06 The spread of Roman power

Of all the great empires of the ancient world, that of the Romans was the greatest and the most enduring. The Greeks had spread their culture far and wide in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great, but had failed to establish a political unity.

In contrast the Romans, via force of arms, the imposition of their laws and the extension of citizenship to conquered peoples, created a homogenous imperium from the island of Britain to Egypt and the western fringes of Asia.

The origins of Rome are lost in the mists of time. According to Roman tradition, the city was founded in 753 BC by a shepherd called Romulus, after he had killed his brother Remus. Romulus was the first of seven kings of Rome, the last of whom, Tarquin the Proud, was banished by the citizens of the city in 509 BC.

Expansion under the Republic In place of the old monarchy, the Romans set up a republic. At first this was dominated by the patricians, a class consisting of a relatively small number of elite families. Every year the patricians elected two consuls to rule over them and command the army, and the consuls were in turn advised by an elected assembly, the Senate. In times of emergency, a single dictator was appointed, but for no more than six months at a time. Domination by the patricians led to unrest among the remainder of the citizens, the plebeians, who eventually gained some political rights, with their own assembly and elected representatives, known as tribunes.

To begin with, Rome had been just one of a number of Latin-speaking city-states in central Italy. Gradually, combining diplomacy with military adventurism, Rome became the dominant power in the region, and the neighboring peoples their allies in the conquest of the whole peninsula, which was completed by the early decades of the 3rd century BC. Rome then turned its attention overseas. The greatest power in the western Mediterranean at that time was Carthage, a city in North Africa that had been founded by Phoenician traders from the Levant. Rome fought three wars against Carthage, successfully resisting the invasion of Italy by the Carthaginian general Hannibal and taking over the extensive Carthaginian territories in Spain and elsewhere. In 146 BC, at the end of the third Punic War (Punicus is Latin for “Carthaginian”), the Romans razed Carthage to the ground. In the same year, Greece became a Roman province, and the Mediterranean became the “Roman lake.” The Romans went on to add the Near East, North Africa, Gaul (modern France) and Britain to their empire, with the Rhine and Danube rivers providing their frontiers in mainland Europe.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. [It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.]”

Horace, Odes, book III, no. 2. This famous line sums up the value the Romans put upon martial virtue and manly sacrifice.

Civil wars Imperial expansion was accompanied by extensive social and economic changes. Originally the Roman army had been made up of small-scale farmers, who served when required then returned to their land. But as the army campaigned further and further afield, these peasant farmers were unable to take care of their holdings, and as a result many fell into debt and were forced to leave their land and seek a livelihood in the city—where many remained unemployed, reliant on government handouts. At the same time, the wealthy elite were able to buy up these small landholdings and form them into larger estates, worked by the numerous enslaved captives that were one of the bounties of imperial conquest.

“Roman, remember to rule the peoples of the world through strength—for these are your skills: to bring peace and impose law, to spare the conquered, and to bring down the proud by war.”

Virgil, in The Aeneid, book VI, provides a mission statement for the first emperor, Augustus

As the rich grew richer and the poor grew poorer, a number of successful generals from the dominant elite vied for power, gathering around them followers drawn from the ranks of the dispossessed. This led in the 1st century BC to a series of civil wars and oligarchies, involving such figures as Pompey and Julius Caesar. Caesar was suspected of seeking supreme power, which led to his assassination by his Republican enemies in 44 BC. More civil wars followed, ending only when Mark Antony and his lover, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, were defeated by Octavian in 31 BC.

Imperial Rome Octavian went on to become the first emperor, taking the name Augustus. He was succeeded by a long line of emperors, some of them effective rulers and generals, some of them incompetent nonentities, some of them crazed despots, such as Caligula and Commodus. The hereditary principle was never firmly established, and succession often depended on assassination or the support given to a popular general by his legions.

Although there was often political instability at the top, for some centuries the Pax Romana (“Roman peace”) reigned through much of the empire, which had reached its greatest extent by AD 200. The provinces were largely self-governing, run by the local elites with little reference to the emperor in Rome—as long as they did not cause trouble. The benefits of Roman citizenship were extended to those conquered peoples who were content to comply with Roman ways; those who offered any resistance were either put to the sword or enslaved. The army recruited from many subject peoples, and army veterans settled in colonies across the empire, often marrying local women. New cities built on the Roman model—with forums, temples and amphitheaters—grew up all over the provinces, trade flourished, and people could travel freely across the empire, able to communicate wherever they went in either Latin or Greek. However, this state of affairs was not to last. From the 3rd century AD the empire began to come under increasing pressure from outside—pressure that was eventually to bring about a catastrophic collapse.

Roman engineering

Although the Romans never quite matched the Greeks in the intellectual sphere, they were supremely practical, and were responsible for some of the greatest engineering accomplishments of the ancient world. Water was brought long distances to the cities by aqueducts, and sewage taken away by covered drains, while the villas of the wealthy benefited from underfloor central heating, Magnificent public buildings adorned every city, none more so than Rome itself, where the Colosseum—the arena for the perennially popular gladiator fights—could seat 50,000 spectators. It was the Romans who were the first to use the arch in a wide range of structures, and it was the Romans who built the first true domes, in such buildings as the temple known as the Pantheon—which employed another Roman innovation, concrete. Military considerations led to other impressive achievements, notably the network of roads that linked all parts of the empire, and the defensive walls, such as Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England, that secured the frontiers of Roman power.

the condensed idea

Rome held sway in the Mediterranean and beyond for over half a millennium