Chapter 7

The Roman World

While Alexander laid the foundations for Hellenistic civilization by carrying Greek
culture and ideas into the heartland of the Persian Empire, further west the
interplay of different cultures and civilizations also gave rise to a new variation on
the theme of civilization. Phoenician cities had flourished in northern Africa and
Spain since the late 2nd millenium B.C., while Greek cities dotted southern Italy
and eastern Sicily in such profusion after the great period of Greek colonization
that the region became known as Magna Graecia, or Greater Greece. These citydwelling immigrants came into contact with various tribal peoples speaking IndoEuropean languages such as Celtic and Italic. In northern Italy the rather
mysterious Etruscans, who may have migrated there from Asia Minor in several
waves, had established their own highly structured and sophisticated kingdoms. As
all these groups began to interact, a new civilization began to emerge in the
western Mediterranean. The center of this new civilization was a small group of
villages along the Tiber River not far from the western coast of Italy. Sometime in
the early years of the 1st millenium B.C., these villages came together and
organized themselves around a common market place, or forum. From this central
forum grew the great imperial capital, Rome.
Section 1
The Emergence of Rome
Under Alexander the Great, Greek culture expanded eastward into the ruins of the
old Persian Empire. In many areas, the new Hellenistic, or Greek-like culture that
emerged under Alexanders successors remained little more than an artificial
overlay, a culture of the Greek-speaking elite that had little influence on the local
cultures and traditions of most people. This was particularly true in Egypt and
Mesopotamia, as well as among the Jews of Palestine. In other places, however,
such as Asia Minor, Syria, and far to the east in Bactria and northern India,
Greek civilization and culture did filter down to the local level where it interacted
with older traditions to produce a blending of cultures. To the west too, Greek
culture significantly influenced emerging cultures and civilizationsparticularly
that of Rome, which would soon conquer not only Greece itself but most of the
rest of the Hellenistic world around the Mediterranean Sea.
Geography and History
At even a first glance, the Italian peninsula would seem a logical place for the
emergence of an imperial power that would dominate the Mediterranean region.
The boot-shaped Italian peninsula juts south from Europe into the Mediterranean
Sea nearly half way to Africa. It also lies almost halfway between the eastern and
western boundaries of the Mediterranean world. In short, Italy provides the perfect
land base from which people might be able to dominate the entire Mediterranean
world.
To the north, the peninsula is protected, though not isolated, by the high
mountain range of the Alps. South, east, and west the sea provides both protection
and a means of rapid transportation. Up the center of the peninsula, the Appenine
Mountains divide the eastern and western coasts. From north to south, Italy

stretches some 750 miles, with an average width of about 120 miles across. Much
of the peninsula is relatively rich country with a pleasant climate, able to feed a
large population. Compared to Greece, for example, the interior of Italy provided
much better soil, trees, and a better balance between agriculture and the livelihood
to be gained from the sea.
Greeks, Carthaginians and Etruscans
Civilization came late to the western Mediterranean. Mesopotamia and Egypt had
reached a sophisticated level of civilization long before anything occured in the
west. The first great civilization to emerge in Italy was established in Etruria, north
of Latium, in modern-day Tuscany.
Scholars disagree about whether the Etruscans came from Lydia, in Asia
Minor, or were native Italians. What little we know about their original civilization
is drawn from their cemetaries and the tombs they decorated and furnished for
their dead. Judging from such evidence, they seem to have had a great zest for life.
They danced, played hard at games, and feasted at great banquets. Women
apparently played a much greater role in Etruscan society than in Greek or later
Roman civilization.
The Etruscans never established any single political entity in Etruria but
organized themselves in a collection of independent cities. During their Golden
Age in the 6th century B.C., however, the Etruscans dominated central Italy from
the Po river to the bay of Naples. In the 5th century, pressure from Greeks and
Celts, and revolts of the Latins forced them to retreat to Etruria proper, between
the Arno and Tiber rivers. They greatly influenced Rome, which they controlled
throughout the 500s.
From the middle of the 8th century Greek colonists settled in southern Italy
and eastern Sicily. The region took the name of Greater Greece (Magna Graecia)
because of the importance of Greek emigration in this region. Meanwhile, across
the Mediterranean, on the North African coast, Carthage, a Phoenician colony
founded in 814 B.C., headed a trading empire in the western Mediterranean,
controling the coasts of North Africa, Spain, western Sicily, as well as the islands
of Corsica and Sardinia. Led by an aristocracy of merchants and possessing a
powerful navy, Carthage could claim the title of "Queen of the western
Mediterranean" in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.
Surrounded by such influences, near the western coast in the middle of the
Italian peninsula, the city of Rome grew up from several small villages grouped
together around a central market, or forum. According to tradition, Romulus and
Remus, twin brothers who were raised by a she-wolf, founded the city of Rome in
753 B.C. Whether such figures actually existed or not, the city prospered at least
partly from its location. It was strategically located on the banks of the Tiber River
and only about 18 miles from the western coast. In addition, Rome was a bridgecity, controlling access across the river. Thus it not only lay across valuable trade
routes between northern and southern Italy, it also had convenient access to the
sea while at the same time being protected from pirate attacks. Early Romans
themselves appreciated the location of the city, as the later Roman statesman,
Cicero, acknowledged in his explanation for the development of Romes empire:

It seems to me that Romulus must at the very beginning have [had] a divine
intimation that the city would one day be the site and hearthstone of a mighty
empire; for scarcely could a city placed upon any other site in Italy have more
easily maintained our present widespread dominion. [Cicero (De Re Publica
II,5)]
The Romans. The people who established Rome were members of an IndoEuropean speaking group of peoples, known as Latins, who had migrated into the
Italian peninsula from the northeast sometime around the beginning of the 1st
millenium B.C. They were thus related to the Greeks, at least culturally if not
ethnically, and spoke an Italic language that was relatively close to Greek. In Italy,
the Latins came under the influence of the Greek city-states of the south, as well as
the Etruscan civilization of northern Italy. Sometime after the founding of Rome,
the city came under the rule of Etruscan kings, much as many Greek cities began
life as small kingdoms.
In 509, however, the Romans threw out the last of their Etruscan
monarchs, Tarquinius, and established a republic, in which representatives of the
people, at first usually the wealthy landed nobles, but eventually including ordinary
people called plebs, ruled the state. They remained at war with the Etruscans
further north, as well as with their surrounding neighbors. Like the early Athenians,
the Romans were a tribal people who yet learned how to organize themselves for
city-life. Around them, meanwhile, the other Latin peoples continued to live a
basically rural tribal existence as farmers and herders. Gradually, the Romans
extended their control over these rural neighbors and incorporated them into a
kind of Latin League.
Eventually, the Romans began to prevail over the Etruscans, partly because
of their greater manpower and partly because of their development of a citizen
army. In addition, although the Romans began to expand their city, they remained
at heart a rural community. Roman citizens, both commoners and aristocrats called
patricians, prided themselves on their connection with the soil. One famous story
of early Rome for example, tells how the city was threatened by enemies; in their
time of need, the people turned to their greatest general, Cincinatus, who was
plowing his own fields at the time. After leaving his plow, Cincinatus defeated the
Romans enemiesthen promptly returned to his plow.
As the Roman population began to grow, so too did the need for more and
more land. Soon, Rome had begun to conquer its neighbors and to settle its own
surplus population on the newly-acquired land. Although like the Greek cities,
Rome too suffered from internal strife between aristocrats and commoners, in
times of danger they could put these quarrels behind them and unite to confront
their common foes. Moreover, much as had happened with the hoplites in Greece,
Roman military victories not only provided more and more land for the peasants,
thus alleviating their land-hunger, it also gave them a greater stake in the survival
and growth of the city.
Although the rate of Roman expansion suffered a setback in 390 B.C.,
when a band of Celtic warriors swept down from the north, sacking and burning
the city, recovery was rapid and Roman expansion became even more rapid after
the raid. By about 265 B.C., the Romans had not only defeated the Etruscans of

