Children of Mars

This book provides a new narrative account of the rise of Rome as an imperial force in the centuries before Julius Caesar and Augustus. It presents a new interpretation of the early Roman army, highlighting the fluid and family-driven character which is increasingly visible in the evidence. It draws on recent developments within the field of early Roman studies to argue that the emergence of Rome's empire in Italy should not be seen as the spread of a distinct "Roman" people across Italian land, but rather the expansion of a social, political, and military network amongst the Italian people. It suggests that Rome's early empire was a fundamentally human and relational one. While this reinterpretation of early Roman imperialism is no less violent than the traditional model, it alters its core dynamic and nature, and thus shifts the entire trajectory of Rome's Republican history.

Jeremy Armstrong is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and the author of Early Roman Warfare: From the Regal Period to the First Punic War and War and Society in Early Rome: From Warlords to Generals.