history

Lecture 9: The Early Roman Empire - The Pax Romana

Lecture 9: The Roman Empire – The 12 Cæsars and the Pax Romana (31 B.C.– 180 A.D.)

This lecture and the one that follows it will be covering a vast timeline and amount of material, from the establishment of the Imperial Roman state after the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. to the traditional fall of the Western Empire in 476 C.E. This will not only mark the transition from “before common era” (B.C.E) or B.C. if you like that designation to the “common era” (C.E.) or A.D., it will also mark the end of “governments of the people” in any form for almost exactly 1800 years – until the American (1776) and French (1789) Revolutions of the 18th century. The influence of the Imperial Roman state and social structure is vast, not only on the Western tradition but also on the global tradition – the reputation and traditions of the Roman Empire were known by the Empire of Mali of 13th century sub-Saharan Africa, by the 9th century T’ang Chinese Dynasty (via the Roman contemporaries in China, the Han Dynasty) whose governmental structures were the model for/imposed upon Japan, Korea, Siam, and much of southeast Asia, and had influence on not only the Europeans, Byzantines, Muslims, and Persians who inherited their lands but on all the peoples that they encountered and influenced (often whether they wanted that influence or not!).

The Roman Empire can be divided many ways as befits a society that existed and ruled its world for over five centuries. For purposes of this class, we will divide the Empire into six periods: (1) The Principate of Augustus (31 B.C. – 14 C.E.), (2) The Era of the Cæsars (14-96 C.E.), and (3) the Five Good Emperors (96-180 C.E.), all of which combined to make up the Pax Romana and are the subject of this lecture; and (4) The Dominate (180-284 C.E.); (5) The era of Diocletian and Constantine (284-337 C.E.); and (6) the Decline and Fall of the Empire (337-476 C.E.) which will combined make up the subject of the next lecture.       

 

A.The Principate of Octavian, aka. Augustus Cæsar (31 B.C. – 14 C.E.)

After his victory at the Battle of Actium over Marc Antony and Cleopatra, both of whom committed suicide shortly afterwards, Octavian was left in a position of complete control of the Roman world. After nearly a century of revolution and 50 years of active civil wars, finally there was now one man in a position of supreme and unchallengeable power. However, this was still a society that valued its traditions and way of life and Octavian remembered what happened to Gaius Iulius Cæsar when he had himself declared dictator perpetua – “perpetua” ended up lasting a very brief time before he was assassinated.  So Octavian decided to structure his rule within the context of the Roman Republic – using its institutions and offices to make himself Emperor in fact, if not in actual overt title.  He first had himself elected Consul directly after Actium and has his chief general and loyal ally, Marcus Agrippa, elected as his co-Consul. He then took the office created for Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus after his defeat of Hannibal – Senatus Princeps – the first to speak in the Senate – since this title had the least overt power, it was Octavian’s preferred title, he even termed his state “the Principate”. He then took the money taken from the Egyptian treasury that he seized after his defeat of Cleopatra and with part of it, begins a massive building programme in Rome to better house the citizens of the city, thus becoming popular with the people.  The Concilium Tribus grants him the powers of a Tribune, making his person sacrosanct. Finally, he reorganizes the system of governance of the provinces – making certain provinces Senatorial Provinces, possessions of the Senate to govern and administer, which will be without standing troops, and claiming certain others as property of the Princeps directly as Imperator Provinces – including the most important province: Egypt.  After all, he had conquered Egypt, so why shouldn’t he be allowed to administer it in the name of the people of Rome? This gave Octavian, and all subsequent Emperors, control of the province that supplied the majority of the food to the city of Rome. It also allowed him free access to its treasury and future profits, so that he did not need to proscribe his enemies for their estates – which makes him seem much more benevolent than his predecessors Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar.  He took the rest of the money from Egypt and mustered out 60 of the legions (about 360,000 men) – leaving 28 (totaling 168,000 men), who would now be a permanent standing army, with a term of service of 20 full years and retirement benefits after that. The legions would now have two chief tasks – to defend the limes (borders) of the Empire and to maintain internal peace in Rome.  The troops, in return, begin to use the term “imperator” to describe Octavian – the origin for the term “Emperor”. 

