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Scitianwarrior t1_j1seq34 wrote

Reply to comment by Shoopdawoop993 in Death of Vercingetorix by oga_ogbeni

Rome could only sustain her Empire by conquest and plunder and extermination of the peoples who offered resistance.

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Tiako t1_j1sxuwn wrote

This is often asserted but I think a simple glance at a timeline provides a real challenge to it. The Roman empire's expansion was more or less ended by about halfway through Augustus' reign (so roughly "year zero"), and while there were a few border expansions after that they tended to be fairly specific and "one off"--the conquest of Britain by Claudius and the conquest of Dacia about sixty years later by Trajan being the main examples. Exceptions aside, there is not a steady, constant expansion of Rome's borders by military conquest. And yet, these two hundred years are by most measures the period of the height of Rome's prosperity. Which becomes difficult to explain if Rome's prosperity depended on a constant stream of new conquests.

Ed: to clarify a bit I'm not saying the Roman empire functioned on hugs and teddy bears, it was certainly a creation of an extremely intense period of military conquest and was maintained by the threat of military force, but its actual functioning was not dependent on continuous border expansion.

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tevors t1_j1ui46m wrote

I don't remember were i read or saw it, but i remember being said that Roman Empire had a lot of politics destined to incorporate the conquered nations into the empire, not just by force, making the conquered nations actually fight for the empire just as much as anyone else, and was not by force or threat, as i recall they didn't go killing everyone that said no to them.

Movies tend to be very nonchalant about that facet of history, people tend to like war, deaths and plot, not actual facts.

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Tiako t1_j1v6uww wrote

While this can sometimes be taken too far, yes, Roman imperialism and the maintenance of the Roman empire was always a combination of force, co-option, and diplomacy. In particular, one of the greatest tools in its toolbox was a fairly open handed approach to bestowing citizenship to allies and later participants in the administrative system.

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Usernametaken112 t1_j1srzta wrote

That's kind of what happens when you live in 200bc.

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999_deathkult t1_j1sumka wrote

Roman Empire didn't exist at that point bud

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TheBoozehammer t1_j1svcqh wrote

Rome was an empire ("a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority") long before it had an emperor. Even just Italy had enough distinct peoples to qualify.

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