It seems as if our examination of civilization in the West has been doing precisely that--moving westward. We started in Mesopotamia and, with a short stay in Persia, moved to Greece and now Rome.
Rome began as a small village on the Tiber river 18 miles inland on the west coast of the Italian Peninsula. It was at a shallow spot in the river, so roads tended to converge there for ease of fording the river. As the village progressed, the several islands in the Tiber there made it a rather simpler process to build bridges across the river and further give the town some importance as a crossroads. The legend about Rumulus and Remus being sons of Mars, suckled by a she wolf is just the sort of legend Romans would make up to explain their city's name and its military heritage. The traditional date for the founding of Rome is 753 BC.
Italy itself--750 miles long and 120 miles wide--is separated from the rest of Europe by the Alps, and is cut in half lengthwise by the Appenines, a set of low mountains that today makes driving interesting, and tended again to separate Italy into cultural zones. Thus, until relatively recently, there was no such thing as an "Italian." Rather, the people of the peninsula identified themselves variously as Latins, Etruscans, Samnites, and others. The Romans were Latins, but in Rome's earliest days it was dominated by a highly cultured but otherwise mysterious people--the Etruscans.
Civilization had percolated into Italy rather late, The Iron Age began in Italy about 900. It was an agricultural world--much of it still is. Even when Rome was the greatest city on earth, people still raised olives and wheat and goats on the hills and plains.
In addition to local tribes, Greeks had colonized much of Sicily and southern Italy by the 6th century.
753-509: Rome was a kingdom ruled by Etruscan kings, There are five legendary kings, including Romulus, but their lives are so encrusted with legend it is difficult to know if any of them actually existed. Rome did become wealthy under Etruscan rule, and when she threw off the Etruscan rulers, lost significant trade.
Before 509, the Etruscans had dominated their corner of Italy with a traditional horse and chariot based military force which depended on a few members of the nobility to keep order. But by the early 6th century, Greek military strategy was coming into use throughout Italy. This dependence on the phalanx meant that armies were increasingly dependent on ordinary foot soldiers. Naturally, these foot soldiers began to gain in prominence, something the Roman aristocracy could not abide. They probably threw out Tarquin, the last Etruscan king, in order to maintain their privileged status against the lower orders. Naturally, the legends immediately invented to justify the overthrow spoke of national pride, and how Tarquin's son Sextus raped Lucretia whose suicide sparked revenge and a patriotic uprising. Rome was still, at best, a fair sized town.
The kings were out and Rome became a Republic, not to be confused with a democracy. The Patrician families did not intend to share power with anyone.
But they needed the lower orders of Plebes--free, landowning farmers mostly--to man the armies. The Plebes recognized that their political status did not reflect their economic or military importance. Thus began the Struggle of the Orders which continued until 287 when the Hortensian laws allowed broader political participation and opened up the nobility--but not the patrician class- to wealthy plebes. Wealth, and to a degree ability, became the key to becoming a successful, powerful Roman.
After the fifth century, the Plebs would elect ten tribunes This was an extraordinarily powerful office. The tribune could pretty much put his nose in anything, could veto legislation, in order to protect plebian interests, which is not to say the interests of the poor.
Two consuls were elected annually and served as chief execs and as supreme military commanders of the republic. Praetors served as judges and lower ranking military leaders.
The Senate was composed of 300 men, appointed for life. The Senate had few formal powers, but immense prestige. Whenever the Senate advised a particular course of action, the advice was almost always taken.
The popular assemblies represented the great mass of the Roman citizenry. There were various assemblies, divided along family lines and along residential lines. The assemblies elected the consuls and passed legislation, but tended to be dominated by the wealthiest citizens.
Dictators were chosen occasionally for six months to deal with a major emergency.
