Was this war justified? Did it even help Rome?

[Legio X]

The questions above were posed in a thread dealing with CJ Caesar's Gallic Wars.

 

Actually I don't see why they shouldn't apply to any other Roman war of conquest.

 

Have we asked that to virtually any Roman historian, from Fabius Pictor to Zonaras, it seems the answer would have been almost unanimously straightforward:

 

Rome conquered the world in perpetual self-defense.

 

What would you answer to the same questions?

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Often just because individuals wanted personal glory, but in caesars case, the gallic wars protected italy from more barbarian invasions, like the one marius stopped ca 100BC from teutons and cimbres.

[Kosmo]

That invasion came, in the beginning, from Raetia, the region north of Italy.

[Primus Pilus]

Often just because individuals wanted personal glory, but in caesars case, the gallic wars protected italy from more barbarian invasions, like the one marius stopped ca 100BC from teutons and cimbres.

 

There are also those who have and would argue vehemently that Caesar's war, while initially justifiable by the diminished Roman standards of the late Republic, evolved entirely into a war for Caesar's personal glory.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Often just because individuals wanted personal glory, but in caesars case, the gallic wars protected italy from more barbarian invasions, like the one marius stopped ca 100BC from teutons and cimbres.

 

There was no Gallic threat to Rome that justified Caesar's illegal war. There is, by the way, a long thread on this somewhere.

[caldrail]

Rome conquered the world in perpetual self-defense.

 

What would you answer to the same questions?

 

I would answer - Rome conquered the world in perpetual self-interest.