With all these measures in place, Octavian then moved to consolidate his power. When the Senate opens in 27 B.C., Octavian marched into the Senate chamber and resigned his offices – turning them over to the Senate and People of Rome (SPQR).  The Senators beg him not to retire, knowing that his absence would simply lead to more civil war, and grant him the title of Augustus – exalted one, or one who has auctoritas, a term that means “above politics”. From this point on, he is Augustus Cæsar, Emperor of Rome, though, as noted, he preferred and official records refer to him as Princeps – thus this period of the Empire is referred to as the Principate. The statue below is the most famous contemporary depiction of Augustus Cæsar as Princeps, Father of the Nation (Pater Patriæ), and Imperator, and would serve as a template for the statues and monuments to future emperors as well: 

 

The desire for stability and peace after decades of civil wars certainly contributed to Augustus’ triumph, as did his brilliant strategies. He placed a priority on appealing to not only the Senators and to the Equities but also to the plebeians, allowing him to combine the appeal of the populares and optimates of the previous century and also allowing for no real opposition to his rule – no segment of society felt like they had been left out by Augustus. His keeping the vestiges of the res public quelled the outrage that accompanied Cæsar’s reign and allowed the Senators to continue to feel that they were a part of the government. In fact, when a group of Senators began to plot a conspiracy in 24 B.C. against Augustus over the fact that he and Agrippa had been Consuls continuously for seven years, Augustus simply resigned as Consul – his other powers had made it unnecessary – and the plot against him died before it really began. He also would move a legion and a half, 9000 men, out of the field and create them as the personal legions and bodyguard of the Princeps – the Praetorian Guard. Originally conceived as a force that could be immediately deployed to the Imperator Provinces in a time of crisis, this body quickly became the bodyguard of the Emperor – later, it will actually grow in power enough that it will actually make and unmake Emperors as we will see. Additionally, Augustus was named Pater Patriæ in 2 B.C. – the “Father of the Nation”. This makes all of Rome part of his household, his manus, which, remember, the father has total control over. Finally, the final advantage that worked in Augustus’ favour was the one he had no control over: time. As the historian Tacitus wrote in the introduction to his first work, the Annales, which covers the period from Augustus’ death in 14 C.E. to Nero’s death in 68 C.E., “Actium had been won before the younger men were born. Even most of the older generation had come into a world of civil wars. Practically no one had ever seen truly republican government… political equality was a thing of the past, all eyes now looked to imperial commands.” Augustus reigned a total of 41 years, or 45 if you start his reign with the Battle of Actium – by the time he died, there were very few Romans who actually remembered the Republic and none who remembered it from before the civil wars – two entire generations had grown up knowing only Augustus and the Principate, a structure that worked well, kept the peace, won far more victories than not and kept the people fed - so it was only logical that this structure would endure after the death of the man who created it.  Indeed, those who would argue that there are no “great men” in history, that all historical events are manifestations of widespread societal movements that no one man, or woman, can really influence, have a tough time with that argument when discussing Augustus (or Alexander for that matter).

