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Hi, everybody.

From Wondery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History. I'm Patrick Wyman.

Thanks so much for being here with me today. The rise of Rome from a city-state, struggling to survive in

central Italy, to the hegemonic power of the entire Mediterranean world, is the foundational process of the later

first millennium BC. Everything else that came afterward, including the spread of Christianity,

depended on that happening first. For that reason, folks have spent a great deal of time trying

to explain how and especially why Rome succeeded where every other potential contender failed.

Now, this is a good and worthy project. Rome did indeed rise. That's not just a retrospective judgment, but something contemporaries themselves noticed

and sought to understand.

But that lens of analysis runs the risk of missing the broader dynamics of that time and

place.

The Romans weren't the only ones with agency who made decisions about what they wanted

to do and went out and then did it.

So too did Carthaginians,

Macedonians, Syracusans, Samnites, Tarantines, and all the other people living in that world.

We have to make sense of them, too, and only then can what was special about Rome really

shine through. As we try to grasp especially the military and political aspects of Rome's

push for dominance,

we couldn't hope to have a better guess than we do today.

Dr. Brett Devereaux is teaching assistant professor of history at North Carolina State University.

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