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Read "Rome and Empire"

Rome and Empire

Rome began as a merging of small towns on seven hilltops by the Tiber River, halfway down the west coast of the Italian peninsula. A hundred years after the union, in 509 BCE, Roman aristocrats overthrew their king and set up a republic ruled by the patrician class. (A republic is a form of government in which delegates represent the interests of varied constituencies.) The poorer classes, called plebeians, insisted on some protections and participation. The idea of the republic came to include the rule of law, the rights of citizens, and upright moral behavior.

As its population grew, Roman rule expanded. For various reasons — food supplies, defense, land, glory — Roman armies fought the powerful city of Carthage, across the Mediterranean near modern-day Tunis, Tunisia. After 120 years Rome finally won and went on to conquer Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East by 133 BCE.

The republican form of government, however, produced seething rivalries among its military leaders, who competed for power with their personal armies. Out of this competition emerged the winner, Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE), who conquered Gaul (modern France) and England, but not Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, where the Celts held the line. By 46 BCE Julius Caesar declared himself dictator for life, ending the republic. Two years later other members of the Senate stabbed him to death in hopes of restoring the republic. Instead, after 13 more years of civil war, Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, known as Augustus, took the throne and ruled for 45 years Roman virtually unopposed.

The empire reached its height in the first two centuries of the Common Era. From 27 BCE to 180 CE, a time known as the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace, Roman leaders controlled about 130 million people across an area of about 1.5 million square miles, from a city of 1 million people. Roman roads linked all parts of the empire. Roman law, which featured key concepts such as the principle that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, was administered everywhere.

Under Roman law men had most of the rights, as was also the case in Greece. The father of the Roman family could arrange the marriages of his children, sell them into slavery, or even kill them without punishment. Roman law limited women’s rights to inherit property and assets, but some clever individuals managed to skirt this law.

Like all agrarian civilizations of its time, Romans made use of slave labor — but on a larger scale than most. No reliable data exist, but at the height of the empire maybe one-third of the population were slaves; an emperor alone might have about 20,000 slaves. In 73 BCE an escaped slave, Spartacus, assembled 70,000 rebellious slaves; after several years Roman troops crushed them and crucified 6,000 survivors along the Appian Way.

Romans put more of their creativity into roads, aqueducts (for carrying water), and law than into philosophy and science, unlike the Greeks. In a way, though, the Roman Empire was a vehicle for the spread of Greek culture. The Romans honored many gods, renaming the Greek ones and taking them as their own. Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) adopted a version of Stoicism, a Greek philosophy seeking to identify universal moral standards based on nature and reason; Epicetus and Marcus Aurelius further popularized it. The older mystery religions — the Anatolian rites of Mithras and Cybele and the Egyptian rites of Isis — proved immensely popu- lar in the Roman Empire.

Out of a remote corner of the Roman Empire emerged a small sect that has become the most widespread religion of today’s world — Christianity. The Romans conquered Judea (modern Israel) in 6 CE. Jesus, whom Christians consider the Son of God, grew up at a time of great tension between the Roman overlords and their Jewish subjects. The Romans allowed Jesus to be crucified in the early 30s CE to forestall rebellion, which they believed he was advocating with his message that “the kingdom of God is at hand.”

In 66–70 CE the Jews actually did revolt against Roman rule; the Romans crushed this by destroying the Jewish temple, taking thousands of Jews to Rome as slaves, and sending most of the rest into exile. 

After this revolt, Christianity spread to non-Jewish communities, led by Paul of Tarsus, Anatolia, who preached in the Greek-speaking eastern regions of the Roman Empire. At first Rome persecuted Christians, but by the third century CE Rome had become the principal seat of church authority, with the religion appealing to the lower classes, women, and urban populations. In 313 CE Emperor Constantine (who ruled from 306 to 337 CE) legalized Christian worship after his own conversion, and by the end of the fourth century it had become the official state religion.

History books used to refer to the “fall” of Rome in 476 CE when a Germanic general, Odovacar (435–493), became the ruler of the western part of the empire. But the fall was a gradual dissolution, not a sudden collapse. After 200 CE, Rome faced many problems. Strong leadership was lacking; during a 50-year span in the 200s CE there were 26 emperors, only one of whom died a natural death. Epidemics of disease spread along the Silk Roads; afflictions that began in animals — smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough — could spread rapidly in urban populations. The Roman world lost about one-quarter of its population before 450 CE. Monetary inflation occurred; people lost confidence in coins and returned to bartering. The dissolving empire meant the decline of urban life, reduced international trade, loss of population, and widespread insecurity for ordinary people.

In 324 CE Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople and now called Istanbul) in Turkey, and from there the Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire, which lasted another thousand years until the Ottoman Turks sacked Constantinople in 1453. The Western Roman Empire ended in 476. Centralized authority did not hold; government reverted to city-states and small territories ruled by princes, bishops, or the pope, with the Roman Catholic Church often at odds with state authorities. The common tongue, Latin, evolved into many splinter languages — French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.

