Killing for the Republic: Citizen-Soldiers and the Roman Way of War. Steele Brand. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.

What are the relationships between citizen-soldiers, civic virtue, and patriotism? What does the American republic lose if one or more of these things atrophy? What are the effects of the all-volunteer force on these things? The Roman Republic was instructive for America’s Founding Fathers, who admired its mixed constitution, its many examples of virtuous patrician statesmen like Cato the Elder and Cincinnatus, and its plucky citizen-soldiers. But, after nearly 500 years, the Republic fell, in part because citizen-soldiers gave way to professionals, and civic virtue gave way to avarice and pragmatism. What lessons does the Roman Republic have for today’s republics?

The Romans have left important legacies, and Americans—perhaps especially those in military service—should learn from them.

In Killing for the Republic, Steele Brand charges that the United States has nearly lost Rome’s positive legacy of republicanism. Brand worries that 21st-century Americans find the ambitious, autocratic Caesar more appealing, and that the American military has more in common with the professional legions of the Caesars. A former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Steele Brand earned his Ph.D. in Church-State Studies at Baylor University and teaches at The King’s College in New York City. Killing for the Republic explores the republicanism of the typical Roman—who was a citizen first, a soldier a distant second—and the centrality of these citizen-soldiers to Roman greatness. Finally, he explores the lessons Americans can learn from these everyday Romans. The Romans have left important legacies, and Americans—perhaps especially those in military service—should learn from them. Ultimately, though, Brand’s treatment is incomplete and misleading.

Brand’s thesis in Killing for the Republic is that understanding the longevity and military successes of the Roman Republic begins and ends with its citizen soldiers and their unquenchable republican spirit. Before, during, and after service in the legions, Roman culture habituated and demanded sacrificial service and normalized citizen military service. Their mixed constitution and citizen virtues assured their rise to power and even, in Brand’s view, gave them “the right to dominate” the Mediterranean world.[1] Roman citizens were overwhelmingly small-holding farmers, at home with the soil, the cycles of the seasons, and endless rounds of human, animal, and vegetable procreation. These farmers willingly left hearth and home to serve in Rome’s legions when called, and Roman bellicosity meant the call came frequently. Brand argues their willingness to serve derived from their sense of duty to family and polity, their belonging and agency under the republican constitution, and their ardent belief in the justice of the Republic’s causes. These hardy, patriotic farmers-turned-fighters truly were “killing for the Republic” as they defeated their enemies and brought about Roman dominance in the Mediterranean.[2] The subsequent diminution of this republican spirit precipitated the demise of the participatory Republic and the advent of the autocratic Empire.

Brand presents his thesis and reviews the interests of America’s Founding Fathers in the Roman constitution and its agrarian citizen-soldiers in Part I of Killing. Parts II through IV of the book subsequently provide historical studies, mostly built around key battles in the Republic’s expansion. The first is Sentinum in 295 BC, an Italian Armageddon that secured Roman control over much of the peninsula. The second is New Carthage in Spain in 209 BC, the first victory in the storied career of Scipio Africanus and Rome’s first major victory over Carthaginian forces since the start of the Hannibalic War in 219 BC. The third is Pydna in 168 BC, the last pitched battle of the Macedonian Wars in Greece and Asia Minor. The fourth is Mutina in 43 BC, the campaign Cicero orchestrated against Antony, trying to hold the Republic together after Julius Caesar’s assassination. The fifth and final is Philippi in 42 BC, where Caesar’s assassins and successors battled and the latter won.

In these battle studies we witness the triumphs and eventual tragedies of Roman citizen-soldiers and the statesmen-generals who led them. The studies of Roman leaders, especially Paullus in the Pydna account and Cicero in the Mutina account, are the book’s chief strengths. In Brand’s view, the republican spirit that animated and justified Roman expansion died along with Brutus, Cassius, and thousands of legionaries at Philippi. The battle studies, however, contain few new insights. With the exception of New Carthage, none of them make significant study of terrain, logistics, weather, or tactical complexities. The accompanying battle diagrams are also heavily linear, which makes them easy to read but nearly pointless. For example, neither the narrative nor the three diagrams for Pydna make reference to important terrain features on the battlefield, or to the effect on deployment of the battle’s impromptu start.