the north, conquering many of their cities, they had also made themselves the
masters of southern Italy, which they conquered from the Greeks.
The foundation of Rome and the Royal period (753-509 B.C.).
Romulus and Remus. The Romans dated the foundation of their city to 753 B.C.,
when, according to tradition, twin sons born to a Vestal Virgin by the war god
Mars established the city. Legend relates that the twins, grandchildren of king
Numitor of Alba Longa, were condemned to death by their grand uncle who had
usurped the throne. But the soldier charged with the deed could not bring himself
to do it and abandoned the babies for wild beasts to devour. Instead, a she-wolf
adopted them into her own litter and saved them by feeding them. Thereafter, the
she-wolf became the symbol of Rome. Later the twins, Romulus and Remus, after
giving back to their grandfather the throne of Alba Longa, left the city to found a
new one, Rome.
The legend of the foundation of Rome by Romulus and Remus was later
associated with the Greek epic of the Trojan war. Aeneas, a Trojan, had fled Troy
in flame, and settled in Latium. His son had founded Alba Longa, and through a
succesion of kings they arrived at the grandfather of the twins. The story of the
Trojan origins of the Romans was to be immortalized in the 1st century A.D. by the
great poet Virgil in his work, the Aeneid.
Latin and Etruscan Kings. From 753 to 509 B.C. Rome was ruled by kingsat
first Latin kings, then Etruscan kings (in the 6th century). The Etruscans were
interested in Rome because of its strategic location: it was of crucial importance
for their lines of communications between Etruria and Campania.
Under Etruscan rule, Rome began to prosper. The Etruscans transformed
the dispersed villages into a city by paving the plain in the middle of the hills, by
surrounding the city by a wall, by creating a solid political organization, and by
strengthening the economy. From the Etruscans, the Romans learned and adopted
many elements of civilization and culture: the alphabet; engineering expertise in
irrigation and construction; the art of divination; and many others.
The expulsion of the kings (509 B.C.). In 509, however, the Roman nobles
expelled their last king, Tarquinius Superbus, as part of a general movement of
liberation from Etruscan rule that was happening throughout Latium. The nobles
proclaimed that Rome was now a republic in the Latin sense of the term res
publica, or public property rather than the private property of a king. (see section
iii)
Roman Conquest of the Mediterranean World
The conquest of Italy (509-272 B.C.). The Roman conquest of Italy should be
considered in two phases divided by the sack of Rome by a raiding party of Gauls
in 390 B.C. Before this disaster, the Romans had been able to take control over the
neighboring tribes in Latium and the surrounding regions. They were starting the
conquest of Etruria when a band of Gauls invaded from northern Italy. The Gauls

defeated the Roman army on the field of battle, then sacked and burned Rome to
the ground.
This set-back cancelled all the progress the Romans had achieved since 509
B.C. But it did not destroy the Romans spirit. As soon as the Gauls left, the
Romans rebuilt their city and resumed their yearly campaigns against the tribes of
central Italy. From that moment on the Romans would never stop expanding until
they had established their dominion first over Italy, and then throughout the
Mediterranean. By 338 B.C., Rome had gained control of the Latins and
neighbouring tribes (by 338 B.C.), and opened hostilities against the fierce tribally
organized Samnites south east of Latium. It took three difficult wars to subjugate
the Samnites (343-341; 316-304; 298-290 B.C.). In the process, the Romans
established the predominance of an urban society rather than the foundations of an
urban society throughout Italy that replaced the loose social structure of the tribal
peoples.
Once in control of central Italy, the Roman legions moved south toward
Magna Graecia. Rightly worried by Roman progress, the city of Tarentum
decided to appeal for help to Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. Pyrrhus, a relative of
Alexander the Great, was one of the most brilliant generals of his time. He came to
Italy with a well trained professional army of 35,000 men. The first two battles
against Pyrrhus ended in outright defeats for Rome (279 and 278 B.C.).
Nevertheless, the Romans stubbornly refused to acknowledge the superiority of
their enemies or to negotiate with them as the rule of warfare between civilized
countries normally implied. Both the Romans stubborn refusal to negotiate and the
casualties they inflicted on the Greek forces caused Pyrrhus to remark to one of his
officers that with another such victory he would end up without an army! (Ever
since, costly victories have been known as Pyrrhic victories.) In 276, the Romans
faced Pyrrhus one more time and finally were victorious.
The Pyrrhic war made clear to everybody that the Romans could stand to
lose battles but would end by winning the wars. The lesson was not forgotten. In
273, the king of Egypt, Ptolemy II, sent an embassy to seek a treaty of friendship
with Rome. The great Hellenistic power of Egypt thus acknowledged the rising
western power of Rome. Rome was now a power to be acknowledged in the
Mediterranean world. The following year, the capture of Tarentum sealed the fate
of southern Italy.
Roman Italy. It may be useful to interrupt here the history of the Roman conquest
to reflect on the political organization of the conquest of Italy. The Romans did not
treat their defeated enemies rashly. They imposed on them two strict conditions: to
forfeit any independent foriegn policy and to provide a contingent of troops to the
Roman army. Apart from these two conditions Rome did not intervene with the
domestic affairs, customs, or religion of their "allies".
By not imposing a tribute nor interfering with the internal matters of these
peoples, Rome avoided creating strong resentments among the defeated Italians.
Furthermore in imposing her order in the Peninsula, Rome brought peace and
security, two advantages many Italians could appreciate. Italian tribes had been
constantly fighting between themselves before the Roman conquest. Now they
could enjoy a stability at a minimum cost.