Rome was a very conservative place. One way to maintain this conservatism was through client-patronage systems. A patron looked after his clients, interceded for them if they got in trouble, perhaps loaned them money, made sure they had a job. Being a patron could be an expensive endeavor, but in return, the client supported the patron--voted for him, fought for him if necessary. These relationships were passed down from generation to generation and if they were informal, were taken quiet seriously.
Family relations were also central. Fathers had the power of life and death over even their grown sons. While this probably persuaded a number of rebellious sons to settle down a bit, there were only a handful of occasions when a father actually ordered the death of a son.
The Roman gods, the ones not imported from elsewhere, were gods of hearth and home. The Romans also worshipped a host of numinae--deities of streams and cross roads and forest depths.
Once they started encountering Greeks, the Greeks imported Greek statues. Jupiter came to be conceived very much like the Greek Zeus; Mars started to look like the Greek Aries. I suspect that the official religion of Rome, the ritualized worship of Jupiter Captiolinus had less impact on the average Roman than we might think. To the laborer and farmer, it was more important to stay on good terms with the more ambiguous, capricious gods of fertility and rain and the like. Unfortunately, Roman historians thought such things unworthy of notice, so we know little of them.
Romans were religious. When they started building an empire, they tended to leave other people to their religious and cultural ways, usually assuming that sooner or later the superiority of Roman culture would win over the populai. Quite often it did.
And Rome stumbled into an empire. As late as 390 BC Rome was burned by raiding Gauls who had to be paid a ransom to leave. Eventually the Gauls were defeated and Rome was rebuilt. What had started in the early 4th century as defensive alliances with the Latin towns to the south turned into practical dominance by the Romans of the Latins. In 331-348 these Latins revolted and were defeated. Rome made a very crucial move. Roman citizenship was extended to the other Italians, even in defeated cities. Rome forged alliances that gave real benefits to the allies. Rome could never have expanded across the Mediterranean if she had been forced to watch her back on the home front. Instead, Italians from all over Italy were to serve as e core of the Roman army and the backbone of Roman political and economic strength. By 275 BC Rome had defeated the Greek colonies in southern Italy and brought them into her alliance system. By 265 all of Italy was effectively under Roman control, and only just in time.
While Rome dominated Italy, Carthage, located on the north coast of Africa, was becoming a great naval power. In fact "Africa" is the Latin word for the region Carthage occupied. Carthage had been settled centuries earlier by Phoenicians, and was quite naturally threatened by the expansion of another power so close to her home base.
The First and Second Punic wars (264-241 and 219-201) were wars of survival for both powers. It was in the second Punic War the great Carthagenian general Hannibal led an army, including elephants, a few of whom actually survived, from Spain, across France, and over the Alps into Italy. There, Hannibal was, just barely, defeated. He had hoped that, by bringing the war to Italy, Rome's allies would desert her. They didn't. In the Third Punic War, Rome would absolutely destroy Carthage and sow the city with salt so that nothing could even grow there again. Romans could be vindictive at times
But having defeated Carthage, Rome inherited her empire in Iberia and Africa. There followed a series of wars, the details of which really excite some people. But by the middle of the second century, Rome dominated both the Western and Eastern Mediterranean using a system of military and political alliances in which Rome was clearly the dominant power.
This was also quite profitable. Rome enjoyed the spoils of war to pay for festivals and entertainment's. Her crowds could drink wine from Spain, wheat from Africa, listen to lectures by Greek philosophers--and many became devoted to Stoic philosophy.
But success would begin to undercut the very thing that made Rome strong. With cheaply imported wheat, the small farmers, who were the backbone of the Roman army, could no longer compete economically. Nor could they compete with slave labor used in some of the bigger farms. When farmers went broke they had little choice but to sell their land to wealthy investors who joined the farms into latifundia. Often the farmer would stay and work as a tenant on what was once his land. Often he would go to the cities, especially Rome, hoping for employment. There he would join the crowds of unemployed for whom there were no jobs.
