The Three Phases of the Roman Empire and Their Corresponding Military Strategies

The Roman Empire began around 27 BC, replacing the Roman Republic. During the five centuries of its existence, the empire would expand significantly. While expansion is success, it also creates a need for military strength — and that need is continuously changing.

Historian Edward Luttwak describes the geopolitical history of the empire in three phases, in order: the growth, maintenance, and defense of the empire:

The first expansive, hegemonic, and reliant chiefly on diplomatic coercion; the second meant to provide security even in the most exposed border areas, in part by means of fortified lines whose remains are still visible from Britain to Mesopotamia; and the third a defense-in-depth of layered frontier, regional, and central reserve forces that kept the western empire going till the fifth century and the eastern empire for much longer.

For roughly the first century of its existence, the military policy of the empire was expansion. The empire was birthed in the midst of the collapsing republic. One of several reasons for the end of the republic was that it was a form of government suited to ruling the city of Rome and the surrounding territories in central Italy, but it was not suited to ruling a world empire. Although the empire would ultimately rule more territory than the republic, the republic, during its last years, had control of millions of square miles, including the areas of present-day Spain, France, Greece, Turkey, and North Africa.

Maintaining effective military control of occupied regions, and mounting campaigns to gain control of still more land, was a task which required quick and consistent decision-making and a clear chain of command. The Senate, which was the main governing body during the republic, was a deliberative institution which engaged in debate. Military commanders in the field, sending requests for instructions to Rome, couldn’t wait for the Senate’s thorough discussions.

“The first system of imperial security was essentially that of the late republic, though it continued” until around 68 AD, when Nero died. This first system operated “under that peculiar form of autocracy we know as the principate.” The principate was a legal fiction created by Octavian, designed to retain the appearance of a republic while concealing the fact that the actual machinery of government was functioning as a dictatorship.

The empire was born in war, and kept a martial flavor for most of its existence, as Edward Luttwak explains:

Created by the party of Octavian, himself a master of constitutional ambiguity, the principate was republican in form but autocratic in content. The magistracies were filled as before to supervise public life, and the Senate sat as before, seemingly in charge of city and empire. But real control was now in the hands of the family and personal associates of Octavian, a kinsman and heir of Julius Caesar and the ultimate victor of the civil war that had begun with Caesar’s murder.

That war had been an internal power struggle between the three members of the Second Triumvirate: Octavian, Mark Antony, and Lepidus. In 36 BC, Lepidus was defeated by Octavian and sent into exile, where he lived safely and died of natural causes around 13 BC or 12 BC. That left Octavian and Mark Antony to face each other. Mark Antony had Cleopatra as an ally, but the war ended in 31 BC “with the final defeat of Antony and Cleopatra.”

Octavian now had all the power which was originally divided among three men: the separation of powers was destroyed, the Senate largely powerless, and Octavian, becoming emperor, chose a new name: Augustus.

Octavian-Augustus was succeeded by Tiberius, then Caligula, and later Claudius. At the death of Claudius, Nero became emperor.

Nero’s tyranny and excesses provoked rebellion. In part because Nero failed to clearly identify a successor, and in part because any successor named by him would likely not have been acknowledged, there was an open question about who would be the next emperor.

“When Nero died,” writes Luttwak, it was under mysterious circumstances. He had been obliged to flee the city of Rome because of uprisings against his tyrannical rule. Some historians write that he committed suicide; other write that the governor of a Greek island discovered him living in disguise and ordered that he be executed. Most of the evidence points toward suicide. In any case, when Nero died in 68 AD, “another had already claimed his place.”

On June 8, 68 AD, the Senate, seeing that Nero was unlikely to retain power in the face of the rebellion, named Galba to be emperor. Most evidence points toward Nero dying by suicide on June 9 in Rome. Galba, however, had been in Spain when the Senate named him emperor, and was not yet in Rome.

But the new emperor, Galba, did not arrive in Rome until October and did not live beyond January 69. M. Salvius Otho, an ex-governor of Lusitania, though in Rome as Galba’s follower, procured his murder at the hands of the Praetorians and was acclaimed emperor in turn. By then yet another had risen to claim the office, Aldus Vitellius, governor of Lower Germany and master of its four legions. So far, contention had been resolved through suicide and murder; now there was to be civil war also.

The lower levels of the Roman bureaucracy trundled along, keeping the empire running, while at the highest levels, open warfare among would-be emperors manifested itself in a string of assassinations. After Nero’s death, Rome would have four different emperors within a year.

The military, especially those units on the frontiers, had no steady source of instructions. It engaged largely in holding actions during this time. The era of grand expansion was over.

