Why did Rome conquer and destroy so much of the civilized independent

Name one example.

>>404433
>destroy
In what way?

>>404440
Carthage and Greece
whyd they have to wreck Athens and Syracuse and so much more

>>404448
Carthage is the only civilization they actually destroyed.

File: Rome.jpg (84KB, 680x529px) Image search: [Google]

84KB, 680x529px

Because Rome.

>>404453
They fucked Greece up. It has been a backwater ever since.

>>404433
For the same reasons all the other powerful ancient civilizations did

>>404459
>who are the byzantines?
>who are the ottomans?

lust for power, prestige and wealth
seeing itself (rightly or not) as the beacon of true civilization
maybe being paranoid because of that time when the celts sacked the city

>>404459
They didn't, greece was the richest place in europe until the ottomans shrekt it.

File: Philopoemen_David_Angers_Louvre_LP1556.jpg (41KB, 327x600px) Image search: [Google]

41KB, 327x600px

>>404459

>From the time he was appointed as strategos in 209 BC, Philopoemen helped turn the Achaean League into an important military power in Greece. He was called "the last of the Greeks" by an anonymous Roman.
>With his death, Philopoemen's body was cremated. At his public funeral, the historian Polybius carried the urn with Philopoemen's ashes and later wrote a biography and defended his memory in his Histories. Pausanias wrote that after Philopoemen's death, 'Greece ceased to bear good men'.[2]

That happened before Roman Conquest, they were already exerting their influence though.

>>404433
>>404448
>why did they destroy carthage
Because otherwise there would have been a third, fourth and fifth Punic wars

>>404459

>Been backwater ever since

The Byzantines dominated for hundreds of years after Rome fell.
It was the Ottoshits and Arabs that ruined Greece.

>>404494
Carthage was pretty much irrelevant after 2nd Punic War. They could just let them be and nothing of value would be lost. But of course, Romans were war-mongering cunts and still were butthurt after Cannae.

>>404459
>Byzantine empire
>backwater

>>404500
>carthage apologist calling romans butthurt warmongering cunts
lol who is hannibal

>>404500

Why the fuck would they leave a vulnerable and potentially valuable piece of territory alone?

What exactly is your issue? Did you want them to leave Carthage alone and give them time to recover and rival them again?

>>404515
Better that, than massacring and genociding entire population in fear of potential conflicts.

>>404433
why?
career politicians, governors or emperors were constantly seeking to expand their own power and wealth

>>404440
Carthage and Macedonia.

>>404465
Anatolia.
>>404484
Anatolia.
>>404498
Anatolia.
>>404502
Anatolia.

>>404448
Rome was at war with Carthage. They either destroyed them or they would have been destroyed.

>>404521

Yeah, in your idealistic utopian fantasy land but not in the ancient world retard.

>>404515
3rd Punic "War" was a hilarious pretext by the Roman Republic to instigate a war to wipe out Carthage as soon as any half-assed justification could be found. When Numidia started attacking Carthage, the Carthaginians retiliated to defend themselves despite the treaty ending the 2nd Punic War stipulating that any military actions by Carthage had to be first approved by Rome.

This was all the pretext Rome needed to justify a war, siege, raze, and destroy the ancient city and disperse its inhabitants. While Carthage had in fact proven the impossible by paying off its debts to Rome for previous war's enmity by 151 BC, this again proved to Cato the Elder and others that Carthage was a threat.

Because if Carthage, even when stripped of most of its merchant fleet, military navy, and had its main colonies in Sardinia, Hispania, and Sicily, was still able to pay off its debt and start to recover. Which frightened Rome badly. All Carthage wanted was to continue its success and wealth as a mercantile trading empire, not a military one.

Remember even in the 2nd Punic War for example, Carthage barely tolerated what Hannibal was doing in Hispania, Gaul, and Italy and more or less abandoned Hannibal early on in the war. They felt if Hannibal failed and that if the Romans could see how they weren't supporting his singular actions, Rome would understand Carthage never intended for war to break out.

So the destruction of Carthage is a sad footnote in our history.

>>404733
>*and had its main colonies in Sardinia, Hispania, and Sicily taken from her

>>404702
Constantinople is on the European side of the Bosphorus. If anything, say it's Thrace. It's definitely not Anatolia.

