INS 280, Spring 2008: Rome: The birth of Western Civilization
From the Republic to Empire to the Church
Seminar assignments: 1) Some compare Rome with America, especially now as the US is engaged in military battles far from its shore. Conservative Pat Buchanan even warned that we were going from a Republic to an Empire. While no one expects a Caesar to overthrow our democratic system, some wonder if we’re not sacrificing our freedom and control over government by allowing it to become so large, powerful, and interventionist in the world. What do you think? 2) As you walk around Rome or Pompeii, think about what life must have been like in the Republic or Empire. What do you imagine the cities to have been like?
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Pre-Roman times: The Italian peninsula is home to numerous tribes, including the Itali, Latins (now Latium), Phoenicians, Sabines, Sicali (Sicily), Etruscan (Tuscany). The Etruscans were dominant in the middle of the peninsula, and in fact the first Roman kings were Etruscans.
The rise of Rome
There are two myths about the founding of Rome. The first is that a vestal virgin and Mars the God of War had two twin sons, Romulus and Remus. According to legend, they were abandoned (either on a mountain top or in a river in a basket), then found and raised by a She-Wolf. Livy states that the term ‘wolf’ was used to deride prostitutes, so it could mean they were raised by a prostitute. They founded the city in 753 BC, and legend says Romulus killed Remus to get the city named Roma instead of Rema.
Virgil (born near Mantua) is the famous Roman poet whose Aeneid tells the story of Roman history. In his version, Aeneas is a Trojan Prince who, after the fall of Troy, wanders the Mediterranean for seven years before being shipwrecked in Carthage (now Tunisia) and falling in love with the Queen of Carthage. He left her and took his people to the place now Rome and founded the city.
The first Kings of Rome were from the Etruscan Tarquin family, and ruled until 510 BCE. At that time Roman families banded together and kicked out the Etruscans and started the Roman republic.
Politics of the Roman Republic: The Republic would last from 509 to 28 BCE. Two Consuls would be elected by the Senate and a popular assembly. Early on political and military leaders held dominant power in the day to day political and legal life of the city, so under pressure from the plebeians (average citizens) the 12 Tables were passed in 450 BCE giving Roman citizens basic rights, and determining how to settle legal disputes. This was Rome’s first written laws.
Rome expanded rapidly, as the Romans took over most of the Italian peninsula, with Roman General Sulla finally eliminating Etruscan influence in a butcherous war in 88 BCE. The Etruscans had a high culture in their heyday, and may have come from Greece or Mesopotamia.
Carthage was threatened by the rising Roman Republic, and that led to three punic wars, the last one ending in 146 when Carthage surrendered Spain, and was basically dominated by Rome. Rome grew in power and wealth. But also was divided as it was hard for a city state to administer such diverse territory, with regional leaders able to have a lot of power.
Political Structure:
By our standards, we’d have said that sovereignty for the Roman Republic was based on the people, a concept of popular sovereignty that would be lost and rediscovered in the 17th century. Rome also had the first notions of individual rights, equal justice under the law, and truly western concepts. Although many of these were borrowed from the Greeks, Greek culture and politics was so different that it really can’t be seen as western. Rather, the “West” became a marriage of Greek ideas with Hebrew thought and religion which Rome brought together through Christianity. However, many of the political developments in the Roman Republic were Rome’s own indigenous contribution to what the West would become. For instance, Rome introduced the notion of checks and balances, something Montesquieu would note and whose ideas had a huge impact on the American constitution.
Senate: an advisory body officially, but due to the prestige of the people on it, it had considerable power. The Senate controlled the legislative process, as well as state finances and domestic and foreign policy. It became made up of ex-magistrates (the second branch of government) and hence its “advice” actually had the force of a decision.
Magistrates: These included the yearly elected Consuls, who had supreme administrative and military power, enforced the laws, convened and presided over the Senate’s meetings (and the popular assembly, noted below), and had what we would consider executive functions. There were two, and each could overrule the other, an important check. Below the council were Praetors, who ran the courts and governed provinces. There were six of those (after 200 BCE). There was also a Censor, who tried to make sure there was honor and morality in the political institutions and the people who made hem up, and a dictator, who was a magistrate given supreme power for six months (or less) to deal with a crisis.
