Ancient Rome

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Introduction; Early History; Life in Early Rome; The Roman Republic ; The Legacy of the Roman Republic

Introduction

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Ancient Rome, the period between the 8th and 1st centuries bc in which Rome grew from a tiny settlement to an emerging empire while developing from monarchy to a republican form of government.

Nearly 3,000 years ago shepherds first built huts on the hills beside the Tiber River in central Italy. These encampments gradually grew and merged to form the city of Rome. Rome’s history is unique in comparison to other large urban centers like London, England, or Paris, France, because it encompasses more than the story of a single city. In ancient times Rome extended its political control over all of Italy and eventually created an empire that stretched from England to North Africa and from the Atlantic Ocean to Arabia. The political history of Rome is marked by three periods. In the first period from 753–509 bc, the city developed from a village to a city ruled by kings. Then, the Romans expelled the kings and established the Roman Republic during the period from 509–27 bc. Following the collapse of the republic, Rome fell under the domination of emperors and flourished for another five centuries as the Roman Empire from 27 bc–ad 476. This article begins the discussion of ancient Rome’s history with the city’s legendary founder, Romulus, and ends when Augustus becomes the first emperor of imperial Rome, in 27 bc.

Modern motion pictures and television often portray the ancient Romans as military conquerors as well as ardent pleasure seekers, and there is some truth to those images. Their armies did brutally subjugate the Mediterranean world. Today statues of native leaders such as Vercingetorix in France or Arminius in Germany honor those patriots who battled against Roman domination in Europe, just as Christians honor early disciples martyred by the Romans. The ancient Romans also did enjoy lavish and sometimes even cruel entertainments that included gladiatorial combats, chariot races, and animal hunts in the arena.

Yet these same Romans created a civilization that has shaped subsequent world history for 2,000 years. The remains of vast building projects, including roads and bridges, enormous baths and aqueducts, temples and theaters, as well as entire towns in the North African desert, still mark Rome’s former dominion. Cities throughout Western Europe stand on Roman foundations.

Early History

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The land and environment of Italy provided the Romans with a secure home from which to expand. Italy is a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the sea and protected to the north by the Alps mountain range. The climate is generally temperate, although summers are hot in the south. Rome was part of a region near the Tiber River in central Italy that was called Latium (now part of Lazio). Its Latin-speaking inhabitants originally joined the waves of Indo-European peoples who crossed the Adriatic Sea from the Balkan Peninsula and settled in central Italy about 1000 bc.

To the north, the Etruscans had established a vigorous civilization (see Etruscan Civilization) in the region called Etruria. These people probably originated in Asia Minor and spoke an entirely different language than neighboring Indo-European peoples. In southern Italy and on the large island of Sicily, colonists fleeing from famine and political conflict in Greece founded new cities between 800 and 500 bc. The city of Naples derives its name from the Greek words Nea Polis (New City).

Volcanoes like Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius dot the western coast of Italy and its offshore islands, leaving sections of Latium, Campania near Naples, and Sicily fertile from the residue of volcanic ash. The mountains were once rich in timber and had meadows where sheep and goats grazed in the warmest months before they were driven to the plains for the winter. There was salt along the Tiber River and large deposits of iron were located in Etruria. North-south land routes allowed for overland trade, and so commerce as well as agriculture, pasturage, and metalwork drove the economy.

Legends of Early Rome

The story of Rome’s founding survives only in primitive myths and meager archaeological remains. An island in the Tiber River afforded the easiest crossing point, and archaeology shows that some Latins established a settlement on the nearby Palatine Hill; perhaps they hoped to rob, or collect tolls, from traders crossing the river on their way from Etruria to southern Italy.

Roman myth created a more glorious tale of the city’s beginnings. These legends trace Rome’s origins to Romulus, a son of the god Mars and also a descendent of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who brought his people to Italy after the city of Troy burned. Romulus and his twin brother Remus were grandsons of King Numitor of the ancient city of Alba Longa in Latium. Numitor was deposed by his brother, who also tried to kill the twins by having them thrown into the Tiber. Instead, the infants washed ashore and were suckled by a she-wolf who became—and remains today—the symbol of Rome. When the brothers grew up, they restored Numitor to his throne and then founded a new city on the Palatine Hill above the river.

There are no contemporary written records of the Roman monarchy, so the stories of the early kings are primarily preserved in the works of historians Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote seven centuries after the time of Romulus. These legends and even some of the kings themselves are probably mythical creations, and the dates that they reigned are either inventions or rough approximations. Nevertheless, such myths often contain bits of historical information that are passed on and transformed through repeated telling.

Legendary Period of Kings (753-509 bc)

The Romans believed that Romulus and Remus founded Rome in 753 bc, and that Romulus erected a wall around the site of the new city. When Remus tried to assert his leadership by scornfully leaping over the inadequate wall, Romulus killed him and became the city’s first king, giving it his name. He then invited his neighbors east of the Tiber River, the Sabines, to a festival and kidnapped the Sabine women—called the “rape of the Sabine women”—to provide the wives necessary for the Roman population to grow. Other legends about Romulus include his mysterious disappearance in a storm cloud, an event that led the Romans to proclaim him a god.

The second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, was a Sabine who was regarded as especially just and devoted to religion. Many of Rome’s religious traditions were later attributed to Numa, including the selection of virgins to be priestesses of the goddess Vesta. He also established a calendar to differentiate between normal working days and those festival days sacred to the gods on which no state business was allowed. His peaceful reign lasted from 715 to 673 bc.

Under Tullus Hostilius (672–641 bc) the Romans waged an aggressive foreign policy and began to expand their lands by the conquest of nearby cities like Alba Longa. When the warlike King Hostilius contracted the plague, the people thought it was a punishment for the neglect of the gods so they named Ancus Marcius, a highly religious grandson of Numa, as the fourth king (640–617 bc). Marcius founded the port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber.

A wealthy man from the Etruscan city of Tarquinii, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, came to live in Rome and became such a favorite of King Ancus that he managed to succeed him even though he was considered a foreigner. Tarquinius, who ruled between 616 and 579 bc, was said to have drained the marshes between the hills and paved an area for the market place that became known as the Roman Forum. His successor, Servius Tullius (578–535 bc), organized the Roman army into groups of 100 men called centuries and was said to have built a new wall around the city. The cruel seventh king, Lucius Tarquinus Superbus or Tarquin the Proud (534–510 bc), was expelled in 510 after his son cruelly raped Lucretia, a virtuous Roman matron and the wife of his kinsman Collatinus.

Archaeology shows that there is some truth to these legends. There were huts on the Palatine Hill above the Tiber River by the 8th century bc, and the evidence of both burials and cremations indicate that two different cultures like the Romans and the Sabines had intermingled. The Forum was first covered with a pebble pavement about 575 bc and its draining dates to the period of Etruscan kings. On the other hand, archaeologists believe that the earliest wall around the city was built in the 4th century bc—two centuries after the reign of Servius Tullius. Even if the names, dates, and legends of early Rome remain highly questionable, remnants of Roman material culture help to document significant transformations in Roman life.

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