history

Lecture 7: The Early Roman Republic

Lecture 7: The Early Roman Republic (753-241 B.C)

Roman legend says that the city of Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus, one of two twin sons of the daughter of the King of Alba in central Italy and the God of War, Mars.  This woman became pregnant by Mars then abandoned her babies because they were of bastard birth, which will not do for a princess.  The twin boys, Romulus and Remus, were found by a she-wolf who suckles and raises the two boys.  When they are grown, they leave central Italy and walk to the sea, deciding to raise cities on either side of a sacred plowed furrow along the River Tiber in a region with seven hills: Romulus founds a community on Palatine Hill, while Remus founds his community on Aventine Hill.  After a dispute between them, Remus crosses over the plowed furrow into his brother’s territory and Romulus kills him: that’s why the city is called “Rome” and not “Reme”.  Romulus then founds other communities on the other seven hills and realizes that these communities need women so that their population can grow, so he and some of his friends set out to the region of Sabine in the mountains to the north and they carry off all the women to take back to Rome.  The Sabinian army then marched on Rome to get their women back, but Romulus convinced the women to convince the Sabine army that they liked it in Rome and that they wanted to stay – Romulus then invited the Sabine men to stay as well and they were accepted as citizens.  Later, a Roman writer named Virgil wrote in his epic poem the Aeneid, that the Trojan warrior Aeneas, who, in Homer’s Iliad survives the fall of Troy and sails away from its ruins with his father and family, landed in Italy and was one of the ancestors of the King of Alba, whose daughter was Romulus’ mother. 

This legend of the origins of Rome was a living history to the Romans themselves – it was believed as fact.  It also demonstrates many traits of Rome as a civilization: Rome sees itself as descended from glory and destined for future glory – hence, the ancestors of her founder are a hero from the Iliad and a god; it possesses military might – the god who is Romulus’ father is the god of war, but it only fights conflicts when attacked – Romulus did not attack his brother until Remus crossed into Romulus’ territory, Romans see all their wars as defensive in origin and nature; they are an inclusive people, unlike the ethnos-obsessed Greeks, they include the Sabine men and make them citizens after taking their women; and they have a mystic connection to the fates and nature – the founder of the city was raised by a wolf and the wolf was always a sacred symbol to the Romans, much like the bald eagle is to the US – the Senate house in Rome had a huge sculpture of a wolf with two babies suckling under her above the entry door that one would pass under and acknowledge as one entered - this sculpture, the lupus primus, still stands in Rome in the area of the historic Roman Forum today:

For that matter, even today, the chief soccer team in Rome, AS Roma, uses a wolf’s head as it’s symbol.  The Roman calendar began in 753 B.C – Roman dates were “ab urbe condita” or A.U.C. – “from city’s founding” so the defeat of Cleopatra that happened in 30 B.C. on our calendar would have happened in 723 A.U.C. to a Roman.  This shows that Romans consider nothing that occurred prior to the founding of Rome to have enough worth to chronicle specifically – only Roman events matter.  The Catholic Church had the same philosophy when it came to making our calendar – events are measured as being before the birth of Jesus or after, but for Rome, it is the founding of the city that matters, not the birth of a god – showing the importance of civic and political concerns to this civilization.

           

A. The establishment of Rome

In reality, people had lived in the valley of the Tiber river for centuries prior to the founding of Rome, which, archaeologists have determined, actually did occur in the vicinity of the traditional 753 B.C. date, which by the way, is also the year in which the first Greek colony was established on the Italian mainland – the colony of Nea Polis (New City), which is now named Napoli (Naples).  Italy is roughly boot-shaped and geographically divides into two distinct regions: North of the Apennine Mountains in the valley of the Po River, near modern-day Milan, Southern France and Switzerland; and South, the peninsula south of the Apennine range.  The East coast of the Southern region was inhospitable to settlement with little arable land, few rivers, and no natural ports, but the Western plains were good for settlement.  Three great rivers flowed from the northern mountains to the sea through western Italy; the Arno, upon which Florence would be founded, the Liris, which reached the sea at the Bay of Neapolis, and the Tiber.  Climate was moderate and fields were fertile enough to support a small population, with olives and wine the chief crops, and vast numbers of free-range cattle, in fact, Italy gets its name from the Greek term for “Cattle Land”: “Fitelia”.  In addition, there were iron deposits as well as copper, though little gold or silver.  However, grain had to be largely imported from Sicily, and this slowed the development of civilization on the Italian peninsula.  The beginnings of organized agriculture did not develop until ca. 2500 B.C. and the Bronze Age did not come until ca. 1500 B.C. – about when the Hittites were pioneering the use of Iron that would make bronze obsolete.  The early civilizations of Italy did not enter the Iron Age until ca. 800 B.C., consequently, they were venerable to invasions from foreign tribes using iron weapons, who would come down from out of the mountains to the north and impose their will on the settlements of the south for about 300 years, beginning in ca. 1000 B.C.