The outstanding virtue of the principate, the constitutional device invented by Augustus, was its reconciliation of republican forms and traditions with autocratic efficiency. Its outstanding defect was that the succession was dynastic, but without any mechanism to secure it as such, or to replace an unfit dynast. When a tolerable emperor chose a capable successor and made him a son by adoption, all was well. Adoption satisfied the dynastic sentiments of the army and the common people without offending the anti-dynastic prejudice of the Senate. But if there were no adequate son and none were adopted, he became emperor who could make himself emperor; usually by force.

During the next two centuries, succession was not always as chaotic and violent as it was after the death of Nero. But the flaws in Augustus’s precedent had been visible, and succession remained a point of contention for the remainder of the empire.

Although there would be occasional bursts of expansion, the empire energy and focus could not be as devoted to conquest as it had been earlier, because some amount of attention was continuously absorbed by the matter of succession.

Babylon: Military, Political, and Cultural Grandeur Come Eventually to Naught

In the Ancient Near East, Babylon had a central role: it was both conqueror and conquered. It lay at a crucial location on the Euphrates River, where the river had been divided into a number of trenches and canals which flowed through and around the city both to provide water, mainly for agricultural irrigation, and to provide defense in a system of moats.

The Tigris River was not far from Babylon, and together the Tigris and Euphrates gave the region both moisture for crops as well as transportation in the forms of ships and barges which moved up and down the waterways.

The earliest written documentation of the city seems to be from around 2250 B.C., and the cities importance waxed and waned: during its highpoints, the city was the political center of the Babylonian Empire; during its low points, it was a vassal to other empires.

The word ‘Babylonia’ refers to the larger region controlled by the city of Babylon, i.e., the Babylonian Empire.

During one of its last glory days, Babylonia conquered Israel and brought most of that nation’s citizens to Babylon as slaves: this would have happened approximately during the time from 598 B.C. to 586 B.C.

The military defenses of the city were formidable. The captured slaves would have been impressed, and probably depressed, by the structures of the city, as described by historians Joachim Marzahn & Klaudia Englund:

Babylon was situated on both sides of the Euphrates, the old town to the east, another half of the town to the west of the river. It was protected by a double ring of walls, the inner wall being some 6.5, and the outer wall 3.5 meters thick. At distances of 17-18 meters, towers of, respectively, 11 and 4.5 meters width formed part of the defenses. At least 8 double gateways stretching 50 meters afforded entrance to the city. The old town alone comprised an area of ca. 2¼ km², a large part of which was occupied by palaces and temples. Further protection was offered by the eastern wall spanning some 8 km, which also protected buildings beyond the inner city, for example, the Summer Palace in the north.

This system of walls and gates was not only a military defense system, but rather also an impressive work of art and architecture. The famous Ishtar Gates featured bricks with a glossy blue glazed finish. Accents of gold or yellow were mainly in the form of lions.

Beneath the walls and gates, the foundations extended downward even further than the walls above ground extended skyward: This was to prevent an attacking army from tunneling under the walls.

The physical strength and architectural grandeur of the walls of Babylon was paired with the intellectual resources of the city, which was a center of both literary and scientific work.

In 539 B.C., Cyrus of Persia conquered the city with little actual fighting: the city seems to have surrendered quickly. Babylon was incorporated into the Persian Empire, but retained some importance as a regional administrative and cultural center.

Cyrus died around 529 B.C., and various kings succeeded him as rulers of Persia. One of those later kings was Xerxes.

In 482 B.C., the city revolted against Xerxes. He put down the rebellion and, as historian Henry W.F. Saggs writes, the uprising

led to destruction of its fortifications and temples and to the melting down of the golden image of Marduk.

(Marduk was a major figure in the Babylonian polytheistic system.)

Although the city remained in existence for several centuries after this, it was never again a major player in the politics of the Ancient Near East.

The Ethics of Capitalism: The Moral Side of the Free Market

Arguments against capitalism often take a moral tone, and accuse capitalism of deifying avarice: of making greed into a virtue. Who wants to defend an economic system which amounts to codified selfishness?

Such attacks are misguided on multiple fronts.

A polemic against capitalism, if it does not further specify what it is condemning, is fundamentally ill-founded, because the word ‘capitalism’ possesses multiple distinct, different, and mutually exclusive definitions. On the one hard, there is ‘crony capitalism,’ in which a small number of companies develop relationships with the government, in the process inducing the government to so regulate trade and commerce that only these companies have the advantage, and that the majority of companies are burdened by regulation and unable to effectively compete: such “crony capitalism” is opposed to any intuitive sense of fairness.