As far as society in Rome is concerned, Augustus transformed the senatorial and equities social classes into a kind of bureaucracy, giving members of each class specific administrative realms to administer and leaving the paths of advancement generally open so that social mobility was a greater possibility than in the Republic. Anyone who possessed property valued at 1,000,000 sesterces qualified for the senatorial class – by example, an unskilled labourer earned about 3 sesterces a day, a legionary was paid between 900 and 1200 sesterces a year. The senatorial order was accepted as the partners of the Princeps in governing Rome. The equestrian order required one to possess 400,000 sesterces in assets and they were given the opportunity to hold offices and military commands for the first time, while maintaining their position as tax collectors and on juries. The remainders of the citizens were the lower class who lost power, in that the powers of the Tribunes and the Concilium Tribus were greatly diminished, but were allowed to advance in rank if they could and were better cared for by the state. He also established the office of Prætectus Urbi – a kind-of mayor of Rome and the Vigiles, the first urban fire department and civil disturbance force, to try to improve the lives of the common Roman citizen. Despite these measures, the social problems that had existed all the way back to the Gracchi were still a problem and the gap between rich and poor in Rome was substantial.  Augustus also instituted a morals program in Rome using taxes – families with children were placed in the most favorable tax bracket while bachelors with jobs paid the highest taxes. He also instituted severe penalties for adultery and for divorce – in fact, he was forced to banish his own daughter Julia to a deserted island for adultery, showing not only the seriousness of his program but also showing the people of Rome that he did not play favourites. Women in Rome gained many more rights during Augustus’ time and over the course of the Principate, they acquired the right to own their own property and to inherit, they were able to attend the races and the theatre, even eventually the gladiatorial games, though there they sat in a special women’s section.  Women could also own businesses and act as merchants, though they could never hold political office.

Militarily, Augustus’ greatest task was deciding where the outer boundaries of the Empire would be – setting the limes. Augustus liked to use natural boundaries as limes so in Syria, he used the Euphrates River as the eastern boundary; in the Levant, the Jordan River; in North Africa, the Sahara; and in Gaul, the boundary started off at the Rhine and Danube Rivers in modern-day Germany. This is the one region where Augustus’ Rome attempts to conquer new lands – Augustus wants to extend the limes to the Elbe River to the north and east. In 9 C.E., his commander in the region, Quintillicus Varrus marched with 3 full legions, 18,000 men, into the Teutoburg Forest on this campaign to expand the limes of the Empire. There he was ambushed by a collection of Germanic tribesmen from the Alemanni tribe, led by a commander named Arminius, and the legions, not suited to warfare in a dense forest, were slaughtered. This had a number of effects – one, it established the Rhine-Danube limes as the near-permanent limes of Roman Gaul, two, it stopped further campaigns of expansion for quite some time, and three, it gave the German tribes a victory over the Roman legions that would be passed down in their traditions for centuries so ideas of Roman invincibility which much of the world would believe would not be as pervasive in German culture. In fact, Romans would call most of the peoples of the northern regions “Germanics”, they will identify the one specific tribe of Germanics “Alemanni” – a reason why the Latin-based language word for “Germany” is usually some form of the word “Alemania”.

Finally, Augustus is faced with the question of how to pass his Empire, and the stability which he brought to the Roman political system, down to a successor and avoid the conflicts and disasters of not only the Roman revolutionary periods but also those that befell Alexander’s Empire after his untimely death. Many would-be candidates failed to survive him, including some who had possibly been murdered, possibly by or at the insistence of Augustus’ wife Livia.  Finally, Augustus turned to Livia’s son from her first marriage, Tiberius, as his heir. Tiberius was a great general who had fought campaigns in Parthia and Germany and had a great rapport with the legions, but by the time he was chosen as the heir apparent, he had retired to a villa in Rhodes, having been passed over 8 separate times for the position of heir apparent or consul – there is something to seeing Augustus seeing Tiberius as a last resort choice. In any case, when Augustus finally dies in 14 C.E., Tiberius had already been given imperium, now, when he emulates Augustus and goes to the Senate to refuse power, the Senate grants him the title of Princeps, grants him sacrosanctias and his reign begins.

