Bret Devereaux

It's pretty clearly located in the rhetoric of Augustus and not as strongly earlier. Pax wasn't so much a thing to be desired for much of the Republic. It's not a key buzz-word. But then civil wars and Augustus and he's putting 'pax' on everything, building altars to it, etc.

would humbly disagree; the concept of pax romana exists, I would argue, well in advance of Augustus' rhetoric (the political *necessity* of the concept is, without doubt, truly Augustan). It's hard to see, e.g., intervention in Pontus etc. in any other than the same hypocritical/

/light as the Pax Romana though - same potentially with the dealings as an intermediary between Greece and Macedon. Indeed, what is the simultaneous sack of Carthage and Corinth but the epitome of the concept of pax romana? Augustus coins the term (in exactly the same ways as/

you clearly point out in your post, and really goes big on it in all those examples you point out) - but for my money he's giving a name to a pre-existing Roman policy, rather than creating one.

While you can posit consistent Roman values in those periods, I do not think you can posit consistent Roman policy. Second century Roman focus on Fides != Caesarian Concordia != Augustan Pax.

For most of the Republic - and I have to stress this - war was not seen as a bad thing. It was a *normal* state of affairs and potentially a moral positive. It is only after decades of civil war that the Romans fix on 'peace' as a positive, unmitigated good.

If you haven't, take a read through J.E. Lendon's Soldiers and Ghosts for a sense of the Roman value-set of the Republic (check out also Barton, Roman Honor and Lendon, Empire of Honor). There is a real shift in attitude in the first century brought on by the civil wars.