Conclusion: Roma Aeterna
In: Rome, Global Dreams, and the International Origins of an EmpireSearch for other papers by Sarah H. Davies in
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Abstract
In the generations after Polybius, Romans appear to have responded to the uncertainties of the second century by at first embracing a tension in their position of power. In an odd twist, their rhetoric of global power romanticized their own decline and fall, as a “noble” apology for achieving the dream of Zeno. At the same time, they re-affirmed their claim to have successfully encompassed the entire known world, and re-confirmed their own legitimacy for doing so. By the Augustan period, both traditions conjoined, guaranteeing the new meaning of imperium and its goddess Roma. Augustus not only declared that the Republic had fallen, but that it had also been restored, and it had thereby transcended the old cycles of History. There was a new beginning for the world, with Rome’s Empire now confirmed as a reified entity, both universal and everlasting.