Detail of Roman soldiers, taken from the carving Martyrdom Of St Paul, which can be found in the Chapel Of Sisto IV in the Vatican. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Detail of Roman soldiers, taken from the carving Martyrdom Of St Paul, which can be found in the Chapel Of Sisto IV in the Vatican. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Ancient Rome’s influence cannot be overstated. The English language, government, and culture—from basics such as the alphabet and calendar to more sophisticated legal systems—are so heavily saturated with Roman traits that it is impossible to imagine what the world would be like if Rome had not flourished.
Any civilization whose influence reverberates so strongly around the globe thousands of years after its fall deserves a closer look, and that is what this book provides. Ancient Rome: From Romulus and Remus to the Visigoth Invasion transports readers back to a time of intrigue, conquest, invention, and empire building. Readers also will be introduced to the Caesars, warriors, senators, patricians, and plebeians who built, governed, conquered, and inhabited the ever-expanding territories under Roman rule.
From its mythical founding by Romulus on Palatine Hill, Rome had devised a political and social framework from which the empire would fall away and return and to which emerging countries and civilizations would look for centuries to come. Popular images of Rome conjure the picture of a fully formed state with vast lands and a multilayered government and social order, but its beginnings were humble. The once-small village of Rome transformed itself into an empire through organized government, an expansionist military policy, and openness to the cultures of the lands Rome had dominated throughout the ancient world.
Rome was ruled by kings until the fabled tyrant Tarquinius Superbus was, according to legend, overthrown by the populace. From then on, Rome would never again have a king, instead electing two magistrates called consuls. There were two main social classes in the early republic (509–280 BC), the patricians and the plebeians. In essence, the patricians held the power and the plebeians had the right to vote on laws. The consuls, however, were elected by the military; consequently, primarily generals who led Rome’s armies were elected to consulship.
The Senate, which most likely evolved from the king’s group of advisers, was composed of patrician elders. Because of their collective wealth and social status, the senators and their “advice” were taken seriously. The assembly was slightly more egalitarian, with five classes ranging from wealthy knights to the poor landless, and it passed basic legislation. A clearly defined system of law, called the Law of the Twelve Tables, was completed about 450 BC.
As leader of the Latin League, the loosely aligned individual states of Italy, Rome frequently sought to expand through what was deemed “justifiable war,” though in reality Rome typically provoked other states into war and then claimed self-defense. The Samnite Wars (343–290 BC) brought the acquisition of Campania and 13 other colonies and the establishment of the Roman navy. The Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC) brought Rome control over central Italy from coast to coast. Next came the Punic Wars, fought against Carthage in the period termed the Middle Republic (264–133 BC), which brought Sicily and some small islands under Rome’s control through naval supremacy and small military movements. At the conclusion of the Second Punic War in 201 BC, the empire had gained control over Spain and the western Mediterranean. In the east, Macedonia was annexed as well.
The vastness of the empire made necessary the local rule of annexed territories, called provinces. Local administrators, who were overseen annually by senatorial magistrates, enforced Lex provincae, the rules of the conqueror. The administrators’ main duties were to collect taxes through publicani, private debt collectors. In Rome itself, power was officially shared among the Senate, assembly, and magistrates. However, the elite of the Senate held most of the power, forcing the plebeians to pass laws without their approval, creating a power struggle.
The population was changing, too, as the influx of people from conquered lands sought Roman citizenship. Rome was generally tolerant of other cultures but was careful not to adopt too many foreign ideas, especially from Greece. Former slaves replaced farmers in the countryside, though not as landowners. Senators bought up large plots of land from fallen soldiers and rented to tenant farmers or hired slaves to work it. This relationship served both parties well for many years.
With expansion came a new emphasis on the marketplace. The landless poor flooded Rome, causing food and housing shortages. Independent of the state, manufacturing and trade were still cottage industries, but Rome provided numerous public works to facilitate growth. Infrastructure projects made good use of a recent construction material, concrete, to build arches and shore up aqueducts. The traditional family structure became less important, and child rearing fell to family slaves, who often were foreigners.
Italy was becoming homogenized in the Middle Republic (264–133 BC), as a result of several important developments. The massive construction of modern roads increased travel and relocation into and out of Rome. While Rome was reluctant to impose itself on provincial governments, the friendly relationships between the elite of Rome and other cities naturally resulted in similarities in law. The Italian peninsula was united in military campaigns at their frontiers as Roman troops helped to maintain order throughout the republic.
War was an essential part of Roman life during the Late Republic (133–31 BC), resulting in further conquests. But as the empire expanded, so did maintenance costs. The governor of each province had absolute power over the noncitizens of the city of Rome itself, which opened the door to abuse of power in the form of illegal taxation and fining. A court was established to address these issues. Though it did not punish the offenders, it was a step toward making the government accountable to the inhabitants of Rome, regardless of citizenship and social standing.
Further reform came at the hands of the Gracchus brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, known in plural as the Gracchi. Born into wealth, the brothers each had a turn as “tribune of the plebs,” speaking for the common people. Tiberius Gracchus began his service in 133 BC by attempting to enforce a legal limit to how much land an individual could own, with the goal of distributing land more equally to landless citizens. Through much bargaining, eventually a compromise was reached that put control of this project into his family’s hands. After a group of opposing senators killed Tiberius, his younger brother, Gaius, took up the banner. He continued to strive for more equality among the people through the redistribution of wealth, while also attempting to grant citizenship to other Latins. This tactic was to be a fatal error. Gaius was not reelected in 122, and was killed in a riot the next year. An uprising called the Social War, begun in 90 BC, resulted in citizenship for anyone who sought it, thereby resolving the issue.