For Brand, the Republic’s cultivation of civic duty marks a specific contrast with contemporary individualism, wherein the vast majority of Americans do not even entertain military service or celebrate martial virtues like discipline, subordination, and sacrifice. Brand laments the status quo, particularly that Americans may lobby for foreign wars without risking service overseas themselves. He ponders whether America is embroiled in forever wars because those in power lack accountability to employ military force prudently. Brand does not explicitly call for the end of the all-volunteer force, or for compulsory civic or military service; in fact, he largely skirts a solution to reach his desired end: the restoration of a republican spirit.

Is Brand right about the republican spirit of Roman farmers and that spirit’s explanatory power for Roman success? Brand’s depiction is modeled after The Western Way of War but lacks that book’s care in handling the ancient evidence—although Hanson’s famous work had other issues.[3] Brand fills the massive gaps in what we know about everyday Roman soldiers with the ideas of some of Rome’s most ardent republican aristocrats. His account shows little attention to change over time, relies extensively on conjecture but seldom admits it, and privileges a select part of the Roman Republic as the only part of any consequence. The most serious problems in Killing for the Republic concern what made Rome exceptional, what rank-and-file Roman citizens were like, and whether and how Roman soldiers exhibited a republican spirit.

Rome was a slave society, and since the sixth century BC had maintained a truly novel practice whereby freed slaves gained partial citizenship as freedmen and their descendants full citizenship, and thus liability to conscription. The poet Horace, a favorite source of Brand’s, was both a Roman knight and the son of a wealthy freedman. This unique custom provided Rome with a continued source of additional manpower. Grants of citizenship to neighboring peoples constituted an even larger source. Both made Rome unique. Contemporary observers marveled at Rome’s liberality with citizenship and the resulting advantages it garnered.[4]  During the Hannibalic War (219-202 BC), after Hannibal’s early victories left some 50,000 citizens dead, the Republic dramatically lowered the property qualification for military service, making many freedmen-descended and other poor citizens eligible for service in the legions. Previously, the property qualification reserved military service for propertied households more like those described by Brand. The qualification dropped even more in the 2nd century BC, then was discarded altogether. Most of the soldiers who won Rome’s great expansionist victories would not have fit Brand’s profile.

Brand’s description of everyday Roman republicanism depends heavily on the writings of Roman aristocrats, and particularly of a conservative outlier—Cato the Elder, an embattled idealist—Cicero, and a poet for its bygone glory—Horace. Thus Brand describes an idealized version of what Roman citizens and their military service may have been like in the late 5th or 4th centuries BC, or what the ruling aristocracy were like later. But Rome’s biggest victories occurred under very different conditions in the 3rd and 2nd centuries, when its citizenry swelled with descendants of freedmen and tens of thousands of Italians—many of whom lacked the ability to vote. This far less glamorous demographic advantage fueled Roman military success.

It is also important to consider the limits of historical analogy. Rome differed significantly from modern states in legally requiring its political leaders to complete military service. With a few exceptions, those leaders always came from the aristocracy, Rome’s cavalry class. They enjoyed dramatic political and social asymmetries that assured their status.[5] Brand tends to imagine the rank-and-file Roman and the privileged aristocrat possessed similar levels of literacy, pre-service military training, acumen for politics, and concern for just war.[6] These claims often lack evidence and at times defy logic. Brand chalks Roman mutinies up to their republican spirit, “exercising political sovereignty,” but none of the examples he uses before the last days of the Republic were mutinies at all, and the few mutinies that did occur were about things like arrears of pay or poor leadership.[7] Depicting these as acts of political sovereignty supports Brand’s argument, but would make practically every mutiny in any army an exercise in political sovereignty.

Brand rejects characterizing America’s all-volunteer force as citizen-soldiers; but, by the same criteria, neither were Rome’s legions.