 

B. The Era of the Cæsars (14-96 C.E.)

What we know of these Emperors, we know mainly from two historians, Tactius, who wrote four books, the Annales, about events from 14-68 C.E., the Historiae, which covers from 68-96 C.E., as well as the Germania, an ethnographic study of the German tribes, one of the first such studies ever written, and the Agricola, a biography of his father-in-law, a provincial governor of Britain which also contains an ethnographic study of the Britons. The Germania is also the first known book that promotes the idea of the “noble savage” – Tacitus compares the barbarian Germans favorably with what he perceived as decadent upper-class Romans – a technique that will be used by countless future authors. The other chief historian of the period is Suetonius, who wrote a book called Lives, which is very much concerned with scandal, personal lives and sex – it’s the National Enquirer of history and thus, much more fun to read, full of descriptions of orgies and such incidents as a contest between an Emperor’s wife and the madame of the largest brothel in Rome as to who could entertain the most men in a single night.  The Emperor’s wife won, by the way…

Almost immediately, Tiberius’ reign suffered through a major scandal.  His nephew Germanicus who commanded the legions in Germany at the Rhine limes takes his troops across the Rhine and begins driving to the Elbe River. He won a number of battles, including one over a Germanic tribe that had defeated Tiberius himself back when he was a general. Tiberius told Germanicus to stop, but word did not reach him until he had won another victory. Tiberius then recalls Germanicus from the German frontier and reassigns him to Syria in 17 C.E., where he died the next year under mysterious circumstances. The historians of the time, Tacitus chiefly among them, wrote that much of those who were politically active in Rome thought that Tiberius may have had Germanicus poisoned out of fear of his youth and popularity or out of jealousy that he had been more successful against the Germans than Tiberius had been. These charges, even just as a whisper campaign, made an already bitter Tiberius even more resentful and relations between he and the Senate deteriorated. Tiberius then instituted the Delatores – a network of informants that would gather information against enemies and then bring charges against them in the Senate. Quickly, this system brought on numerous treason trials, especially after insulting the Emperor was added to the list of treasonable offenses. The Delatores were given 25% of the estate of any traitor convicted off their evidence, so you can see how being rich and powerful could be very dangerous in Tiberius’ Rome.  In his 22 years of rule, there were 52 trials and 18 convictions – most of which were bogus, but when Roman historians write of the brutality of Tiberius’ reign, they are measuring it against Roman tradition and past – Tiberius is hardly in the same league as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or other modern day psychopaths.

By 26 C.E., Tiberius, not a young man when called from retirement on Rhodes to become Princeps, finally grew disgusted with life in Rome and moved to his villa on the island of Capri.  He allowed the commander of his Praetorian Guard, Sejanus, to be his representative in Rome at the Senate. Thus Sejanus had the real power in Rome for the next six years, convening treason trials, eliminating his enemies, and controlling the flow of information to the absent Tiberius. In a way, this period shows how well Augustus’ system worked – treason trials and high politics aside, Rome could run smoothly for the vast majority of Romans even when the Emperor is absent for years. Finally, after a reign of terror, Sejanus is brought down after the death of Tiberius’ adopted son, when he tries to marry the son’s widow, also a relative of the royal family. Tiberius’ cousin informed him of the impending marriage, and Tiberius realized that, married into the royal family, Sejanus would effectively become Emperor. Tiberius wrote to the Senate and had Sejanus arrested and executed. Tiberius then named his grandnephew, Gaius Caligula, the youngest son of Germanicus, as his heir and died in 37 C.E. Finally, it should be noted that Tiberius was the Roman Emperor when Christ was crucified in either 29 or 33 C.E.

(It is known He was 33 years old from the Biblical source, what is not as clear is whether the later Romans started their calendar in the correct year to begin it with the birth of Christ – this also leads to the use of “common era” as well). As noted above, the Biblical story of a Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, being the authority in the area makes more sense when you recognize (a) local control of a far-away province would be largely run by the local authority, appointed by the Emperor and, especially given (b) by either 29 or 33 C.E., Tiberius had long since “retired” to Capri and was not exactly micro-managing, or in some cases even running, the Roman government by the time the trial and crucifixion took place. We will discuss the early history of the church that grows in the aftermath of Christ in the next lecture.

