Senate and General

Senate and General: Individual Decision Making and Roman Foreign Relations, 264–194 B.C. by Arthur M. Eckstein reconsiders the traditional view that the Roman senate exercised consistent and centralized control over foreign policy in the middle republic. Building on close readings of Livy, Polybius, and other sources, Eckstein argues that while the senate certainly possessed legal authority and wielded enormous prestige, the reality of decision making was far more diffuse, improvised, and contingent. In practice, Roman magistrates and generals in the field—often consuls with imperium—played a vital role in shaping the Republic’s external relations, and their ad hoc choices frequently became the foundation of formal policy once the senate ratified them. Rather than the senate directing a coherent program of imperial expansion, foreign relations from the First Punic War through the post-Hannibalic period were characterized by flexibility, delegation, and a high tolerance for local initiative. Organized by geography, the book traces Rome’s responses to crises in northern Italy, Sicily, Spain, Africa, and Greece, demonstrating how the senate’s influence was strongest on the Italian frontier but increasingly tenuous overseas. In regions like Sicily, Spain, and the Greek East, generals often determined whether alliances were struck, treaties concluded, or wars initiated, sometimes with only vague or delayed guidance from Rome. Eckstein situates this within the broader primitiveness of ancient diplomacy: the absence of permanent embassies, poor record-keeping, and the cumbersome structure of the senate itself made coherent, long-term planning difficult. Against interpretations that depict Rome as pursuing a deliberate policy of imperialist aggression, Eckstein emphasizes the improvisatory nature of republican decision making amid a volatile Mediterranean environment. The study ultimately portrays Roman expansion as the outcome of aristocratic trust, institutional decentralization, and the contingent actions of individual commanders, offering a nuanced corrective to both older constitutionalist models and modern theories of systematic Roman imperialism. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.