Populus: The people were the final branch, and there were popular assemblies which could vote on war, peace, or enact laws, and try people charged with capital offenses. The assembly could veto laws proposed by the Consul, but could not amend them. Also, while open to the populus, the voting system favored those with wealth and prestige, minimizing its threat to the power of the other two branches.
Alas, secret deals and corruption flourished as Rome grew in power, and the honor and traditions that held these systems in place soon gave way to greed and avarice. By the second century BCE the system had weakened and even as the Republic grew in power, its internal institutions lost power. This made it ripe to become an empire.
From Republic to Empire:
Julius Caesar (100 – 44 BCE) was a successful Roman General who conquered Gaul, and after je defeated Syria in 47 BCE consider the war so straightforward and successful that he sent back the following description: Veni, Vedi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered). He was from a patrician family, but sided with the populist politicians, which helped create an opening to gain power, but then use public support to hold on to it. In 48 BCE he was elected Consul, but soon was named dictator for life. His power grew, and many on the Senate resented it, and ultimately a plot was hatched to kill him, and he was assassinated on March 15, 44 BCE.
His successor was his nephew, Octavian (known as Caesar Augustus 63 BCE – 14 CE). He was an able administrator and military leader, famously defeating Marc Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium in 31 BCE, gaining all of Egypt, and expanding his own wealth beyond that of the entire patrician class of Rome. In 28 BCE he was named Emperor, and the Republic ended. But Rome was entering its golden era.
Pax Romana
Rome never fought an offensive war, if you believe Roman history. They claim all their wars were defensive, or at the very least a preemptive defense against a rising threat. Their power was at a peak, as for 200 years they enforced a Roman peace (Pax Romana) on the empire from London to beyond Jerusalem and Damascus. Their power and wealth was immense, and Rome itself grew to over a million people, with a rising middle class as wealth created business people, administrators, teachers, and others.
Slavery and Gladiators: Slaves were mostly from defeated peoples (either those defeated or their descendants) and basically did whatever work they were told to do. They served a real niche in the economy, and can’t really be compared with what we consider slaves today to be, though their treatment and life conditions varied. Gladiators were slaves who fought in the public games – check out the rather realistic movie from 2000 “Gladiator” for a glimpse. The ex-slave Spartacus, an escaped Gladiator, helped lead a rebellion in 71 BCE that was brutally put down (and Spartacus was killed). Yet the uprising was a message to the Romans that if they mistreated their slaves too badly, the slaves could rise up.
The Pantheon: The Pantheon is still standing, built in 25 BCE by Marcus Agrippa, and after years of neglect, was repaired by the Emperor Hadrian in 118 CE. It became a church in 609 CE.
Christianity: Christianity rose at the time of Pax Romana. St. Peter, one of the apostles of Jesus, was sent to Rome in 64 CE to try to gain recognition. He was crucified upside down on (according to legend) Vatican hill. In the 4th Century Emperor Constantine would build a church there, and later it would become the site of St. Peter’s. Despite the stories of persecution, most Christians lead rather normal life styles as the religion became more and more popular, especially with women, who had a higher status than in traditional Roman society.
Why Christianity? Paul, a Jew who was a Roman citizen made a fateful decision. Christianity was one of many sects of Judaism competing for dominance of the Jewish faith. But Paul determined that new Christians did not have to become Jews (did not have to be circumcised or follow Jewish laws to become part of the covenant God had with Israel), arguing that due to Jesus, people were ‘justified by faith.’ This led Jews to reject this version in favor, ultimately, of rabbinical Judaism. But the openness to other people of the new religion (after all, having to be circumcised to join a religion was a big barrier to gaining large numbers of male converts) helped it expand and ultimately become a world religion. Later Islam would also join this tradition, as Muhammad would accept Jewish and Christian teachings, arguing that Jesus (Isa) was only a great prophet rather than the son of God (since a monotheistic god couldn’t have a son, according to Muhammad). In any event, Christianity became popular and persecution actually was rare after the early years.
