Military Mortality in the Middle and Late Roman Republic

FAIN: FA-52642-06

Nathan Stewart Rosenstein
Ohio State University (Columbus, OH 43210-1349)

This project asks a simple question: how many Roman and Italian soldiers died in Rome’s wars during the third, second and first centuries BCE? The answer is vital to a central problem in Roman history—nothing less than our understanding of the fundamental demographic and social causes of the fall of the Republic. I will argue that military mortality in this era was far greater than anyone has previously recognized and that its effects profoundly shaped political and military events in the middle and late Republic.

Associated Products

Rome 290-146 BC: The Imperial Republic (Book)
Title: Rome 290-146 BC: The Imperial Republic
Author: Nathan Rosenstein
Abstract: This volume charts Rome’s stunning rise to mastery of the Mediterranean over the course of the third and second centuries B.C. It narrates the Republic’s great wars—against Pyrrhus, Carthage and Hannibal, and the kings of Macedon and Syria—as well as its less spectacular but no less essential subjugation of Gallic northern Italy and Spain. As importantly, chapters explain the political dynamics of the Republican aristocracy, the economic and demographic foundations of Roman power, the nature of the city’s hegemony over its Italian allies and how it integrated many thousands of citizens across a vast expanse of central Italy into a single body politic, and the operation of the Roman army on campaign and in combat, all of which combined to make possible the Republic’s extraordinary military success. The book concludes with an appraisal of how its newly won imperium affected Italy and Rome itself.
Year: 2012

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