Fall Of The Roman Republic

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Kevin Kane Dr. Pilant The Ancient World 12/10/2010 When the Roman Republic first made war with its rival, Carthage, in 264 BCE, it was a city-state with no imperial aspirations. It wielded power and influence on the Italian peninsula but was not quite ready for the foreign responsibilities and financial burden inherent in the management of an empire. By the end of the Punic Wars, a series of military conflicts with Carthage extending over one hundred years, Rome was catapulted towards its imperial destiny. These wars altered the course of Roman history by causing expansion to occur too rapidly for both the government and the economy to properly adjust to. The ramifications of Rome’s expansions and rise to power were the inevitable fall of the republic and rise of the empire. Although other factors contributed to the fall of the republic, such as the reign of Julius Caesar, most of the reasons for this monumental switch are rooted in the Punic Wars. As the boundaries of Rome’s jurisdiction spread over the Mediterranean in the second and third century BCE, the senate proved to be inept at adjusting its method of governing. Richard Edwin Smith explains in The Failure of the Roman Republic that Rome, by means of the Punic Wars, became a powerful state in the Mediterranean world without fully realizing it. While Rome may have grown during this period, he says, “there was no change in her mental outlook to correspond to her changed position” (Smith, 50). The leaders of the Roman Republic failed to realize that by gaining so much land as quickly as they did, the government would have to change to suit the added responsibilities of maintaining colonies. The inability of the Romans to adapt their government to the changing conditions in the aftermath of the Punic Wars was damaging to the longevity of Republic. Furthermore, the defensive form of imperialism
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