On the other hand, there is “free market capitalism,” which seeks precisely to correspond to this intuitive sense of fairness: the job of the government is to be a neutral referee or umpire, allowing companies to compete fairly by offering various products at various prices.

In addition to those two types of capitalism, one can even make the counterintuitive argument that Marxist communism or socialism is a type of capital: it argues that the “means of production” should be jointly owned by all the people, in the form of government ownership — and the means of production is nothing else than capital. Marxism, in the form of socialism or communism, can be characterized as “state capitalism.”

If one is to find fault with capitalism, then one must specify which type of capitalism one is vilifying.

Crony capitalism is easy game: it is almost universally seen as unfair, to the extent that even those who engage in it take pains to hide their activity. Beyond that, crony capitalism is of no utility to the citizens: the market is provided with goods of low quality at high prices, and shortages are frequent. Consumers have fewer options and choices in such a system.

State capitalism is sometimes advocated by people of good will, as a route to social justice. Other times, it is cynically implemented by those who see it as an opportunity for personal power. In either case, it leaves the citizens with fewer choices, higher prices, less quality, and shortages.

A free market system, on the other hand, can achieve the social justice which state capitalism claimed to seek. As economist Ludwig Erhard phrased it:

When I speak of a social market economy, I do not mean that the market needs to be made social. I mean that the market is intrinsically social.

A free market corresponds to an intuitive notion of social justice: a market economy is socially conscious because, as suppliers seek to sell to every demand, then every consumer benefits from the competition to offer better products at a lower price. Everyone is a consumer, and everyone is part of the economy’s aggregate demand. In a competitive market economy, every supplier wants to meet as many demands as possible, and suppliers will lower their prices and raise quality in order to sell to those demands.

Because suppliers want to sell to as many consumers as possible, they find ways to offer products at lower prices. Because suppliers compete with each other, they find ways to offer better quality at those lower prices. As consumers are able to obtain better products at lower prices, the goals of social justice are attained.

Ludwig Erhard showed that market economies lead to social justice, and that property rights lead to civil rights. He showed that when suppliers are free to creatively meet demands and consumers are free to choose, all parties in the marketplace benefit.

As a brilliant byproduct, free markets also give consumers more choice and more abundance.

Efforts to censure capitalism as immoral are effective against crony capitalism and against state capitalism, but gain no ground against free market capitalism, as Russ Roberts writes:

A lot of people reject capitalism because they see the market process at the heart of capitalism — the decentralized, bottom-up interactions between buyers and sellers that determine prices and quantities — as fundamentally immoral. After all, say the critics, capitalism unleashes the worst of our possible motivations, and it gets things done by appealing to greed and self interest rather than to something nobler: caring for others, say. Or love.

It is plausible to make moral arguments against greed. But in a free market, the retailer is working simply to feed his family: this is not greed, it is responsibility. How he would be chastened if he did not attempt to provide for his family!

Buyer and seller function as a couple dancing: each plays a part. Buyer and seller function as teammates in a sport: one would hardly accuse the player who caught a teammate’s pass as greedy because he received the ball.

In any discussion of the various forms of capitalism, it is good form to quote from the writings of Adam Smith, whose The Wealth of Nations appeared in 1776 and became a foundational text in economics:

Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favor, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

If capitalism were merely greed cloaked in the equations of economists, it would be morally suspect, as Russ Roberts recites:

Capitalism, say its critics, encourages grasping, exploitation, and materialism. As Wordsworth put it: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” In this view, capitalism degrades our best selves by encouraging us to compete, to get ahead, to win in business, to have a nicer car and house than our neighbors, and to always look for higher pro.ts and advantages. In the great rat race of the workplace, we all turn into rats. Is it any wonder so many want to kill off capitalism and replace it with something more just, more fair, more humane?

But he goes on to point out that only in a free market system does the retailer have a motive to treat his customers honestly and fairly. Only in a free market does the employer have a reason to pay his workers well. The freedom of the marketplace means that the consumers can go elsewhere if they perceive that they’ve been given a bad deal. Workers can go elsewhere if they feel unappreciated.

This is why people who live in countries with even a partially free market inevitably have a better standard of living than those who live in “command economies” or “planned economies.”

The political freedom and personal liberty which accompany a free market are pleasant byproducts of the laissez faire economic system.

Endless tirades have been made — and will be made — against “capitalism,” but when those attacks are carefully analyzed, they fail to undermine the results obtained by a free market system. Those who benefit the most from a free market are not the wealthy capitalists — for such people will enjoy a high standard of living in any economic system — but rather the working-class people, who obtain a level of prosperity not available to the working class in nations governed by other economic doctrines.

Radically Different Types of Capitalism: Why the Discussion Gets Confusing

People constantly debate about economics and politics. Sometimes they even fight about it. But these discussions are often confusing, unclear, and ambiguous. Why?

