Lecture 22:  Introduction to Ancient Rome

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Periodization

Royal Rome, 753-510 BC

Roman Republic, 510-27 BC

Early Republic 510-281

Middle Republic, 281-133
War with Pyrrhus of Epirus, 281-276
First Punic War 264-241
Hannibalic War 218-201
Wars in the Hellenistic East 201-146

Late Republic 133-27
The Gracchi 133-121
Civil War between Marius and Sulla 88-82
Dictatorship of Sulla 81-78
First Triumvirate 59-53
Civil War between Caesar and Pompey 49-46
Caesar's Dictatorship, 46-44
Second Triumvirate 42-32
Civil War between Octavian and M. Antonius 32-31
Augustan Settlement, 27 BC

Roman Empire 27 BC - 476 AD

Early Empire 27 BC-180 AD
Julio-Claudian Dynasty, 27 BC - 68 AD
Flavian Dynasty, 70-96
Antonine Dynasty 96-180

Late Empire 180-476
Constantine 312-336

View of the Southwestern Italian Coast

Topography:
The peninsula of Italy stands some 700 miles long, 200 miles wide. It is protected to the north by the Alps; the Apennines form a long central spine that separates its east and west coasts. The eastern Adriatic coast tends to be less mountainous, but marsh bound and malarial. There are fewer natural harbors and it was exposed to attacks by Illyrians across the sea. As a result urban civilization developed later than the west coast. The western Tyrrhenian coast is more mountainous, with several natural harbors, and tended to develop earlier. The region is highly volcanic with numerous hot springs and porous tufa soils. Combined with the mild Mediterranean climate, this makes for excellent production of wine and oil. In Campania and along the flanks of Mt. Etna in Sicily, for example, the porous soil retains water during the dry season, enabling the Campanians to produce "three crops per year". Unlike Greece some 60% of the land of Italy is arable. This meant that the region allowed for more cities and larger population. Whereas in Greece the average hoplite army was c. 5000 men, in Italy the average hoplite army was 15-20,000. Larger armies meant that the political situation took longer to resolve.

Ethnicity
To make matters more complicated, the populations of Italy were highly diverse. As noted earlier the Etruscans migrated to Italy at the end of the Bronze Age, possibly as a component of the Sea Peoples. They established a significant empire that extended by 600 BC along the entire west coast from the Po River Valley to the north to Campania in the south. More than a dozen Etruscan cities formed a confederacy that was often as divided within as it was hostile to outside elements. Etruscan ruling elements at one point or another controlled nearly every major settlement in Italy, including Rome, which was seized by an Etruscan dynasty in 619 BC. The last Etruscan king, L. Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), was expelled by the Roman aristocracy in 510. Although their language was non-Indo-European and has still not been fully deciphered, it is clear that the Etruscans lent the Romans a number of cultural attributes, including bronze and iron technology, urbanization, and several religious attributes including augury and funereal games that centered around human sacrifice in the form of gladiatorial combats. Along the central mountainous spine Indo-European peoples speaking Italian dialects (Oscan, Umbrian, Latin) migrated sometime after 1000. Regions such as Latium, Umbria, Samnium reflect the eventual agricultural settlement of these otherwise pastoral peoples. Similarities between Latin and Greek are readily apparent (Gr., patros = Lat. pater; Lat. "Jupiter" = "Zeus Pater") Along the southwest and south coasts and in eastern Sicily, Greek colonists settled c. 800-600 BC -- places such as Syracuse, Neapolis, and Tarentum. Over time Greek and Italian settlers made important contributions to each other's cultures, most notably in Campania where centuries of interaction, often violent, resulted in a mixed population base. Greek innovations such as the hoplite phalanx were readily adapted by Italian neighbors. In western Sicily and across the seas in Carthage a significant Phoenician presence took root by 814 BC. The Carthaginians secured control over their agricultural hinterland of northwest Africa. By 500 BC they had extended the lines of a maritime empire across the seas to Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and east coastal Spain. They controlled the Straits of Gibraltar and sailed as far as the Canary Islands and the coast of England. Several cultural attributes, including their language, their political organization, and their material remains, such as their transport amphoras, show an unbroken link to their Phoenician origins to the East. Finally, to the north in the broad valley of the Po River, Gallic tribes traversed the Alps and settled the region by 600 BC, appearing in history by sacking Rome in 390 BC. Enclosed by mountains, the Po Valley experiences a wet, colder continental climate with significant precipitation during winter. The Gauls came slowly to urban settlement; they are described by Roman writers as physically large and extremely fierce in battle. Gauls were reported to consume huge quantities of beer before battle and to stake everything on the first shock of their ferocious military assaults. From experience, the Romans learned that if they maintained discipline their Gallic opponents would wilt in the Mediterranean heat and sun and ultimately give way. The combination of so many highly diverse populations within close proximity of one another helps to explain the delayed political development of the Italian peninsula, vis-à-vis the Greek mainland. Whereas in Greece the political map became apparent by c. 600-500 BC, in Italy the course of political development does not become evident until 276 BC when the Roman Confederacy emerged as the dominant power on the peninsula.

