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The history of ancient Rome extends from the settlement of the first populations that developed in the Italian peninsula and that, according to tradition, founded Rome in the year 753 BC, until the fall of Byzantium at the hands of the Ottomans in the year 1453. In a first approximation to the so rich and extensive history of Rome, of fundamental incidence in our western culture, it can be divided into four periods: the Rome of the kings, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire . Below is a brief description of each period.
The Rome of the kings
Tradition tells that Rome was founded in the year 753 BC on the banks of the Tiber river. The peoples that inhabited the Italian peninsula before the rise of Rome were diverse, many of them originating from the Indo-European migrations that arrived on the peninsula around the 13th century BC, although there were also previously settled peoples. The Etruscans formed the first great civilization on the peninsula, but pre-Roman Italy was also heavily influenced by neighboring Greece. Beyond the legend, there is certainty that a city-state developed on the seven hills from villages of Latin tribes that grew on their peaks and that they were unified between the 9th and 8th centuries BC. Together with that Latin colony from Alba Longa, Settled there perhaps to monitor the advance of the Etruscans on the other side of the natural limit that was the Tiber River, groups of Sabines moved from the mountains, since it was the confluence of roads and an important site at that time for trade, especially salt . These villages are united in a league of the seven hills orSeptimontium , the germ of the future Rome. And for its birth a third element is added: the advance of the Etruscans towards the south, towards Campania through Lazio, turning the agglomeration of villages into a city that took on an Etruscan name: Rome, a city resulting from the fusion of Latins, Sabines and Etruscans.
The period of the kings, that is, the Roman monarchy, lasted from 753 to 509 BC, the year in which Tarquin was overthrown.the Proud and abolished the monarchy. These kings were elected, it was not a hereditary position, and there was a senate that had limited power. Legend has it that there were seven kings who ruled Rome in this period, and that Romulus, a legendary figure, was the first of them. But there is more certainty that it was an Etruscan king who developed the structure of the city towards the end of the 7th century BC. According to the founding myth, the second king of Rome would have been Numa Pompilius, who lived between 753 and 673 BC. He was a Sabine who is credited with pacifying Rome during his reign and introducing changes to its social structure, such as the creation of major religious institutions and the organization of artisans into eight corporations.
the roman republic
The second period of Roman history is that of the Roman Republic, a term that refers to both the temporal period and the political system. It begins in the year 509 BC, but the date it ends depends on the event that is considered the closing of the period. These events may be the seizure of power in Rome by Julius Caesar in the year 49 BC, his assassination in the year 44 BC or the rise to power of Gaius Octavius Turin, adopted son of Julius Caesar, named Augustus (emperor ) later, in the year 29 BC. Strictly speaking, Octavian’s enthronement as emperor marks the end of the Republic.
Once the monarchy was abolished, it was replaced by a system of government exercised by elected magistrates in citizen assemblies: the Roman Republic. In this system of government, the people had the right to appeal the decisions of the magistrates, whether on daily life or on the laws. However, the government of the city was in the hands of the richer classes and the nobles. Rome never became a democracy like Athens; the Republic always maintained an oligarchic and plutocratic government. Together with the Roman Senate, the comitia or assemblies were the representative bodies of the Roman people. The comitia had very broad powers and combined legislative, judicial and executive functions. One of them was the centuriata committee, which approved some laws and chose the highest authorities, the consuls.
The period of the Roman Republic can be divided into an early stage, when Rome was expanding and extending until the beginning of the Punic Wars; a second stage until the civil war, during which Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean and which lasted until 133 BC, and a third stage until the fall of the Republic.
In the first stage, Rome conquered new lands and began a geographical expansion that transformed it from a city state to a territorial state, and then into a vast empire. This stage of the Republic developed until the start of the Punic Wars, the three armed conflicts that faced the two main powers of the Mediterranean, Carthage, in North Africa, and Rome, between 264 and 146 BC. Carthage was devastated by the army of the Republic and its allies, led by Scipio El Africanus , and ceased to be a power capable of overshadowing Rome in the ancient world.