The first people to establish an urban civilization on the Italian peninsula were the Etruscans, who built cities on the Arno River in the region of Etruia, modern-day Tuscany.  We do not know specifically who the Etruscans were related to, but we do know that, unlike the Indo-European Italian peoples, the Etruscans spoke a language not related to Latin.  Their practice of divining the future by inspecting the livers of sacrificial animals suggests a Near-Eastern origin, in addition, the architecture of their tombs is very much like that found in Anatolia – which, remember, is where Troy was located – maybe Aeneas was an ancestor of the Etruscans? You never know with ancient myths… In any case, they brought the notion of an urban civilization with them and founded 12 city-states all on hilltops in the valley of the Arno, between that river and the Tiber.  The Romans would later call Etruscan culture “Cultura Villanova” – new culture of the city.  All 12 were self-governing city-states like the Greek poleis, which shared a loose religious unity, but more often that not, the Etruscan cities fought with each other – a chief reason that they were unable to take advantage of culturally advanced state and conquer the whole of the Italian peninsula.  Each city was ruled at first by a single monarch; later that monarchy was replaced by an aristocracy of agrarian leaders – a process much like what occurred in most Greek poleis at about the same time, when the aristoi ousted the Dorian Basileus.  The Etruscans were a military ruling class that exploited the native Italian peasants and, by doing so, got very rich and powerful.  They also traded with Greek merchants, both of the Sicilian and later southern Italian colonies as well as the Greek poleis themselves, as well as with Phoenician merchants and merchants from the Phoenician colony of Carthage, which will play a large role in the history of Rome.  Etruscan civilization was thus based on exploitation of agricultural resources, exploitation of the iron and copper reserves, and trade mixed with a fair amount of piracy.

The religious traditions of the Etruscans argued that the world was filled with gods and spirits, both good and evil, and that one had to consult nature to ascertain divine will.  This legacy would pass down to the Romans, who believed in taking auspices, which involved inspecting the entrails of a sacrificed animal to try to determine the nature of messages from the gods, as well as a belief in omens and a belief in manes, which are the spirits of dear departed ancestors.  These are reverenced by carrying about what the Romans called imago, small wax images of ancestors – like the little figures of his wife and child that Russell Crowe carries in the movie “Gladiator”.  It is one reason that the early Catholic church will come down so hard against icons, but also, at the same time, try to replace the imago with the angus dei – a small wax figure of a lamb carrying a staff that most late Romans and medieval priests were expected to carry – the early Christian church is all about incorporating pagan rituals into the Christian tradition to make it more comfortable to convert.  Most Etruscan cities contained a temple dedicated to a trinity of gods.  Beyond these Etruscan legacies, most of Roman religion is assimilated from the Greek: so Zeus became Jupiter (after the Etruscan sky god), Athena became Minerva (another Etruscan god), Aphrodite became Venus, Poseidon of the sea became Neptune, Ares became Mars – in fact, you are familiar with most of the Roman names for Greek gods – most of them are the names of planets.

After 800 B.C., Etruscan armies conquered the small communities of the Tiber valley, among them, Rome.  To these peoples, they gave an alphabet, iron weapons, and a way to dredge the swampland common to the Tiber valley so that cities could expand beyond hilltop settlement, as well as urban development.  By tradition, Romulus was followed by six of these Etruscan kings, under whom Rome came to control most of the Tiber valley south to the Greek-dominated region around Neapolis.  Etruscan kings were granted the right of imperium; the right to order exact compliance to issued commands upon pain of death for disobedience.  These kings would be followed in the streets by 24 lictors who would carry bundles of sticks lashed together with an axe-head protruding from the top to compel compliance and protect the king – these were called fasces, which is where Mussolini got the name Fascist for his (and later Hitler’s) political movement, and if you wonder what the fasces looked like, just look on the back of an old US dime

or on the wall of the US Congress, depicted on either side of the Speaker's Chair - or on the arms of Lincoln's Chair at the Lincoln Memorial. 