ARCHAIC OR ROYAL ROME (753-510 BC)

The Latin pastoralists who settled Rome chose the location because of its defensible heights (7 hills) above the navigable river of the Tiber. The Tiber offers the most accessible means from the coast to the central Italian hinterland and the Tiber Island at Rome is the closest point to the coast where the river is fordable. Hence the position was strategic for traffic in fish and salt from the coast to the hinterland, as well as for movement north/south along the coast. The early kings of Rome were legendary but claimed descent from Aeneas, the Trojan hero. Apart from the late survival of kingship, political organization at Rome closely resembled that in Greece. The king was the commander-in-chief in war, the chief priest, and the chief executive of the state (i.e., judicial authority). He was advised by a council of elders called the Senate. The Senate consisted of the heads of all the great landholding households, or the patres. Beneath the Senate stood the assembly of freeborn citizen warriors, as in Greece. As noted above, political development progressed more slowly in Italy -- the transition to a national militia (hoplite phalanx) did not arrive in Rome until the reforms of King Servius Tullius (578-535 BC), which is to say that social organization remained based on kinship much longer in Rome. As late as 410 BC aristocratic families such as the patrician Fabii could still mobilize 400 warriors and operate independent of the state on the battlefield. Family arguably remained the predominant building block of Roman social structure until the Late Republican period (133-27 BC), when, like many traditional Roman institutions, it fell into decline.

THE ROMAN FAMILY STRUCTURE

The patriarchal family remained the basis of social organization in Rome throughout most of its history. In the archaic period it is suggested that all land was held in common and controlled by the eldest surviving male, the paterfamilias, or head of the Roman household. The paterfamilias enjoyed absolute power over everyone and everything on his estate. As late as the 140s BC we are informed of an aged Roman senator whose son committed abuses in the provinces while commanding Roman forces as proconsul (that is, the son had already held the highest possible political office at Rome). Although popular magistrates had indicted the son, his aged father asked leave of the Senate to try his son before the council of his extended clan or gens (like the genos, the gens consisted of all those who claimed descent from a common ancestor, usually a hero descended from the gods). Although surprised by the request, the Roman Senate had a penchant for respecting ancestral traditions, or custom, what the Romans called the mos maiorum, or the ways of their ancestors, and acceded to the senator's request. He assembled his family elders and tried his own son, finding him guilty, and reportedly had his son strangled to death by his servants before his very eyes. As shocking as the story sounds today, it was preserved by Roman sources precisely because it reinforced notions of traditional values in a period when such values stood in decline. Roman elders were pleased to see any examples of the conservative underpinnings of their society being reasserted during periods of great transition. It shows us as well that as late as the end of the Republican Era, the power of the family in Roman society remained strong.

ROMAN NOMENCLATURE

This power is best exemplified by Roman nomenclature. Generally the family or gens took its gentilicium or family name from some hero ancestor, such as Julius (Iulus) the descendent of Aeneas. Each paterfamilias would assign to his children first names or praenomina to distinguish one from another, about 10-12 of which, commonly abbreviated, became extremely common (Caius or Gaius, Gnaeus, Lucius, Marcus, etc.). Several praenomina were based quite simply on numbers, Quintus, Sextus, Decimus, and female names such as Tertia. Such numerical names not only reflect the cold authority of the paterfamilias but also the likelihood of high infant mortality rates. When the paterfamilias died, each male member of the succeeding generation assumed his place as the paterfamilias of a separate nuclear family and the inheritance was divided accordingly. Particularly among patrician families (those claiming descent from members of the Senate during the era of the kings, that is, before 510 BC), it became common for these branching-off elements of the gens to distinguish their separate branches through the acquisition of third names known as cognomina. Cognomina frequently took the form of heraldic badges such as L. Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud. C. Julius Caesar, the future dictator, for example, took his cognomen from an ancestor who was reportedly born by caesarian section (caedo, caedere, to cut). Many cognomina were acquired through valor in battle, or conquest. Others were apparently "awarded" to Roman politicians by the voters, whether they wanted them or not, and were often based on distinctive personal features, for example. M. Licinius Crassus (the Fat), L. Cornelius Balbus (the Bald), Q. Sulpicius Rufus (red haired or red-bearded). Q. Fabius Maximus (i.e., the Greatest of the Fabii), the celebrated dictator who opposed Hannibal, acquired the cognomen Verricosus, because of his warts, as well as that of Cunctator, the Delayer, because he wisely resisted the impulse to confront Hannibal with unseasoned Roman troops on the battlefield. When Tib. Sempronius Gracchus was killed in the urban melee of 133 BC, the aedile or magistrate responsible for maintenance of public order, M. Lucretius, determined to "clean the streets" by throwing the corpses of Gracchus' followers into the Tiber. He became known as Lucretius Vespillo, or Lucretius the Undertaker. As maudlin as that sounds, the curious fact is that a politician apparently three generations removed proudly proclaimed his descent from this magistrate by advertising his cognomen while seeking public office. Heraldic or pejorative, cognomina were useful to Roman politicians in an electoral environment because they offered invaluable name recognition with the voting public.

With the census reforms of King Servius Tullius c. 550 BC, the formal names of all male Roman citizens were registered with the censors as follows: C. Julius C.f. C.n. Caesar, or Caius Julius, son of Caius, grandson of Caius, Caesar. Survival of this nomenclature enables historians to trace back family lineages over hundreds of years during the Republican era, in part because the aristocratic families themselves preserved the memory of their lineages so carefully that their record survives to the current day. Census registration also reveals the dominance of the paterfamilias over others within the familia, family dependents such as slaves. The Romans perceived their familia as a fluid entity capable of absorbing outsiders on an expanding basis. One could rise into the family through adoption, through marriage, and through manumission. Ex-slaves awarded their freedom by their masters would be enrolled at the following census, for example, as C. Julius C.l. Epagathus, or Caius Julius, freedman of Caius, Epagathus, where the abbreviation for libertus clearly shows his manumitted status and his cognomen, frequently, his native (in this instance, Greek) origin. Roman nomenclature serves as a useful reminder of the centrality of the family organization in Roman society.