The Romans very cleverly managed always to negotiate separate treaties

with the different cities and tribes of Italy in order to avoid creating an Italian
consciousness and the risk of an alliance among their new allies against the
hegemonial city. Each treaty had its specific clauses giving the impression that the
two powers were treated separately. Rome did not want to create an Italian nation
that could threaten her, but preferred to practice the "Divide and rule" principle.
Also, to protect their domination the Romans had at their disposal an immense
manpower to fill their armies. In fact Rome was to acquire domination over her
empire with armies made of an equal number of legions, composed of Roman
citizens, and auxiliaries, drawn from the Italian allies. Strictly speaking, from a
military point of view, the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean was a RomanoItalian achievement.
Conquest of the Western Mediterranean (264-146 B.C.). Once in control of
southern Italy, Rome was soon to intervene outside of the peninsula, in Sicily. In
agreeing to help the city of Messena against her enemy Syracuse, Rome came into
conflict with Carthage. The Carthaginians were in control of eastern Sicily and
were afraid to see Rome in control of the straits between Italy and the island. This
was a possible threat to their commercial ambitions. The first war between Rome
and Carthage was fought in Sicily for 25 tears. It was a long and frustrating
conflict since Rome was superior on land but the Carthaginian navy dominated at
sea.
Only when the Romans realized that the war had to be won on sea and
decided to build a navy could they win the conflict. The Romans did not challenge
the Carthaginians at sea without difficulty. This new form of fighting had to be
mastered and it cost them dearly: they lost more than 600 ships (and their crews
and marines) during the war, most of them through lack of naval experience and
competent leaders. Aware of their limitations as sailors, the Romans found an
ingenious device to transform sea battle into land battle. They equipped their ships
with boarding-bridges that were thrown on the enemies' ships and thus made it
possible for Roman marines to board and fight as if they were on land. With this
new technique of fighting, the Romans eventually not only prevailed on land but
also overcame the Carthaginians at sea.
The results of this first Punic War were important for Rome. Carthage was
forced to pay a heavy war indemnity and to abandon Sicily. The indemnity made it
clear to the Romans that warfare might actually become a paying proposition.
Control of Sicily reinforced this lesson. The Romans, for the first time faced with
governing overseas territories, did not treat Sicily as they had conquered territories
in Italy. Instead, they created their first province - that is they ruled it directly, with
a governor and troops of occupation, and the imposition of a regular tribute. A few
years later (238 B.C.) taking advantage of the revolt of Carthage's mercenaries in
North Africa, the Romans seized the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, which they
transformed into their second province. The seizure of the two islands was
contrary to all legal and moral principles but Carthage was in no condition to resist
the aggression.
This act of brutal imperialism, however, generated hatred of Rome in
Carthage. Some Carthaginians dreamed of revenge. Among them were the Barcids,
a Carthaginian family who had emigrated to Spain after the loss of Sicily. They

hoped to use Spains manpower to create an army. The son of Hamilcar Barca, the
great general Hannibal, in 218 B.C. was to be the heir of this strategy when he
departed from Spain at the head of a well trained army to invade Italy during the
Second Punic War.
The second Punic war was one of the most tragic wars in Roman history.
During its first three years Hannibal defeated the Romans in three great battles
(Trebia in 218; Lake Trasimene in 217; Cannae in 216). By 215 Rome seemed on
the verge of being destroyed. She had lost some 100,000 soldiers (either dead or
prisoners), her southern Italian allies had defected to Hannibal, Sicily was no
longer on her side, and the powerful king of Macedonia, Philip V, had made a
military alliance with Hannibal. Nevertheless, Rome faced these trying times with
all her energy and resources: the Senate took total control of the war effort and the
whole Roman population stood behind their leaders. Eventually, Rome managed to
regroup and finally to defeat the Carthaginians.
Carthage was severely punished. She lost her navy and Spain, as well as her
independence in matters of foreign policy. As for Rome, the defeat of Carthage
made her the leading power in the western Mediterranean. But the trauma of the
second Punic war left indelible scars in the Roman psyche. One Roman orator, for
example, ended every speech he made in the Senate with the phrase, Carthago
delenda est! meaning Carthage must be destroyed. Eventually, in 149 B.C.
under arguable pretexts, the Romans declared war for the third time. After a siege
of three years they finally took the city by force. They enslaved and evicted the
remaining inhabitants and leveled Carthage itself. They even spread salt on the
remains of the ancient city, as a dedication of the site to the gods of the
underworld. In the meantime, the Romans secured their rule over north Italy and
Spain.
Conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean (215-133 B.C.). During the Second
Punic War, Macedonia had been allied with the Carthaginians. As soon as the war
was over, the Romans declared war on Macedonia. They were victorious (197
B.C.). But in intervening directly in the East, Rome soon became involved in the
Hellenistic world especially the Greek leagues and Syria. By 146 B.C., Rome was
in control of the eastern Mediterranean.
Conclusion: Roman imperialism (Its nature).
The Romans did not acquire their empire by following a rational plan of world
domination. They acquired it piecemal and for a variety of reasons - among them
self-defense, fascination with military glory, responses to their allies's request for
help, a desire for military spoils and the riches of empire, and not least the
militaristic character of the Roman people.
In addition to their success in defeating their enemies the Romans were
remarkably successful in keeping their acquisitions. In addition to their military
superiority, and their willingess to use force against any signs of revolt, the
Romans owed their imperial successes to their treatment of their new subjects.
They were not interested in direct exploitation nor in direct intervention in the
domestic interests of subjugated countries. They left the vanquished nations to
enjoy their own customs, religions and cultures - as long as they abandoned all

independence in foreign and military affairs and paid a regular tribute. As in Italy
the Romans generally brought peace and order to their overseas provinces.

Section 2
Early Roman Society (5TH-2ND CENTURIES B.C.)
Roman Republican Institutions
The expulsion of the last king in 509 B.C. left Roman society divided between the
patricians (aristocrats by birth) and the plebeians (the rest of the population,
approximately 90% of it). The patricians controled every aspect of society:
politics, religion, economy, military commands.
They did not enjoy this absolute control for long. In fact, from the very
beginning of the new Republic, plebeians challenged the patrician monopoly of
power in what became known as the Conlict of the Orders (509 to 287 B.C.).
Much as in Greece during the same period, poor plebeians allied with a
growing number of rich plebeians in the fight for economic reforms. They
especially hoped to settle problems of debts and distribution of land. Rich plebeians
were interested in political equality, access to public offices and priesthoods. It
took them nearly two centuries to obtain a share in political power on equal terms
with the patricians. In the end, a new aristocracy emerged from this conflict, a
patricio-plebeian aristocracy that was no longer based on birth but based on
election to public offices. This new aristocracy, known as the nobilitas, consisted
of those families whose ancestors had been elected to the highest office of the
state, the consulship. This new kind of oligarchy reflected the strong feeling for
serving the state in Roman society. Although restricted in numbers and access, the
Roman oligarchy was not completely closed. New members could join by being
elected to the consulship. After 287 B.C., however, Roman society was no longer
divided between patricians and plebeians but between an oligarchy and the rest of
the citizenry.
The new constitutional order that emerged out of the Conflict of the Orders
consisted of three elements: the public offices, or magistracies; the Senate; and
the popular assemblies. Access to public offices was limited to the richest
members of the society. A high property qualification was required to follow a
public career. After completing ten years of military service, a Roman politician
would pursue his career by soliciting popular votes for a series of offices leading
ultimately to the highest political office, the consulship. This career, known as the
cursus honorum, was strictly regulated: there were minimum age requirements,
mandatory progression from one office to another, delays between periods of
holding office, and a prohibition against holding the same office more than once
(except the consulship under certain emergency conditions.) Such rules insured
that participants would become familiar with all aspects of the art of government:
securing and distributing food supplies, organizing public games, accepting
financial responsibilities, carrying out legal duties, and of course fulfilling military
functions.
The magistrates were elected by the people either in the centuriate
assembly for the highest offices (praetors, consuls, and censors) or by the assembly
of the tribes for the minor magistracies. Wealthy citizens controled the Centuriate
Assembly by monopolizing the majority of the voting units. In the tribal assembly,
citizens were distributed in 35 voting units based on where they lived, without
considering their property qualifications. And yet, this assembly was controled by
the oligarchy mostly because of the lack of secret ballots and the importance of