The landless poor (or proles), though they were citizens, were not qualified for military service. The pool from which the Roman legions were drawn was growing smaller and smaller, even as the demands on the legions grew greater.
Besides, the latifundia were increasingly growing luxury goods, especially wine, which was profitable, and Rome was having to import wheat from Sicily, which makes for a vulnerable situation.
Last week we talked about an ideal: the Roman Republic. Like any Platonic ideal, it is difficult to say that the ideal Roman Republic I described ever existed, because it was in constant flux through time. In fact, we might say that from the beginning of its success as a city state, and certainly from the beginning of its existence as a Republican Empire, the political and social realities that made it possible for Rome to be a Republic began to change and transform Rome, step by step, into an Empire ruled by an emperor. From the end of the second Punic War--201 BC, Rome continued, almost accidentally, to expand her empire, first into Macedon and Greece, interfering more and more in Greek affairs, finally dominating them, and in Syria until by 146 BC Rome was master of most of the Eastern and Western Mediterranean basin. This was not the same as ruling directly. Rome did not usually take the trouble to administer a region itself unless compelled to by military necessity. Instead, t he Senate negotiated treaties with her neighbors which gave Rome an excuse to interfere, to become involved in one way or another, occasionally to collect tribute, but by and large the people who came under Roman rule enjoyed the law and order--which made business possible--and the free trade systems the Romans had accidentally created.
But the city of Rome itself was the place to be. It was the center of the world, and the middle and upper level aristocrats whose powers had once been circumscribed by custom and the balance of power among the Assemblies, Senate, and Consulate found themselves ruling alien provinces with unlimited powers of life and death, and unparalleled opportunities to collect bribes, concubines, or whatever else might please him.
Unfortunately for the stability of Rome, the wealth and power became disproportionately concentrated in a very few hands with the great majority of Roman citizens crowded into poverty.
The number of ordinary citizens, small farmers and crafts people shrank. Farming is usually more efficient and profitable on a large scale. Romans who could afford to buy large farms and work them with the labor of slaves captured in war could push down the prices of grain and other produce, which, of course, caused more and more farmers to lose their farms, selling out to create more latifundia, estates cultivated by slaves. The proles, landless laborers, crowded into Rome looking for work, and not often finding it. They went, quite necessarily, on the public dole. Many of them were veterans, many of them wanted to work, to farm their own land, and they were frustrated. They also lost their status as clients, but they could still vote: hence the Roman solution during the empire: Bread and Circus.
133 BC Tiberius Gracchus elected Tribune of the plebes tried to institute agricultural reform--how else can we preserve Rome other than to restore the economic balance. Take public lands--often land held in long term lease--and provide it at no price or at nominal price to the proles to work, to become tax paying citizens again.
Naturally the elites, the Senate, the landed classes, the people who always suspected populists, resented the daylights out of it. It would partly expropriate them. He got it through the Assemblies, ignored the Senate, announced that he was going to run for re-election--unheard of--and was assassinated. Romans did not assassinate their enemies. It simply was not done. A politician could walk through the streets unarmed.
A decade later his brother, Gaius, was elected twice tribune, got some reforms passed, but made too many enemies. Assassinated too after he was out of office.
107 BC Gaius Marius was elected Consul, to face a double Threat, Jugurtha, king of Numidia had revolted, and more importantly, the Gauls were pushing down into Southern France. He successful faced down both enemies, but had to do so by re-organizing the army, allowing Proles to join, and to become dependent on their leaders. They had no stake in Rome itself.
I don't want to go into the details of the last fifty years of the Republic before the assassination of Caesar in 44 BC 15 MARCH, but suffice it to say, Caesar had been in competition for power with Pompey, another great ego. Caesar won. He started, however, acting too much like a king. Romans feared a king as much as they feared democracy, and the assassination of Caesar was a conservative plot to save the Republic. It failed. The conspirators were not Caesar, they lacked his personal popularity, his strength of personality, and assassination has never been an effective way to gain political power in a non-dictatorial society.
