3. The Rise of Rome

The Roman state was born out of war, and was in an almost perpetual state of war with its neighbouring tribes. The struggle with tribes like the Volsci, the Aequi and the Sabines were a matter of national survival for Rome. The wars against these peoples gave the Roman citizens’ army a great deal of experience. It perfected its tactics. A new spirit was engendered in the Roman people, a spirit hardened by the trials and tribulations of war. The traditional Roman virtues: valour, discipline and submission to the state, thus reflects the real conditions in which Rome was forged.

At the same time, the class contradictions at the heart of Roman society found their reflection within the army. After all, the plebs constituted the overwhelming majority of the troops. On more than one occasion the plebs turned this weapon against the patricians by refusing to fight or sabotaging recruitment. Livy notes that the Roman commanders in the field were sometimes more afraid of their own men than they were of the enemy. This brings to mind the words of the Duke of Wellington when passing review of his troops on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo: “I don’t know what effect they will have on the enemy, but by God, they frighten me!”

Livy writes:

This disaffection amongst the plebs was fanned by their tribunes, who were continually giving out that the most serious war was the one going on between the senate and the plebs, who were purposely harassed by war and exposed to be butchered by the enemy and kept as it were in banishment far from their homes lest the quiet of city life might awaken memories of their liberties and lead them to discuss schemes for distributing the State lands amongst colonists and securing a free exercise of their franchise. They got hold of the veterans, counted up each man’s campaigns and wounds and scars, and asked what blood was still left in him which could be shed for the State. By raising these topics in public speeches and private conversations they produced amongst the plebeians a feeling of opposition to the projected war.^[1]

Livy thus attributes the mutinous mood in the army to the agitation of the tribunes. But it is more likely that the discontent was already present, and the tribunes were merely giving it a voice: a sufficiently serious crime from the standpoint of the Senate. Again, the crafty patricians took the necessary measures to pacify the plebs. The Roman generals were careful to allow the soldiers to plunder the town of Anxur, where 2,500 prisoners were taken:

Fabius would not allow his men to touch the other spoils of war until the arrival of his colleagues, for those armies too had taken their part in the capture of Anxur, since they had prevented the Volscians from coming to its relief. On their arrival the three armies sacked the town, which, owing to its long-continued prosperity, contained much wealth. This generosity on the part of the generals was the first step towards the reconciliation of the plebs and the senate.

This was followed by a boon which the senate, at a most opportune moment, conferred on the plebeians. Before the question was mooted either by the plebs or their tribunes, the senate decreed that the soldiery should receive pay from the public treasury. Previously, each man had served at his own expense.^[2]

Livy describes the scenes of rejoicing at the unexpected generosity of the Senate, which was preparing for war with the powerful Etruscan city state of Veii, and needed to avoid a conflict with the soldiers:

Nothing, it is recorded, was ever welcomed by the plebs with such delight; they crowded round the Senate-house, grasped the hands of the senators as they came out, acknowledged that they were rightly called ‘Fathers’, and declared that after what they had done no one would ever spare his person or his blood, as long as any strength remained, for so generous a country. They saw with pleasure that their private property at all events would rest undisturbed at such times as they were impressed and actively employed in the public service, and the fact of the boon being spontaneously offered, without any demand on the part of their tribunes, increased their happiness and gratitude immensely. The only people who did not share the general feeling of joy and goodwill were the tribunes of the plebs. They asserted that the arrangement would not turn out such a pleasant thing for the senate or such a benefit to the whole community as they supposed. The policy was more attractive at first sight than it would prove in actual practice. From what source, they asked, could the money be raised, except by imposing a tax on the people? They were generous at other people’s expense.^[3]

The concerns of the tribunes were well founded. The Senate did impose a tax, and the tribunes publicly announced that they would defend anybody who refused to pay it. Livy records that the Senate emptied the treasury of bronze coins to keep the army happy, an aim which they succeeded in achieving – for the time being.

From the first conflicts with more backward Latin tribes, Rome was preparing for greater things. The later wars were waged against more advanced opponents such as the Etruscan colony of Veii. It was in this war that Camillus first compelled the Romans to accept continuous military service. Previously, the peasant soldiers had been allowed to interrupt their military service for harvesting. Now Camillus ended this tradition, replacing it with pay. The campaign against Veii was successful and marks a turning point. For the first time, the soldiers of Rome had conquered a great Etruscan city-state.

