Ancient Rome · CHAPTER 3 ·
Roman conquest of Greece
Chapter 3 of The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476: “The Greek East Falls”
Rome entered the Greek east as an ally and referee, then broke Macedon at Cynoscephalae and at Pydna in 168 BC and drove the Seleucid king Antiochus III out of Greece. In 146 BC it destroyed both Carthage and Corinth, and in 133 BC the last king of Pergamon bequeathed his realm to Rome.
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The map above is the world of The Roman Republic, 133 BC — The Pergamon bequest.
SHORT EXPLANATION
Greek states seeking protection from Macedon invited Rome into the eastern Mediterranean. Rome defeated Macedon at Cynoscephalae and Pydna and drove the Seleucid king Antiochus III out of Greece. Macedon and the Seleucid kingdom of Syria, heirs to Alexander’s empire, had been accustomed to negotiated settlements among rivals. Rome’s victories left it able to settle disputes on its own terms, and each settlement gave it a role in the next quarrel. Direct rule followed the earlier arrangements.
The costs and rewards of that power reached far beyond the battlefield. In 146 BC Rome destroyed Carthage and Corinth, killing or enslaving their inhabitants to warn other cities. In 133 BC Pergamon’s king left his wealthy kingdom to Rome. Tribute, enslaved labor, Greek art and learning flowed into Italy. The gains enriched Roman culture and rewarded further war, while wealth gathered in fewer hands and social divisions widened. Within a century those divisions would help tear the Republic apart.
The full story
The Greek states that sought Roman help against Macedon had a practical reason for doing so: a powerful ally could protect them from a stronger neighbor. Rome, for its part, could present itself as their protector. But protection created relationships that lasted after an army went home. Clients brought further disputes to Rome, and each intervention strengthened its authority to decide what should happen next.
Rome’s armies could enforce those decisions. At Cynoscephalae and Pydna, they faced Macedonian phalanxes, dense formations whose long pikes were formidable while the line held. Roman legions fought in smaller units with their own leaders. Where uneven ground or casualties opened the Macedonian line, Roman soldiers could enter the gaps and attack a formation that depended on staying together. After Pydna in 168 BC, Rome divided Macedon and took a thousand leading Greeks to Italy as hostages. One was the historian Polybius.
The map changed more slowly than the balance of power. Even without annexing a territory, Rome could influence its rulers through treaties and hostages, backed by the possibility of another intervention. After Pydna removed a major counterweight, an envoy’s demand carried the force of the armies behind it. Provinces came later, when indirect arrangements failed or the prospect of direct revenue became attractive.
In 146 BC Rome showed what defiance could cost. After a long siege it destroyed Carthage; it also burned Corinth. Their inhabitants were killed or enslaved, and other cities were meant to draw a lesson from their fate. The atlas marks these destructions as memorials rather than triumphs. A different route to control opened in 133 BC, when the last king of Pergamon left his kingdom to Rome. Rome made it the province of Asia.
The eastern empire brought tribute, tax contracts, plundered art and enslaved people west. Greek learning enriched the culture of Rome’s elite. Yet the profits were concentrated, and slave-worked estates undercut small farmers in Italy. Rome had gained power over other societies; the means by which it exercised that power were also changing its own.
FULL EXPLANATION
Did Rome Mean to Build an Empire?
The question of Roman intention begins with a striking fact: Rome often fought an eastern war without announcing that it intended to annex its enemy’s land. Greek cities asked for help against Macedon and against one another, and Roman armies sometimes imposed terms and withdrew. Historians who call this “defensive imperialism” see expansion emerging from fear, obligations to allies and successive crises. But a policy need not begin with a blueprint to have powerful supporters at home. Victory gave consuls prestige, soldiers expected plunder, and indemnities paid into the treasury. Those rewards gave Romans reasons to welcome wars that they could also describe as necessary. The destruction of Corinth and disarmed Carthage in 146 BC is especially difficult to explain by an immediate threat. Rome may have lacked a plan for a Mediterranean empire while possessing institutions that repeatedly turned disputes into victories, obligations and greater power.
Violence as a Message
A change of color on the map cannot show what happened to the people of Carthage and Corinth. Their communities were destroyed; inhabitants were killed or enslaved. Ancient accounts disagree about totals and details. Nor is there ancient evidence for the familiar story that Rome sowed Carthage’s fields with salt. That detail is a modern invention, and the destruction needs no embellishment. The attacks also spoke to people elsewhere. If other cities expected the same punishment, Rome might obtain obedience without placing a permanent garrison in each one. People and treasure went to Italy, while fear helped sustain Roman authority. Yet fear could leave resentment behind. Mithridates later drew on anger against Roman tax collectors: a policy that secured compliance could also help create resistance.
