How Rome Weaponized Fake News to Build an Empire

Ancient Rome’s military conquests weren’t achieved through legions and engineering alone. According to groundbreaking research, the Romans were masterful practitioners of psychological warfare, strategically employing rumors and misinformation to demoralize enemies, win battles, and justify their Mediterranean dominance.

A study published in the prestigious journal Dialogues d’Histoire Ancienne by Jorge Barbero Barroso from the Autonomous University of Madrid reveals that what we now call “fake news” was a sophisticated weapon in Rome’s imperial arsenal. The research, focusing on the period of maximum Roman Republic expansion between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE, demonstrates how controlling information often determined the outcome of major conflicts.

“Rumors are an atavistic communicative act,” notes Barbero Barroso, establishing that information manipulation isn’t unique to our digital age. In ancient Rome’s oral culture, rumors spread rapidly, morphing as they traveled, and significantly influenced military campaigns and diplomatic relations throughout the Mediterranean.

The battlefield provided fertile ground for strategic misinformation. Historical sources like Livy and Polybius document numerous instances where Roman generals deployed psychological tactics. When General Scipio Africanus faced a mutiny among his troops during his Hispania campaign in 206 BCE, the revolt had begun with exaggerated rumors about the severity of his illness. Scipio successfully quelled the uprising by addressing the misinformation directly.

Similarly, Julius Caesar had to calm troops terrified by rumors about the superhuman ferocity of Germanic warriors—stories deliberately circulated by Gallic merchants to undermine Roman morale. Rather than dismissing these fears, Caesar recognized their potential impact and countered them with his own narrative.

Roman commanders frequently created their own falsehoods to gain tactical advantages. At the beginning of the First Punic War in 264 BCE, Consul Claudius circulated a false rumor that he needed new orders from Rome before setting sail, enabling him to bypass Carthaginian naval blockades. During the critical Battle of Metaurus in 207 BCE, Consul Gaius Claudius Nero instructed his troops to shout during combat to create the illusion that reinforcements had arrived—a simple deception that completely demoralized the enemy.

Interestingly, Roman sources consistently portray their enemies’ use of similar tactics as dishonorable. The study cites how Hannibal, during the Second Punic War, ordered the destruction of all Italian lands except those belonging to Roman dictator Fabius Maximus—a calculated move to generate rumors that Maximus was secretly collaborating with Carthage. While Romans viewed their own information manipulation as clever strategy, they condemned identical tactics by opponents as treachery.

The diplomatic arena proved equally susceptible to information warfare. In a Mediterranean world of competing powers, a single piece of news—true or false—could trigger war or cement an alliance. The Roman Senate worked diligently to position itself as the ultimate arbiter of reliable information, regularly dispatching ambassadors to verify rumors from distant regions.

In 203 BCE, responding to reports that King Philip V of Macedonia was sending troops to aid Carthage, the Senate immediately dispatched high-ranking emissaries to investigate. Similarly, a rumor transmitted by Rhodes in 202 BCE about a supposed secret pact between Macedonia and the Seleucid Empire became one of the catalysts for Roman military intervention in Greece and Asia, permanently altering Mediterranean power dynamics.

Foreign rulers also employed misinformation against Rome. King Pyrrhus of Epirus, after suffering defeat by Roman forces in 275 BCE, instructed his ambassadors to falsely claim he had secured an alliance with King Antigonus of Macedonia, when negotiations had actually collapsed. This fabrication temporarily deterred his enemies and stabilized wavering alliances.

Scipio Africanus demonstrated particular skill in information management. When his Numidian ally Syphax defected to Carthage in 204 BCE and sent emissaries to announce this shift, Scipio quickly dismissed them and spread the opposite rumor—that they had actually come to request Roman intervention in Africa. This calculated falsehood maintained his troops’ morale during a critical campaign.

Barbero Barroso’s research emphasizes that rumors were double-edged weapons, sometimes backfiring catastrophically. Consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus in 137 BCE, acting on false intelligence about massive Celtiberian reinforcements, signed a humiliating peace treaty that the Senate later refused to ratify—resulting in Mancinus himself being handed over to the Spaniards as punishment.

Beyond tactical applications, the study reveals how Rome built a narrative framework justifying its imperial expansion. Roman sources consistently characterized their own use of deception as clever necessity while portraying identical enemy tactics as inherent treachery. This carefully constructed dichotomy between Roman virtue and foreign perfidy provided ideological justification for conquest.

“Misinformation shaped perceptions in the narratives of conflicts that shook the Mediterranean,” Barbero Barroso concludes. “The struggle to control the narrative, to sow doubt in the enemy, and to justify one’s own power through information—or misinformation—is as old as civilization itself.”

This historical perspective offers striking contemporary relevance: Rome’s sophisticated understanding that controlling information was as crucial as controlling territory helped forge one of history’s greatest empires, demonstrating that information warfare has deep roots in human conflict.