These conquests prepared the way for the inexorable expansion of Rome. The defeat of Veii in 396 BC removed an important obstacle in the path of this expansion. Overnight, it almost doubled the territory of Rome. Land in the newly-conquered regions, linked by the excellent Etruscan road system, could be given to the Roman citizen-farmer/soldier as individual allotments. This system of obtaining land through conquest was a very important element in the history of the Roman Republic, but the biggest question of all was: who would get control of this conquered land? It proved to be the central question of the entire history of the Republic.

Gauls and Samnites

However, in 387 BC the seemingly inexorable advance of Roman arms received a sudden and shocking reverse. This was a period of huge migrations, which transformed the face of Europe forever, and only ended in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

By the eighth and seventh centuries BC, the migration of the Celtic-speaking peoples was in full swing. They spread as far as Spain in the West to Britain in the North, and the banks of the Danube in the East. They occupied what is now France and gave it its name: Gaul.

From there, in the fifth century they gradually spread across the Alps and drove out the Etruscans who were settled there. From this time on the North of Italy was called Gaul this side of the Alps (Cisalpine Gaul). The Gauls who occupied the valley of the Po had developed the art of war to the point where they possessed a formidable military machine. They had the first cavalry to use iron horse shoes and their infantry was skilled in the use of finely-tempered slashing broad-swords.

Few could resist the mass onslaught of these ferocious warriors, their bodies painted and tattooed, their horses decorated with the skulls of fallen enemies. To make their attack more terrifying, they accompanied the charge with a deafening cacophony of trumpets and war-cries that struck terror into the hearts of the most hardened Roman soldiers.

In the late fourth century BC, one group of Gauls called Senones drove southwards from the Po Valley into the Italian peninsula in the direction of Rome. In 387 BC, at the confluence of the Tiber and Allia rivers, only eleven miles from the city, they were met by an army of 10-15,000 Romans – the largest force Rome had ever put into the field. What followed was the greatest catastrophe in Roman history.

The Roman phalanx of heavily-armed spear-carrying troops was overwhelmed by the faster-moving Gaulish cavalry and infantry, which rushed on them with an unstoppable impulse, shouting their terrifying war-cries. The Roman ranks were shattered and the army routed. Most of its soldiers plunged into a nearby river in a desperate attempt to save themselves and were drowned. Rome was left defenceless in the face of the enemy.

The Gauls entered the city and camped in the streets of Rome. Meeting no opposition, they murdered, plundered and burned, although they lacked the siege weapons to take the Capitoline Hill, where the last of the Roman defenders had barricaded themselves. The Gauls finally got tired of the siege, and were eventually persuaded by bribery to leave the city, for which, in any case, they had no use. But the memory of this horrifying experience remained to haunt the Romans long after the events had receded into that misty area of consciousness where historic memory becomes blurred by myth and legend.

The Roman historians have left us the story that the terrified Romans emptied their temples of gold to pay the Gauls to leave the city. The gold was brought to the place appointed by the Gauls, but when the amount that the Romans had with them was not equal to the weights brought by the Gauls, the Gallic leader, Brennus, threw his sword onto the scales, uttering the chilling words: “Vae victis” – “Woe to the conquered.”

This story may or may not be founded on fact, but it left a strong imprint on the national psychology of the Romans forever, and in particular coloured their attitude to the people of Gaul, who later learned the true horror behind the words that Roman legend attributes to Brennus.

Despite this setback, Rome soon revived and continued its march to domination, extending its sphere of influence into the fertile plains of Campania. This brought them into conflict with one of the most warlike of all the Latin peoples and dragged Rome into the longest and most bitter wars in its history.

The Samnites were peasants and herdsmen, living in the barren limestone uplands of the Apennines in central Italy. They were barbarians at a stage of social and economic development not unlike the one that characterised Rome in its initial stages. As happened with the Gauls and many other barbarian tribes in antiquity, pressure of a growing population and the lack of agricultural land to feed it brought about a mass migration.

The result was a headlong collision with Rome, which was strengthening its position on the fertile plains of Campania, now threatened by a wholesale Samnite invasion. The Romans constructed the Appian Road for the purpose of transporting large numbers of troops towards the theatre of military operations.

However, the Samnites proved to be tough opponents and Rome suffered more than one costly defeat in the course of three separate wars. The first lasted from 343 to 341 BC. The second (or Great) Samnite War lasted from 326 to 304 BC. And the third war lasted from 298 to 290 BC. This represented a titanic effort that seriously drained the resources of Rome. The second war alone lasted more than twenty years and in the first half of the war Rome suffered serious defeats. Only the second half saw Rome’s recovery, reorganisation and ultimate victory.

