Suffer in the Empire

My internal dialogue seems to be inescapably hurtling towards a discussion about empires, and their political franchises.

Through the mass of text I've plowed through in the last 4-5 months, I've had a pretty good look at several ancient 'empires' - Athens, Sparta and Persia - and a shorter look at two others - Carthage and Rome. My next target after the Spartans will be Livy and Polybius, and I reckon my Roman and Carthaginian knowledge should increase as a result. If I survive, that is.

Hypothesis:
The success of empires is largely due to two factors - 1) their success in dealing with other empires and political units; 2) the extent and flexibility of their political franchise. 1) is also largely predicated by 2).

The major struggles I've been fascinated by (Athens/Sparta vs Persia; Athens vs Sparta and Rome vs Carthage) all seem to show substantial differences in the structures of political representation between the empires or states, and I would argue that these differences are the key factor in the outcome of the struggles, not generalship, weather, luck or even access to resources.

In Rome vs Carthage this lesson is the clearest, although of course we have to accept the overwhelming pro-Roman bias of all the primary sources. Carthage faced three major problems, all caused by the limited nature of her political set-up:
1) Lack of reliable, cheap manpower - forced to use mercenaries
2) Lack of commitment by the commercial aristocracy to winning the war
3) Desertion of cities, armies and individual leaders (including, critically, Masinissa)

All these problems, I argue, were due to the narrowness of the political structure. There was no over-arching concept of loyalty when compared to Rome. The interests of the ruling class seem to have been mostly financial (hence their failure to pay the revolting mercenaries) and this meant they were not prepared to fight to the end as the Romans were.

When Rome attacked a crippled Carthage in the Third Punic war, the citizens held out for years. If they had displayed this kind of endurance and solidarity in the second war, then the outcome may have been different. Carthaginian treatment of its African allies/subjects was also less successful than Roman. Despite the victories of Hannibal on Italian soil, many cities stayed loyal to Rome and the city's resolve never failed. Carthage surrendered almost straight away after Zama.

I'll return to this later...