Rome and the Mediterranean

Rome and the Mediterranean follows Livy’s history as Roman power expands beyond Italy into the wider Mediterranean world. The volume covers major wars, diplomacy and political decisions through which Rome confronted rival states and absorbed new territories, with particular attention to the consequences of victory abroad for republican politics at home. Livy’s narrative joins military history to moral judgement, presenting expansion as both achievement and a source of new tensions.

Expansion creates problems that the institutions of the early Republic were not designed to manage. Commanders spend longer abroad, provincial wealth enters Roman politics and decisions made in the Senate affect communities far beyond Italy. Livy's account therefore records not only conquest but the pressures that overseas empire places on political competition and Roman ideas of civic virtue.