8888888

First, be aware that the Romans never used this term; to the very end they referred to it as a "republic," though in reality the Republic ended for all intents and purposes with the assassination of Julius Caesar. Throughout the five centuries of the empire, the outward forms of the Republic were maintained - the Senate and other officials like aediles and quaestors; two consuls were elected every year, as in the old days, and the emperor technically was their employee (often the emperorwas a consul). The word we use - "emperor" - is the Latin imperator, and it means something like "commanding general" - to the Romans it did not connote hereditary monarchy, as it does in English. There were no "empresses" - the word imperatrix would have sounded as silly to the Romans as "generaless" would sound to us as a term for a general's wife. The office was never technically hereditary, though emperors often arranged to have their sons or nephews succeed them.

The image at right is Augustus Caesar - note that he has a toga, but it's not worn properly; he holds it so that you can see his military uniform; this is not accidental.

After a long three-way civil war (44-31 BC), Julius Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son Octavian defeated his rivals Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius) and Pompey (Pompeius) and made himself emperor with the name "Augustus." It means "the great one" - he was not modest. He was a brilliant general and administrator, and during his long reign established many new institutions that would last throughout the empire; some are still reflected in modern political and religious institutions today. (For example, he and most of the later emperors took the office of "pontifex maximus," or high priest; it is still a title of the Pope today because the first Christian emperor, Constantine, gave it to the bishop of Rome.) Read the textbook for the details of the Augustan reforms. Here is one: the policy of giving retired soldiers land in the various provinces, where they usually settled down and married local women; as a result, everyone today whose ancestors came from a country formerly part of the Roman empire has at least a little Roman DNA.

The next four emperors were members of Augustus' extended family, called by historians the "Julio-Claudians" (they were the product of several marriages between the noble Julius and Claudius families). When you look at their history - better, or more horrible, than any modern soap opera - you can understand how great a leader Augustus was - his empire actually survived the efforts of his murderous, corrupt, incestuous relatives, and even got stronger. Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius were all murdered (suffocation, stabbing, and poison mushrooms, respectively), and Nero killed himself (actually, had a servant do it).

After that, the army - specifically, the Praetorian Guard, a regiment that was the emperor's personal guards - took over, setting up and pulling down emperors. (Not many emperors died quietly in their beds.) Most were not related to each other, though we do see a few short-lived dynasties. In the second century, the so called "Good Emperors" vastly expanded the empire into Britain, northern and eastern Europe, and farther into the Middle East. The empire thrived economically and culturally, producing some great art and literature as well as gradually extending the benefits of Roman citizenship to most of the people they conquered. Also throughout this period they continued to fight the other great empire of that time, Persia. They even traded with China ("China" is a Latin word, derived from contacts with the early kingdom of Ch'in) and Sri Lanka (Taprobane), and may have sailed all the way around Africa (also a Latin word) and as far west as Iceland (Ultima Thule), though this is debated.

The textbook also discusses everyday life and culture, so we will not go into it here, except to note that after Rome "fell," the Romans themselves did not of course vanish; they became the medieval Europeans and Middle Easterners. As a result, many customs and superstitions were handed down through families to modern times. A few examples: the Romans believed very strongly in "bird omens." A stork landing on your roof meant that someone would get pregnant. An eagle flying over was a sign of good luck in war - and today many military forces (and some countries) use eagles as a symbol.

Throughout the empire, there were sacred springs and caves - and many of the great medieval cathedrals are built on those same sites. Roman law is still the basis of many countries' legal systems (though not including the English-speaking countries, whose law is based on Germanic tribal custom; American law included). And of course Latin itself evolved into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Even in English, we use a lot of Latin phrases and abbreviations, etcetera. Roman religion vanished (it was pretty much dead long before Rome fell), but its institutions and language survived and were taken over by the Roman Catholic Church. Roman architecture is all around us - the U.S. Capitol is very Roman. Many personal names used in English are Roman names. And the title "Caesar" became "Kaiser" in Germany and "Tsar" in Russia, as well as the name of a salad, for some reason.