Key places on the map
Why it happened
A power vacuum with an invitation. The eastern balance had depended on three great Hellenistic monarchies checking one another. By 200 BC Egypt had a child king, and Macedon and Syria were dividing its possessions. Smaller powers had reason to look for help: Pergamon, Rhodes and Athens appealed to Rome. They wanted an ally against their neighbors, and their invitations gave Rome a place in eastern disputes.
The phalanx meets the maniple. The phalanx depended on a wall of pikes held together across its front. On level ground it was formidable; where terrain or casualties opened a gap, separately led Roman units could get through. This difference mattered at Cynoscephalae and Pydna. Roman sources claim 20,000 phalangites died at Pydna against about 100 Romans. Those figures need caution, though the formations help explain the victories.
Fear, honor, and the Hannibal reflex. Hannibal’s invasion gave Romans a reason to fear what a powerful enemy might do if left unchecked. Antiochus sheltered the exiled Carthaginian, making that danger easier to imagine. Historians disagree about whether such fears directed Roman policy or supplied glory-seeking aristocrats with a convenient justification. Both interpretations must account for the same eastern wars.
Plunder as fiscal policy. Victory brought money as well as security and prestige. In 167 Aemilius Paullus returned with enough wealth for Rome to abolish direct taxation of its citizens for the long term. Commanders could gain glory and the treasury could gain revenue; these rewards gave influential Romans an interest in further conquest.
THE TURNING POINT
Pydna, 22 June 168 BC. The battle of Pydna on 22 June 168 BC lasted about an hour and ended the 150-year-old kingdom in Alexander’s homeland. Its consequences reached beyond Macedon. A few weeks later, near Alexandria at Eleusis, Antiochus IV was invading Egypt when a Roman envoy drew a circle around the Seleucid king in the sand and demanded an answer before he stepped out. Antiochus withdrew his army. The envoy had won compliance without a battle or a treaty because Roman military power stood behind his demand.
What it changed
A slave society hardens. The scale of enslavement was immense: 150,000 Epirotes were enslaved in a single day in 167, and whole cities were sold after 146. Enslaved labor fed the growth of Italian estates called latifundia, while dispossessed free people moved to Rome. Enslaved people resisted in two Sicilian servile wars and later in Spartacus’s revolt. These changes helped form the Republic’s approaching crisis.
Asia: the province that corrupts. The kingdom left to Rome became the province of Asia. Private tax syndicates, the publicani, bid for the right to collect its revenues. Their extraction enriched the equestrian class while impoverishing people in Anatolia, and provincial misgovernment became an issue in Roman politics. Resentment of tax farmers later helped Mithridates, whose campaign brought the killing of 80,000 Italians in a single day.
Greek culture conquers its conqueror. The flow from Greece to Rome included ideas as well as wealth. Greek became a second language for the Roman elite, and Greek philosophy, historiography, medicine, art and urbanism entered Roman high culture. They traveled onward with Roman roads and law. The eastern empire that endured beyond this atlas was Greek-speaking and rich in cities; the ties formed here helped shape that later world.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Did Rome intend to build a Mediterranean empire, or did its empire grow from successive interventions? What evidence would help distinguish the two?
Those who favor “defensive imperialism” point to roughly fifty years in which Rome annexed little. It fought, imposed settlements and withdrew, governing through clients; Macedon became a province only after four wars. Harris and other advocates of the aggression school instead stress the rewards available to annual consuls, soldiers and the treasury, and the gains that followed Rome’s repeated claims of danger. The events of 146 BC test the explanations. Neither Corinth nor disarmed Carthage posed an immediate threat, yet Rome destroyed both as examples. That does not establish that Rome had planned its whole empire in advance. It does show why intention and institutions must be considered separately: even without a blueprint, careers, the army and the treasury rewarded expansion. The distinction can also be applied to other powers’ claims of “reluctant” growth.
An interesting fact
The destruction of Carthage in 146 BC gave rise to a persistent story: Rome supposedly sowed the soil with salt. No ancient source records it. The story entered textbooks in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a historian traced it in 1986. Rome did curse the site, yet about a century later it founded a colony there. The new Carthage became one of the empire’s greatest cities; its loss in AD 439 would damage the western empire, as Chapter 11 shows. The destruction was real; the salt was a later invention.
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