Read "Rome and Empire"

Rome and Empire

Rome began as a merging of small towns on seven hilltops by the Tiber River, halfway down the west coast of the Italian peninsula. A hundred years after the union, in 509 BCE, Roman aristocrats overthrew their king and set up a republic ruled by the patrician class. (A republic is a form of government in which delegates represent the interests of varied constituencies.) The poorer classes, called plebeians, insisted on some protections and participation. The idea of the republic came to include the rule of law, the rights of citizens, and upright moral behavior.

As its population grew, Roman rule expanded. For various reasons — food supplies, defense, land, glory — Roman armies fought the powerful city of Carthage, across the Mediterranean near modern-day Tunis, Tunisia. After 120 years Rome finally won and went on to conquer Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East by 133 BCE.

The republican form of government, however, produced seething rivalries among its military leaders, who competed for power with their personal armies. Out of this competition emerged the winner, Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE), who conquered Gaul (modern France) and England, but not Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, where the Celts held the line. By 46 BCE Julius Caesar declared himself dictator for life, ending the republic. Two years later other members of the Senate stabbed him to death in hopes of restoring the republic. Instead, after 13 more years of civil war, Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, known as Augustus, took the throne and ruled for 45 years Roman virtually unopposed.

The empire reached its height in the first two centuries of the Common Era. From 27 BCE to 180 CE, a time known as the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace, Roman leaders controlled about 130 million people across an area of about 1.5 million square miles, from a city of 1 million people. Roman roads linked all parts of the empire. Roman law, which featured key concepts such as the principle that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, was administered everywhere.

Under Roman law men had most of the rights, as was also the case in Greece. The father of the Roman family could arrange the marriages of his children, sell them into slavery, or even kill them without punishment. Roman law limited women’s rights to inherit property and assets, but some clever individuals managed to skirt this law.

Like all agrarian civilizations of its time, Romans made use of slave labor — but on a larger scale than most. No reliable data exist, but at the height of the empire maybe one-third of the population were slaves; an emperor alone might have about 20,000 slaves. In 73 BCE an escaped slave, Spartacus, assembled 70,000 rebellious slaves; after several years Roman troops crushed them and crucified 6,000 survivors along the Appian Way.

Romans put more of their creativity into roads, aqueducts (for carrying water), and law than into philosophy and science, unlike the Greeks. In a way, though, the Roman Empire was a vehicle for the spread of Greek culture. The Romans honored many gods, renaming the Greek ones and taking them as their own. Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) adopted a version of Stoicism, a Greek philosophy seeking to identify universal moral standards based on nature and reason; Epicetus and Marcus Aurelius further popularized it. The older mystery religions — the Anatolian rites of Mithras and Cybele and the Egyptian rites of Isis — proved immensely popu- lar in the Roman Empire.

Out of a remote corner of the Roman Empire emerged a small sect that has become the most widespread religion of today’s world — Christianity. The Romans conquered Judea (modern Israel) in 6 CE. Jesus, whom Christians consider the Son of God, grew up at a time of great tension between the Roman overlords and their Jewish subjects. The Romans allowed Jesus to be crucified in the early 30s CE to forestall rebellion, which they believed he was advocating with his message that “the kingdom of God is at hand.”

In 66–70 CE the Jews actually did revolt against Roman rule; the Romans crushed this by destroying the Jewish temple, taking thousands of Jews to Rome as slaves, and sending most of the rest into exile. 

After this revolt, Christianity spread to non-Jewish communities, led by Paul of Tarsus, Anatolia, who preached in the Greek-speaking eastern regions of the Roman Empire. At first Rome persecuted Christians, but by the third century CE Rome had become the principal seat of church authority, with the religion appealing to the lower classes, women, and urban populations. In 313 CE Emperor Constantine (who ruled from 306 to 337 CE) legalized Christian worship after his own conversion, and by the end of the fourth century it had become the official state religion.

History books used to refer to the “fall” of Rome in 476 CE when a Germanic general, Odovacar (435–493), became the ruler of the western part of the empire. But the fall was a gradual dissolution, not a sudden collapse. After 200 CE, Rome faced many problems. Strong leadership was lacking; during a 50-year span in the 200s CE there were 26 emperors, only one of whom died a natural death. Epidemics of disease spread along the Silk Roads; afflictions that began in animals — smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough — could spread rapidly in urban populations. The Roman world lost about one-quarter of its population before 450 CE. Monetary inflation occurred; people lost confidence in coins and returned to bartering. The dissolving empire meant the decline of urban life, reduced international trade, loss of population, and widespread insecurity for ordinary people.

In 324 CE Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople and now called Istanbul) in Turkey, and from there the Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire, which lasted another thousand years until the Ottoman Turks sacked Constantinople in 1453. The Western Roman Empire ended in 476. Centralized authority did not hold; government reverted to city-states and small territories ruled by princes, bishops, or the pope, with the Roman Catholic Church often at odds with state authorities. The common tongue, Latin, evolved into many splinter languages — French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.