In the Louvre, there’s a famous painting by the French Artist Jacques-Louis David depicting the Intervention of the Sabine Women. In it, the Sabine men, whose daughters were stolen by and then married to Romans in the mid-8th century BC, returned to avenge Roman treachery and retrieve their offspring. The scene depicts a woman standing between the belligerents, imploring them to cease fighting:

If you are weary of these ties of kindred, these marriage-bonds, then turn your anger upon us; it is we who are the cause of the war, it is we who have wounded and slain our husbands and fathers. Better for us to perish rather than live without one or the other of you, as widows or as orphans.

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Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799, by Jacques-Louis David. Public domain.

The men stopped fighting, and eventually the Sabines became Roman citizens. This strategy of conquest and integration would characterize Rome for much of the next 1100 years. Other than perhaps Egypt, most conquered lands became essentially Roman. This is demonstrated by the extensive Roman ruins found in places like Britain, Portugal, Algeria, Turkey, and more. Although most would never become Roman citizens, their lives would have had similar characteristics throughout the Empire.

Romans didn’t just do forced acculturation through outside conquests. When armies would attack Rome and were defeated, which they almost always were, the Romans would sell those women and children who had traveled with the invading army into slavery. The men, if not sold into slavery, would be conscripted into the Legions, but sent to regions far from their native lands. Again, it forced its culture on others, not vice versa.

The result of this was that for most of its history, Rome faced relatively few consequential internal rebellions beyond civil wars between rival generals. In the 4th century AD, however, that would........

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