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Page 7 of 9 Article Outline Introduction; Early History; Life in Early Rome; The Roman Republic ; The Legacy of the Roman Republic
Despite the presence of a vibrant Greek culture in southern Italy and Sicily, Roman literature developed quite slowly. Through conquest, Rome began to spread the Latin language, but only official documents like the Twelve Tables, family records, or brief personal identifications were written in Latin before the 3rd century bc. Some Roman aristocrats learned Greek, and the earliest histories by Romans were written in Greek, perhaps to convince the Hellenistic world that Rome was not an entirely barbarous state. The first literary work in Latin was a translation of the Greek poet Homer’s Odyssey by Lucius Livius Andronicus (284?-204 bc), who was probably born in one of the Greek colonies of southern Italy and brought to Rome as a slave. Livius and others also translated Greek tragedies into Latin. Only fragments exist of these works as well as the epics and tragedies of Quintus Ennius (239-169? bc), who is sometimes called the Father of Latin Literature. The first works in Latin that survive in their entirety are 20 plays of the earthy writer of comedy, Plautus (254?-184 bc). According to Plautus, his plays were performed at fairs where snake charmers and acrobats competed for the audience’s attention, so he spiced up adapted Greek plays with coarse humor. Not unlike modern television situation comedies, his plays use stereotyped characters (shrewd slaves, pompous soldiers, lovesick young men) in ingenious plots. The English playwright William Shakespeare adapted Plautus’ play Menaechmi as The Comedy of Errors (1592?), while The Braggart Soldier and other plays by Plautus formed the basis for the American musical comedy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). Political leaders in the Roman Republic took themselves very seriously, but the works of Plautus show that the Roman masses could laugh at topics like family, chastity, and even the military, as long as the plots of these plays were safely set in Greece. Terence (195-159 bc), who originally came from Carthage, became Rome’s other great comic poet. He followed Greek models more faithfully than Plautus and wrote comedies in clear and elegant Latin. The first prose writer was Cato the Elder, whose practical handbook on farming, De Agri Cultura (On Agriculture; 160? bc), is the oldest surviving nonfiction work in Latin. Cato also wrote a history of Rome that he claimed was for the education of his son, but he clearly intended the book to bolster his own reputation and disparage the aristocratic families which he despised. The most accomplished historian to write in Republican Rome was Polybius, a Greek hostage brought to Rome in 167 bc. His history of Rome’s rise to the domination of the Mediterranean, written in Greek, is the best source available for this period. Polybius combined rigorous methodology with a philosophical approach to history that made him unique among historians of Rome. By the 1st century bc, Roman writers and intellectuals were reading widely in Greek philosophy and literature. The poet Lucretius (94?-55? bc) wrote De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), a long poem that passionately expounded the ideas of the Greek philosopher Epicurus on the mechanical working of the universe. The other great poet of the late republic was Catullus (84?-54? bc). He was much influenced by the elegance and intimacy of Greek poetry from Alexandria, the center for Greek culture and learning in Egypt. He is best known for his cycle of 25 love poems addressed to a mysterious woman whom he calls Lesbia. The love affair recounted in the Lesbia poems was genuine, and these verses convey the poet’s ecstasy and despair with an immediacy that still strikes a responsive cord after 2,000 years. Among works of Roman prose, the commentaries of Julius Caesar (100-44 bc) on the Gallic War and the Civil War (De Bello Gallico and De Bello Civili) are masterpieces of propaganda. Caesar, a famed military commander and later dictator of Rome, was also a skilled writer who chose to present his conquests with a contrived objectivity and third-person detachment that gave added credibility to his account. Caesar’s former deputy Sallust (86-35? bc) has left short histories—Bellum Jugurthinum (War with Jugurtha) and the Bellum Catilinae (Conspiracy of Catiline). His moralizing approach to history focused on the decay of the aristocracy, and his bare, precise style imitated Cato. Sallust’s terse writing was in direct contrast to the rich prose of one of Rome’s greatest writers, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 bc), who was also a noted orator, statesman, philosopher, and essayist. Cicero’s speeches and letters are most widely known, but he also wrote essays on the history and practice of oratory. Cicero created a philosophical vocabulary in Latin by translating and adapting Greek philosophical works. Cicero’s works influenced the development of political philosophy, rhetoric, and prose style through the centuries and exceeded the impact of any other Roman writer.
