Rome from its origins to the end of the Republic

We now turn to the Romans, whose great civilization was the last to dominate the Mediterranean region in ancient times. From modest beginnings at a fording point on the Tiber River in central Italy, the city of Rome eventually controlled a huge territory stretching from Britain to North Arabia, from the Danube River to Morocco. Admiring and assimilating Greek and Etruscan culture in particular, the Romans created their own social and artistic synthesis, an outlook that would profoundly influence the Mediterranean world and Europe well after the demise of pagan antiquity, through the Middle Ages to the present day.

Roman history is divided into two main periods. After the initial settlement and a century of rule by Etruscan kings, the Romans organized themselves as a republic. The Roman Republic, the formative age of Roman civilization, lasted for nearly 500 years, from 509 to 27 BC. After decades of disruptive civil war, Octavian, later called Augustus, brought peace to the waning Republic, then transformed the state into a newly harmonious unity, the empire. Prosperous and powerful for two centuries, the empire began to fracture in the third century AD. The Roman Empire would nonetheless last into the Middle Ages, until AD 476 in its western half, according to conventional periodizations, and until AD 1453 in its eastern, Byzantine half. This book will trace the Romans to the fourth century AD only, to the end of pagan antiquity, when the character of the empire was profoundly transformed by the change of the state religion to Christianity.

We begin with the origins of Rome and its subsequent development during the Republic. Because evidence from the city is fragmentary, Republican Rome having been heavily remodeled and rebuilt in imperial and medieval times, we shall complement our examination of Rome with visits to other, better preserved towns for a fuller understanding of the period: in particular Cosa, but also (in Chapter 22) two cities originating in the Republic that continued during the Empire — Pompeii and Ostia.