Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [25]
OF ALL THE PEOPLES IN THE WORLD”
Like Achaemenid Persia, imperial Rome incorporated conquered nations by making them “provinces” of the Roman Empire. During the High Empire, there were roughly forty such provinces. Also like the Achaemenids, the Romans marshaled the services of local elites to help rule their vast empire. They kept local governments largely intact, allowing them to continue ruling the day-to-day life of their subjects.
But unlike in Achaemenid Persia or perhaps any other ancient empire, there was no ceiling on the power that elites from the provinces could achieve in the Roman Empire. Whereas all the Achaemenid Persian kings and virtually all of its governors were Persians, not so in Rome. Rome's highest power holders— all the way up to emperor himself—came from every corner of the empire. As the historian Cornelius Tacitus wrote, “Emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome.” The emperor Trajan, who ruled from AD 98 to 117, was born in Spain. His top advisory included a Greek, a Moor, and Gaius Julius Alexander Bereni-cianus, a descendant of the Israelite king Herod the Great.
Trajan, whose mother was Spanish, was the first Roman emperor to come from a province, and his rise announced that the empire's highest offices were now “open to all educated men, regardless of race and nationality.” Trajan's successor, Hadrian, also hailed from Spain, and Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, descended from a family of Gallic origin. The father of the next emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was Andalusian, and Septimius Severus, who ruled from AD 193 to 211, was an African with a Syrian wife. People of all colors, backgrounds, and cultural traditions coexisted in the “Eternal City” of Rome.
The provinces produced Roman elites in every walk of life. The playwright and poet Seneca was Spanish. Tacitus was probably from Gaul. Fronto, the orator and tutor of Marcus Aurelius, was an African. During the height of the empire, “Roman” was a cultural identity that allowed citizens—even those, in Cicero's words, from “savage and barbarous nations”—to participate in the political process and share in the power and prestige of the empire.5
In adopting this tolerant outlook, Rome learned from the history of ancient Greece, where bigotry and ethnic division often caused resentment that led to war. The logic of Roman toleration was best explained by Emperor Claudius, who argued in a speech to the Roman Senate in AD 48 that the recently defeated tribes of Gaul should be allowed to stand for public office. Speaking to the Senate, Claudius reflected:
What else was the downfall of Sparta and Athens, than that they held the conquered in contempt as foreigners? But our founder Romulus’ wisdom made him on several occasions both fight against and naturalize a people on the same day! We have had strangers as kings; granting high offices on sons of freedmen is not a rarity, as is commonly and mistakenly thought, but rather a commonplace in the old Roman state…And yet, if you examine the whole of our wars, none was finished in a shorter time than that against the Gauls; from then on there has been continuous and loyal peace. Now that customs, culture, and marriage ties have blended them with us, let them also bring their gold and riches instead of holding them apart.
The Senate was convinced. Thereafter, as Edward Gibbon put it, “the grandsons of the Gauls, who had besieged Julius Caesar in Alesia, commanded legions, governed provinces, and were admitted into the senate of Rome. Their ambition, instead of disturbing the tranquility of the State, was intimately connected with its safety and greatness.”
The Roman Empire set a new standard for toleration. As the U.S. Supreme Court justice James Wilson, one of the drafters of the Constitution, observed in 1790, “It might be said, not that the Romans extended themselves over the whole globe, but that the inhabitants of the globe poured themselves upon the Romans.” For Wilson, Rome's strategie tolerance was plainly “the most secure method of enlarging an empire.”6
Of course, there