patronage. If successful in all stages of the cursus honorum, a candidate might be

elected to the consulship. There were always two consuls, and the office
controlled the highest power in civil and military matters. The most prestigious
office, the censorship, could crown an already successful career. Two censors
were elected every five years for 18 months to conduct the census of the whole
population and to nominate new senators. Only the richest and best connected
people could hope to become censors.
The Senate was the third element of the Roman republican political system
and probably the most important one. It controled foreign policy, military
operations, and public finances. It was made up of 300 members chosen from
among the elected magistrates, and the tenure was for life. The Senate was the
most experienced council of Rome and enjoyed prestige and authority among both
the current magistrates and the people. The Senate was not a legislative bodyit
only gave advicebut its opinion was usually followed.
The Roman republican system was neither democratic nor despotic. The
Romans were a deferential people and did not challenge the control of the
oligarchy. In addition, the Roman system of patronage, that is the division among
citizens between patrons, rich and powerful citizens, and their clients, the common
people who looked to them for protection and help in exchange for support in
political matters, insured the control of the elite.
Until 133 B.C., the system worked well and the success of the Roman legions
year after year may have been partially responsible for this. Roman citizens were
proud of the achievement of their city and attributed it to the excellence and
common-sense practicality of its institutions. As one Roman statesman explained
Romes success:
The reason of the superiority of the constitution of our city to that of other
states is that the latter almost always had their laws and institutions from one
legislator. But our republic was not made by the genius of one man, but of
many, nor in the life of one, but through many centuries and generations.
[Cato (apud Cicero De Re Pub. II,1,2)]
The Roman Army
Romes successful expansion from a city-state into a major empire was due largely
to its military superiority. The manpower of Italy sustained the Roman military
machine. Roman armies were made up of Roman citizens and Italian allies in equal
proportions. The citizens were organized into legions, while the allies acted as
auxiliaries. Between the ages of 17 and 46, Roman citizens were liable for military
service: 10 years in the cavalry or 16 years in the infantry. The time need not be
served consecutively, and in cases of emergency a citizen might have to serve
longer.Military service required a minimum property qualification since the
Romans believed that one would only fight bravely if he had some property to
protect at home.
At first the Romans used the phalanx formation but soon replaced it with a
more elastic formation. They divided the phalanx into 30 units called maniples.
Eventually, at the end of the 2nd century B.C., the Roman general Marius achieved
a synthesis of the best elements of the phalanx system and that of the manipular
system by reorganizing the legions into 10 cohorts. This system of cohorts

provided both the flexibility for fighting in mountainous and broken terrain
provided by the smaller manipules, as well as the power of the phalanxs mass
formation for fighting on open, flat terrain. The new cohortal system remained the
basic military organization of Rome until nearly the end of its imperial history.
Well disciplined and superbly trained, the Roman army was an army of foot
soldiers rather than cavalrymen. Roman strategy was based on caution,
organization, resilience, and high morale, rather than dashing and inspiring tactics.
Until the reforms of Marius, the army reflected the make-up of Roman societyit
was made up of citizen-soldiers. Indeed, all citizens were expected to be soldiers,
and military glory was a major part of the Roman ethos, both among officers and
men in the ranks. Republican Rome, in short, was very much a military society.
Republican Society
At the heart of Romes social structure was the family. Even the state reflected the
basic structure and importance of the family in Roman life. The family in turn was
like the state in small. Like other tribal peoples, the Romans were patriarchal. The
head of the family, the paterfamilias, or family father, the oldest living male, had
extensive powers over other members of the extended family. This included his
wife, his sons with their wives and children, unmarried daughters, and the family
slaves. One of the paterfamiliass most important duties was to ensure the proper
worship of the spirits of the familys ancestors, on whom depended the familys
continuing prosperityjust as the prosperity of the state depended on the proper
worship of the official gods of the state.
Families were grouped into gentes or clans, whose members claimed
descent from a common, though often mythical ancestor. Within this basic family
structure, Romans emphasized the virtues of the farmer-soldiera stubborn breed,
they valued above all authority, simplicity, and piety. Most families sustained
themselves more or less independently on small farms which they managed
themselves.
Roman women could not do anything without the intervention of a
guardian (being the father, husband, son, or nearest relatives according to the
case). Marriage cum manu i.e. the gardianship passed from father to husband or
sine manu i.e. the guardianship remained with her father (in that case, once her
father dead, she was free (sui iuris) . The minimum legal marriage age was
normally 12 for girls. In contrast to upper-class Athenian women, however, upperclass Roman women were not segregated from males in the home. They were free
to go outside the home without escort.
Children were accepted in the family only if they were recognized and
accepted by the father. As in Greece, the early Romans often exposed unwanted
children. Adoption was an important aspect of Roman society, and adopted
children, usually brought into a family to establish political alliances between
families, or for the pupose of providing a strong heir to act as paterfamilias, were
considered the full equals of natural children.
Education was carried on primarily at home. For boys it consisted mostly
of military training, but also included basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Under
Greek influence, during the 2nd century a more literary education became popular,
particularly in rhetoric and philosophy. Romes eventual conquest of Greece and
the Hellenistic world brought many Greek tutors into rich households as slaves. As

Rome adopted Greek culture, the upper classes of Roman society became largely
bi-lingual, learning both Latin and Greek.
As Rome expanded, growing numbers of war captives became an
important feature of society as slaves. As in Greece, slavery had always existed in
Roman society, whether as a result of military conquest or because people had to
sell themselgves or their children to pay off debts. Romans were very liberal in
giving freedom to their slaves, however, and freedmen also constituted a growing
part of society.
Economically, Rome remained primarily dependent on agriculture. At first,
trade was marginal and industry nearly non existent. The Romans had no
independent coinage before the 3rd century. Although some wealthy aristocrats
began to accumulate large estates, in the early years of the republic the economy
was made up mostly of small farms managed by a family and more or less autosubsistent. Of far more importance was the military nature of societyparticularly
once the Romans discovered that conquests could be profitable.
Republican Culture
Before the 2nd century, Rome was too involved in military matters to devote much
energy to the arts and literature. By the second century, however, the process of
Hellenization had begun to transform Rome into a Hellenistic city. Drawing on a
common Indo-European religious tradition, the Romans adopted Greek mythology
and identified their own gods with those of Olympus.
Also like the Greeks, Romans viewed religion largely as a matter of state.
Morality was less important than the exact performance of rituals through which
both individuals and the state established the proper relationship with the gods. In
fact, the Romans seem to have had a kind of contractual relationship with the gods
in exchange for the proper rituals, the gods would sustain the pax deorum, or
peace of the gods. As one Roman statesman, Cicero, put it, We have overcome
all the nations of the world, because we have realized that the world is directed and
governed by the gods. To insure that the religious observances were done
properly, the Romans established the posts of pontiffs, or priests, headed by the
Pontifex Maximus, or Highest Priest, to act on behalf of the state in religious
matters.
Believing also that the gods sent signs and warnings to human beings, the
Romans also paid particular respect to the priests known as augurs, who
specialized in interpreting these signs. Nothing important, in either family or public
life, was undertaken without first consulting the augurs to see whether the gods
approved or disapproved of an action. The signs, or auspices, came from
observing the flight of birds, lightning, or the behavior of certain animals.