Now for the first time Rome found itself involved with the powerful and wealthy Greek city-states of southern Italy, who had appealed to Rome for help against the Samnites. Victory in this costly war made Rome the master of the whole of Italy except for Sicily. The final defeat of the Samnites therefore decided the fate of Italy and changed world history. It also gave a powerful impulse to the class struggle in Roman society.

Class contradictions in Rome

The first period of the Roman Republic was characterised by a continuous expansion that established the hegemony of Rome in all Italy after the victory over the Samnites. After the long wars of defence against neighbouring Latin tribes and marauding Gauls, the Romans passed over to wars of offence and conquest.

In the process, the Roman army had been transformed. It was far bigger than before, growing from two to four legions of 4-6,000 men. Michael Grant describes this:

Each legion was a masterpiece of organisation, more mobile than the Greek phalanx which had served as the original model because a legion contained an articulated group of thirty smaller units (maniples), each of which could manoeuvre and fight separately on its own, in rough mountainous country as well as on the plains, either in serried ranks or open order, thus combining compactness with flexibility.^[4]

The Romans perfected a kind of warfare that was well suited to the peculiarities of a citizens’ army: the disciplined legions, fighting with the throwing spear and the short sword, created a formidable military machine that swept all before it. These new weapons were probably introduced during the Samnite wars. They completely changed the nature of warfare.

The withering hail of javelins, followed by a charge and the employment of the short stabbing sword wielded from behind a solid barrier of shields, has been likened to the combination of the musket and bayonet in eighteenth century warfare. No other army could withstand it. The lighter and less costly equipment of the new legions (referred to as ‘manipular legions’) also allowed for the effective mobilisation of an even larger layer of the population, beyond the wealthier plebeians who had formerly made up the old phalanx system.

The main factor that ensured the success of Roman arms was therefore the free peasantry that formed the backbone of the Republic and its army. Under the early gens system, land was held in common by the gens itself. But with the break-up of the gentes, and the emergence of private property of the land, a class of free small peasants was created. Alongside the class of small peasants (assidui) there was the poorest layer of society, the proletarii – the ‘producers of children’. But it was the class of small proprietors that supplied the troops for military service.

The Roman peasant was a free citizen who had something to fight for. He had the right to bear arms and the duty of military service. The very word for ‘people’ comes from the Latin populus, which originally meant ‘a body of warriors’, and is related to the word populari, to devastate, and popa, a butcher.

The ruling class understood the need to ensure that Rome’s plebeian soldiers would continue to fight. Appius Claudius, known as Caecus, ‘the Blind’ – which he was in his old age – was a patrician who became censor in 312 BC. His main aim appeared to have been to improve the position of discharged soldiers, who by this time were increasingly landless peasants flocking to Rome.

No reformer had ever before taken up the cause of the Roman proletariat. His intentions may have been motivated by genuine concern, but more likely his main aim was to avoid disturbances in the capital. These measures, however timid, irritated the Senate, which took steps to undermine and sabotage them.

The third and last Samnite war began in 298 BC and lasted for eight years. This ferocious conflict ended in victory but also in financial exhaustion. The plebeians of middle rank who spent years fighting in the army had returned home to find themselves ruined. The influx of cheap grain from the conquered lands undermined them. So, despite all the laws passed to protect them, a large number of small peasants fell into debt. A new period of instability ensued.

Within the community from the very beginning there were the elements of class contradiction. But the rapid increase of inequality and the encroachments on the rights of the plebs by the wealthy patricians placed a growing strain on the social cohesion of the Republic.