Instead of a republic, they got civil war and, 27 BC to 14 AD, a real emperor. Octavian, who later took the name Augustus. His official title was princeps, first citizen, and the early empire was the princepate. It was hard to tell that anything much had changed. Elections continued, people debated issues in the Senate, but it really didn't matter. Augustus managed to let it be known what he thought would be a good course of action, who he thought would make a good consul, and thus went the election. He paid careful attention to the advice of the Senate--something Caesar had failed to do, he appointed his personal representatives to lead the armies and to govern the provinces--about half the empire. He lived in a fairly simple house, outlawed lavish displays of wealth, and ruled an empire of 50 to 100 million people. And, most remarkably, the empire was at peace--mostly--within its borders.
Tiberius (14-37) continued Augustus's policies. Although he was not Augustus's first choice as successor, this brings up a point of value. Emperors usually nominated their successors, often adopting as sons men--usually kin--they thought capable of ruling the empire. Tiberius was not popular--Pontius Pilate was not his best staff decision, and keeping control of the bureaucracy would prove a constant impossibility. The emperors wanted the procurators to keep the peace and procure the taxes. Administering justice was important, but mostly the people of the empire lived under their own laws. But public office was also seen as an opportunity for personal enrichment, for bribes and kickbacks and the like. If a procurator got too rapacious he could be executed--especially if he provoked rebellion, but mostly things simmered.
When Tiberius died, the empire rejoiced--they were not always kind. They should have been more restrained. He was replaced by a 25 year old named Gaius whose nickname, Caligula, little boots, is better known. He was distinctly unbalanced, but he had absolute power and no one dared to restrain him. He spent fabulous sums building a pontoon bridge across the bay of Naples so he could ride his horse across. He deified his sister Drusilla, and put tow others in prison. He appointed his horse to the priesthood, and made something of a point of having his way with the wives of his nobles. One brought a prostitute to dinner to avoid the dishonor. He ruled for four years when he was assassinated by his guards in order to save the Empire.
There is no point in running through the list of emperors--Claudius was generally pretty effective as emperor. Nero was ruling when the city of Rome burned in 64, for which he blamed the Christians, and was accused of starting the fire in order to build himself a palace on lands formerly occupied by private homes. He competed in the Olympics--and won everything-- But he too generally ran the empire effectively.
But in 68 AD a conspiracy put him off the throne and he killed himself. 69 was the year of the four emperors--internal strife in Rome, but the empire recovered. Indeed, the Roman Empire seemed to survive by its ability to transform itself to meet every occasion. As a Republic, the Romans dominated their neighbors and defeated their enemies, and thus successfully made the transition into an empire. As an empire, Rome kept the peace. As long as the world was at peace, the Romans administered it. They made possible the transmission of Greek philosophical ideas, and Christianity could not have become the dominant religion of Europe had the empire not provided the means thereto.
The ideal of Rome was resurrected in the year 800 by the pope to crown Charlemagne emperor of Rome, the Renaissance was a rebirth of the glories of ancient Rome and of Latin. Latin was the language of learning and culture in the Middle ages, indeed until the 20th century.
And the Roman Empire--after it had moved to constantinople, existed until the 15th century when it was destroyed by the Turks at last.
If we have any heritage from Rome, it is the law, not as an ideal, but as a process, as a way of administration.
But there is a hard core to Rome that ought not be forgotten. The Republic failed because too much wealth came into too few hands--a modern phenomenon, because people, in general, no longer believed in the rule of law, not when it became inconvenient. We would do well to remember that. In a republic, you do not always get your way. In a republic, the voice of the minority still matters. The poor matter. Popularity is fleeting, and if power does not corrupt--I don't think it does--it is still dangerous in the hands of corrupt people. That is why we have a balance of power--to prevent a tyranny of the majority, of the popular idea.