spurred their
use. Philip and Alexander employed them as well. Th e Helle-
nistic monarchies had an enormous need for manpower, and
although the core of their armies consisted of Greek and Mace-
donian settlers, they hired large numbers of mercenaries from
all over the Mediterranean. A parallel development can be seen
in naval forces, where professional rowers had to be hired.ROME
BY JAMES A. CORRICK
By tradition the doors to the temple of Janus in the Roman
Forum were closed in times of peace and open during times
of confl ict. During the centuries of the Roman Kingdom and
Roman Republic, these doors were shut only twice, and aft er
the formation of the empire they were open far more oft en
than they were closed. War was indeed a constant through-
out Rome’s history, for Rome was built on war and conquest.
Its dominance of the Mediterranean world was through force
of arms. Its treasury and many of its prominent citizens and
leaders were periodically enriched through the loot of con-
quest and the governance of conquered provinces, whose
inhabitants were forced to pay tribute under the threat of Ro-
man military reprisal.ROMAN ATTITUDES TOWARD WAR
Th e Romans were a militaristic people who saw war as a natu-
ral—indeed a proper—way of establishing their dominance
over others. Th us for much of its history Rome spent half of
its revenues on maintaining its military and on waging war. It
gave its top offi cials—consuls, praetors, proconsuls, proprae-
tors, and the occasional dictator—the imperium that gavethem the authority, among other things, to command troops
in battle. It demanded that its elected offi cials not only serve
in the military but also have combat experience. Further, it
elevated Mars, who had been a minor agricultural god, to the
second most powerful deity in the Roman pantheon, just af-
ter Jupiter, by making him the god of war.
Th e Roman character itself was shaped by war and the
demands of war. Th e Romans were a people who valued disci-
pline, endurance, and courage and who saw duty to the state
as among the highest goals to be achieved. Th ey praised those
who rejected luxury for austere living and who took no no-
tice of physical hardship. Th ey admired the pragmatic. All of
these characteristics made for good, reliable soldiers.
Yet despite their belief in the rightness of combat and
battle, Romans did not take war lightly. Th ey knew, as the
Roman poet Virgil (70–19 b.c.e.) wrote in the Aeneid, that
war was horrible. Accordingly, the centuriate assembly was
to debate the justness and necessity of any proposed military
action, which its delegates then had to approve through ma-
jority vote. Nor were Romans reluctant to use other means of
gaining their ends. Roman offi cials, for instance, oft en nego-
tiated with states to avoid war; sometimes they brought these
states under Rome’s infl uence through treaties, sometimes
through large bribes to foreign rulers.
Still, Rome was mostly at war somewhere in the Mediterra-
nean, the Middle East, or along its northern European border.
Th e deliberations of the centuriate assembly were oft en short-
circuited by aristocratic infl uence over delegates who voted as
their patrons desired; patricians could enrich themselves only
through agriculture or war and were thus oft en inclined to go
to war. Occasionally, Roman leaders simply ignored the as-
sembly altogether. Diplomatic eff orts were oft en feeble or fi lled
with demands the Romans knew would be rejected.
In t he end, successf u l wars of conquest led Romans to see
themselves and their culture as superior to others. Th ey were
convinced that Rome’s destiny was to be ruler of the world.
Th ey had no hesitation in pursuing that destiny through war-
fare and military occupation of other lands, nor did the Ro-
mans question that they had a right to plunder and loot their
fallen enemies for the enrichment of Rome.EARLY ROME
Nothing is known about Roman warfare prior to the eighth
century b.c.e. Beginning in the eighth century, according
to Roman historians such as Livy (ca. 59 b.c.e.–17 c.e.), the
Roman Kingdom fought a number of wars with neighbor-
ing peoples, among them the Albans, the Fidenae, and the
Sabines. Th e latter were defeated in several battles aft er they
attacked in response to Romans supposedly seizing Sabine
women for wives. To what extent these accounts of early war
are factual is diffi cult to know because no actual records sur-
vive from this early period. For the most part, Rome’s early
wars were probably minor aff airs, in general being no more
than skirmishes with neighbors that consisted of border dis-
putes or raids to seize livestock, slaves, and plunder.war and conquest: Rome 11490895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1149 1149 10/10/07 2:31:15 PM