The wealthy classes encroached on the common lands and oppressed the plebs in different ways, causing rising tension between the classes. The constant need to defend the Roman state against external enemies provided the patricians with an invaluable instrument to keep the plebs in check, as Hegel points out:

In the first predatory period of the state, every citizen was necessarily a soldier, for the state was based on war; this burden was oppressive, since every citizen was obliged to maintain himself in the field. This circumstance, therefore, gave rise to the contracting of enormous debts – the patricians becoming the creditors of the plebeians. With the introduction of laws, this arbitrary relation necessarily ceased; but only gradually, for the patricians were far from being immediately inclined to release the plebs from the cliental relation; they rather strove to render it permanent. The laws of the Twelve Tables still contained much that was undefined; very much was still left to the arbitrary will of the judge – the patricians alone being judges; the antithesis, therefore, between patricians and plebeians, continues till a much later period. Only by degrees do the plebeians scale all the heights of official station, and attain those privileges which formerly belonged to the patricians alone.^[5]

Here the inner workings of every state in history are laid bare, exposing the organised violence and class oppression that lies beneath the thin veneer of ‘impartiality’ and ‘justice’ that is expressed in the Majesty of the Law, and serves as a fig-leaf to obscure the crude reality of the state as an organ for the oppression of one class over another:

In order to obtain a nearer view of this Spirit, we must not merely keep in view the actions of Roman heroes, confronting the enemy as soldiers or generals, or appearing as ambassadors – since in these cases they belong, with their whole mind and thought, only to the state and its mandate, without hesitation or yielding – but pay particular attention also to the conduct of the plebs in times of revolt against the patricians. How often in insurrection and in anarchical disorder was the plebs brought back into a state of tranquillity by a mere form, and cheated of the fulfilment of its demands, righteous or unrighteous! How often was a Dictator, e.g., chosen by the senate, when there was neither war nor danger from an enemy, in order to get the plebeians into the army, and to bind them to strict obedience by the military oath!^[6]

The campaign for land reform was repeatedly interrupted by the threat of foreign invasion, the patricians making good use of the external threat to defuse the class struggle. How well the old idealist Hegel understood the workings of class society! And how brilliantly he exposed the tactics with which the rulers of the state make use of the ‘external enemy’ to fool the masses and whip up patriotic sentiment in order to divert their attention from the self-evident fact that their worst enemies are at home.

The Punic Wars

The history of class society is studded with wars and revolutions. Pacifists and moralists may lament this fact. But, sad to say, even the most superficial examination of history shows that it has never been guided by moral considerations. It is as inappropriate to approach history from a moralistic standpoint as it would be to do this in relation to the workings of natural selection in the evolution of species. We may regret that carnivorous animals are not vegetarians, but our feelings on the subject will not affect the ways of nature in the slightest degree.

It is self-evident that wars and revolutions have an important – even a decisive effect – on human history. They are, to use the Hegelian expression, the nodal points where quantity becomes transformed into quality, the boundaries that separate one historical epoch from another. Thus we refer to the period before and after 1789, 1815, 1914, 1917, 1945 and so on.

At these critical points, all the contradictions that have been slowly accumulating emerge with explosive force, impelling society forward – or back. In the case of the Roman Republic, we see a dialectical process in which war leads to a change in the mode of production, and the change in the mode of production leads to a change in the nature of war and the army itself.

The formative period of the Roman Republic was an age of almost permanent warfare: wars against the Etruscans, the Latins, the Gauls, the Samnites, the Greek colonies in Italy, Epirus (modern day Albania and Greece) and finally, against Carthage. This last episode was a decisive turning point in Roman history. Carthage was the main trading power in the Western Mediterranean. It possessed a great part of the coast of northern Africa and southern Spain and had a footing in Sicily and Sardinia.

It was the Carthaginians’ involvement in Sicily that first brought them into conflict with Rome. An appeal for aid against the city-state of Syracuse from a group of mercenaries based at Messana (modern-day Messina) was eagerly taken up by the Senate as a pretext for Roman expansion onto that wealthy island.

The Romans became involved in the affairs of Sicily, where the Carthaginians were already well installed. A complex web of alliances and trade interests caused a chain reaction that led inexorably to war between the two powers for control of the island.

Roman historians like Polybius liked to portray this as a defensive war, but there is little evidence to support the idea that at this stage Carthage was a serious threat to Rome. The fact is that Rome was now an aggressive power that was fighting to achieve total domination of the whole of Italy – including Sicily.

Thus, a conflict with Carthage was inevitable. But this conflict was to turn Rome into a power, not just in Italy, but throughout the Mediterranean. And if we recall that the word mediterraneus in the Latin language signifies “the centre of the world”, then what is meant is a world power, in the understanding of those times.

There were three wars with Carthage, known as the Punic Wars (264-241, 218-201 and 149-146 BC). In comparison to these conflicts, all previous wars seemed like child’s play. This was a deadly, bloody slogging match, which lasted decades. The human and economic cost of the war was immense. In the First Punic War alone, in a five-year period, the census of Roman citizens fell by about 40,000, one-sixth of the total population. And these figures do not include Rome’s allies, who suffered big losses at sea.