In the beginning of his reign, Caligula was a benevolent Emperor, but within a year, he fell desperately sick with what modern-day medical historians think may have been epilepsy, or some sort of fever. In any case, when he rose from his sickbed, he was a changed man – his latent megalomania and paranoia had been brought out by his illness, and he began another reign of terror in Rome. He demanded that temples to himself be built to supersede those of the Gods, he spent the entire treasury giving free bread to the people and holding gladiatorial games, he declared war on the God of the sea, Neptune, and then threatened to charge the entire Senate with treason when they would not vote him a triumph upon his return with a chest of seashells, he named his horse, Incitatus, as his co-Consul for a year, and made the Senate allow the horse to stand in the chamber and be asked for its vote, he reinstituted the treason trials, and he held massive orgies in the palace. He also married his oldest sister, but then has her and their child killed because he feared that, like Jupiter was a greater God than his father Saturn and had Saturn exiled from heaven in the Greek myth that the Romans adopted, this child too would someday exile or kill him. In short, he was a paranoid megalomaniac with near absolute power, always a bad combination. Ultimately, his excesses were too much for the political society of Rome to take and, four years after becoming Emperor; Caligula was assassinated by some of the commanders of his own Praetorian guard in the basement of the Roman Forum.

This was perhaps the final moment that a return to a Republic could have been considered possible, however unlikely. The irony is that the man named the next Emperor was probably one of the few older men left in Rome who held republican sympathies.  When news of Caligula’s death reached the sub-commanders of the Praetorian Guard, they realized that, without an Emperor to guard, they would be reintegrated back into the field legions and sent from living in Rome to some far-off provincial outpost, so they set off with the troops to find some relative of the royal family to prop up as the next Emperor. The man they found was Caligula’s uncle, Germanicus’ brother, Claudius Cæsar, hiding behind a curtain. They marched him to the Senate and, standing behind him, 1000 strong with arms, they asked the Senate to declare him Emperor. Given little choice, Claudius was named Caligula’s successor. By the way, by this point nearly every powerful Roman is either related to Julius Cæsar, Marc Antony, or both, so if you get lost trying to keep track of the familial relations, don’t worry – it’s not an ancestry.com class!

Claudius was an extraordinary man. Partially crippled by polio and suffering from a mild form of either Cerebral Palsy or Parkinson’s disease, he nonetheless was one of the leading scholars of Rome, writing numerous books, including the definitive history of Carthage, as well as linguistic treatises – in fact, he invented the letters X and Z and added them to the Roman alphabet, and wrote a study of the Etruscan language that helped keep that language alive. Unloved as a child due to his condition – he stammered, limped and drooled, it is perhaps because of these shortcomings that he was still alive to become Emperor in 41 C.E. after all his contemporaries, and most of the sons of his contemporaries, had either been killed or had died. Claudius made two great contributions to the Roman Empire – first, he realized that no one man alone could govern so vast an Empire so he created and formalized the first real departments of state – an office of the arts, a financial office, a general chancery for legal issues – and extended citizenship to the peoples of the long conquered provinces of Gaul and Spain. Second, in 43 C.E., he undertook to complete to conquest of Britain began by Julius Cæsar a century before. He established camps at Lundonium at the mouth of the Thames River and at Lugdunum in the middle of the island which will become the cities of London and York – in fact, the Roman word for camp is “castra” which is why so many British cities end in “caster” or “chester” – and returned home in triumph with the Roman presence in Britain established.  He reigned for 13 years during which spending is kept down and the government is reformed to make it more efficient, but in the end is poisoned by his 3rd wife (who was also his niece) so that her son Nero could become Emperor in 54 C.E.

