I.

Introduction

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.

The Romans also had enormous cultural influence. Their language, Latin, gave rise to languages spoken by a billion people in the world today. Many other languages—including Polish, Turkish, and Vietnamese—use the Roman alphabet. The Romans developed a legal system that remains the basis of continental European law, and they brought to portraiture a lifelike style that forms the basis of the realistic tradition in Western art. The founders of the American government looked to the Roman Republic as a model. Modern political institutions also reflect Roman origins: senators, bicameral legislatures, judges, and juries are all adapted from the Roman system. In addition, despite recent modernization, the Roman Catholic Church still uses symbols and ritual derived largely from the ancient Romans.

Contrary to popular image, the Roman state was not continuously at war. Roman armies most often served on the frontiers of the empire while Roman lands nearer the Mediterranean were more peaceful and more culturally and economically interconnected than in any subsequent era. The Romans extended citizenship far beyond the people of Italy to Greeks and Gauls, Spaniards and Syrians, Jews and Arabs, North Africans and Egyptians. The Roman Empire also became the channel through which the cultures and religions of many peoples were combined and transmitted via medieval and Renaissance Europe to the modern world.