One simple vocabulary word can be misleading: “capitalism.”

Before deciding whether capitalism is good or bad, one must first discover what capitalism is. To complicate matters, it soon becomes clear that there are different types of capitalism — so different from each other that they are nearly opposites.

So when Ben Shapiro makes a radical statement like “Capitalism is morally preferable to socialism,” the meaning of his statement can vary, depending on which definition of ‘capitalism’ the reader has in mind.

The word ‘capital’ is used to denote, in the simplest sense, money. More specifically, it refers, in economic contexts, to money used to form “the means of production,” i.e., money invested to create jobs, factories, businesses, etc.

It is not possible to have an economy without capital: without value used to create production. Even socialist and communist economies have capital. So, in that sense, communism is a type of capitalism! That might seem like a confusing statement, but only because, in everyday conversation, the words ‘communism’ and ‘capitalism’ are used vaguely.

Friedrich Engels, who worked closely with Karl Marx, wrote, “State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution.” Many communists, therefore, desire “state capitalism” — i.e., the government ownership of the means of production, which is the government ownership of factories and businesses.

Wilhelm Liebknecht, an early follower of Marx and Engels, wrote that “State Socialism is really State capitalism.”

To clarify matters, an adjective can precede the noun ‘capitalism,’ as in “state capitalism,” or “crony capitalism,” or “free market capitalism.”

“State capitalism,” as used in the above quotes from Engels and Liebknecht, is a type of communism or socialism, in which the government owns and controls much or all of the means of production.

“Crony capitalism” is a system in which government leaders cooperate and collaborate with those who own large amounts of capital. In “crony capitalism,” governments make regulations which favor large and influential businesses, and which do not create a fair or neutral marketplace for economic competition. “Crony capitalism” is a corruption of the system, and the role of the government fails to be impartial and unbiased. In “crony capitalism,” people cannot rely upon the government to be an objective referee or adjudicator between competing businesses. Instead of being neutral, the government in a “crony capitalist” system works to help some businesses and hinder others.

On the one hand, “state capitalism” leads to shortages in the marketplace and leads to a loss of freedom and prosperity. On the other hand, “crony capitalism” leads to a lack of opportunity for ordinary people: they can’t have a fair chance of competing with those who have a special relationship with the government. Crony capitalism also leads to higher prices and lower quality in production.

“Free market capitalism” corresponds to the everyday notion of a “level playing field” or a “fair game.” In free market capitalism, individuals have freedom, and have the opportunity to make offers: to bargain about prices. Individuals have the freedom to choose which type of work they want to try, and for which employer they might work. They also have the freedom to start their own business. Fair competition between businesses leads to lower prices and higher quality. Individuals have opportunities to seek higher wages, and thereby raise their standards of living. When the rules are fair, and fairly enforced, everyone has a chance.

Because the word ‘capitalism’ gets used in these different ways, debates become garbled. Those who say that they are in favor of capitalism are really in favor of free market capitalism; those who say that they are against capitalism are actually against crony capitalism. Those who say that they are in favor of socialism or communism do not realize that they are actually in favor of a type of capitalism.

It “free market capitalism” that Ben Shapiro has in mind when he writes:

Capitalism is the greatest single force for the empowerment of human beings in the history of mankind. Free markets defeated the global scourge of communism, which was responsible for the impoverishment of half of mankind and the murder of a hundred million people; free markets raised nearly the entire globe out of abject poverty.

In a historical perspective, capitalism is often linked to the Industrial Revolution. This link is real, but also indirect. On the one hand are the advances in technology and inventions which radically changed work and life; on the other hand is the financial system which enabled this creativity and inventiveness.

Although the Industrial Revolution is sometimes linked with images of urban poverty and hardship, in many places it led in fact to a rising standard of living for the lower and middle classes. In the Soviet Socialist system, however, it led to shortages and lower standards of living. The former was a free market system, the latter was a form of state capitalism.

One of the principles that distinguishes “free market capitalism” from the other types of capitalism is that freedom is related to prosperity. Where there is freedom for people to make their own economic choices, standards of living rise. In general, human beings desire both freedom and prosperity; it turns out that those two are almost the same thing.

Capitalism is about the notion that you are not a slave. You own your own time, and you own your own labor, and you may do with it precisely what you wish. The miracle of capitalism is that such freedom doesn’t result in billions of artists finger-painting — it results in billions of people investing their time and effort into creating products for one another. Capitalism results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don’t give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.

To take away people’s freedom is to lower their standard of living. To control people is to impoverish people. To willingly inflict both control and poverty on people is morally questionable.