Nero is the first demonstration of the maxim that one-man rule is a disaster for any society when that one man is incompetent.  He manages to alienate every faction in Rome, angering the military because he does not let them fight, the Senate by reinstituting the treason trials, and the people as well. When a large part of the slums of Rome burns to the ground in 64 C.E., Nero ignored the fire and decrees that nothing be done to put it out – and then blames the fire on the Eastern mystery cult Christiani, leading to the first persecution of the Christians in which they would be crucified, then covered with pitch and then burned alive on the cross. The fact that he then oversaw the construction of new expensive apartments on the land of the burned-out slums was simply a coincidence… The Senate denounced him and he responded with more treason trials; finally, in 67 C.E., he went to Greece and made the Greeks hold an Olympic games so that he can win events. Upon returning to Rome, however, he discovers that revolts had broken out in Judea and Gaul and three generals of provincial legions were marching on Rome to take advantage of his absence to depose him. When his own Praetorian Guard refuses to help him, he tries to commit suicide but fails even at that, finally having to have a slave kill him in 68 C.E.  Nero shows that, while the system founded by Augustus and further refined by Claudius worked well even while an Emperor was absent, it would not function well when an Emperor was active but an idiot.

After Nero’s death, each legion named their own commanders as Imperator and a four-way civil war began for control of the state. 68 C.E.  is called “the year of the four emperors” because four different generals march into Rome, take the city and then fall when the next general attacked.  Finally, the fourth general, Vespasian Flavius, the commander of the Syrian legions, leaves his son Titus to put down a rebellion in Judea, and marched on Rome where he is victorious and makes his victory stick. The Senate grants him the title of Princeps and he establishes a new dynasty, though he was still related, distantly by marriage, to Julius Cæsar as well! It is at least interesting to note that by this point, no one seriously suggests a restoration of the Republic – not only is that philosophy a thing of the past, but the presence of large armies under command is not so different from the times of Marius and Sulla – Imperators have trumped the Senate and Consuls.

Vespasian began work on a new Forum, called the Flavian Amphitheatre, now known by the name given to the massive statue outside its gates: The Coliseum. It was not completed until the reign of his eldest son Titus, who did not return to Rome until after he had put down the Jewish rebellion by destroying the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem (remember, the first was destroyed by the Chaldeans) and then the final holdouts in the fortress of Masada in 73 C.E. This began another Jewish Diaspora as the Jews are expelled from Judea, a Diaspora that lasts until 1948 and the restoration of the Jewish state after World War II. Vespasian was from the equestrian class, the son of a tax collector, and is sympathetic to the legions, having been a soldier most of his life.  His career is a demonstration of the difference in Rome once Augustus opened up offices to the equestrians – his rise to legion commander would have been literally impossible in the Republic.  He reestablished peace in the Empire and names Titus his successor long before his death.  Titus ruled for only two years (79-81 C.E.) before he died, a reign dominated by the fallout from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum right after he became Princeps. The excavations of these sites have allowed us to know a great deal about common everyday life in Roman times because these sites were almost perfectly preserved in the ash and lava that buried them. In fact, you can go visit a perfect replica of a Roman villa up in Malibu – the Getty Museum, not the one in Westwood. After Titus’ death, his untrained brother Domitian becomes Princeps but is ill-prepared for the task and ends up alienating both the Senate and the army. When he is assassinated in 96 C.E., the plotters this time had a plan – they place a elderly respected Senator, Nerva, on the throne, and the Senate moves to enact legislation to stop direct hereditary succession to the throne.

 

C. The “Five Good Emperors” (96-180 C.E.)

This ushers in the era of the “five good emperors” who will rule over Rome for the next 84 years. Indeed, historians writing less than 250 years ago generally agreed that this period was the happiest in human history – the Emperors were tolerant, Rome was winning victories, extensive building programs saw aqueducts, bridges, extensive roads and civic improvements to the city of Rome and the major cities of the provinces such as Antioch, Jerusalem, Lyon, London, Marseilles, Milan, Koln, Alexandria and Byzantium just to name a few. In addition, each of these Emperors instituted a policy of adopting their eventual successor and ruling jointly with him.  This not only made the transition of power smoother but it also helped to avoid an unprepared man from coming to the throne. In addition, the traditions of an accused man being considered innocent until proven otherwise and being allowed to defend themselves before a judge developed during this era – traditions that long outlived the Roman Empire.  So too did the tradition of Ius Naturale – natural laws that applied to all men (it is from the Roman word “Ius” that we get the word “Justice”), though, in practice, these were applied less than perfectly, just as today. While there was much prosperity in this era, and the concerns of the majority of the populace were largely addressed, we should not forget that the gap between rich and poor was still large and other concerns, such as problems with the Germans on the frontier and the rise of the Christian sect, were still present, if mostly below the surface during this near-century.

