There may be volumes already extant on this topic of which I'm sadly ignorant of.
But what of the proposition that the
Roman Empire from, I'll place a somewhat arbitrary date of 68 A.D.,
was an empire, unlike some others, in that most of the expansion of the empire, the wins, the losses, the advances, and the retreats were, when boiled down to the underlying reasons, was in essence, a matter of "keeping those barbarian bastards off our backs" as opposed to "We need the gold, silver, copper, land, slaves, crops, ports, and other things to
help us live the life of Empire"?
Even most of Trajan's conquests were to put down rebellions, settle old scores, destroy this or that fledgeling empire, depose or raise this or that monarch as a puppet and similar as opposed to "we need that damn forest land of the
Dacians." Also if any emperor
had a hobby that was war,
Trajan was the guy. Did
Trajan and the
Roman Empire really need
Arabia as a
Roman province?
I know
colonists were often settled in a conquered province, but was that not just to "Romanize" it and thus cut down on future insurrections?
Granted, in the time of
Antoninus Pius the empire was relatively calm, but as
history records,
Marcus Aurelius had to do a lot of head-bashing immediately after,
nor was Antioninus immune from the punitive expedition or three.
A secondary question would be at what point did the empire ever have all the resources it needed to support it's population without conquering a particular region to get some natural or other resource that was in short supply? Or did it ever?
I know that at that perhaps imaginary point, if it existed, there were always "barbarians at the gate" so to speak. But was there ever a "golden balance" in the empire? This last question is not the thrust of my main question, be aware.
One more thing. How does all this relate to: "Got a bunch of guys with swords, shields, and training. What to do with them in the off-season?"