World History/The Roman Empire

Ancient Rome and the Republic

The Foundations of an Empire

Statue of Romulus and Remus and the Capitoline Wolf, one of the foudning tales of Rome.

According to literature, Rome was founded in 753 BC by the twins named Romulus and Remus. They built their settlements on the Palatine and Aventine hills respectively. (Rome sits on seven hills.) Remus grew jealous of Romulus and mocked the size of the walls he had built, so Romulus killed him. He then named the city after himself and was crowned king. Whether or not this story is true, it highlights the warlike origins of Rome. Around 753 BC the foundations of one of the most powerful empires in history were laid - one which would shake the very foundations of the world.

Map of Rome in 753 BC

The Romans' own accounts and historical evidence suggests that, for several hundred years after its founding, Rome was ruled by kings and emperors. from the nearby land of Etruria. The Etruscans were very oppressive rulers and the Romans desired to rid themselves of their masters. In 509 BC, the son of the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, raped a noblewoman named Lucretia, and then Lucretia, out of her own humiliation, killed herself. Outraged, her family instigated a revolt that drove the royal house of the Tarquins out of Rome. Lucretia's husband, Lucius Tarquinius Collantis and one Lucius Junius Brutus became the first two consuls of a new republic which they founded. The office of the consul became the chief executive position in the Republic. The title of "king" became so despised that it remained a career-shattering charge until the rise of Julius Caesar and the end of the Republic.

Social Structure and Citizenship

The Capitoline Brutus, a bust depicting an Ancient Roman.

The social structure of the Republic was basically divided between two main groups: the patricians, or the wealthy noble class, and the plebeians, the broad mass of peasant citizens. One's class was hereditary, meaning that even if one was lucky enough to be one of the few plebeians who became wealthy and rich(or at least attained enough wealth to be considered middle class), especially as a merchant, one was still considered a plebian. Likewise, some patricians had become almost poor towards the latter end of the Republic. The plebeians were often at odds with the patricians and the class conflict that was generated often saw the patrician nobles granting certain privileges, rights, and concessions to the plebeians in order to keep them under control. In 494 BC, the plebeians gained the right to elect two Tribunes, who held large amounts of control in the government of the Republic. Later, this number was expanded to ten. Finally, the plebeians were eventually allowed to elect a Concilium Plebis, or "Council of the Plebians" which gave them greater control in legal affairs. Towards the end of the Republic, a new group known as the equites became a powerful and potent force within the Republic, as the result of the actions of the Consul Tiberius Gracchus (more on him later). Note that only men, no matter what class, were able to have authority or hold a political position in Rome.

The Government of the Republic

The Roman Forum was an important place for Roman Governance.

The chief body of the Republic was the Senate. Contrary to popular belief, it held no law-making power, and consisted of an advisory function to the various assemblies, which actually passed the laws. However, the Senate was the most important body in the Republic and the most influential - political careers were made or broken in the Roman Senate. The Senate appointed governors and generals, directed the use of public funds, and received ambassadors on behalf of the city! The Senate also had the important power of empowering the two Consuls to appoint a Dictator (for a period of six months) in times of emergency. The reason was that the people of the Republic realized that in an emergency, especially that of war, democracies are too slow to act effectively (contrast this to heightened power of the American President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, for instance). The Senate consisted of around 300 members who could be either patricians or plebeians. Usually all magistrates had been Senators at some time.

The executive power in Roman politics was vested in the cursus honorum, which constituted the order of posts one went through in the Roman hierarchy. It comprised a mixture of political and military posts, each having a particular age requirement for election. The cursus honorum began with a period of around ten years of service in the army, especially the calvary (the "equites"). However, this requirement, because of nepotism, was not rigidly applied. In fact, because of the absence of political parties, political advancement came almost exclusively through family ties and personal influence. The next step (or first) after military service was the office of the quaestor, at the minimum age of thirty (men of patrician descent could subtract two years from all age requirements). Quaestors automatically became Senate members; thus, the executive and legislative branches of the Republic were closely intertwined. In total, there were eight to twelve quaestors who served for a period of one year. They directed the financial affairs of the state, as well as supervising the Roman armies and officers. Former quaestors could be elected to one of the four positions of aedile at the age of thirty-six, subtracting two for patricians. Aediles were administrative positions charged with keeping public order and enforcing the law. Half of the aediles came from the plebeian class and half from the patrician class. This step in the cursus honorum was optional. At the age of thirty-nine, former quaestors and aediles might be elected as one of six praetors, who had several functions. Some held judicial positions; others served as governors of provinces not controlled by the consuls and commanded up to one legion. The chief officers of the Republic were the two consuls, who held the highest powers in the government. They were elected once a year and had to be at least forty-two years of age. No one could be elected consul again except after a ten-year intervening period between consulships. The consuls controlled the city's political agenda, commanded the largest divisions in the army, and were in charge of important provinces. Each had veto power of the actions of the other. In addition to the these offices, there were two censors in the political hierarchy of Rome. These former consuls held incredible power, because they conducted the census of Rome, which gave them power of who belonged to which "tribe" (not ethnic but bureaucratic), and controlled the roll of the Senate, giving them power over its membership. They were elected every five years and served an eighteen month term (the only office not serving a one year term). Another important position in Rome was that of tribune, a position held by aspiring plebeians which allowed them to balance out the power of the patricians.