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This kingship was elective, though it stayed in the same Etruscan family throughout the era of the kings.  A Senate advised the king, but he was free to ignore its advice if he was strong enough to do so.  This became increasingly difficult as the Roman economy grew over time, which led to a growth in wealth and subsequently influence for certain Romans, called the patricii, which, as with the aristoi in most Greek societies, made up about 10% of the population.  Finally, in 509 B.C., the Etruscan king Tarquinius Superbus offended the Senate and the patricii class enough by his rape of a power patricii’sdaughter to inspire a revolution, led by the patricii Iunius Brutus.  King Tarquinius and his whole family were exiled and the Etruscan kings were overthrown. 

 

B. The Res Publica

In their place, the Romans used the existing Senate to set up a Res Publica, or system of rule by the people, which we call a republic.  To avoid allowing any one man to seize supreme power, the Romans created two executives, called consuls, granted them imperium, and placed them in a position of power-sharing with the Senate – a system that, on the surface, resembles the Spartans with their two kings and Gerousia council of elders.  The important differences, however, are that, unlike Spartan kings, Consuls are elected for one-year terms only, while a senator is elected to the office of High Priest, Pontifex Maximus, separating religious authority from civil authority.  Also, all offices were open to any male Roman citizen, though, in practice, for the first 150 years of the republic, the patricians controlled the entire process, and no non-patrician ever held any office. Roman society was centered on the familiae, which was more extended than our notion of the family; it includes not only wife, daughters and unmarried sons but also grandchildren if they lived in the house and slaves. The head of the familiae was called the Pater Familias and his household was called his manus and the Pater Familiashad total control of life and death over his manus. To escape the power of the manus was called “e mancpatio” – where the term “emancipation” comes from. This familiae group is far more important than the individual in early Roman society, leading to a society that is fairly easy to organize, by contrast to the individualist Greeks. A Roman patrician’s name had three parts – the first name is the given name, the second is the name of the clan to which he or she belongs, and the third is most often descriptive in some way – so Gauis Iulius Cæsar is actually Gaius from the clan Iulius, the bald guy – since Cæsar means “bald”! – so that one could tell which “Gaius Iulius” one was referring to. Plebeians usually had only two names since no one needed to care which one was which in the early Republic – a kind of handy, though not foolproof way, to tell at a glance whether a Roman was a patricii or a pleb.

The Roman people as a whole were known as the populus, of which 10% were patricii and 90% were plebeians – intermarriage between the two classes was not allowed when Rome set up the Res Publicasupposedly in 509 B.C. – note one year before Cleisthenes’ reforms. Society was organized into a number of structures, including the Tribus – 35 artificial tribes based on where one lived – 4 urban and 31 rural. Each Roman male would elect representatives to serve in the Comitia Tributa – a representative assembly which operated on the principal of one tribe-one vote. This body was not nearly as influential as the Senate, which began as a hereditary council of advisers to the Etruscan Kings and evolved into the most influential governmental body in the Res Publica, its membership composed of the most important patricii. In addition, Roman society was built in part on the relationship of clientela between a patronus and a cliens. Essentially, a cliens would go to a patricii for help of some sort – the patrician would then become his patronus. This bond is hereditary but is not codified and is supposed to be mutually beneficial. The patronus gains a protection gang which he can call upon in times of need as well as loyal service – in exchange, the plebian gains a powerful advocate and helper with things like debts, job searches, and the like – most evidence suggests that, in the era of the Republic, this relationship was generally mutually beneficial and not usually abused as much as one would think.

