From a small town in central Italy to the centre of a huge empire: how was the incredible rise of the Romans possible? And why is Roman history particularly interesting for us as contemporaries of globalisation? An interview with ancient historian Michael Sommer.
QUESTION: Your two-volume comprehensive account of Roman history is now available. Beyond the purely historical interest, what is the relevance of Roman history today?
SOMMER: Every generation looks at history anew; this also applies, perhaps especially, to antiquity, which still has a special place in the cultural memory of Europe and North America. For us as contemporaries of globalisation and worldwide networking, what is probably particularly interesting about Roman history is that it saw the completion of a process that also tremendously accelerated the mobility of people, goods and ideas. This process begins with the early Iron Age, when the inhabitants of the Levant - the Phoenicians - put out their feelers to the west of the Mediterranean, and it ends with the Roman Empire, when the political, legal and, to some extent, social and cultural unity of the Mediterranean region was completed.
QUESTION: How did you ultimately manage the vast amount of material?
SOMMER: Every book, even the thickest tome, is too thin to provide an overview of Roman history that can even come close to being complete. I have therefore decided to forego completeness and concentrate on the questions posed by our generation - a generation that is experiencing how post-national structures are taking shape and modernity, which began with the French Revolution, is gradually becoming history:
What factors helped the empire to become permanent?
How did the Romans manage to integrate a world that was as culturally, linguistically, religiously, politically and socially heterogeneous as the area between the Firth of Forth and the cataracts of the Nile into their empire? What factors contributed to the empire's longevity? How did subjects perceive Roman rule and how was it legitimised? Why did a pre-modern empire endure cultural dissonance to which modern nation states capitulate? It is these questions that make Rome such a fascinating phenomenon for our generation.
QUESTION: From a small town in central Italy to the centre of a world power: how was this incredible rise actually possible?
SOMMER: In the beginning, the Romans were like all conquerors: they plundered province after province, which they plundered economically; prosperity flowed in one direction: from the periphery to the centre. But in the 1st century BC, the balance between centre and periphery changed. The Romans had something to offer those they subjugated: Participation in their rule and in the civilisation that Rome stood for. That is why the locals in the provinces, from Gaul to Syria, enthusiastically accepted everything that was Roman or that they thought was Roman.
Because there was no optimism about progress, the Romans also had no sense of crisis.
What Rome had to offer was particularly attractive to the elites. As a rule, the upper ten thousand were granted Roman citizenship without much ado. And this citizenship was their ticket to the imperial elite. The relatively generous granting of citizenship and the social mobility that Rome made possible meant that every inhabitant of a province could hope that their children would become Roman citizens, their grandchildren even knights or senators and their great-grandchildren perhaps one day Roman emperors. Apart from this integration achievement, the constant expansion of the Roman citizenry through the granting of citizenship was of course also a power factor of the first order: at some point there were simply more Romans than Samnites, Syracusans or Carthaginians.
QUESTION: What realisation has particularly occupied you in your study of Roman history?
You have to make ancient history interesting.
SOMMER: One inevitably wonders what end our civilisation will come to when even the Roman empire, which was designed to last, eventually collapses due to the tensions and political upheavals of the Migration Period. Perhaps most touching is the pessimistic understanding of history of the Romans themselves, for whom it was already a gain if a generation succeeded in maintaining the status quo - morally, politically, economically - of their fathers and mothers. Because they were not optimistic about progress, the Romans were not aware of the crisis that arises from the dissonance between high expectations and reality. Our feeling of being contemporaries of a crisis is the flipside of our optimistic vision of the future.
QUESTION: To what extent are you taking a different look at Roman history with these two volumes, what is special about your approach?
SOMMER: Firstly, I want to embed Roman history in the history of its environment: The Mediterranean, the Orient and even the area north of the Alps are inextricably part of it if you want to understand why the Republic failed, for example. Secondly, I want to make it clear where research draws its knowledge from: from sources. Probably more than in many other overviews, ancient people themselves have their say. Thirdly, I do not presuppose that ancient history is interesting per se. You have to make it interesting, you have to explain why it is interesting and why it is still worth engaging with it after 2000 years. I hope that I have succeeded in doing this in my presentation.
Rome and the Ancient World up to the End of the Republic. Roman History, vol. 1, Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag. 654 pages, ISBN 978-3520449016.
Rome and its empire in the imperial period. Römische Geschichte, vol. 2. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 631 pages. ISBN 978-3-520-45801-8.