I have no idea what you are even talking about.

There isn’t any actual evidence of such an economic effect. Of either war. Indeed, 3 legions indicates a rather insignificant war by Roman standards. There were 28 legions in the Empire. Half the number that served under Augustus in the Roman Civil War. Literally. Augustus and Antony fought that war with 50 legions. Not 3. But 50. And yet, the economy boomed in result. So your thinking doesn’t align with facts or precedent.

Quite an interesting read. Thank you. Chalmers Johnson wrote a bit about Rome versus the United States, and what parallels could be drawn between the two as regards their respective Republics and Rome’s descent from a Republic to Imperialism. Chalmers Johnson thought that the U.S. will go one of two ways, maybe: either the U.S. go the way of Rome, and sacrifice its Republic to maintain empire; or, it may go the way of Britain after WWII, and sacrifice its empire (albeit begrudgingly and not smoothly) to save its Republic. Interesting thoughts. I happen to like Chalmers Johnson, and his unofficial trilogy of books criticizing the U.S. imperial juggernaut.

“A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.”

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/938/chalmers_johnson_on_the_fall_of_the_republic/

What Johan just said is true, too, IMO.

I’m not talking about some modern day concept of universal human rights or democracy. By Rome giving ‘people’ peace and technology, I do not mean ‘The People’ in this modern sense. I mean the people with some degree of power. Local elites who could decide to side with some usurper, or a neighbouring empire. Average folks would only matter in the sense that if they were truly starving, they might desperately rise and topple the local elites (but clearly not the empire). So local elites want a system that prevents that.

I’m not talking about democracy, but about having a certain sense that rulers cannot purely be the strongest robbers. An empire does not survive for long if peace is only upheld through fear.

Again, compare with the Chinese ‘Mandate of Heaven’. It is not that China was a democracy, or that it was egalitarian. Even the best emperors were shockingly brutal by modern standards, and lived in seemingly unlimited grandiosity while the masses were at the brink of starvation even in good times. But there was this basic idea or understanding among the elites, that an emperor could not afford to be seen as a menace to the rest of society. Because if he did not understand that, he would be toppled by someone who had that understanding, and that would be seen as just by the educated elites. Other elites would support such a rebellion not simply because they had some personal ties with the usurper, but because they believed that restoring this order was vital for the long term prosperity of themselves, their families, and the culture they saw themselves as part of.

I think that there was such an understanding in the Roman Republic, perhaps not from the very beginning, but clearly visible by the way the fall of the Republic was seen as a disaster by many in the educated class, including many who held real power.

But I think that after the fall of the Republic, any such understanding was gradually lost, and that became the doom of the Empire.

I mostly concur with Roger Crew.

I think I would dispute that the Roman Republic ever had much of a basic contract with respect to The People in general.

As I understand it, the situation in 500 BC was that they’d just booted their last Etruscan king and, faced with the question of which leading family would take over the monarchy, given no obvious choice and the prospect of a bloody and protracted war of succession, they decided to try Something New.

Greek ideas being in the air, there being at least some level of trade (they got their copycat pantheon from somewhere, after all), it’s a fair bet the more educated folks at least vaguely knew about them. But their reaction to direct democracy would almost certainly have been something along the lines of “F–K NO”.

The Republic was essentially the patricians’ power-sharing agreement. At some point they created assemblies for the military and the plebes as a safety valve so that they’d at least have a chance of hearing in advance about problems they might be needing to address, but there was never any point at which the Senate and the patrician class didn’t hold all of the cards that mattered.

And, this not being Athens, and the French Revolution being 2200 years off, there’d be no reason for anyone to have expected otherwise.

As for taxation, in the provinces, taxes were basically “bring enough back to make this worth our while” and, beyond that, whatever else the proconsul could get away with collecting to line his own pockets. The smarter ones, like Julius Caesar, eventually figured out they needed something more sustainable; Caesar made that work in Gaul and that became the model for later, but by that point the Republic was pretty much toast anyway.

For a couple of centuries, this worked out sort of fine, because the empire was still run by professionals who knew how to handle various crises.

But eventually, the rot got bad enough that it was not obvious to the subjects of Rome that the empire benefited them. The peace was disturbed because the elites were fighting each other, mainly to attain personal status. Often supported by lower classes (not particularly the lowest classes, but those below the very elites) who were promised that the system would be fixed, if they only supported the right man for emperor. But of course it was not fixed.

So the economy was damaged from all these wars, but at the same time the elites still wanted their shiny villas and opulent lifestyles. So the population was taxed more, even to the point of serfdom. Which fuelled more rebellion, which cost more to repress and damaged the economy further, getting into a vicious spiral where less and less of the taxes paid were of any benefit to the populace. Perhaps breaking free from Rome was still not truly rational, but it became rational enough that the amount of rebellion became impossible to curb.

I think that blaming the ‘constitution’ is a bit too specific. For instance, China had a concept known as the ‘mandate of heaven’ that justified the rule of an emperor, but that at the same time justified rebellion against an emperor who did not serve the interest of the people. So even though China suffered terrible rulers, civil wars and partial declines, the empire still managed to right itself eventually, for thousands of years.