Chapter 1
There are two key events in the mythological foundation of Rome: the arrival of the Trojan hero Aeneas in Italy and the founding of the city by Romulus. Rome’s humility is exemplified not only in the image of the early city but also in the world-weary character of “Pious” Aeneas, who is not always heroic in the conventional sense. Unlike Augustus’ Rome, which he claimed to have “found a city of brick and left a city of marble”, Archaic Rome was a city of mud. Rome’s early kings are generally associated with military conquest, and sometime in the 7th century bc, scattered Latin settlements in Rome were invaded and/or formed an alliance with the neighboring Etruscans from the North. Servius Tullius’ efforts to reorganize the population into several classes on the basis of wealth, rather than ethnic tribes, reflected the needs of a growing population in Rome and its hinterland.
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The Republic began at the end of the 6th century bc as a fledgling collection of agrarian communities and cultures and ended as a vast empire across Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean, including millions of people. Rome’s mixed constitution, often compared to the Spartan government, offered a series of checks and balances between executive, legislative and judicial powers. The politics of the Republic are inextricably linked to power and prestige; to be elected consul was often regarded as the pinnacle of the Roman career ladder. In an environment where military victories became a defining part of life, it was inevitable that individuals, particularly generals, would gain prominence. The same power struggle with the Carthaginians in Sicily that lured Pyrrhus would entangle the Romans. The administration of a large empire continued to plague the Roman Republic. Pirates in the Mediterranean threatened Roman markets and Roman citizens, for whom they showed little respect.
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Rome’s movement towards monarchy was a product of many factors. Crucial among these were the consolidation of power for generals, the prevalence of bribery in elections and the increasing dominance of the Senate. The success of the first triumvirate between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus was immediately evident in the election of Caesar as consul. Caesar’s victory at Pharsalus was a muted one; when Roman fights Roman, everyone stands to lose. Nero was artistic, sporting, brutal, weak, sensual, erratic, extravagant, sadistic, bisexual — and latterly almost certainly deranged. Servius Sulpicius Galba, the sole surviving descendant of an ancient patrician family and the former governor of Spain, was the Senate’s choice as a successor for Nero. Under the Flavian emperors, the economy of the Empire was rationalized to the extent that expenditure could be projected. Dependent kingdoms became provinces of the Empire. Scholarship has reconsidered Domitian’s reign and the context of his condemnation.
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Despite a number of disasters, particularly involving the succession of young and inexperienced rulers in the Julio-Claudian and Flavian dynasties, dynastic succession remained both an aspiration and a popular model for Roman emperors. The procedure for establishing guidelines for the administration of a province probably changed little in principle from republican to imperial times. The principal functions of the provinces were to supply Rome with taxes and grain, the military with food and supplies, and the civil service and the armies of the Empire with cash. Severus was also responsible for a number of monumental restorations in the city of Rome in 203 after an earlier fire, all of which bear inscriptions with his name. The threat of the Empire being overrun was temporarily averted by Aurelian, commander-in-chief of the Roman cavalry, who was proclaimed emperor by his troops while campaigning against the Goths.
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The Romans had a pragmatic attitude to religion, as to most things. Many of the gods and goddesses worshipped by the Romans had equivalents in Greek mythology. Some came by way of the Etruscans or the tribes of Latium. The contractual relationship between mankind and the gods involved each party in giving, and in return receiving, services. The Romans believed that powers residing in natural and physical objects had ability to control the processes of nature, and that man could influence these processes by symbolic action. Disasters were seen by Romans as manifestations of divine disapproval, and unusual phenomena as portents of catastrophe. The religion of the Roman state reflected the ways of private worship, while retaining traditions from the period of the kings. One issue with religion and culture, is that its transmission is seldom a one-way street. The monotheistic practices and Jews and Christians made them a subject of ridicule and persecution for centuries in the Roman Empire.