Section 3
The Crises and Fall of the Republic (133-27 B.C.)
As Rome grew from a city-state in Italy to a world empire throughout the
Mediterranean, the character of Roman society began to change. Under
Hellenistic influences from the east, individualism began to replace the old

Roman commitment to duty to the state. New wealth also bred growing
competition within the ruling classes, as aristocratic Romans competed for the
offices and military commands that might bring them even more fame and
fortune. Under the pressures of such rapid imperial expansion, Roman society
began to crumble, and people looked for a new balance of power within the state.
The challenges of finding this new balance would transform Rome once and for
all from a city-state to a great world empire, even as it forced the old Roman
sense of identity to expand and encompass even people beyond the limits of the
city of Rome itself.
The Consequences of the Conquests
Rome in the middle of the second century B.C. had no rival in the Mediterranean
world and yet she was still basically ruled by the institutions of a small Italian city.
A few elected magistrates were governing an empire without the help of any
organized administrative strucrure. Corruption of governors in the provinces was
a standard feature of Roman rule: competition for offices had become so difficult
that politicians were spending fortunes to get elected, both legally and illegally.
They had to make up for their losses and they did so either through the booty they
captured in war, or the taxes they collected while governing the provinces.
Meanwhile, others were busy trying to take advantage of the conquests to
make their fortunes without feeling the need to participate actively in politics: the
equites , or knights, as they were known, were now too many and too rich to
ignore the importance of having access to political decision making. As a result the
rich class eventually divided into two competing orders, the senators and the
knights. As for the common people who filled the legions, the conquests were now
becoming a burden. Serving long years away from Italy they were discharged only
to realize that their farms had been sold or were in such financial trouble that they
must be abandoned. The farmer-citizen-soldiers who had built a world empire were
now condemned to join the growing mass of unemployed in Rome.
At the same time, foreign ideologies and religions were undermining the
original fabric of Roman society. The ideals of piety, faithfulness, and honor were
no longer satisfying to a growing number of citizens. Influenced by Greek political
philosophy, many began to question what they regarded as the selfishness of the
Roman oligarchy. As Hellenistic influences grew, individualism began to conflict
with the old Roman emphasis on duty to the state.
The Roman Revolution
As the pressures of world empire grew, during the late 2nd and early 1st century
B.C. a revolution occurred in Roman political and social institutions. As had
happened earlier in Athens, the heart of this revolution lay in the growing
dissatisfaction of the plebs with the rule of the Roman oligarchy.
The Gracchi. In 133 B.C., Tiberius Gracchus, the tribune of the Plebs, pointed out
to the Roman people the tragic irony with which the old farmer-citizen-soldier had
been transformed into the urban unemployed poor.
The wild beasts that roam over Italy have their dens and holes to lurk in, but
the men who fight and die for our country enjoy the common air and light and

nothing else... They fight and die to protect the wealth and luxury of others.
They are called the masters of the world, but they do not possess a single clod
of earth which is truly their own. (Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus 9)
Gracchuss own ambition was to restore the dignity of his unhappy fellow citizens.
He presented a bill to limit access to public land and to redistribute the land in the
form of small farms to dispossessed farmers.
At first the bill was well received even by the senatorial aristocracy which
was also concerned about the growing poverty of the Roman plebeians, a poverty
that not only undermined their morals but also kept a growing number of them out
of the draft since they could no longer afford the property qualifications for the
army. However, the tribune's motivation was soon questioned by his cavalier
attitude toward the traditional Roman political system. Not only did Gracchus
bypass the Senate and go directly to the people but he forced the impeachment of a
fellow tribune who had vetoed his bill. He also infringed the Senates rights in
foreign matters, and took the unprecedent step of running for the tribuneship a
second time.
Eventually, fearing that he was planning to establish a tyranny, the senators
incited a lynch mob to kill Gracchus along with three hundred of his followers. For
the first time in Roman history the blood of citizens was shed in the forum.
Tiberiuss crime was that he had undermined the traditional political order of
Republican Rome by questioning its oligarchic control. In effect, he had broken the
social consensus that had so far characterized Roman society, and thus began the
so-called Roman revolution. From 133 to 27 B.C., a series of reforms and
revolutionary steps led inexorably to the destruction of the republican order. It
was.a period of disturbances that would end only with the establishment of a new
political orderthe empire.
The revolution continued under Gaius Graccchus, Tiberius's younger
brother, who was elected tribune in 123 B.C. Gaius went much farther than his
brother in trying to reform the state. In addition to accelerating the land law of his
brother, he also gave enough political power to the Equites to challenge the
senators, thereby dividing the Roman elite into two competing factions. He also
took care of the common people by regulating the grain supply of the city, a first
step toward what would soon become the distribution of free food to the people.
In the end, Gaius and his followers too were murdered by order of the Senate. The
oligarchy would not give up its control over Roman society without a fight.
Marius. In 107 B.C., however, a social outsider named Marius was elected to the
consulship. Marius had become popular because of his military talents. He was
indeed a good general and had defeated King Jugurtha in Numidia (modern
Algeria) and Germanic invaders in southern France and northern Italy. Marius
carried the revolution begun by the Gracchi even farthernot by attempting
political reform, but by instituting military reforms. Anxious to improve
recruitment for the army, Marius dispensed with the property qualifications for
military service and accepted in his army all who wanted to join. With these
reforms, Marius unintentionally changed the nature of the military from a civicminded force to a professional army.

Poor people now joined the army and attached themselves to a general in
hopes of sharing the booty of the campaigns and rewards of land at the end of the
war. To a large extant, armies became private forces devoted to their general who
held their economic future in his hands. Marius had only tried to resolve a crisis in
recruitment. His successors, however, soon realized the political potential of such
professional armies. As usual, the occasion was a military crisis that threatened
Romes very survival.
The Social War. In 90 B.C., the Italian allies of Rome rebelled. They had been
trying to gain Roman citizenship since the 120s but stubbornly both the Roman
Senate and the peoples assemblies had refused to share the privileges of
citizenship. The war between Rome and her Italian allies (known as the "Social
War", from the Latin socius, ally) was one of the bloodiest conflicts in Roman
history. Italians had served alongside the legionaries and were as good soldiers as
the Romans. In fact, the Social War resembled a civil war. In the end, the rebels
were defeated militarily but obtained what they were asking for: Roman
citizenship. This was an important step in the evolution of the Roman identity as
well as the Roman empire. With the extension of citizenship, Rome was no longer
just a city but all of Italy.
Sulla. The Social War had revealed the talent of one of the generals: Cornelius
Sulla who as a result rose to the consulship in 88 B.C. Although Sulla had served
under Marius, the two eventually quarreled over who should receive the command
of a war against Mithridates, the king of Pontus in Asia Minor. Sulla saw the war
as a chance to revive the fortunes of his family, which although aristocratic had
become poor. As Marius and his faction tried to prevent Sulla from taking
command of the campaign against Mithridates (such campaigns were potentially
enormously lucrative and would certainly have restored Sullas family fortunes),
Sulla made the fateful decision to march on Rome itself with his legions. In the
civil war that followed, Sulla emerged victorious in both Asia Minor and Italy, and
established a dictatorship in Rome.
Sulla seems to have been genuinely concerned about the growing decay of
the old Roman virtues and institutions. As dictator, he implemented a
comprehensive program of reform aimed at restoring the old power of the Senate
and the traditional oligarchy over the Republic. After implementing these reforms,
Sulla then voluntarily retired and died peacefully on his own estate. His reactionary
program did not long survive him, however. It was soon challenged and
overthrown by two ambitious generals, Pompey and Julius Caesar.
The end of the Republic.Within a generation of Sullas death, the old republic
was practically dead. The Republic fell largely because of the ambitions of three
generals: Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus. Combining themselves in a private alliance,
these three men conspired to control the Roman state through what came to be
known as the First Triumvirate, or rule of three men, in 60 B.C.. When Crassus
died, however, Pompey and Caesar quarelled and civil war once again wracked the
empire. Eventually, Caesar defeated Pompey and made himself master of Rome. In
44 B.C., the Senate declared Caesar perpetual dictator and he was now king in all
but name. Nevertheless, in a last attempt to save the Republican constitution, a