The Romans first learned wall painting from the Etruscans and later were influenced by Greek fresco painting and mosaic work for the decoration of houses. Unfortunately, in this most fragile of all art forms, almost nothing has survived from the Roman Republic. (The only remaining Etruscan painting was preserved in sealed tombs, while nearly all we have of Roman painting was sealed off in ad 79 by the lava flowing from Mount Vesuvius, when it erupted and destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum). More Roman sculpture has survived from the republic. The earliest artists were Etruscan, and from the 3rd century bc sculpture seen in Rome came primarily from defeated Greek cities. Most Roman marble sculpture continued to be in the Greek style. The outstanding exceptions were Roman portrait-busts, which showed great originality and were far more realistic than their idealized Greek equivalents. The tradition of realistic representation probably originated in the terra-cotta busts of ancestors, which had long been displayed at the funerals of Roman aristocrats.
The Romans themselves believed that the century of civil war that destroyed the republic originated in the changes brought about by the success of Roman imperialism. Some like the Roman historian Sallust blamed the gross economic inequalities that had emerged: farmers without land, laborers without jobs as a result of slave labor, and Italian allies without the rights of citizenship. Others like Cato the Elder criticized the corruption of Greek culture and the pride and ambitions of aristocratic families who put personal glory before the common good. Still others like Cicero saw the transformation of the army and urban mobs into instruments of political power as the death knell for traditional senatorial government. There was some truth in all these views as irreconcilable differences among the Romans propelled the state toward civil war.
The social conflict that eventually destroyed the Roman Republic first erupted with the election of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus as tribune in 133 bc. Gracchus came from a distinguished family background: His father had served twice as consul, and his mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of the famed general Scipio Africanus the Elder. He proposed a land law to limit private occupation of public property to 300 acres and to distribute the excess in 20-acre parcels to the landless. According to Tiberius, the aim of this measure was to reduce the unemployed population of Rome, to make the poor eligible for military service, and to reverse the dangerous trend toward enormous plantations worked by slaves. Those families who had long occupied public land believed they had de facto ownership and would not relinquish it without a struggle. Roman aristocrats attributed his actions to personal ambition, but Gracchus claimed that he intended to protect the peasantry and save the Roman Republic. When Tiberius bypassed the Senate and brought his legislation directly to the Assembly, another tribune vetoed the proposal. Tiberius had him removed by the assembly, but the Senate retaliated by refusing to provide funds for implementation of the land law. Gracchus then proposed that the government use the treasure of King Attalus of Pergamum, just bequeathed to the Roman people, for that purpose. Tiberius’s actions were legal, but unprecedented in the history of the carefully balanced Roman constitution. His opponents feared Tiberius could become a despot, especially when he began to walk through Rome accompanied by private bodyguards. After he took the unprecedented step of standing for reelection, rioting broke out and a mob led by senators killed Tiberius and some of his followers. For the first time in centuries, violence had entered Roman politics. In 123 bc Tiberius’s younger brother, Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, was elected tribune and proposed a more radical program of social and political reform. Gaius, a brilliant orator, undermined senatorial domination by encouraging the political aspirations of the equites and by proposing that Rome extend citizenship to the people of Latium and Italians in the surrounding areas. He, too, died as a result of street fighting, and his senatorial opponents executed more than 3,000 of his supporters without trial. After the deaths of the Gracchi, a new breed of politicians arose called populares. They considered themselves advocates of the people (populus), although they came from the same noble background as their opponents. The supporters of continued senatorial dominance were known as optimates since the nobility called themselves the optimi (best). Although the populares drew their support from the urban poor or the landless rural population, they were senators just like the optimates. Thus, the political rivals of the late republic all held the same social position but promoted different agendas. The Gracchi were not conscious revolutionaries, but their actions and the senatorial reaction ushered in a series of social