Originally Posted by
Roma_Victrix
I guess you could say not all but most native folk living under Hellenistic states didn't have much of a stake in things, and only occasionally intermarried with the Greek elite or were accepted as legal citizens of a local polis city-state within a larger kingdom under a basileus. Ptolemaic Alexandria comes to mind, where incredibly wealth native Egyptians were able to become "legally" Greek (Burstein, Reign of Cleopatra, 2004), but only after jumping through bureaucratic hoops, renouncing their original Egyptian culture, embracing the Greek pantheon, etc. The Ptolemies recruited native Egyptians only out of necessity, but for nearly a century after Ptolemy I Soter ignored them as a pool of recruits in favor of Greeks, Jews, and Galatian Celts as kleruchoi landholder soldiers. Native Egyptians to the south also rebelled in Upper Egypt for several decades during Ptolemaic rule with their own rival pharaohs. Most native Egyptians were simply farming peasants along the Nile, while the wealthy Egyptian priesthood remained loyal to the Ptolemies due to royal patronage.
The Seleucids in West Asia were perhaps far better at incorporating native Persian subjects and the monarchy itself was one of mixed Greek and Persian ancestry. However, their form of governance in Hellenistic kingship suffered from all the limitations that the Antigonids experienced in Macedon and that Cyclops outlined above. Pre-Marian and for that matter post-Marian Romans simply did not have these disadvantages. Rome had a highly motivated core of upper and middle class citizen soldiery whose entire lives were invested in keeping the Republic alive as a way to advance their own careers and families. Meanwhile, their allied auxiliaries were ruled with a relatively light hand with economic incentives to retain their military alliance and civic relationship with Rome.
That's a really fascinating subject to explore! :yes:
Aside from the personal, familial, career, and financial reasons for regular Roman citizens or allied auxiliaries to support the Republican Roman state, there were surely psychological factors as well. I'm suddenly reminded of Octavian's propaganda aimed at Mark Antony and his wife Cleopatra VII of Egypt, depicting Antony as being a brainwashed sycophantic tool of a dangerous sorceress and mysterious easterner whose revolting animal-headed gods were poised to destroy the good honest deities worshiped by the Romans. This sort of xenophobic stuff was preserved in Augustan era literature, despite the same Cleopatra being generally adored by the Roman public as "Venus Genetrix" when she was attached to Julius Caesar as his mistress (well, aside from figures like Cicero, who always hated her and was insulted that she failed to let him borrow books from the Library of Alexandria).
:tongue:
With that in mind, we shouldn't forget that the Romans were a religiously devout people. Some of their most impressive edifices were temples dedicated to the gods and goddesses. The state was responsible for their maintenance and care. For that matter, religion was woven into the state itself with institutions like the Vestal Virgins and College of Pontiffs led by the Pontifex Maximus. Considering how the latter was an elected position that eventually became open to plebeians, not just patrician families, this was yet another incentive for regular Romans to support the state, since the state itself upheld their polytheistic religion.
Also yes, the Roman military was incredibly harsh and disciplined, something that seemed to awe the historian Polybius a bit when he explained how Rome came to dominate affairs in the Mediterranean during the mid-2nd century BC. However, most Roman citizen soldiers didn't seem to buck at the thought of harsh discipline and were motivated by more than just shared spoils. As for the psychological factors in accepting this harsh military discipline, you could argue that for some Romans it was because they had an eye for politics and becoming a praetor or even a consul one day. In most states at the time moving up the social ladder was extremely difficult or even impossible, but in Rome a plebeian could serve out a military career, get elected to a series of offices, and have his family become prestigious after becoming a senator. People descended from consuls were the nobiles of the Republic, and this was generally open to everyone who had citizenship, was ambitious enough to climb the career ladder, and fortunate enough to win elections (also wealthy enough to win over voting blocks).
There were few states like this or even remotely comparable to this in antiquity. Regular citizens of Democratic Athens saw the fortunes of their household rise and fall, and they did have a stake in upholding their democratic state. However, Democratic Athens never constructed an allied support system like the socii Italici mentioned above, only the Delian League, in which members had to pay exorbitant fees that maintained the Athenian navy and enriched state coffers in Athens (the Romans did the opposite by not levying such taxes). While Athens did colonize and establish new poleis as a mother polis (for instance, Amphipolis along the Strymon River in Macedonia), this was hardly comparable to the widespread Latin Roman colonization of Italy coupled with Latin Roman colonization of distant regions like Iberia (Spain) as far back as the 2nd century BC.