By the beginning of the fourth century, the empire was beginning to come apart at the seams: see the next reading。

The "Fall" of Rome: A Paradigm Shift

Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published some 240 years ago, is still a classic of historical writing. Gibbon gave us the idea that Rome "fell," but the people who lived in the fifth century AD probably did not see it that way. The collapse of the Roman world was rather gradual, not always violent, and did not necessarily mean that things got worse - it would have depended on who and where you were.

Gibbon dated the beginning of the end from the Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in about AD 311, and he is probably right. Christianity was not at all compatible with traditional Roman priorities, and as more and more Romans became Christians, they became something other than "Roman" in the old sense. The image is the head of a colossal statue of Constantine in Rome.  In recent years the concept of "paradigm shift" has caught on among historians. The term is used too often, and sometimes in a vague or clumsy way, but in this case it probably makes sense.

A "paradigm" is a set of ideas and values that govern a civilization  (everything from the definition of God to table manners).

When wrenching and revolutionary changes destroy that value structure and replace it with another, a "paradigm shift" has occurred. Perhaps the most fundamental such shift came when the Greeks decided that humans and nature are separate. But the end of the Roman world was important too. Rome had dominated Western civilization for almost a thousand years, and its culture had spread from the British Isles to the Persian Gulf. When the Empire itself ended (the traditional date is AD 476) the Romans themselves, obviously, did not disappear. Nor did their culture. It transformed itself in a thousand ways, large and small, to become the civilization of medieval Europe.

What were the causes of the "Fall of Rome"?

A few major factors include:

· the empire was too big and hard to govern

· the population leveled off, so tax revenue stopped increasing

· the "barbarians" were at the gates

· transportation and communications networks broke down, for a variety of reasons

· the government was corrupt

· emperors came and went too often and too violently: a peaceful means of passing on power was never discovered

· the empire was too ethnically diverse: "Romanization" was only partly successful

· the eastern and western halves of the empire were too different

· last, but certainly not least: Christianity was adopted as the official religion

Read the chapter for the details of Rome's decline, but here is a brief summary. Rome's power and population both peaked around 250 AD. After that, the population declined slowly (epidemics, barbarian invasions, a decrease in the birth rate whose causes we don't know). Fewer people means less tax income, meaning that government services and military protection will decrease. Either that or you raise taxes, which makes people unhappy. In the late third century, the emperor Diocletian recognized that the empire was too big to govern, and he divided it into four vast provinces, two ruled by "caesars" and two by "augusti," with himself as the senior partner. Four new capitals, as well: Mediolanum (Milan); Augusta Treverorum (modern Trier, Germany); Nicomedia (now Izmit in Turkey); and Sirmium (now a very small town in Serbia). Rome itself had become a vast slum. Of course this backfired - these "co-emperors" quickly became rivals for supreme power and fought among themselves.

Years of civil wars followed Diocletian's abdication; the eventual winner was Constantine, who won the key battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD after seeing a vision (or having a dream; accounts vary) of a fiery cross in the sky. This persuaded him (so the questionable story goes) that the Christian God wanted him to win; and after he did win, he legalized Christianity. He himself was not baptized until he was on his deathbed, despite which he is now a saint (he had previously been a Mithraist). We do not know how many Romans were Christians by that time, but it was probably nearly half - a good reason for a man who wanted to be emperor to solicit their support. All but one of the emperors after that were Christians, or at least said they were. Theodosius, in 380 AD, outlawed all other religions.

The empire continued to fragment, largely because of the so-called "barbarian" invasions - mostly people speaking Germanic languages; but also the ancestors of today's Hungarians, and other peoples now vanished. They were moving into Roman territory for mainly two reasons: Roman lands were rich, and there were other, stronger tribes farther east who were pushing the "barbarians" westward. Many barbarians joined the Roman army, and some even became emperors. The "Roman-ness" of the empire was being heavily diluted. At last, when the Ostrogoths conquered Italy and unseated the last emperor at Ravenna (then the capital), the Roman empire came to an end. (This last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was ten years old.)