group of senators led by Brutus and Cassius murdered Caesar in the Senate
chanber itself on the Ides of MarchMarch 15 in 44 B.C.
Caesar's murder did not solve anything, however. In 43 B.C., a second
triumvirate composed of Caesars heir and adopted son, Octavius, Mark Antony,
Caesars loyal officer, and Lepidus, the Pontifex Maximus, was empowered by the
Senate to take control of the affairs of the Republic. The Roman people had
effectively abandoned the Republican principle. But this arrangement worked no
better than that of 60 B.C. Soon Lepidus was pushed aside and a civil war began
between Mark Antony and Octavius. Octavius defeated Antony and his ally
Cleopatra of Egypt at the battle of Actium in 31 B.C. The common suicide of
Antony and Cleopatra the following year marked the end of an epoch. Rome was
now under the sole control of Octavius. The Republic was dead and a new period
in Roman history was beginning.

Section 4
The Pax Romana (27 B.C. - A.D. 180)
With the fall of the Republic, a new phase of Roman development began under the
leadership of the so-called Julio-Claudian family. From a city-state, the Republic
had now emerged as a full-fledged empire. As the Julio-Claudians sought to
rationalize the empires government, republicanism was swept away and replaced
with a centralized imperial bureaucratic administration. Under this strong,
central government, Rome established a period of peace, stability, and prosperity
throughout the Mediterranean world that would be remembered for generations.
Augustus and the Principate
Back in Rome in 29 B.C. Octavian faced the task of restoring order in the empire.
He had no intention of estalishing a distatorship but he had come to realize that it
was impossible to return to the old republican system. A very astute politician,
Octavian under the pretense of "restoring the Republic" succeeded in establishing a
new political order which we call the empire. Octavian himself, however, was very
careful to avoid the title of king or emperor (the modern term came from the Latin
imperator, a title given by soldiers to victorious generals). Instead, he presented
himself as princeps, the first citizen. He made clear that he had no more superior
powers than other magistrates and that his leadership came from his higher moral
authority (auctoritas).
In 27 B.C., the Senate gave him the honorific title of Augustus, the
revered one. In total control of the army, Augustus brought to the Roman people
what they were craving for: peace. After so many years of anarchy, civil wars, and
devastation the Romans wanted order and stability. Augustus gave it to them and
they praised him for that. For more than forty years, Augustus remained at the
head of the state, until his death in A.D. 14, and this very long reign made possible
a smooth transition toward the new regime. Augustus wanted to be the guide but
to rule the empire in collaboration with the senators.
Augustuss reign was a turning point in the history of Rome since it
concluded a century of disorder and create the foundation of a new order, two
centuries of peace and prosperity. Augustus divided the administration of Rome
and her empire between himself and the Senate but, contrary to the latter,
Augustus surrounded himself with a professional, well-trained administration.
Little by little the imperial administration increased its field and at the end of the
reign most financial and administrative matters, as well as the military, was under
Augustuss control.
In foreign affairs, Augustus initially hoped to put an end to military
adventures. But soon, once the army reorganized he started a vast program of
pacification in the West, especially in Gaul and Spain, and a series of conquests
that pushed the border of the empire to the Danube river. His ultimate ambition
was to push the border of the empire from the Rhine to the Elbe river in order to
shorten the length of his northern frontier and so make it more defensible. When
German tribes under their war leader Arminius wiped out three Roman legions in 9
A.D., however, Augustus decided to retreat to the Rhine. He came to realize that
further conquests might overextend the resources of the empire in finances and

manpower. In the east he was more cautious and prefered to use diplomacy to
settle problems with the Parthian empire in Persia.
In domestic matters, the legacy of what became known as the Augustan
Age was even more impressive. Augustus initiated a vast building program. He
took special care of the city of Rome, organizing its police force, fire brigades, and
food and water supplies. He boasted that he had found Rome a city of brick and
had left it a city of marble.
Augustus also presided over moral and religious reforms. The gods had
made possible the empire, he argued, so it was just and wise to praise them for it
and show them respect. Temples were restored, new ones were built, and many
half-neglected cults were reorganized. Preoccupied with what he saw as a growing
moral decadence, Augustus legislated against adultery and encouraged people to
marry and have lots of children.
Literature in the Augustan Age
In literature, the Augustean period is known as the Golden Age of Latin literature,
and includes many late-Republican writers such as the poet Catullus, the
philosopher Epicurus, the orator-politician-lawyer-philosopher Cicero, and Iulius
Caesar himself, whose mastery of the Latin language (especially in his war
commetaries) made him required reading for students of Latin prose. Realizing that
literature and the arts could enhance his fame, Augustus patronized the arts.
Literature flourished under his reign: the poets Horace and Ovid; the historian
Livy; and above all the poet Virgil who in his epic poem the Aeneid tried to imate
Homer by offering Rome a national epic that tied its origins to the ancient city of
Troy.
The Julio-Claudians and the Flavians
The successors of Augustus are known as the Julio-Claudians. They consolidated
imperial rule at the expense of the power of the Senate. Consequently, our
contemporary and later Roman sources are not always very kind to them. They
depict Tiberius (A.D. 14-37) as a suspicious and cruel tyrant, Caligula (A.D. 3741) as a monster, Claudius (A.D. 41-54) as an old fool under the spell of his wives
and freedmen, and Nero (A.D. 54-68) as an unpredictable and cruel tyrant. Such
characterizations, however, are rather unfair to them and overlook their
contributions to the Roman world.
Tiberius was a good soldier and a competent administrator despite his
difficult situation as the direct succesor of the great Augustus. Caligula was
probably not a very balanced man but he was the first to make the senators realize
that the emperor now had the real power in Rome. His reported announcement
that he intended to have his favorite horseIncitatus serve as a consul was certainly
a metaphor to make them understand the unlimited nature of the imperial power.
Claudius, perhaps even more than Augustus, should be remembered as the
founder of Roman imperial administration, the system that presided over more than
a century and a half of provincial prosperity and stability. Claudius also did much
to further extend Roman citizenship to people in the provinces of the empire.
As for Nero, his passion for art and spectacles was not understood by the
senators. In addition his decision to build an extravagant palace in Rome on land
expropriated after the great fire of A.D. 64 was unwise since many were convinced

