Few would dare undertake as broad a subject as ‘power’ in the millennium of Roman history from 400 b.c.e. to 600 c.e., but few are as well positioned as W. V. Harris to do so. His decades-long career has carried him across all the centuries of Roman history and into most of its subfields.
This book is divided into three sets of two chapters, each covering about three hundred years. The introductory chapter lays out its chronological parameters, from the middle Republic to the Battle of Yarmuk in 636. It then explores in more detail the meaning of power, surveying theorists such as Montesquieu, Weber, Arendt, Andreski, Foucault and Mann. Although H. professes no loyalty to any one, the book relies most heavily on Michael Mann's categories of social power (ideological, economic, military and political).
Ch. 2, ‘The Romans Against Outsiders, 400 BC to AD 16’, returns to territory familiar from H.’s first monograph, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome (327–70 BC) (1979). H. abides by his characterisation of republican Rome as a brutally efficient war machine that converted calculated aggression into a massive world empire in short order. Rome's belligerence stemmed from greed and hunger for military glory, but its empire quickened because of the invention of effective organisational techniques, including colonisation, freehandedness with citizenship, success in enlisting support from former foes and the widespread deployment of slaves. The pattern continued into the late Republic, although some factors initiated fissiparous processes: the growing importance of Hellenism; increasing financial corruption.
Ch. 3, ‘The Romans Against Each Other, from Republic to Monarchy’, focuses on the construction of state power, which H. insists (contra Millar) was based on ‘citizen power’ without being democratic. Collective political action was channelled through assemblies that were always controlled, structurally and informally, by aristocrats. After asserting that the elimination of property qualifications for military service was the most important factor in bringing the Republic to an end, H. argues that Augustus managed to consolidate power by channelling popular discontent to his advantage through the promise of stability and benefactions, and the projection of charisma.
Ch. 4, ‘The Romans Against Outsiders, AD 16 to 337’, argues that the high Empire witnessed a withdrawal of interest on the part of emperors, elites and commoners in the project of military expansion. Whereas republican citizens of all social classes had shown an eagerness for conquest by undertaking heavy military service, in the imperial period senators came increasingly to refrain from service, while the military rank and file was drawn from provincials and, above all, non-Roman auxiliaries. H. is sceptical of those who contend the fourth-century army was larger than ever, and he also argues that military effectiveness dropped off.
Ch. 5, ‘The Romans Against Each Other: from Empire to Nation?’ plots the web of social structures on which internal power was based in the high Empire. An emperor, assisted by a larger bureaucracy than has often been assumed (provided we count imperial slaves) was able to command the loyalty of the military and civilians (primarily through manipulation of senatorial, equestrian and local elites), even despite the absence of a systematic succession process and severe limitations of money, information and time. Ultimately, H. argues, Rome had become something like a nation, but this unity became threatened by the political instability of the third century, by the decoupling of citizenship from military service, by the growing stagnation of the economy and by the rise of religious conflict.
Ch. 6, ‘The Romans Against Outsiders, AD 337–641’, asks how and why Roman power collapsed in the fourth through seventh centuries. H. is happy to answer the first question conventionally: a hostile takeover by barbarians, first in the West between 370 and 430, and then the East between the 560s and 640s. More complex is the relationship between these events and changes in the ‘organizational techniques’ that had permitted the rise and maintenance of Roman power. H. has no doubt that the problems were internal to the Empire and attributes them to four discrete spheres: ideological (Christian religion, particularly its penchant for irrationality and doctrinal dispute), military (an army reduced in size and manpower and overpopulated with barbarians), economic (a reduced tax base, occasioned by territorial losses but also by inefficiencies), and political (civil war, and Justinian's misguided decision to reconquer the West).
Ch. 7, ‘The Romans Against Each Other in Two Long Crises’, emphasises internal weakness while arguing against much of the prevailing scholarship on a variety of fronts: the late Empire saw less, not more centralisation; the later bureaucracy was probably smaller than generally agreed; the government was less effective at extracting taxes; emperors had less power; bishops were less a force for social cohesion than a drain on the system. Instead, society was plagued by internal social disintegration and a decline in personal freedom, social mobility, gender parity, rationality and loyalty to the state.
Obviously the argument ranges widely, but if any single thread can be traced, it is that Roman power was fundamentally a question of military might; thus Roman decline reflected a loss of military mojo.
The book is impressive in its scope and breadth of learning. We owe H. a debt of gratitude for inviting us to think about the macro-question of ‘Roman Power’.
Inevitably, the nature and style of the argument reflect much about H. himself. The snappy writing makes the book easily readable but is sometimes marred by a penchant for sarcasm, which too often stands in for developed argument. Important work is mocked rather than debated: Eckstein's ‘silly historical falsehood’ (42); Isaac's ‘insufficient familiarity’ with republican history (125); the impact of a ‘prolonged period of bourgeois western comfort’ on Averil Cameron's scholarship (220–2).
Also apparent is H.’s greater familiarity with the scholarship on earlier rather than later periods, a deficit in a book with so strong a teleological trajectory. Material mistakes arise because H. shows no awareness of frontier archaeology on the Rhine and middle Danube (231); of Giardina and Grelle on late Roman tax collection (231–3); of Frakes on the invention of the defensor civitatis (286); of Carrié and Grey on the colonate (287). Especially regrettable is the absence of engagement with the important work on fiscality by Carrié, Mazzarino, Delmaire, Bransbourg and Banaji.
Perhaps most notable is the absence of work on non-Roman peoples — with the exception of the Goths and early Muslims. The increasing power of Germanic confederations (Alamanni, Franks, Vandals, Lombards), of Sasanian Persia, of steppe nomads (Huns and Avars) and above all of the pre-Islamic Arabs goes a long way toward explaining the collapse of Roman territorial hegemony. This, enforced through military superiority, is by and large the subject of H.’s book, for what H. attempts to demonstrate is that the ruthlessly belligerent but astonishingly efficient Rome of the middle Republic is a thing of the past by Late Antiquity. Given that in many ways this goes without saying, one might have wished for an effort to look outside the Empire in search of the causes of the rise of a new world power order.