Most officials in the Roman government held the power of imperium, which meant absolute executive power, except by the veto of one possessing a higher level of imperium. Imperium meant holding the power of life or death over the people. Beginning with the position of aedile, imperium was a great honor that carried with it the privilege of lictors. Lictors were special servants who accompanied magistrates and served them. The number of lictors was symbolic of the power of the office held. Lictors carried with them the faces, a bundle of sticks with an axe within. Inside of the city of Rome itself, the axe was usually removed and the number of lictors reduced, because the power to wield capital punishment towards Roman citizens was reserved for the consuls and the dictator.

Expansion and Conquest

753-202 B.C.E

The early centuries of the republic heralded its rise to prominence in the Italian peninsula. The tiny city-state was blessed with adept leadership and brilliant innovation. In the period of 753-275 BC, most Italians practiced the Greek style of Hoplite warfare with phalanxes. The Romans, who used the style initially, found it unwieldy and hard to manage in the mountainous and broken terrain of Italy. So, they adopted the Legion. The Legion was a band of recruited militia and made up of 6,000 soldiers, brought up in times of war from the middle and rich classes. Since Rome was a military state, these soldiers' battle skills were without question and they often served in the army for 7-10 years, before being disbanded at the end of the conflict. These citizen militias fought hard and received good pay and spoils of war if they succeeded in battle. Through this method, the Romans conquered or allied with all the Italian city states south of the Po river by 275 BC

Rome's success attracted the eyes of other powers in the region. Carthage, the Phoenician colony in modern day Tunisia, was already an established trading power and commanded a wealthy realm. Rome and Carthage grew increasingly hostile over the place of Sicily in each other's sphere of influence and in 263 BC, Carthage and Rome went to war. Rome defeated Carthage and her large fleet, without ever having fought a naval battle before, and conquered Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia. The terms of the peace for Carthage were so extreme, that a young boy named Hannibal, son of one of Carthage's finest generals, felt immense hatred towards Rome. Later on, he became a high ranking Carthaginian general, and after amassing a force in Spain, marched across the Alps to attack Rome in 222 BC, essentially starting the Second Punic War. After making it through the mountains, Hannibal's army swept through Italy defeating every Roman army it came across, including one with more than twice their numbers at the Battle of Cannae. However, the Romans continued to fight on. A promising Roman general, Publilius Cornelius Scipio "Africanus", came up with the strategy of drawing Hannibal away by invading Carthaginian Spain. The plan worked to a degree, and within a year he had conquered all of Spain, essentially isolating Hannibal. He then took the fight to Carthage itself, and at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, Hannibal and Carthage were defeated. This time, the Romans stripped Carthage of everything, and reduced its empire to the area directly around the city. Even her independence wasn't guaranteed by Rome and in the Third Punic War in 146 BC, the city of Carthage was sacked, its inhabitants enslaved, and the rest burned.

215-133 BC

The Capuan bust, which may be of Hannibal, a prominent Carthaginian general.

Roman expansion East started in the Second Punic War when the Carthaginians asked the Antigonid dynasty of Macedonia, one of Alexander's Successor Kingdoms, to assist them in defeating the powerful Romans. Needing to maintain peace on all fronts to focus on defeating their other Greek rivals, the Macedonians declared war in 215 BC. This First Macedonian War had little fighting, but it forced the Romans to think of their neighbors to the east with an eye of suspicion. After this war, the cities of Rhodes and Pergamum both sent emissaries to the Romans informing them of a secret plot of invasion by Macedon. Thus sparked the Second Macedonian War 200-196 BC, saw the Romans attack Macedon to quench any expansionism by the Antigonids. The Romans allied with the Aetolian League, a band of Greek city states who also distrusted Macedon. The war ended quickly and decisively and forced a peace and Macedonian neutrality. When the spoils of territory were assigned the Aetolian League received less territory then they believed they deserved, they invited the other Successor Kingdom, the Seleucid Empire to take over Greece from the Romans. This Seleucid War was finished at the battle of Magnesia where the Romans under Scipio "Africanus" crushed the army of the Seleucid king at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC. Thus, Rome gained a foothold in Asia Minor to be expanded upon later, and ensured the decay of the Seleucid Empire. The last bid for Greek independence were the Third and Fourth Macedonian Wars 172-168 150-148 where the Macedonians fought against the Romans in a bid for supremacy. They lost the Battle of Pydna in 148 BC and were forced to acknowledge Roman domination. After all this destruction in the east, the king of Pergamum attempted to defuse a succession crisis in his nation by bequeathing it to the Romans. After his death in 133 BC, his entire kingdom was granted to Rome and the wealth it contained would lead to darker times in the Republic.