that he was responsible for the fire in the first place. In an effort to exonerate
himself, Nero used the small Christian community as scapegoat, and thereby
became the first to begin the persecutions. The Christian tradition did not pardon
him for it and this has not helped his reputation. As revolt broke out, Nero was
forced to commit suicide, but soon the Romans were brutally reminded of the
fragility of the order of the Julio-Claudian emperors.
After Neros death in A.D. 69, civil war raged in the Roman world. The
imperial bodyguard, known as the Praetorian Guard, that had been formed first
by Augustus, had already interevened several times in succession disputes, notably
when they forced Claudius to accept the throne. Once again they interfered and
chaos ruled in Rome. Eventually, four generals claimed the throne in turn. The last
one, Vespasian, finally re-established order.
During the reigns of Vespasian (69-79) and his two sons, Titus (79-81) and
Domitian (81-96), order, peace and prosperity returned to the Roman world. These
Flavians, as they are known, were not from the old Roman aristocracy like their
predecessors, but from Italy. In fact, they had only recently been admitted to the
senatorial order. They proved to be good administrators, however, especially in
financial matters.
The "Golden Age"
In 96 a new dynasty established itself on the throne: the Antonines. Five emperors
presided over the destiny of the Roman empire for nearly a century: Nerva (9698), Trajan (98-117), Hadrian (117-138), Antoninus (138-161), and Marcus
Aurelius (161-180). They are known as the five good emperors.
With the exception of Nerva, the Antonines were all of provincial rather
than Roman origins. Consequently, they continued the opening up of Roman
imperial society by admitting more and more members of the provincial elites,
particularly in the western provinces like Gaul and Spain, into the Senate and the
imperial administration. The Roman Empire was no longer ruled solely by a small
oligarchy drawn from the old Roman aristocracy.
The Five Good Emperors were especially interested in providing their
subjects with a good, honest, and efficient administration, as well as a sound
imperial financial policy. Hadrian in particular spent most of his time touring the
provinces of the empire inspecting their administration. The Antonine emperors
managed to get along reasonably well with the Senate, but they progressively
increased the scope of imperial administration. For example, they instituted a state
program to help poor parents raise and educate their children. To insure the
continuation of good government, all but Marcus Aurelius refused to choose family
members as successors, preferring instead to name the most able successor
possible as their heirs to the throne.
The Antonines also saw the Roman Empire reach the limits of its territorial
expansion. Trajan added Dacia (modern Rumania), Armenia, Mesopotamia, and
large parts of Arabia to the empire. His successor Hadrian followed Augustuss
example, however, and to prevent the empire from becoming overextended, he
withdrew from all these eastern additions except Dacia, which had valuable gold
mines. Hadrian also followed a policy of building defensive fortificatins along the
empires frontiers, particularly on the Rhine and Danube Rivers and in northern

Britain, where he built a wall some 80 miles long to guard against incursions into
the Roman provinces by barbarian tribal peoples.
Roman Imperial Civilization
Several essential characteristics helped the Romans build their empire and maintain
its peace. The Romans had a talent for ruling others and maintained their authority
through an efficient government both at home and abroad. Law, military
organization, and widespread trade and transportation held the empire together
and brought peace for more than 200 years. The period from the beginning of
Augustuss reign in 27 B.C. until the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 A.D. is
known as the time of the pax Romana, or Roman Peace.
Government. The Roman government provided the strongest unifying force in the
empire. The government maintained order, enforced the laws, and defended the
frontiers. By the 2nd century A.D. the position of the emperor had been wellestablished. He ruled without real opposition and was able to insure the goodwill
and cooperation of the elite in governing. Both in the central administration and in
the provinces, members of the aristocracy participated in government, but all
important decisions were made by the emperors, most of whom were competent
and conscious of their responsibilities. From 27 B.C. to 180 A.D., only two short
periods of civil war disrupted the imperial government. In general, the system
initiated by Augustus proved successful and advantageous for the vast majority of
the inhabitants of the empire.
The provinces. The Roman Empire was divided into provinces, territorial units
governed by a representative of Rome. During the Pax Romana, provincial
administration was both more efficient and fair than it had been under the republic,
largely because the government in Rome now kept a closer check on provincial
governors than before. Moreover, any citizen in the provinces could appeal a
governors decision directly to the emperor.
Through this provincial organization, the Roman Empire brought a certain
uniformity to the Mediterranean world. Cities were governed in imitation of Rome,
complete with their own local Senates and magistrates. Local elites took pride in
governing and embellishing their cities. Theaters, amphitheaters, public baths, and
temples could be seen all over the empire from Britain to North Africa to Syria.
Cities were in fact the main beneficiaries of the empires prosperity. Wealth was
concentrated in the hands of the urban elites, who did everything possible to
improve the lives of the urban population and to entertain them.
On the other hand, the vast majority of the population living in the
countryside saw little improvement in their living conditions. Indeed, Roman
civilization was primarily urbanfor those living far from the cities it had a limited
impact, if any at all. Although the Roman authorities maintained a level of peace
never before known, they were never able to eradicate brigandage and thievery in
the countryside altogether. Traveling outside the main centers of the Roman world
was a dangerous enterprise and, for most of the population, a luxury they could
not afford. For most people in the provinces, the only way to get away from their
native villages was to join the Roman army.

The army. Augustus had reorganized the Roman army. It was divided almost
evenly between citizen legionaries and non-citizen auxiliaries. A legion had
approximately 5,500 men, and auxiliary units were roughly similar. Legionaries
served for 20 years, and auxiliaries for 25 years, at the end of which service they
would receive citizenship. An estimated 250,000 to 300,000 soldiers guarded the
empire at the time of Augustuss death. Although this number rose under later
emperors, the total number of Roman soldiers probably never exceeded about
500,000hardly an adequate number to defend some 6,000 miles of borders.
The troops were stationed in great fortified camps at strategic locations
throughout the empire. However, there was no central, mobile army in the empire
that could be dispatched on short notice to a trouble spot. In emergencies, the
emperors had to move units from their own areas to the threatened location. Thus,
although the system was efficient for low-intensity threats to security, it was not
suited coping with simultaneous threats at many different locations.
Law. The Roman legal system combined two different approaches to law. Stability
in the system was achieved by laws, or statutes, passed by popular assemblies or
the Senate, which specified exactly what could or could not be done and what the
penalties were for breaking the law. In addition, Roman law also tried to address
questions of equity, or fairness, by allowing magistrates, including provincial
governors, to decide at the beginning of their tenures what legal actions they
would hear. In judging such cases, the magistrates took into account new social
and economic circumstances that might require a modification or adaptation of the
law.
Roman law also unified the empire. The Romans distinguished between
two legal systems. The ius civile, or civil law, applied between citizens. The ius
gentium, or law of peoples, applied between a citizen and a foreigner. In the ius
gentium, magistrates were not tied to traditional interpretations of the law but
were allowed to innovate as necessary to achieve fairness and justice. Over time,
however, these two approaches blended, and eventually Roman law became a
single, universal system. Even so, the Romans never imposed their legal system on
the provinces. They allowed local customs to continue to guide the lives of
provincials. Nevertheless, although such local customs never fully disappeared,
over time more and more peoples adopted the Roman system because of its
greater technical flexibility and intellectual value. The extension of Roman
citizenship also helped the spread of the Roman legal system since citizens were by
definition subject to Roman laws.
The magistrates and the Senate were helped in legal matters by professional
jurists, the jurisconsults. These jurists were interested in developing general legal
principles that could be applied regardless of the locale or the historical
background of a problem. They wanted above all to find legal principles that could
apply to all human beingsthe ius naturale, or natural law. In later years, the
Roman system of law became the foundation for the laws of all the European
countries that had once been part of the Roman Empire, as well as the laws of the
Christian Church.
Trade and transportation. Throughout the time of the Pax Romana, agriculture
remained the primary occupation of people in the empire. A new type of