In the second stage, accumulated internal tensions erupt. Rome was concentrating on its expansion. The military campaigns had caused the citizens to leave their farms to fight in the different and continuous wars; many farmers could not maintain their farms and went bankrupt, and social conflicts were generated that were expressed in the year 133 BC in the murder of Tiberius Gracchus and 300 of his plebeian followers, following his proposals as tribune of the plebs. The conflict between the Senate and the commoners continued with the election of Tiberius’s brother, Gaius Gracchus, who would later be executed along with 3,000 of his followers on Capitoline Hill. In the third stage, political conflicts continued until Julius Caesar seized power in Rome with his army in 49 BC. and he exercised the government as a dictator in the Roman way (the dictatorship was a political figure foreseen for exceptional situations, and he was not the first dictator throughout the Republic). Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15 (“TheIdes of March») of the year 44 BC by Gaius Cassius, Marco Brutus, his adoptive son, and several, more than twenty, other senators. After various wars, Gaius Octavio Turino, adoptive son of Julius Caesar, would assume the government of Rome in the year 29 BC as emperor, Augustus, closing the stage of the Roman Republic.
The Roman Empire
The end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the empire on the one hand, and the fall of Rome and the rule of Byzantium on the other, are not clearly defined. The five centuries in which the Roman Empire spread are usually divided into two periods, the Principality and the Dominated. The formation of a government tetrarchy and the rise of Christianity are two characteristics of the last of these periods, while the maintenance of some of the institutions of the Republic was a characteristic of the Principality.
During the last period of the Republic, conflicts between the social classes led to several changes in the way Rome was governed and in the way people viewed its representatives. In the year 29 BC the Roman Senate proclaimed Octavian as princeps , first citizen, from which the name of the period, Principality, derives. In addition, he was granted the position of proconsular imperium , military command over the entire empire, along with the title of Augustus , equated with emperor. The unification of power in an Augustus allowed to enhance profound political, economic and military changes, putting an end to the multiple conflicts that were taking place. Thus he generated a period of stability that was called the Pax Romana .
For five centuries, the Roman emperors handed over the position to chosen successors, except when the army or the Praetorian Guards staged coups and assassinations. Originally the rulers were either Romans or Italians, but as the empire expanded, as the colonized barbarian peoples provided more and more manpower for the legions, men from other parts of the Empire came to be appointed emperors. Trajan, originally from Hispania, was the first non-Italian emperor of the Empire.
At the height of its expansion, the Roman Empire controlled the Mediterranean, the Balkans, Turkey, the regions known today as the Netherlands, southern Germany, France, Switzerland, and England. The empire’s trade reached as far north as Finland, as far as the Sahara in Africa to the south, and as far east as India and China via the Silk Road.
In the year 293 Diocletian established a tetrarchy, dividing the government between four people, two Augustus and two Caesars, although the new structure did not imply sharing power, since the main authority continued to reside in Diocletian and the Caesars were in charge of executing the measures that the august had. This system of government lasted until the year 324, when Constantine again unified power in a single emperor.
Constantine rebuilt the city of Byzantium, which would come to be called Constantinople and would be designated the capital of the empire in the year 330. Constantine adopted the Christian religion and established it as the official religion of the empire, becoming mandatory on pain of death under the reign of Theodosius I. , which generated religious clashes throughout the empire. On the death of Theodosius I in 395, the Roman Empire divided into the Eastern Empire, based in Constantinople, which would continue as the Byzantine Empire throughout the Middle Ages, and the Western Empire, based in Rome, which disintegrated in 476 when a Germanic tribe conquered the city founded by Romulus.
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, lasted until the year 1453, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Byzantium. Despite the fact that the Western Roman Empire divided into several kingdoms in the late 5th and early 6th centuries, there were attempts to reunify it. Emperor Justinian (527-565) was the last of the Byzantine emperors to attempt to reconquer the West.
In the Byzantine Empire the emperor wore the symbols of the oriental monarchs, a diadem or crown. He also wore an imperial cloak and people prostrated themselves before him. He was nothing like the original idea of the Roman emperor, the princeps , a primus inter pares , “first among equals.” The bureaucrats and the court established an insurmountable barrier between the emperor and the people.
Members of the Roman Empire who lived in the East considered themselves Roman, even though their culture had more Greek than Roman roots. This is an important point to keep in mind even when talking about the inhabitants of mainland Greece during the thousand or so years that the Byzantine Empire spanned. Although for the inhabitants of Byzantium they were always Romans. In fact, the Byzantine name was coined in the 18th century, centuries after its disappearance.
Sources
Carandini, Andrea. Rome: Day One . New Jersey, Princeton University, 2007.
deGrummond, Nancy T. History of ancient Italic people . Britannica Encyclopedia, 2015.
Kelly, Christopher. The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2006
