After the Etruscans had been driven out the Romans decided that they had had enough of the monarchy and settled on a system of oligarchy instead. Headed by Lucius Junius Brutus, members of the ruling class (the patricians) created a Senate and from that body they elected two magistrates, later known as consuls, to see to the hands-on business of running things for a year at a time. It was a form of government that was always evolving, gradually becoming more democratic as the common people (the
Plebeians) demanded more civil rights. The plebeians eventually won the right to elect their own representatives, known as tribunes.
The fifth century BC was a period of cautious colonial expansion as the Romans defended themselves against neighbouring territories on the Italian peninsula. They were defeated many times but Roman tenacity finally won through. They suffered a setback in 394 BC when they found themselves under attack from the Gauls, who were gradually working their way southwards from central Europe. The Gauls succeeded in sacking Rome in 390, though they did not occupy the city. The city responded by strengthening its defences.
Rome’s next powerful enemies were the Samnites, a group of Oscan-speaking hill tribes with whom they fought a series of protracted wars on and off between 343 and 290 BC. Their final victory meant that the Romans now had overall coast-to-coast control of a huge area of central and southern Italy that included the important cities of Benevenium (Benevento), Capua and Neapolis (Naples).
Expansion southwards continued unabated into the third century BC as Rome finally brought the Greek colonies of southern Italy into the fold. This was not achieved without a struggle. In 280 BC the maverick warlord Pyrrhus of Epirus landed in Italy with a Macedonian-style army of 25,000 men armed with pikes, and 20 elephants, and defeated the Romans, first at Heraclea and then the following year at Ausculum, suffering heavy losses of men both times. Reinforced by Rome’s old enemies, the Samnites, he advanced to within 40 miles of Rome. He tried to negotiate with the Romans but they refused to deal with him. The Greek philosopher Plutarch (AD c. 46-c. 120) claims that Pyrrhus offered a bribe to a Roman ambassador, Fabricius, in an effort to get his enemy to listen to his peace plans and when this failed tried to intimidate him with one of his elephants. ‘Your gold did not move me yesterday,’ said the noble Fabricius, ‘nor does your beast today.’ Pyrrhus’s elephants were the first the Romans had ever seen and they jokingly referred to them as ‘Lucanian cows’.
It is a measure of the Romans’ tenacity that while Pyrrhus and his supposedly superior army defeated them not once but twice, ‘liberating’ the whole of southern Italy in the process, he was still forced to retreat. Two costly victories for no gain. He returned in 275 BC and this time the Romans defeated him, in the Battle of Beneventum. The poor man has left his name
To posterity in the shape of ‘pyrrhic victories’ - gains that have been won at such cost that they are perceived as disasters for the victor.
SEA
With southern Italy now under control, the Romans sought to complete their domination and in 264 BC the Roman legions crossed the Straits of Messina and landed in Sicily. They now embarked on the bloodiest conflict in their history - the Punic Wars.
Carthage was the great naval power of the western Mediterranean, with a trading empire that included Sardinia, western Sicily, North Africa and southeastern Spain. Rome entered this conflict as a little-known power, totally insignificant compared to either Carthage or the eastern Mediterranean super-powers - Macedonia, Syria and Egypt - that had emerged after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC.
The first of the Punic Wars against Carthage lasted from 264 to 241 BC and Roman victories gave them control of
Sicily and Sardinia. It had also turned them into a formidable naval power. The Carthaginians then concentrated their efforts on Spain, building up a power base from which the legendary general Hannibal was able to invade Italy in 218. He was finally defeated in 201, by which time Rome had eclipsed all the other great powers. Philip V of Macedon was defeated at Cynoscephalae in Thessaly in 197, Antiochus the Great of Syria was toppled at Magnesia seven years later, and the kings of Egypt became vassals.
The eminent scholar John Mann once described Rome’s political system as a desperate attempt to keep up with the incredible success of its army. Before the Punic Wars ordinary Roman citizens were just beginning to enjoy a certain level of democracy, but the continuing conflict with Carthage led to a less stable society and an erosion of civil rights and privileges as a wider
Gulf developed between the upper and lower classes. By the end of the third century the state was controlled by a few powerful noble families who formed the Senate. Rome had originally confined its military activity to defending itself against its neighbours on the Italian peninsula, such as the Aequi and the Volsci, and it had done this with an army consisting largely of farm workers. These men were conscripted on a rota system in the spring, after the crops had been sown, and then demobilized in late summer, in time to bring the harvest in. The Punic Wars changed all that. Many men left the land to become professional soldiers. They were sent far away from home and often did not return for several years. Sometimes they never came back. As a consequence, if there were no men left behind to work the land, farms were abandoned and whole families moved to the city. The attraction was that Rome operated a primitive welfare system and gave basic food rations to those who were unable to support themselves.
The migration of people from the countryside to the capital continued as a new development hit the traditional rural economy. As the empire expanded, small farms became unprofitable because more and more of them were taken over and turned into huge agricultural estates to be worked by slaves. And the slave population continued to grow as the Romans conquered one territory after another and shipped their captives back to Italy. Putting them to work on the land was one way of dealing with them. Turning them into gladiators was another.
Most of the indigenous people who settled in Rome, therefore, were from peasant stock. They were used to hardship but were often on the edge of starvation. It was a volatile population, prone to revolt. The ruling elite’s solution was, in Juvenal’s memorable phrase, ‘bread and circuses’ - basic food and entertainment - a strategy designed to keep the plebs from expressing their dissatisfaction too violently. The gladiatorial games formed part of this popular strategy of appeasing the populace with public events.
During the first century BC, as Rome extended its influence ever further - from the Rhine and the Danube in central Europe to the Euphrates and the Nile in North Africa, from the Iberian peninsula in the west to Armenia in the east - the civilization reached its apogee. It was the era of writers and poets such as Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Sallust and Livy, whose wonderful classic works tell us so much about Rome, the Romans and their history. The downside, unfortunately, was that this was also a period of unremitting civil strife. The relatively enlightened political
The Forum seen from the Capitol with the Colosseum in the background.
System that had worked so well when Rome was a tight-knit and self-contained city-state was less well suited to the demands and commitments of a spraw'ling empire.
The balance of power that had previously characterized the relationship between the tribunes and the senate began to break down as the power base shifted to the military commanders. These tough warlords were the new Roman heroes and it was they who exploited the weaknesses of the political system, playing one group off against the other. The names of many of these generals are known - Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Crassus, Mark Antony - because they shaped the Roman world.
World History