conflicts. Neither of the brothers made much permanent improvement in the condition of the urban poor, and the Italians were further embittered when they saw the defeat of proposals, such as the extension of Roman citizenship, that would have addressed their grievances. On the other hand, the Gracchi’s policies made the equites a political force for the first time. Tribunes recovered the inherently revolutionary power of their office that allowed them to act for the plebs and block actions by the Senate and other magistrates, and the popular assemblies again recognized their own power. The moral and political weakness of the Senate was exposed; the nobility could only maintain its dominance through violence. The progressive escalation of these conflicts ended with the destruction of the republic. A generation after the Gracchi, the military entered political life, setting an even more dangerous precedent. When the North African king Jugurtha, ruler of Numidia, killed Italian traders, bribed Roman officials, and humiliated the Roman army in a drawn-out guerrilla war, the Roman general Gaius Marius won the consulship in 107 bc with a popular mandate to defeat Jugurtha. He recruited a large army by enrolling and providing arms to landless volunteers; thereafter, generals recruited and trained armies based on voluntary enlistments and property qualifications were dropped. After Roman troops led by Marius captured Jugurtha, the people repeatedly reelected Marius consul, expecting him to defeat marauding Germanic peoples in southern Gaul. Marius left a fatal legacy of professional armies whose soldiers were loyal to the general who recruited them and promised them land in return for their political support. Politicians had found a powerful new weapon: a personal army that was no longer loyal to the Senate and the Roman people. Italian discontent over Rome’s failure to grant them citizenship or otherwise reward them for their military assistance finally erupted in 91 bc in a general revolt known as the Social War. The Italians who had helped conquer the Mediterranean now fought against the Romans. The Italians established their own capital at Corfinium and issued coinage showing the Italian bull goring the Roman wolf. The Italian army fought well, and Rome finally ended the war by agreeing to extend citizenship to all free inhabitants of Italy. Within a generation, Italians appeared in public life, and within two generations they reached the highest offices of the republic.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla was an impoverished Roman aristocrat who had distinguished himself in the Social War and hoped to make his fortune through an overseas command. While Rome fought against the Italians, the cities of Asia rebelled and joined with King Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus (in what is now Turkey) in killing 80,000 Roman and Italian traders and tax collectors. The Senate gave Sulla the potentially lucrative command of the forces that were being sent to defeat these cities. However, Gaius Marius also wanted the post, and his supporters tried to remove Sulla. Sulla responded by marching on the Roman capital in 88 bc to reestablish his right to the position given him by the Senate. He drove Marius and his supporters from the city. For the next four years Sulla pursued his eastern war, capturing Athens and finally defeating Mithridates. But during this time his Marian enemies again gained control of the government in Rome and declared Sulla an outlaw. After Sulla made peace with Mithridates, he brought his loyal army back to Italy to confront the government. In 83 bc Sulla landed in southern Italy and marched on Rome. Sulla needed to eliminate all opposition and to secure money and land for his 120,000 soldiers and his greedy followers. He issued proscription lists, which put a bounty on the heads of thousands of Romans whose property could then be confiscated. In less than a decade of civil war 200,000 free Romans and Italians had met violent deaths. The image of a Roman general turning his troops on the capital and murdering his political opponents haunted Rome ever after. A frightened Senate appointed Sulla dictator, although his term was not limited to six months like constitutional dictators of the past. Then Sulla, rather ironically, tried to protect the Senate against military leaders like himself. He packed the Senate, which had been depleted by wars and executions, with his own supporters and proposed reforms to ensure senatorial authority in the future. As a result of these reforms, consuls had to wait ten years before standing for reelection, and proconsuls could only hold office for a single year. By restricting the term of office, Sulla hoped to prevent officeholders from building up loyal troops and undermining the Senate, as both he and Gaius Marius had done. In 80 bc Sulla relinquished the dictatorship and soon retired to the pleasures of private life. None of his successors who attained such power would relinquish it so quietly.
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