The Shift from Greek to Roman Dominance

The Mediterranean civilizations of Greek and Rome were dominant during the Classical Era. When the Roman Empire began to expand and conquered Greece, it adopted many of its customs, but also changed some parts of Greek society in order to fit the larger empire. The main factors in the change from Greek to Roman dominance were in the political structure, the religion, and the types of intellectual and technological advancements.

Rome inherited some of its political characteristics from the Greeks. In Greece there were various forms of government. In the city-state of Athens, democracy was invented, and a small empire of colonies was created (Stearns 73, 81). However, Sparta, another major city-state, was ruled by a militaristic aristocratic council (Stearns 73). Rome borrowed political structure from both of these forms of government, but also created some new policies of its own. When the Roman Republic began, it was an aristocratic council, but elected public officials to represent the general population (Stearns 73). When Rome became an empire it "allowed political autonomy in many states in order to keep its vast empire intact" (Stearns 80). The shift from Greek to Roman politics included many small changes.

The Greeks and Romans shared the same religion. The Greeks began a polytheistic religion that spread throughout their civilizations but did not extend to other parts of the world (Stearns 76). The Greek religion had "a complex religion of many gods and goddesses who regulated human life" (Stearns 76). These gods controlled natural forces as well as human emotions. Romans had the same religions as the Greeks, but they adapted it to suit their own needs. They used the same gods and goddesses as the Greeks, but they gave the gods different names (Stearns 76). The Romans also propagated the religion throughout the empire allowing it to spread more widely (Stearns 76). Although there were some slight changes in the main religion during the shift from Greek to Roman dominance, the religion remained essentially the same.

The technological and intellectual advancements were very different because of the basic Greek or Roman worldview. The Greeks were hypothetical thinkers who were mainly concerned with natural order (Stearns 77). This meant that Greek advancements were mostly intellectual. Most achievements were in science or mathematics “as a means of ordering nature’s patterns comprehensible” (Stearns 77). Romans were much more practical. They had wonderful engineering achievements including the creation of roads and aqueducts (Stearns 78). The Romans' engineering accomplishments were a vital factor of the Roman Empire. The technological advancements and the intellectual achievements made in the shift of cultural dominance are present in today’s academic theories and structural triumphs.

During the shift from Greek to Roman dominance many changes were made, but some similarities existed between the two cultures. The Romans borrowed many of their features from Greeks. Their political structures, religion, and intellectual and technological achievements united the two civilizations. This shift was also reflected in the languages spoken, the Western half of the empire would become Latinized, while the Eastern half would largely remain Greek speaking.

Julius Caesar

Bronze statue of Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar was a powerful Roman politician who lived from 13 July 100 BCE – 15 March 44 BCE . His actions paved the way for his adopted son Octavian (later known as Augustus) Caesar to transform the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.

Christianity appears in Rome

Before this time-period, Roman people believed in the Roman gods. Christians were killed and tortured. However, St. Paul and Constantine helped Christianity, to the glory it has today.

This part might need more information.

An Empire split in two

The Roman Empire was divided into an eastern and a western half under the emperor Diocletian. This may sound like a simple administrative decision but it was actually a monumental shift in the way Roman affairs were conducted. There would now be two emperors, who would each appoint a "Caesar" under him to serve as his successor; Diocletian hoped this would put an end to the succession crises that had plagued the Empire. Also under Diocletian's reforms massive taxes were instituted to help prop up the Roman economy: the tax burden became so great that some hailed the barbarian invaders as liberators, merely because of their lower taxes. The tax burden was also highly unequal, with the senatorial classes being completely exempt. The new taxes caused people to want to quit their jobs and run away from the power of the empire so they were bound to the land, and many people were bound to the professions of their fathers. Here we can see the origins of medieval serfdom and the rise of the manor as more and more people fled the cities to the country, to escape growing poverty and starvation.

The Decline and Fall of Rome

The fall of the Roman Empire is an important and interesting event in World History. Its fall marked the end of one of the greatest and longest-lived empires in the ancient world. It is important to realize, before reading any further, that the Roman Empire fell due to entirely internal causes. The AP World History test takes this view, as do most historians. Because of its self-weakened state, barbarian invasions were possible. This was the immediate cause of the collapse. This isn't to say that the Roman Empire ended entirely at one point in time either. The Eastern half of the Empire, known from 476 AD onwards as the Byzantine Empire, would exist until 1453, a full thousand years later.

