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Ancient Rome

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

Italian Subjects

Rome had subdued Italy and then used its Italian subjects to conquer the Mediterranean. Initially Rome had been generous with political rights and had bestowed degrees of citizenship on favored communities and on freed slaves. The Italians were, at first, peaceful and loyal, and by the 2nd century bc had grown culturally and economically closer to the Romans. Most of the Italian people spoke Latin, adopted Roman coinage, and traveled on the superb network of Roman roads that linked the cities of an increasingly urbanized Italy. Italians worked beside the Romans as tax collectors and traders in the provinces, and the profits of empire helped to build the public monuments that adorned Italian towns like Pompeii. When rebels in Asia and North Africa rose to resist their oppressors, Italian merchants were even massacred alongside the Romans.

In the provinces, the Italians were conquerors, but at home in Italy, they were regarded as subjects. They became increasingly resentful that the Romans continued to withhold full political rights from them. The army was more Italian than Roman, yet Italians received a smaller share of the booty. Confiscated Italian land was rented to Romans, and the Italian towns had to endure repeated insults at the hands of arrogant Roman officials who demanded expensive hospitality on their visits. The local Italian aristocracy hoped for change, but as they waited, the intensity of their resentment grew.

New Officeholders

The political victories of the plebeians led to the creation of a new aristocracy of wealthy officeholders, called nobiles by the Romans. The nobiles came from the ranks of both plebs and aristocrats. By the 2nd century bc, a complex interplay of factors including lineage, wealth, landholdings, military reputation, and political achievements determined social status. A wealthy man like Cato, who reached the highest offices but was not an aristocrat, still felt resentment toward aristocratic families like the Scipios.

The expansion of Rome complicated these social divisions by enabling another new interest group, the equites, to reach economic and, eventually, political prominence. Equites could achieve great wealth in trade and business without the controls imposed on senators, who were restricted in their business dealings. Since the wars with Hannibal, the Roman state had become more involved in a variety of economic activities, including shipbuilding, provisioning of armies, road building, management of mines and public works, and, most importantly, tax collection. The equites controlled these services by setting up companies to do business with the state.

Changes in Values

In two centuries Rome transformed itself from a small city-state to the ruler of the Mediterranean. A poor agricultural community had become a commercial giant whose conquests poured gold, grain, and slaves into Italy. Rome had permanently altered its economy, society, and culture, as well as the surrounding Italian countryside. Yet, after almost four centuries of successful adaptation, the political institutions of the republic were not sufficiently flexible to accommodate these changes. The Roman elite no longer retained their traditional values as evidenced by laws against electoral bribery and provincial corruption, luxury, and excessive victory processions, called triumphs. Nor did they understand that republican institutions, developed for a city of 10,000, could not administer an empire of millions. For example, Rome had no adequate financial system and relied on annual income from tribute and taxes as operating capital. When income and, thus, expenditures declined, severe economic crises could result. Roman senators were unwilling to address the problems of the army, the noncitizen Italian allies, the urban poor, the exploited provincials, or the brutality of the slave plantations. They responded only to crisis, and they would soon be confronted by the greatest internal crisis in centuries.

Cultural Life During the Republic

The Romans excelled in architecture and engineering long before they could approach the Greeks in the quality of their literature or art. Roman conquests encouraged the spread of their innovations throughout the Mediterranean world.

Architecture and Engineering

True Roman originality appears more often in engineering and construction than in the decorative arts. By 300 bc Appius Claudius Caecus had commissioned work on the paved military road south to Capua, which became known as the Appian Way. He also initiated construction of Rome’s first aqueduct to bring water to the city from nearby hills. These projects later became the models for hundreds of miles of aqueducts and thousands of miles of paved highway built throughout Rome’s empire. In addition, the Romans took the arch from the Etruscans and, on their own, pioneered the use of concrete covered by brick as the basis for most monumental buildings, including baths, amphitheaters, aqueducts, and markets.

The earliest Roman temples followed the Etruscan style and were built with wood decorated with terra-cotta. Roman architects designed and decorated these structures with the idea that they would be viewed from a single perspective. In contrast, Greek temples were intended to be observed from all sides. When the Romans turned to stone buildings in the 3rd century bc, they preserved a similar structure.

The construction boom of the 2nd century bc, spurred by the profits of conquest and the desire of aristocrats for luxury, led to the incorporation of Greek features such as the use of colonnades and marble. The Greek style of colonnaded courtyards, for example, became an important part of Roman villas. In the 2nd century bc the Romans even devised their own characteristic public buildings called basilicas—large covered spaces for politics, law, and commerce. Much later in the 4th century ad, the early Christians adopted the same type of structure for their churches.

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