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Roman society under both the Republic and the Empire can appear as an inherently rigid and recognizably structured system, where ingrained social and ¬economic factors ensured inequalities among its inhabitants. This chapter examines aspects of life and social organization both in theory and in practice, through surviving literary and material evidence, including case studies from the port town of Ostia. The Romans claimed a system of mos maiorum, the “way of our ancestors”. Much of the hard and menial work was done by slaves or paid laborers. In using slave labor, the Romans were perpetuating an institution that had existed in Egypt since at least 2600 bc, and had been carried on under the empires of China, India, Babylon, and by the Greeks. Sexuality and gender is an evolving field in the scholarship of the Roman world, which deserves further consideration in an understanding of Roman daily life.
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Rome’s art and architecture found inspiration in a number of different cultures, which were incorporated into different types and styles of buildings. The overriding impression the material arts of Rome offer is of opulence, solid permanence and the application of practical skills that were largely inherited but were adapted to the economic and expansionist tendencies of the Roman Empire. Roman painting and mosaic, found both in private homes and in public buildings such as baths, show similar developments over time. Under the category of the public buildings there are at least three different types of buildings: temples, entertainment buildings and urban armatures. Rome’s entertainment buildings were defined by arches and barrel vaults which allowed Romans to build massive freestanding structures regardless of location or proximity to natural resources. Many Roman theaters were freestanding and their stage buildings were elaborate affairs, often used to house imperial portrait statues.
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Equally flexible are the genres of Latin literature, many of which are modern constructs. The ancient literature was much more interdisciplinary in nature and the idea that ancient authors saw themselves purely as historians, novelists, comic playwrights, scientists, “didactic”, “elegiac” or “lyric” poets is misleading. The first comic dramas that the Romans saw were based on the Greek “new comedies” of the kind staged in Athens from about 400 to 200 bc. Lyric poetry has come to mean that in which the writer claims to present their own thoughts and feelings. The Aeneid, the epic of the empire of Rome and of Roman nationalism, for its poetry and poetic sensibility arguably the most influential poem in any language, is unfinished. The romance in prose was a literary form used by the Greeks in the 3rd century bc. In the hands of Petronius and Apuleius in particular, the novel took on a very different aspect.
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The growth and consolidation of the Roman Empire is beautifully illustrated in the development of her army. Like Rome’s political sphere in the late Republic, the army was increasingly controlled by individuals, many of whom came from Rome’s most prestigious families. A legion was commanded by a legate, in Republican times a senior politician assigned to the post for a limited period, after which he might proceed to a provincial governorship. The legions were supported by auxiliary forces, composed of inhabitants of the Empire who were not citizens of Rome, and who often brought their own military skills to add bite to time-honoured Roman infantry tactics. The deployment of the Roman infantry in battle depended on its mobility. The Romans continued to fight, pursuing the Britons uphill and breaking their lines so they were caught between fighting heavily armed legionaries and lightly armed auxiliaries. Some legions remained on same station for many years; others were deployed as the situation demanded.
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In retrospect, Rome’s empire can appear to be a product of an excellent set of political, military and administrative strategies. Politicians of the late Republic were plagued with questions regarding who controlled provincial revenues and how the funds collected from local taxes, were spent. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Rome’s relationship to the author's provinces is the almost individual and “case by case” basis in which she interacted with provincial cities, each of which had something different to offer from a relationship with Rome. With Rome presented as a political epicenter, it is easy to overlook the roles that individual provinces could play in Roman history. The city of Ephesus, a capital city of the province, had a long and prominent history when it joined Rome. To travel through the provinces of the Roman world is to appreciate the many different ways in which Roman culture spread, adapted and changed across time and space.
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The traditional ideologies and historical framework which the early emperors of Rome sought to institutionalize in the city’s monumental buildings became a liability in a new Christian world, where pagan traditions were not immediately reconciled with Christian values. Rome, the city that had once been fed with grain from Egypt, Libyan figs, Spanish olive oil and peppercorns from India, was struggling for survival. Byzantium, capital of the Eastern Empire, had first been reconstructed in the time of Septimius Severus not just as a Roman city, but modeled on Rome itself, on and around seven hills. The remarkable thing about the civilization of Rome is not that it ultimately collapsed, but that from such minute beginnings it survived for so long under so many external and internal pressures. Rome’s empire not only produced a number of practical models for scholarship, linguistics and science, it has also been used by subsequent scholars and rulers as a model for successful imperial conquest.
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