Despite these advances toward egalitarianism, power struggles raged on. Pompey, who inherited his father’s army and captured Spain and North Africa with it, became coconsul in 70 BC. His term was marked by self-interest and bribery, and the nobility once again controlled the Senate and exploited the provinces. After his term as consul, he once again took up military service, gaining control over the East and its wealth. Meanwhile, Julius Caesar’s star was rising. Returning from a successful and profitable governorship in Spain, Caesar became consul in 63 with the initial support of Pompey. However, that tenuous alignment was soon severed. Through Pompey’s political maneuvers, Caesar was forced into exile and a civil war began. When Caesar defeated Pompey in Greece, he returned to Rome and assumed a dictatorship. His desire to please everyone, and thus his failure to end the corruption of the Republic, led to his notorious assassination in 44 BC. A triumvirate consisting of Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian, the son of Caesar, assumed power, but a struggle among them led to Octavian’s victory in both the military and political arenas. Rome had one ruler now, and the republic was dead.
Octavian was technically Rome’s first emperor, but he shunned titles so as not to provoke the wrath of his political enemies. By demilitarizing much of Rome and offering to refuse the consulship after one term, he gained the trust of the Senate, who named him Augustus and gave him control over much of the empire. While the people of Rome were fairly powerless, they did have access to courts of law, the protection of the army, public works such as roads, and sociopolitical mobility through the newly opened channel of the equestrian order. They were taxed heavily, but were given stability and growth in return. Augustan art and literature reflected this stability, blending Greek form with Roman values in the works of Virgil and Horace. The empire expanded in all directions under Augustus, who was beloved and deified by the people of Rome.
Augustus established a familial line of succession with mixed results. The last of his line, Nero, used brute force to control the empire. He committed suicide in the face of inevitable assassination by his many enemies. After Nero’s death in 69, civil wars broke out yet again, and four military commanders claimed themselves emperor. At the end of that year, the Senate and assembly ratified Vespasian as emperor, who faced the same task Augustus had—the restoration of order. He and his sons, Titus and Domitian, the Flavian dynasty (69–96), kept control of the empire by strengthening the borders along the Rhine and Danube with auxiliary armies while creating stable posts for the legionaries.
When Vespasian’s enemies assassinated Domitian, a series of foreign-born emperors ascended. The Antonine emperors, a moderate and constitutional succession, strengthened borders without expanding. Hadrian (117–138) gave members of the equestrian order the option of civil service as an alternative to the formerly required military service. Antonius Pius (138–161) had a reign of peace and prosperity and adopted son Marcus Aurelius (161–180) kept out invaders. The Antonine dynasty ended with Commodus (180–192), who relied on provincial governors to secure borders and thus allowed another grab for power after his death.
For roughly 200 years, the Roman Empire was stable and relatively secure. The principate, or emperorship, was widely accepted by the people. The emperors kept the people’s loyalty by avoiding military despotism and creating an environment that allowed prosperity and local self-government while still keeping the people subject to their total authority. The Senate’s legislative power was greatly decreased during the early empire, though the emperors treated senators, who were frequently foreign-born, courteously overall.
The empire began to decline as soon as it failed to follow this format. The dynasty of the Severi (193–235) resulted in a devalued currency, military distrust of the principate, and the persecution of Christians. For the next 35 years the control of Rome alternated between military leaders and favourites of the Senate. This instability afforded the eastern provinces and barbarians to the north the opportunity to invade and recapture lost lands. An economic and social crisis caused cities to barricade themselves, including Rome.
Diocletian, who was proclaimed emperor in 284, recognized that Rome was too large to sustain itself, so he abandoned the principate and established himself as the dominant member of a tetrarchy, or four rulers. The city of Rome was no longer the sole capital, as each emperor ruled from one of four cities. Diocletian increased the size of the army and fortified the borders of Rome. He financed these maneuvers by means of heavy taxation. When he also attached divinity to his tetrarchy, he made enemies of the Christians, who now numbered 5 million of Rome’s 60 million inhabitants.
The tetrarchy died with the ascension of Constantine, son of a tetrarch. Constantine, a Christian convert, was sole Caesar following the surrender of his coruler, Licinius, in 324. He established a hereditary succession plan, reformed the military to create a border patrol and an imperial guard, and christened a new capital in Constantinople for its proximity to trade routes. His sons divided the empire into eastern and western provinces, with grandson Julian left standing after a series of murders. Julian was a pagan and restored temples to Roman gods over the objections of the Christians. His successors, Valentinian and Valens, again divided the empire into eastern and western provinces, and their successors, Gratian and Theodosius, cemented the religious divide between the two.
In the 4th century Rome had a bloated government payroll of 30,000 workers, who took great entitlements as a privilege of their position. In the west, conditions for the poor were worse than in the east, most likely because of the empire’s increased emphasis on eastern interests and the admittance of barbarians from the north into the Rhineland. Pagan culture was largely restricted to the universities, and Christianity was rapidly spreading through the west. Britain, Spain, France, Germany, and North Africa were being taken over by barbarians and Germanic tribes. By the end of the 5th century, Rome possessed a fraction of its former territory.
Some attribute Rome’s fall to the spread of Christianity or to material excess and self-interest of the ruling class. There is also evidence that Rome simply became too large to sustain itself. Leadership was inconsistent, both in form and the conduct of individual rulers. The growth of the military did not keep pace with the physical size of the empire and could not police it effectively. Nevertheless, ancient Rome provided much that remains fundamental to modern Western thought, including a blueprint for democracy, the notion of which continues to engage people throughout the world.