>>404702
Anatolia was ethnically greek untill the turkics you mong they even spoke greek.

>>404809
Not all of Anatolia was ethnically Greek. There were plenty of Armenians, other Semitics, and what not living there before the Turks started to ethnically cleanse it.

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST

>>404809
Greece = Greece proper

Anatolia was the power base of the empire and one of the richest areas in Rome. Greece was a underpopulated unproductive backwater where only Thessaloniki stood out.

>>404927
Actually the richest provinces in terms of pure economic wealth and revenue were the territories in the Levant:

- Syria
- Lebanon
- Jordan
- Roman Mesopotamia essentially

File: GDP_regional_Ancient_Rome.png (9KB, 915x627px) Image search: [Google]

9KB, 915x627px

>>404936

>>404743
Well, no shit. It would be really fucking stupid if Rome had taken all Carthaginian held lands EXCEPT the ones that were closest to Rome.

File: 1435274807865.jpg (3MB, 4707x3333px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 4707x3333px

>>404956

>>404956

>Lusitania not part of Hispania.
Did a Portuguese made the chart?

File: 113555355.png (535KB, 1352x755px) Image search: [Google]

535KB, 1352x755px

>>404956
>Africa not being 2nd or 3rd in that list
>Gaul being so high
>Mauretania being so high

>>404975
>Albania and Iberia in the Caucasus.

You teach me some neat piece of trivia every day, /his/.

>>405654
What was so special about africa? If you're thinking about Carthage, it was destroyed by that time.

BECAUSE THEY COULD

>start shit
>get hit
What exactly is the problem here?
If Carthage didn't want to be salty then maybe they shouldn't have provoked the superior military power.

>>405834

Egypt.

>>405834
Grain.

>>405946
Egypt is already 3rd on the chart m8

>>404459

The Byzantines would disagree.

Because fuck you

>>405834
Not him but Carthage was soon a pretty important city of the roman empire.

>>405715
They don't have any actual relationship with Albania or Iberia. Caucasian Iberia is just Georgia.

File: laughing.jpg (1MB, 1000x1500px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1000x1500px

HAHAHAHA FAGGOT

>>405946
>>406022

File: Roman_Africa.jpg (72KB, 824x288px) Image search: [Google]

72KB, 824x288px

>>405946
Egypt is not in the province of Africa, learn the roman provinces.

Carthage fags are the worst.
Phoenicians a shit.

why did the romans stop expanding?

File: Mirin.jpg (440KB, 800x1000px) Image search: [Google]

440KB, 800x1000px

>>404455
/thread

>>406365
There was a point where it wasn't sustainable anymore.

>>405834
It was still incredibly fertile and a main exporter of grain throughout the empire.

>>406365
Peter Heather correctly explains that Rome only expanded into areas that were civilized, ie places they could extract wealth and taxes from.

> Give unto Rome what is Roman

>>406365
You can never completely pacify the lands you conquer, or at least not without decades or centuries of effort. That is extremely expensive.

The larger you get, the more waste you have. Bureaucracy chewed up resources, and the more provinces you have the more bureaucrats.

And what geographers call friction of distance. Further you have to go, more it costs, less likely you are to do it. Raising levies and transporting them to the frontiers was a pain the further those frontiers got.

Population movements. All throughout antiquity we have evidence of large migrations, colonizations, invasions, etc. Greeks colonized everything they could, so did the Phoenicians. Cimmerians invaded Thrace and Anatolia. Sea peoples. Celts invading Macedon and Anatolia and forming Galatia. Scythians and other nomadic tribes, etc.

Creating an Empire means establishing non-porous borders. As a small kingdom like, say, Phrygia, you can easily become overwhelmed by large numbers, but by virtue of your size you are obscure enough that not EVERYBODY is coming to invade you or move into your land. Now consider the size of the Empire in >>404433 or >>404975 and you are, because of the vast expanse you control, going to see a lot of people try to breach your borders.

Which goes back to friction of distance and cost of defending the frontiers. More land you've got, bigger the target on your back, more it costs to keep.

>>406485
Which isn't even touching upon clashes with other equally capable powers like the Parthians, where both Empires are large enough and self righteous enough to constantly fight but neither is capable of committing enough resources to defeat the other whole sale. So that was also costly and tied down more troops than anyone actually wanted it to.