If a scholar wishes to create a picture of a modern society in all its aspects, there is little of what he needs to know that he cannot know, although there may still be much that he cannot understand. For the history of Greece and Rome, there is a great deal which is simply unknowable. From the end of the archaic age of Greece, there is an unbroken sequence of works by Greek and, later, Roman historians down to the end of antiquity. But their vision and range of interest were often limited and much of what they did produce has been lost. Some help may be derived from the documentary material...

Between the Sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC and the middle of the second century BC, a part-time army of Roman peasants, under the leadership of the ruling oligarchy, conquered first Italy and then the whole of the Mediterranean. The loyalty of these marrauding heroes, and of the Roman population as a whole, to their leaders was assured by a share in the rewards of victory, rewards which became steadily less accessible as the empire expanded - promoting a decline in loyalty of cataclysmic proportions.