Ancient Rome developed from a small prehistoric settlement on the Tiber River in Latium in central Italy into an empire that encompassed all of the Mediterranean world, and the civilization that resulted formed the basis for modern Western civilization. The history of Rome can be divided into three major epochs: the kingship from the legendary foundation of Rome to 509 BC; the republic from 509 BC to 31 BC; and the empire, which survived until Rome finally fell to the German chieftain Odoacer in AD 476. The genius of the Romans lay in the military, in government administration, and in the law, and they valued crafty diplomacy as much as military discipline. The Romans conquered Greece, adopting Greek culture and transmitting it to the medieval world. Unlike the Greeks, they did not develop a philosophical theory of state and society. Instead, they were the practitioners of power and law, and Roman civil law, which reached its peak under the emperors, excelled in precision of formulation and logic of thought. Historians have offered different explanations for the imperial expansion effort undertaken by Rome, some feeling it was either conscious, willful, aggressive, or a matter of defense. An analysis of some of these views will be used to assess the approach taken by William V. Harris in his book on the subject.
Harris notes the nature of the issue when he indicates that some historians assert that the Romans generally had no desire to expand their power, at least not on any conscious plane:
The view just outlined appears to conflict with the virtually unanimous opinion of scholars that the Roman Senate attempted to avoid the actual annexation of territory. This is held to have been a principle of the Senate's foreign policy through much or all of the middle Republic. In fact the supposed principle would not have conflicted at all directly with the Romans' desire to expand their empire, since they saw the empire as c...