War and Society in Early Rome: From Warlords to Generals

Armstrong, J. and M.P. Fronda (eds.) Romans at War: Soldiers, Citizens, and Society in the Roman Republic. Routledge: London., 2019

This volume addresses the fundamental importance of the army, warfare, and military service to the development of both the Roman Republic and wider Italic society in the second half of the first millennium BC. It brings together emerging and established scholars in the area of Roman military studies to engage with subjects such as the relationship between warfare and economic and demographic regimes; the interplay of war, aristocratic politics, and state formation; and the complex role the military played in the integration of Italy. The book demonstrates the centrality of war to Rome's internal and external relationships during the Republic, as well as to the Romans' sense of identity and history. It also illustrates the changing scholarly view of warfare as a social and cultural construct in antiquity , and how much work remains to be done in what is often thought of as a "traditional" area of research. Romans at War will be of interest to students and scholars of the Roman army and ancient warfare, and of Roman society more broadly.

When one thinks of the fall of the Roman Republic, names such as Caesar, Pompey, Antony, and Octavian leap to mind. Yet the devastating civil wars between 49-31 BCE that brought the Republic to its knees had far deeper roots. In order to understand the political and military opportunities that ultimately led to the rise of Augustus and the beginning of the Roman Empire, we must go back almost two hundred years to the Second Punic War in the late third century BCE. It was during the Hannibalic War that Rome first became militarily involved in the Iberian Peninsula. This commitment would prove daunting and arduous, breaking down the traditional Roman military recruitment system. The traditional military system of a Roman army of landed citizen soldiers continually became less achievable as the pool of available candidates dwindled under the pressures of long foreign wars and loss of property. Faced with this lack of qualified soldiers, an ambitious statesman named Marius enacted radical military reforms that would make Roman soldiers beholden to the desires of their generals over the traditions of the state. A powerful “warlord culture” quickly developed in the first century BCE, which ushered in the climactic events of the final fall of the Roman Republic. Although we can attribute a combination of numerous intricacies found outside of the following major points to the failure of the Roman Republic, this paper argued that the consequences of Roman involvement in Spain, the ramifications of Marius’ reforms, and the rise of the warlord culture at Rome were the three main factors that transformed Roman republicanism and allowed for the founding of Augustus’ empire. Annual Mid-American Conference on History at Missouri State University, September 2012.

The Classical World, 1989

This short article takes a fresh approach to untangle Livy's two 'snapshots' of the early Roman Republican army supposedly c.550 BC; and 340 BC and resolves interpretation of 'rorarii' and 'accensi' in the latter and points to anachronisms in the former as described by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Rituals of Triumph in the Mediterranean World, 2013

in: Stephen O'Brien, Daniel Boatright, Warfare and Society in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Papers arising from a colloquium held at the University of Liverpool, 13th June 2008. BAR International Series 2583, 2013

The Journal of Military History, 2007

Roman Warlords and the Early Medieval World, 2019

This is the non peer reviewed version of the paper published as Carr, D. (2019) 'Roman Warlords and the Early Medieval World', in Christie, H. and Kasten, M. (eds.) Current Approaches to People Places and Things in the Early Medieval Period; Proceedings of the 12th Annual Early Medieval Archaeology Student Symposium, Oxford: British Archaeological Reports: 83-94.

T. Ñaco del Hoyo and F. López Sánchez (eds), War, Warlords and Interstate Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 266-294