Nerva died two years after becoming Princeps; he was succeeded by Trajan in 98 C.E. Trajan marks another milestone in Roman politics – he is the first non-native Roman to rule the nation.  Trajan was born in Spain, descended from the Romans who conquered Spain between 200 and 134 B.C., his grandfather had become a citizen when Claudius extended citizenship to the conquered provinces some 50 years earlier. Trajan was a soldier and a martial Emperor; in fact, he is really the last of the great conquerors of the Early Roman Empire. He decided to extend the Roman limes beyond the Danube River by invading Dacia (modern-day Romania and parts of the Ukraine) in 101 C.E., within five years, Dacia was made a Roman province. He built a great column celebrating his victory which still stands today in Rome – it is a bas-relief with depictions of the battles sculpted along its side, and serves as a model for many similar monuments built in medieval Europe. He then extended this conquest starting in 111 C.E. by controlling the coast of the Black Sea (modern-day Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia) then marched along the Caucasus Mountains to invade Armenia, which he made a client kingdom, then invaded Mesopotamia, marching down the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, conquering Babylon and reaching the Persian Gulf as well as extending the Roman Province of Judea to the border of the Arabian desert, all before he returned home. At home, Trajan enacted the Alimenta, an idea of Nerva’s, which serves as a kind of Roman welfare system.  The Alimenta provided state funds to aid parents in educating their children, to give state funds to orphans and to otherwise needy individuals and it expanded the Corn Laws of Gaius Gracchus and Augustus, providing surplus grain to the citizens of Rome in times of famine. When Trajan died in 117 C.E., the Roman Empire was at its greatest extent, nearly the size of Alexander's and encompassing nearly all of what we traditionally think of as "western" as you can see in the map below:  

 

Trajan's successor was Hadrian, another Spaniard but one who has almost no military experience. Hadrian believed that Trajan had overextended the Empire and that, without new influxes of treasure, the conquests of Trajan would be impossible to hold, either against rebellion or against outside attack. He came to realize that, if any province was attacked, Rome had to pull defenses away from a different province to defend the one being attacked, leaving that frontier vulnerable.  Hadrian decided to pull the Empire back. Since Dacia was the closest province and the conquests in Mesopotamia were not only the farthest from Rome but also under the most threat from the new Sassanid Persian Empire that had risen from the ashes of the Parthian Kingdom, Hadrian decided to pull the eastern limes back to the Syrian desert, all but giving up Mesopotamia, while fortifying the Arabian and Dacian conquests.  In fact, Hadrian is most famous for building walls, delineating the actual Roman frontiers. The most famous of these in Hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain, commissioned in 122 C.E. This wall, which stretches just south of the modern border between England and Scotland, would mark the first separation of Britons from the Scots, a separation that largely continues to this day. Less famous but no less important, is the 80-mile wall that Hadrian built to link the eastern end of the Rhine River with the western end of the Danube River, securing that frontier in a more permanent way.  Hadrian also wanted to build a limes wall in Syria as well, but he was unable to get the project started before his death was imminent. 