The First Punic War ended in 241 BC with the Treaty of Lutatius, under which Carthage evacuated Sicily and agreed to pay an indemnity of 3,200 talents of silver. But though the Romans won the first war with its most powerful enemy, the conflict was not resolved. Carthage soon rebuilt its power, drawing on the rich silver mines of Spain. A second sixteen-year war followed – a war that is forever associated with the name of Hannibal.

The Romans had watched with alarm as the Carthaginians consolidated their power in Spain. This was dangerous and had to be stopped at all costs. The Romans needed a pretext to intervene in Spain and they got one when Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal besieged the city of Saguntum (the modern Sagunto), which was under Roman protection. The Romans claimed that there was an agreement that the Carthaginian army should not go south of the Ebro River, and that Hannibal had broken this agreement.

Whether the claim made by Rome was true or false is a question of third-rate importance. One must never confuse the causes of war with the diplomatic pretexts or accidental factors that provoke the commencement of hostilities.

The First World War was not caused by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, as the old history books used to claim. It was the inevitable result of the conflict of interests between the rising imperialist power of Germany and the older, established imperialist powers of Britain and France, which had carved up the world between them. Here we have an analogous case from the world of antiquity.

Polybius recognised the fact that:

Some of those authors who have dealt with Hannibal and his times, wishing to indicate the causes that led to the above war between Rome and Carthage, allege as its first cause the siege of Saguntum by the Carthaginians and as its second their crossing, contrary to treaty, the river whose native name is the Iber [Ebro]. I should agree in stating that these were the beginnings of the war, but I can by no means allow that they were its causes…^[7]

This is very true. The Romans were determined to prevent Carthage from restoring her economic and military power, and therefore used this incident as a pretext to send an army into Spain.

They made the Carthaginians an offer they could not accept (another typical diplomatic trick to start a war). They demanded that either the Carthaginians hand over Hannibal for punishment or else accept war with Rome. Hannibal had in fact been trying to avoid a war with Rome, because he was not yet ready. But once he understood that war was inevitable, he boldly seized the initiative. He went onto the offensive.

The Romans never imagined he would take the step of invading Italy. Even less did they imagine he would lead his army out of Spain, march through Gaul and cross what seemed to be an impassable barrier – the Alps – to enter Italy from the North. But he did all these things, and took the Romans by surprise. And surprise can be a decisive element in war.

Rome suddenly found itself invaded by a foreign army fighting on Italian soil. This extraordinary general, with very little support from outside, harried the Roman armies and came within a hair’s breadth of destroying Roman power altogether.

Hannibal calculated that his relatively small army would be supported by an uprising of the Latin peoples who were under Roman domination (though technically allies). He did get support from the Gauls of Northern Italy. But in general the Latin peoples remained loyal to Rome.

Thus, although his spectacular military victories at Trebbia, Trasimene and Cannae brought Rome to its knees, he lacked sufficient strength to deliver the knockout blow. The Romans could always rebuild their armies out of the remaining peasant population, while Hannibal, deprived of outside help, could not afford to lose men. Therefore, in the long run, even Hannibal’s great talent as a general could not bring victory.

Learning from their earlier mistakes, the Romans simply avoided direct battles and waited for the Carthaginian forces to exhaust themselves. Then a Roman army led by Scipio invaded Spain and conquered it. After this, Rome turned its attentions to Carthage itself.

They organised an intrigue with Carthage’s African vassals and got them to rise up against their masters. This revolt compelled Hannibal to return to Africa to defend Carthage. Once again, the might of Rome prevailed. In the end Carthage was decisively beaten at the battle of Zama.

After this, the Romans no longer felt any need to pretend that their wars were of a defensive character. They had developed a taste for conquest. But this was merely a reflection of a fundamental change in property relations and the mode of production.

The final Punic War was deliberately provoked by Rome. The war party was led by Cato, who always ended his speeches in the Senate with the celebrated slogan: “delenda est Carthago” – Carthage must be destroyed. After a three-year siege in which the inhabitants suffered terrible famine, the city was taken by storm. In a display of extreme vindictiveness, the Romans broke their promises to the Carthaginians and sold the population into slavery. They then demolished the city stone by stone and cursed the site with the intention that it would never be inhabited again.

