The West
The victory over Carthage left the Romans as the dominant power in the western Mediterranean. Soon her armies were involved in trying to hold their positions in Spain, and then expanding it. The tough Iberian tribesmen, together with the difficult terrain of the peninsula, made the task of conquering what are today modern Spain and Portugal an extremely difficult one, and it took the Romans two hundred years to complete. As a by-product of this struggle, the Romans secured a stretch of southern Gaul in 133 BC and planted Roman colonies on it to safeguard the overland route to Spain.
The East
Meanwhile Roman armies had become involved elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The conflicts between the Greek and Hellenistic states drew the new power inexorably into their tangled affairs. Macedonia, which dominated Greece, had sided with Carthage in the Second Punic War, and a Roman army had become involved in the Balkans before the war’s end.
After Zama, Roman involvement was expanded to the point where, after defeating the Macedonian army at the battle of Cynoscephalae (197), Rome restricted Macedonia’s hold to the south by “liberating” the Greek city states from her interference. Antiochus, king of the Seleucid kingdom, then invaded Greece to prevent further Roman involvement – which of course had exactly the opposite effect by bringing the Romans to the region again and driving him back into Asia (Battle of Magnesia, 190). A new king of Macedonia, Perseus, then decided to try his luck against the Romans, but, after some initial successes he too was defeated at the Battle of Pydna (168) and his kingdom divided into four weak republics, all allied to Rome. Again Roman forces withdrew. Finally, a widespread revolt against the Roman-sponsored regimes in Macedonia and Greece resulted in the destruction of the historic city of Corinth and the establishment of permanent Roman rule in the region (146). In that same year Rome also finally ended Carthage’s existence by destroying her and selling her people into slavery.
"Mare Nostrum"
In the later second century BC two rulers of kingdoms in Asia Minor, Pergamum and Bithynia, having no heirs, actually bequeathed their states to Rome, laying the foundations of Roman expansion further east. This was by no means uncontested. Above all, King Mithridates of Pontus conquered his neighbours and created a powerful kingdom that was implacably opposed to Rome. It was only after many campaigns, involving some of Rome’s finest generals, that he was at length overcome (63 BC). This hard-won victory finally put the whole of the eastern Mediterranean lands at Rome’s feet. Henceforth, they refered to the Mediterranean as "Mare Nostrum" - Our Sea!
Next:
The History of Ancient Rome, Part 6: The Late Republic
Article © TimeMaps 2007.
Last updated: 13th August 2007