Hadrian’s reign also marks the material highpoint of the Roman Empire; more people have more money and prosperity than at any time during this era. At this point, the population of the Roman Empire is nearly 50,000,000 people – the largest seen in the world to this point.  Most of the big urban centers were in the Eastern part of the Empire – Alexandria had a population of around 300,000, Ephesus in Anatolia was at 200,000 and Antioch, the capital of the province of Syria was nearly 150,000. All of these were much smaller than Rome itself, which had a population approaching 1,000,000 in even in Augustus’ time – making it still smaller than contemporaneous Tenochtitlan in Mesoamerica, though Rome would pass it by the time of Hadrian. Most cities in the west of the Empire were comparatively small – remember; Rome is really the first urban civilization west of Greece, while the Near East has had urban civilizations all the way back to Sumeria and Egypt – which is now 3000 years ago at this point! All these provincial cities, and other villages in the provinces, had Roman magistrates, used the Roman language and law, were imbued with Roman culture and customs and had Roman architecture – in fact, the two best preserved examples of Coliseums outside the great Coliseum in Rome itself are in Lyon, France and in Libya in North Africa. This long-term spread of Roman culture and language will greatly aid the rapid spread of Christianity once the Empire becomes Christian, and in fact, one can wonder if Hadrian and his successors had not pulled back from Mesopotamia and the Arabic peninsula, how much harder might it have been for Muhammad to spread Islam through those lands – even though the Roman Empire was gone for almost two centuries when Muhammad began preaching, it is worth noting that most of the areas that remained Roman were far harder to convert than those that didn’t; it’s a question we cannot know the answer to but one worthy of speculation.

When Hadrian died, his successor was Antonius, nicknamed “Pius” because of his efforts to have Hadrian deified as Iulius Cæsar and Augustus had been – basically, in the reality for everyday Romans, that meant that an imago of the deified former Emperor was effective against evil spirits. In the next lecture, we will meet an Emperor named Julian who does the same thing as Antonius Pius but who earns the nickname “Apostate” or “unholy” – clearly by that point (ca. 360 C.E.), Pagan Roman and Roman Catholic Christian beliefs had switched places and statuses within Roman society. Antonius tried to extend the British limes and even built another wall pretty much where the current border between England and Scotland now exists, but this conquest was not permanent. When he died in 161 C.E., he was succeeded by the general and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius was educated as a Stoic and even published a book called Meditations, which today is considered one of the clearest commentaries on the Stoic way of life – in fact, if you take a philosophy course, you will very possibly read some of his work. He was a Platonic scholar and tried to run the Empire the way that a king in Plato’s Republic would – ironically, this extremely wise man would make one of the least wise decisions of any Emperor – he bypassed the tradition set by Nerva and the Senate of adopting the most competent man as successor and working with him to prepare him for the tasks facing a Roman Emperor, he instead named his reckless and incompetent son Commodus, as his successor. While there is no evidence that his son suffocated him with a pillow – or that he looked like Joaquin Phoenix! – most historians certainly wouldn’t put it past Commodus to have done so. During Marcus Aurelius’ reign, he was forced to spend much of his time on campaign in Germany, as German tribes attacked the Rhine/Danube limes on several occasions. Both these campaigns, and the need to provide services to an ever-growing population, began to over-tax the Roman treasury, a crisis for the next century that was beginning to show itself as the era of the “Five Good Emperors” was coming to a close – certainly not yet at the point that would see the issues grow to be unsolvable in the future of the Empire. Marcus Aurelius finally died in 180 C.E. and was succeeded by Commodus (aka. Joaquin Phoenix in the movie Gladiator) who was 19 when he became Princeps and whose reign was, to put it mildly, a complete disaster.

So, these 12 Emperors and the highly successful and, with the exception of the events of Nero’s brief reign and the events of 68-69 C.E., that followed it, stable society they led collectively make up the era known as the Pax Romana – the Peace of Rome, when the average person living in Rome likely had the highest standard of living before the era of governmental freedom, industrialization, and mass food production after ca. 1800 C.E. For a humorous take on the accomplishments of the Roman Empire, check out this video clip:

The remainder of the history of the Roman Empire is one of a decline interrupted occasionally by Emperors who were skilled enough to arrest that decline and gain some successes but unable to continue arresting that decline beyond their own lives nor to ever fully deal with or solve the issues of military necessity and the need for adequate services to a growing Empire – particularly challenging given the lack of communications and technology facing 3rd-5th century peoples. That story begins with the reign of Commodus and the “foreign” dynasty that arose after his assassination (NOT by a gladiator named Maximus!), the Severan Dynasty, which is where the next lecture will begin.