The same year (146 BC) they destroyed Corinth, another trading rival. By order of the Senate, the city was razed to the ground, its entire population was sold into slavery and its priceless art treasures were shipped off to Rome. The destruction of Corinth was partly to prevent social revolution – the Romans always preferred to deal with oligarchic governments, whereas Corinth was a turbulent democracy.

The defeat of Carthage changed the destiny of Rome. Until it was compelled to take to the sea in the war with Carthage, Rome had never been a sea power. Carthage had always blocked her way. Now, with this mighty obstacle removed, Rome was free to launch herself on a career that was to end in complete domination of the Mediterranean.

The Roman victory added new territories to its growing empire, including the prosperous Greek and Phoenician colonies on the coast of Spain. This gave a further impetus to the class of Roman merchants, involved in trade in the Mediterranean. Spain opened up her valuable iron and silver mines, which were also worked by slave labour in terrible conditions.

Rome simply took over this business from Carthage. It also led to a further development of trade and exchange and therefore the rise of a money economy. Thus, war played an important role in bringing about a complete transformation of the mode of production – and therefore of social relations – in Rome.

Effects on the army

The armies of Rome were victorious on all fronts. But in the midst of these foreign triumphs, intense contradictions were developing at home, where a new and even more ferocious war was about to break out – a war between the classes. Stripped of all non-essentials this was a war for the division of the loot.

This was already pointed out by Hegel, who wrote: “The Roman state, drawing its resources from rapine, came to be rent in sunder by quarrels about dividing the spoils.”^[8] This is a very precise, and wholly materialist, account of the basis of the class struggle in Rome at this time.

The Punic Wars also marked a change in the nature of the Roman army. Until now the army was based on the property-owning citizens and was drawn mainly from the mass of free peasants. But in the course of the Punic Wars, when the fate of the Republic was in the balance, it was no longer possible to maintain the old situation and the property qualifications were greatly reduced.

For the first time, a large number of proletarians between the ages of eighteen and forty-six were recruited into the army and served for an average of seven years and were paid for out of the public funds. This was a further step in the transformation of the Roman army from a citizens’ militia to a professional army. It created a new type of general in the person of Scipio Africanus, the first Roman general who was named after his military conquests.

With every military conquest, Rome acquired a huge amount of land confiscated in the conquered territories. This land became the property of the Roman state – the ager publicus (public land). But since the state itself was in the hands of the patricians, in practice they treated the ager publicus as their own property and leased it out to people of their own class. The mass of propertyless plebeians had no access to the conquered lands, and this was a constant source of intense discontent.

The discontent of the plebeian soldiers was further intensified by the fact that the length of compulsory military service was continually being increased as the wars became longer. Initially, the citizens’ militia was fighting defensive wars on its own territory. But the Samnite Wars, which were fought a long way from home, had extended over half a century, involving almost all the states of Italy.

The long periods of military service often meant that the Roman soldier returned home to find his farm in ruins, and himself and his family deep in debt. The long years of war led gradually, on the one hand, to the rise of slavery and the big estates, and on the other hand, to the rapid increase of a landless population of proletarians.

The tendency of the Senate to treat the lands of the conquered territories as their personal property has already been noted. But after the long and bloody slugging match with Hannibal, there was a feeling that the Senate had saved Rome, and the military victory over Rome’s most dangerous enemy greatly boosted the Senate’s authority and undermined any potential opposition – at least for a time. Victory meant Roman control over vast new territories with immense riches. As the third century passed into the second, the Senate strengthened its grip on the new territories by the appointment of governors, who had a virtual licence to coin money at the expense of the provinces.

It is important to note that the class struggle in ancient Rome was not identical with the struggle between plebeians and patricians. That was a difference of rank – roughly the same as the difference between ‘commoners’ and ‘nobles’. But there were also wealthy plebeians – who invariably took the side of the patricians against the plebeian masses.

Thus, the old struggles of plebeians against patricians became transformed into the struggle of rich against poor, a struggle which would acquire an explosive and revolutionary character in the period following the end of the Punic Wars.

Endnotes

[1] Livy, History of Rome, Vol. 1, Book 4, p. 285.

[2] Ibid., p. 286, emphasis added.

[3] Ibid., p. 287.

[4] Grant, The History of Rome, p. 54.

[5] Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, p. 286.

[6] Ibid., p. 288.

[7] Polybius, The Histories, Book 3, p. 15.

[8] Hegel, The Philosophy of History, p. 309, emphasis added.