The first century and a half after the establishment of the Roman Republic is a period of external wars in the Italian peninsula in foreign affairs, and the struggle of the orders at home, as the plebiansgradually gained more and more power in the state. In 496 B.C., Rome defeats the Latins in a war – the peace treaty provides a mutual defense system and allows for free trade and intermarriage between the Romans and Latins. Soon, different peoples would invade the south from the Appinines – the Aequi and Volski, who invade during an interesting ritual known as “ver sacrum”. Once population grows too large, all people who were born in a certain year are kicked out of the society and sent to raid the “soft” southerners – now, as Rome grows stronger, they discover that this won’t work so well – by the 430’s B.C., these Northern peoples stop their invasions and many were integrated into Roman society. The next peoples to fall were an old enemy who had conquered Rome in the days of the Etruscan Kings, the Veii – in 407 B.C.  the Romans, for the first time, place troops in the field for a full year – these are citizen-soldiers who are not paid to be a standing army so long campaigns are difficult – in fact, the citizens have the right to vote whether they will go to war or not – which will become a big factor in the struggle of the orders that I’ll discuss later. In any case, the Veii are defeated and the troops are paid in bags of salt – the first payment of Roman troops. Things are going well until the Gauls invade Italy from the north in the 390’s B.C. Traditionally, in 390 B.C., the Gauls defeat the Roman defense force and sack the city – this is the last time this will happen for exactly 800 years. The Gauls are a marauding, nomadic and non-urban people so after a few years, they leave for their next conquest but Rome is now forced to spend the next century regaining all the territory that they had built up since 509 B.C. – since those they had conquered like the Veii, took advantage of the Gaul’s success and declared their freedom from Roman control.

At the same time as all that is happening in wars, at home, the Roman society is going through what is known as the Struggle of the Orders – a long, gradual negotiation between the patrician class that dominates Roman politics and the plebian class that makes up the majority of the population to extend power to a larger part of society. The first step is the demand of the Comitia Tributa for separate officers to represent the concerns of the Tribes – these are called Tribunes. There were 10 Tribunes elected each year who must be plebeians – the office is closed to patricians – and they could stand for re-election though by tradition, they did not – which will be an incredibly important point in the future. Next, the Plebeians call for codification of the Roman law which, to this point is not written down and can be abused by the patricians. In 451 B.C., when the call goes out for the citizen-soldiers to join their units as a foreign invasion is on the way, they refuse, calling a secessio – marching to the Aventine Hill and refusing to fight unless they are granted concessions. This tactic works – and will work time and time again – the Senate agrees to codify the Law, which is done in the Laws of the XII Tables, published later in 451 B.C. A moment to differentiate between “Lex” = law and “Ius” = rights. An Ius is a right that exists in nature; no law has to be passed by a legislature to guarantee it – like the freedom from being killed. It is from “Ius” that we get the term “Iustice”. A Lex is a statute that has been enacted by some body or person and thus can be repealed or changed. Now, once the laws are published, the Tribunes begin to call for changes in the laws to give the plebians more power. The first law that is amended is the Lex Canuleia in 445 B.C. which allows for intermarriage between plebiansand patricians, which will eventually blur the bloodlines and allow for some social mobility, with status deriving from the father’s status – patrician father and plebian mother = patrician children and vice-versa. Next came the right of appeal for plebians, which would be heard by the entire population assembled in the Comitia Tributa. Next, the Tribunes are granted the status of sacrosanctitas – absolute protection. Tribunes cannot be touched, harmed, assaulted, sued or otherwise hassled – while in office, as soon as they are no longer Tribunes, they are like any other Roman plebian. Finally, after another threat of seccessio, two of the Tribunes for the year 366 B.C.,  Licinius and Sextius, engineer legislation through the Comitia Tributa which limits land holdings and allows plebians to stand for election to become Consuls – the highest office in Rome. In the next year, Sextius is elected one of the Consuls, which opens the door to full plebian participation in the government of the Republic and marks the end to the Struggle of the Orders. By tradition, Roman Consuls would now be one patricianand one plebian, though this was not always the case. Eventually, after the Lex Hortensia passed in 287 B.C., the Comitia Tributa gains the right to pass codified law, essentially making Rome a fully functioning Republic in the modern sense. The best brief description of the Roman government after the Lex Hortensia was written by a Greek historian after the Punic Wars you will read about in the next lecture named Polybius, who wrote an ancient version of "Roman Government for Dummies" to educated the newly conquered Greeks about the system of the Romans who had just conquered them. Here's a link to  Roman Government at the End of the Punic Wars (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. , which is a primary source that will help you understand how the Res Publica was structured and is part of the required reading for the week.