Brand’s Roman soldiers yearned for farms, wives, and children, and their duties at home motivated their concern for the rapid conclusion of wars.[8] That description sounds like a citizen-soldier, but it does not square with Roman military history. Not only did Rome go to war more often and for longer periods of time than other states, it also conscripted overwhelmingly young, unmarried men to the legions, not property-owning heads of households. Well before Sentinum in 295 BC, Rome’s armies began spending whole years in the field, removing soldiers from agricultural duties entirely. For many young Romans, military service provided opportunities in the form of plunder, promotion, or large farms in Rome’s colonies. Brand rejects characterizing America’s all-volunteer force as citizen-soldiers; but, by the same criteria, neither were Rome’s legions.[9]

Killing for the Republic is, for ancient history, fairly accessible, and between that and its celebration of civic virtues and the republican spirit it may garner a significant audience. It does speak to fundamental questions: what made Rome special, and how is Rome relevant today? Republics do need citizens invested in military service and in public life generally. In the military sphere, for example, Eliot Cohen has written frequently and recently about civic virtue and citizen soldiering.[10] While Brand's book asks us to consider the place of civic virtue in modern Republics, its mischaracterizations of Rome's military history and the civic virtues of its citizens make it difficult to recommend.

Paul Johstono is an associate professor of military and security studies at the U.S. Air Command & Staff College and teaches in the Department of Leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Military History from Duke University. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: “The Death of Decius Mus” painted by Peter Paul Rubens (Wikimedia)

Notes:

[1] Brand, Steele. Killing for the Republic: Citizen-Soldiers and the Roman War of War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019, x.

[2] The Greek historian Polybius, a Roman hostage turned client of the Scipios, offered a similar assessment in the middle of the 2nd century BC: “the Romans, fighting as they are for their country and their children, never can abate their fury but continue to throw their whole hearts into the struggle until they get the better of their enemies” (Histories, 6.52.7).

[3] Hanson, Victor Davis. The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1989.

[4] Including one of Rome’s cardinal enemies, Philip V of Macedon, who decried Greek exclusiveness as a harbinger of Rome’s eventual triumph, Syll.3 543.

[5] In addition to better diet, education, mobility, social connections, leisure, and living conditions, the Roman patronage system, which Brand only barely discusses, was essential to Roman life and constantly reinforced the status of the aristocracy. In politics, the main electoral assembly, the Centuriate Assembly, functioned as an electoral college. It assigned citizens to a voting unit (a century) based on wealth and age, so the votes of wealthier, older men were several times more valuable than those of younger men from the infantry classes, and vastly more valuable than those of the urban poor, the proletariat.

[6] See discussion at 161. Brand’s literacy claim derives from a misreading of Edward Best’s “The Literate Roman Soldier” Classical Journal 62.3 (1966), which merely demonstrated that the cavalry class must have possessed a functional literacy for camp life. The atrocious Latin of the Bellum Hispaniense indicates that even high-ranking Roman officers in the Late Republic were often possessed of little more than a functional literacy. Brand’s claims about pre-service military training derive from statements by Cato, Cicero, and Horace about the private and public training of horsemen. Nearly all evidence for civic military readiness relates to the cavalry class (e.g., Strabo 5.3.8, Dio 52.26), some evidence is ambivalent (Vegetius 1.4, Dionysius 5.13.2), and much suggests the large preponderance of infantry recruits were very raw (e.g., Polybius 5.106, Vegetius 1.3, 1.7, 1.11, Sallust 7.4).

[7] Brand, Steele. Killing for the Republic: Citizen-Soldiers and the Roman War of War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019, 41. For example, during Scipio’s Spanish Campaign, which Brand does cover, 8,000 Italic and Roman soldiers mutinied over arrears of pay (Livy 28.24), but Brand does not discuss it. He identifies the popular secessions of 494 and 449 as “mutinies of the army” but both began as citizen political movements, not among serving soldiers. Mutiny was actually more common in the professional legions of the Empire. Cicero described legions that mutinied to Brutus’ camp as doing so out of concern for the safety of the republic, but was quite surprised they--professional soldiers levied by Julius Caesar--possessed the political discernment (Cic. Philippics 10.12). On mutiny in Roman armies, see Lee L. Brice, “Indiscipline in the Roman Army of the Late Republic and Principate” in New Approaches to Greek and Roman Warfare, edited by Lee L. Brice, Wiley-Blackwell 2020.

[8] Ibid., 37.

[9] Ibid., 18-21.

[10] Cohen’s recent essay, “History, Critical and Patriotic” in the Spring 2020 issue (20.2) of Education Next, urges teachers of history to consider how civic virtue and patriotism can be responsibly cultivated. Although he has written on these topics regularly for more than 30 years, I would direct a reader first to “Twilight of the Citizen Soldier” in Parameters 31.2 (2001).