Reasons for the decline and collapse

From the time of Augustus to the time of Diocletian, there was no doubt that the Caesars intended to rule over a unified empire. As the centuries passed, however, Italy, the hearth of Roman culture, became less and less influential in politics and the economic life of the empire. Once a country of peasants with small landholdings, Italy by the third century C.E. had sent untold thousands of her native sons into the Roman legions, sending them away to the borders of the empire. The small farms these men had owned had been swallowed up by huge agricultural estates, which were worked by hordes of slaves brought into Italy from all over Europe, Asia and North Africa.

Rome's later imperial rulers -- the absentee aristocrats who owned the estates -- had a much more tenuous connection to the land and its traditional cultures than the Republic's peasant farmers had had. These rich men enjoyed the wealth that poured in from Rome's conquered provinces, maintained primarily urban residences, and adopted a variety of non-Roman spiritual practices alongside Roman native traditions. Early in the empire, Greek philosophical schools and systems became prominent on the Roman scene; as the first and second centuries passed, more and more urban Romans began to pursue cults and religions from the East, such as Persian Mithraism, Egyptian cults such as that of Isis, and, increasingly, Christianity. Rome itself was a multinational metropolis whose population was heavily skewed toward slaves, freedmen and their descendants, mostly speaking an urban Greek rather than Cato's Latin. The third-century rise of a line of emperors of Syrian origin was fully in line with all these developments. The names and forms seemed continuous with the past, but great changes were underway.

Meanwhile, the outer provinces garrisoned by the legions began to diverge from the center. In the West, Brittania, Hispania and Gaul retained local cultures strongly tied to the land, although their own elites lived Romanized lives in villas and towns. Greece, Syria and Asia Minor gained wealth and influence from land and sea trade routes to India and Asia, becoming more and more distinct in this regard from the agricultural West. Roman citizens in the provinces lived lives not directed from Italy.

Farms and estates were the wealth in the empire's economy, especially in the West. The third century started to see a shrinking of the rural population within the Roman frontiers, as many peasants left the land for the towns. Whole farming regions were abandoned, and Roman officials collected less and less tax revenue from them, despite attempts to restrict peasant movements and resettle vacant tracts. The resulting lack of funds to pay soldiers, operate legal and administrative offices, and maintain roads and buildings, sapped the empire's cohesion. Roman households lost their long-distance connections as the decades passed, turning inwards to make their estates and villas more self-sufficient, which further decreased trade and economic interaction between the provinces. From a military standpoint, a weakened government was losing the ability to project power, to send legions from Syria to garrison Britain and Italians to guard the Rhine. Short of funds, Roman generals found the best remaining way to motivate their troops was by having them defend their own homes. Thus, Rome's legions, which had brought so many provinces under Italy's rule, by the third century were drawing many of their officers and men from those very same formerly vanquished provinces.

A lot can be attributed to the collapse of Rome. The barbarian invasions are only the catalyst that brought on the gradual end of the empire. Over the centuries the costs of keeping large legions grew exponentially, mostly from the emperors' desires, not to have a well maintained military force, but to prevent a coup by rival generals. Extravagances at home, both for the wealth given to patrician families, as well as the obscene costs of the games to keep the plebians happy, helped depress the economy along with various epidemics. Coupled with a series of poor harvests across the empire, the situation for the ailing giant became dire. Further exacerbating the situation was the growing practice of hiring barbarians to defend the borders of Rome for lack of finding Romans or Romanized peoples to serve. This is largely attributed to universal citizenship towards the end of the empire; whereas before citizenship was either received by being born from citizens, or by serving in the Imperial legions. It did not help that the empire was large and difficult to govern from Rome, despite the excellent road systems the empire had maintained. Marcus Arelius, the scholar emperor, spent most of his Imperium traveling the frontier trying to keep the empire together back in the mid to late 2nd century (161-180). Few emperors after Arelius were as effective in administering the empire as he was, though there were some notable and great emperors such as Constantine and Diocletian, by and large many emperors were killed either by civil wars or the Praetorian Guard after only a short time wearing the purple, around 49 emperors in 104 years between Arelius and Diocletian, about an emperor every two years; afterwards the average Imperial reign lasted 3 years until the fall of Western Rome. This is a great contrast to the average reign of 13 years of all the emperors from Augustus to Arelius. The constant battles for the throne, coupled with high taxation and general breakdown of social order, left Rome too weak and crippled to fend off the barbarians. However, it must be noted that the empire did not fall all at once, it was very gradual, there are some articles of some regions of the broken empire still considering themselves part of the Roman empire up to the early 8th century. Coupled with the fact that the Byzantium/Eastern Roman Empire lasted until the mid 15th century, and that the Western World owes its culture, religion, and ideas largely to the Roman Empire makes them one of the longest and most successful empires in the existence of humankind.