 

C. Carthage and the 1st Punic War

By 265 B.C., Rome has defeated all the peoples of the Italian peninsula and has started to become a potential rival to the post-Alexandrian Hellenistic states of the East as well as the Kingdom of Carthage, founded by Phoenician colonists, in the Western Mediterranean. In the process of conquest, not only had Romans constructed the Appian Way, a road named for the Consul, Appius Claudius Cæcus, who oversaw its construction to facilitate troop movements from Rome to the area around Naples in 312 B.C., had defeated its first Hellenistic opponent, King Pyrrhus of Tarentum – a war so bloody that one victory of Pyrrhus came at such a cost that it gave his name to the concept of a too costly victory: a Pyrrhic victory – had signed a treaty with Ptolemaic Egypt, and had developed a differentiation between peoples who were allies of Rome – called socii, from which we get the term “associates” – and those who were Civitas Sine Suffragio – “citizens without rights”. In addition, the structure of the Roman Legio had been established – one Legion would have 6000 men, some as Equites, those who could afford their own horses and would serve as the cavalry, and most as Pedites, foot-soldiers – all of whom who would only be called into service when needed. This structure would not bankrupt the Roman state because only those with wealth and property qualifications were allowed in the Legions – one Roman theory is that those with the most to lose get the largest voice, but also have the greatest responsibly. Now Rome would be challenged for the first, but not the last time, by Carthage – looming as Rome’s chief rival in the Western Mediterranean.

If you remember from lectures in Unit 1, Carthage had been established as a colony of the Phoenicians in 814 B.C., since that time, largely immune to the Greco-Persian conflicts of the 5thCentury B.C. and the Alexandrian wars of the 4th Century B.C., Carthage had grown to become a mercantile power as well as an imperial one, which controlled most of NW Africa, north of the Sahara Desert and had colonies as far away as the shores of Britain. Its government was an oligarchy, much like that of the Levant, with a warlord and associates, usually from a single family, advised by the wealthy who were Carthaginian in ethnicity, even though, as time went on, the population became over 50% non-Carthaginian. Prior to Rome, its greatest rival was Syracuse on the island of Sicily, which was dwarfed in size by Carthage and its armies. Now, as Carthage saw the rising threat of Rome to the east of Sicily, the Carthaginians made the fateful decision to try to nip that threat in the bud – to defeat Rome before it could get to be too big to control. Carthage’s fleet attacked Roman ports beginning in 264 B.C. – soon the battle would center on Sicily and the island to the west of the Italian peninsula, Corsica. Recognizing that Carthage’s fleet was superior and that Rome’s legions were at least equal to those of Carthage and unwilling to fight the same sort of “elephant vs. whale” battles that the Spartans and Athenians had fought, Roman engineers developed the corvus, a type of ship that had grappling hooks on either side and a large, open deck so that, if it could grapple onto an enemy ship, the corvus could serve as a kind of floating platform from which the Romans could stage land-based battles even while afloat on the Mediterranean. These conflicts would be called “Punic Wars” because the Roman word for Phoenicians was “Punicus”. This 1st Punic War would be fought on and off for over two decades, gradually Rome gained the advantage and, by 241 B.C., a peace treaty was signed that ceded Sicily and Corsica to Rome and limited the size of Carthage’s future fleet. This certainly announced Rome’s presence as a “player” in the politics and power-plays of the post-Alexandrian world, however, at this point, Rome’s potential was limited by its citizen-army and limits on the size of the Legio to those of wealth and means – what did not bankrupt the State, also limited the potential size of the State’s army. When the wars ended, the members of the Roman Legio went home and resumed their lives as patricii and “upper plebeians” – who would be commonly known eventually as “equites” and who would soon gain status and desires for power much as the Athenian hoplites had before them.

Carthage’s failure in this attempt throughout the 3rd Century B.C. would lead to Rome becoming not only the dominant power in the Western Mediterranean but ultimately in the whole of the Western World – but, as we will see in the next lecture, this gain in power would come at a terrible price as well.