The Roman Republic
The Roman Republic
Rome was founded around 800 B.C.E. According to a legend, the city was erected by Romulus. The twin sons of Mars by a Vestal Virgin, Romulus and Remus were abandoned at birth but were found and suckled by a she-wolf [Capitoline wolf] and brought up by a shepherd family. Remus is said to have been killed by Romulus during an argument about the new city.
From their homeland in Italy, the Romans came to dominate the Mediterranean and the regions adjacent to it, creating one of the largest and longest-lasting empires in history. Rome remained a monarchy until around 500 B.C.E., when rebellion created the Roman Republic. From the Latin term res publica, or “public thing,” a republic is a state without a monarch and one in which all or most adult citizens (in premodern times, only males) play some role—although not necessarily an equal role—in the political system.
During the republican period, Roman society experienced tensions between the plebeian (lower) and patrician (upper) classes. Through a long process of struggle and negotiation, the former gained greater, but never complete, equality. The latter controlled the oligarchic Senate and the consuls, two executive leaders elected annually from among patricians.
It was during this period that Rome became a Mediterranean empire, first expanding throughout the Italian peninsula, and then fighting three bitter conflicts, the Punic Wars (264–146 B.C.E.), against the Phoenician city of Carthage. Victory over Carthage made Rome the strongest state in the western Mediterranean. It then turned east, taking Greece and parts of Turkey, setting the stage for future conquests in Egypt and Asia. Such rapid expansion caused the collapse of the Roman Republic during the first century B.C.E. Small farmers, the closest Rome had to a middle class, went bankrupt, thanks to falling grain prices and the increased use of slave labor by larger landowners. Poverty worsened, and many of the urban poor joined violent mobs. Rome was shaken by a series of civil wars and slave revolts from 91 to 30 B.C.E. (the revolt of gladiator Spartacus is well known), and political power began to fall into the hands of individual politicians. The most famous of the late republican leaders was the charismatic general Julius Caesar, who assumed dictatorial powers during the civil war of 49–45 B.C.E. and was assassinated in 44 B.C.E. by aristocratic republicans who feared he would crown himself king. More war followed, ending the republic by 30 B.C.E.
Roman law remains a keystone of Western legal thought. The concept of “innocent until proven guilty” stems from republican Roman law as codified in the Twelve Tables.
Like other classical societies, Rome was patriarchal, where the eldest male, the paterfamilias, ruled as the father of the family. Roman law gave the paterfamilias authority to arrange marriage for the children and the right to sell them into slavery— or even execute them. Women’s roles were in supervising domestic affairs, and laws put strict limits on their inheritances, though this was inconsistently enforced.
By the late republican period, women gained more economic rights and greater freedom to divorce. They had no vote.
Together with the Greeks, whose philosophy, art, and gods they absorbed, the Romans bestowed to the Western world an immense cultural heritage: Greco-Roman classicism. The Romans were master architects and engineers, and many of their roads, aqueducts, cities, and fortifications proved useful for centuries to come.
Questions for experts
1. What were the most significant features of the Roman republic’s society?
2. What were the most important factors which influenced the Roman republic’s society?
3. What are the main legacies of the considered society?
4. Which of the below given factors caused the decline of the Roman republic? Explain your choices in detail.
· Unwise or corrupt political leadership
· Rebellions and social tensions caused by overtaxation or injustice on the part of the elite
· Civil wars
· Conquest of more territory than one could effectively govern
· Economic downturns and disruptions of regional trade patterns
· Neglect of infrastructure, such as roads
· War with one or more advanced states or the sudden appearance of a powerful enemy
· Constant, long-term harassment by raiding or migrating nomads
· External environmental factors, such as climate change, natural disasters, or the appearance of new diseases (such as smallpox, measles, or bubonic plague)
· Self-inflicted environmental problems, such as overpopulation, overuse of wood (deforestation), overuse of water (desertification), or the silting of rivers and erosion of soil caused by overfarming or large construction projects.
Questions for mixed groups
1. What was common between the societies?
2. What was different between the societies?
3. Compared to the previous period (5.500 – 1000 BCE) what changed and what remained the same in the world?
4. What legacy did the considered societies leave?