By the rule of Constantine in the early 4th century, the golden age of Rome was ending. German tribes had been resistant to conquest, and were expanding, as were the Huns and other tribes from the East. Constantine made some major choices. One was to convert to Christianity – later Christianity would become the religion of the Empire. Second, he moved the capital of the Empire to the safer East to what would be named Constantinople (now Istanbul). That would set up a split between the western (Roman Catholic) and eastern (Christian Orthodox) churches. He did this in part to strengthen the Empire by enlisting Christians in defense of the Empire. It worked; Augustine, for instance, developed Just War theory in part because Christian pacifism was hard to reconcile when the choice was to defend the now Christian Roman Empire, or to give way to the pagan barbarian hordes. But Rome was by the 5th century constantly attacked. The Romans allowed the Germans to settle in Roman lands, and soon they were encroaching on Rome. The population by the end was down to 20,000. Soon the buildings and monuments would be plundered for scrap, and knowledge of how all that was built would be lost. The end of the western empire was officially 476 CE when the last emperor abdicated, but for all intents and purposes, it was done before then. The eastern empire would survive in Constantinople until 1453 so in some shape the government started in Rome in 753, which went from Etruscan kings to a Republic to an Empire to an Empire based in Constantinople lasted over 2100 years.
In the ruins of an empire…
The eastern Empire would push the Germans out of Italy, though the Lombards would settle north of the Po river. From the highly ordered Roman system emerged a decentralized feudalism. Peasants would work the land and though they were not slaves, they were tied to the land (serfs) and received only a portion of what they produced. Feudalism began to give way to stronger urban centers in the north as early as 1100, though was not abolished completely until the 19th century. In the south it persisted into the 20th century, and its impact can still be seen.
The Church
Although the view of the dark ages was one where the Roman Catholic church used its authority to control politics and people, preventing the growth of science and reason, that is an unfair and wrong impression. The church actually saved the remnants of civilization and learning in its monasteries and cathedrals, which themselves were often an oasis from the chaos of the “real world.” Moreover, there were attempts to rejuvenate European culture. Charles the Great (Charlemagne) reconstructed the empire briefly, being crowned by the Pope. This led to a power conflict which would persist for centuries. Although Charlemagne’s effort to revive the empire failed after his death, a decentralized patchwork of territories ruled with archaic rules and traditions emerged known as the Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor exercised only minimal authority, and even that was contested by the Pope, who claimed to be the premier authority in both the political and spiritual realms.
Near the Vatican is Castel Sant’Angelo, a fortress which is extremely impressive to visit, as one sees it was built to protect against virtually anything. Hadrian built it in the second century, but it was often used by Popes for cover when Rome was sacked, or warfare threatened the Vatican. In 1505 Pope Julius II formed the Swiss Guard to be the Pope’s bodyguards; to this day they still wear their original styled customs (which you’ll see and likely photograph at the Vatican), said to have been designed by Michelangelo.
Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzlinger of Germany) is the 266th Pope (not counting the so-called anti-Popes). From 1378 to 1415 the Great Schism occurred, with two popes. After the Protestant Reformation in Germany, the church was forced to agree to give up its claims on political power. In the Treaty of Westphalia the church essentially ceded power to the “sovereigns” of Europe, creating a new political concept of sovereignty. Theoretically they still claim God through the Church gave the right to rule, but practically they lost control. When Napoleon was crowned Emperor of France in 1803, he took the crown from the Pope’s hands and crowned himself, signifying that sovereignty lay in the people, not the church or God.
Yet the church also set up the seeds for an intellectual change starting in the 15th century. In the 4th century they embraced neo-Platonist thought through Augustine; by the 11th century Muslim scholars were bringing to the West and Italy knowledge of the ancient Greeks, including Aristotle. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) brought Aristotelian thought to the Catholic church (though not without some resistance). Although Thomas would work much of his career in Paris, he was Italian, born in the Kingdom of Napoli. In Bologna, the first modern university was founded in 1066, and soon universities sprang up across Europe. Though originally designed for the church, they also explored the knowledge being conveyed from the Islamic world (ancient philosophers, etc.), and soon became centers of true learning.