agricultural worker, a tenant farmer known as the colonus, began to replace slaves
on the large estates. Each of these farmers received a small plot of land from the
owner. In return, the colonus had to remain on the land for a certain period of time
and to pay the owner with a certain amount of the crops. Most agricultural
activities, however, continued to be performed by independent farmers who were
mostly interested in feeding their families and had very little surplus to sell.
The Roman Empire provided enormous opportunities for commerce, and
the exchange of goods was easy. Taxes on trade remained low, and people
everywhere used Roman currency. Rome and Alexandria became the empires
greatest commercial centers. Alexandria was particularly important sicne Egypt
was the granary of the empire, producing the grain surpluses with which the
emperors fed the urban population of Rome itself. From the provinces, Italy
imported grain and raw materials such as meat, wool, and hides. From Asia came
silks, linens, glassware, jewelry, and furniture to satisfy the tastes of the wealthy.
India exported many products such as spices, cotton, and other luxury products
that Romans had never known before.
Manufacturing also increased throughout the empire during the Pax
Romana. Italy, Gaul, and Spain made inexpensive pottery and textiles. As in
Greece, most work was done by hand in small shops. To a considerable extent,
what made all this commercial activity possible was an elaborate and extensive
network of roads combined with safe sea lanes throughout the Mediterranean.
Transportation greatly improved during the early period of the empire as
the Romans built up a great network of roads linking the cities. Ultimately there
were about 50,000 miles of roads binding the empire together. Most roads,
however, were built and maintained for military purposes. Local roads were not
paved and bad weather conditions often made travel overland impossible. Although
individual merchants might travel the roads, giving way when necessary to the
legions or the imperial post riders, most goods were carried more cheaply and
quickly by sea. It was cheaper, for example, to transport grain by ship from one
end of the Mediterranean to the other than to send it 75 miles overland.
Consequently, one Roman priority was the suppression of piracy throughout the
Mediterranean.
Life in the Empire
The Pax Romana provided prosperity to many people, but citizens did not share
equally in this wealth. Extreme differences separated the lives of the wealthy from
those of the poor. Rich citizens usually had both a city home and a country home.
Their residences included such conveniences as running water and baths. Many of
the nearly one million residents of Rome, on the other hand, lived in crowded three
and four-storied tenement houses. Fire posed a constant threat in such residences
because of the torches the poor had to use for light and the charcoal they used for
cooking. In part to keep the poor of the cities from rebelling against such
conditions, public entertainements became a majopr feasture of civic life
throughout much of the empire.
The Roman satirical poet, Juvenal, once noted with great disdain that the
Roman masses were interested in only two things: panem et circenses, or bread
and games. He was referring to the imperial policy of providing free food and
public entertainments to the population of the city. In fact, a large part of being a

public official even in the days of the republic had been giving games and
distributing food for the people to enjoy. This was one reason public office was so
expensive.
Under Augustus 77 days were devoted to such public spectacles and
festivals every year. By the end of the 2nd century the number was up to nearly
200 days. These games, originally to honor the gods, included three main types of
entertainment: drama and other performances in the theaters: horse and chariot
races in the Circus: and gladiatorial shows, live fights to the death between
individual warriors, in the amphitheater.
Romans enjoyed the theater, especially light comedies and satires.
Performers such as mimes, jugglers, dancers, acrobats, andf clowns also became
quite popular. Nothing was more popular than chariot racing, however. In Rome,
the races were held in the Circus Maximus, a racetrack that could accommodate
250,000 spectators. The races pitted four professional teams, the Red, White,
Blue, and Green, against each other. Spectators bet heavily on the races, and
especially enjoyed the sometimes spectacular crashes that frequently occurred.
Romans were a violent people. They did not object to bloody spectacles in
the amphitheater, where wild animals were brought to fight each other or
professional fighters. Often, condemned criminals were thrown into the arena to be
torn to pieces by beasts. But the most popular entertainment offered in the
amphitheaters were gladiatorial combats. Such shows could and often did end with
the death of one or both of the fighters, who were usually slaves. In Rome, these
spectacles were performed in the Colosseum, built under the emperors Vespasian
and Titus in the second half of the 1st century, which seated some 50,000
spectators.
The games were extremely popular, and while they were in progress the
city could seem deserteda situation that led the Stoic philosopher Seneca to
complain bitterly:
Who respects a philosopher or any liberal study except when the games
are called off for a time or there is some rainy day which he is willing to
waste?
Science, Engineering, and Architecture
The Romans were less interested in scientific research to increase knowledge than
in collecting and organizing information. Galen, a physician who lived in Rome
during the 100s A.D., for example, wrote several volumes that summarized all the
medical knowledge of his day. For centuries, people regarded him as the greatest
authority in medicine. Similarly, people accepted the theories of Ptolemy in
astronomy, partly because he brought the knowledge and opinions of others into a
coherent system.
Unlike the Greeks, who were primarily interested in knowledge for its own
sake, and prefered abstract reasoning to practical scientific research, the Romans
were eminently practical. They tried to apply the knowedge they gained from the
Greeks, for example, in planning their cities, building water and sewage systems,
and improving farming methods. Roman engineers surpassed all other ancient
peoples in their ability to construct roads, bridges, aquaducts, amphitheaters, and
public buildings. Perhaps their most important contribution was the development

of a new type of concrete, which made such large buildings possible in both
financial and engineering terms.
Roman architects designed great public buildingslaw courts, palaces,
temples, amphitheaters, and triumphal archesfor the emperors, imperial officials,
and the government. Although they often based their buildings on Greek models,
however, the Romans learned to use the arch and the vaulted dome, features that
allowed buildings to be built much larger than the Greeks had been able to do.
With such tools and techniques, the Romans emphasized size as well as pleasing
proportions in their architecture.

Section 5
The Crises of the Empire and the Rise of Christianity
The end of the reign of the Five Good Emperors showed signs of the troubles to
come. Military difficulties began on the Danube frontier, as Germanic tribes
began to rpess against the empires borders. Plague brought back by the army
from the east ravaged the empire. In Rome itself, famine stalked the populace.
Soon, the empire was best not only by challenges from outside, but by a growing
rot within.
The Crisis of the 200s
When Marcus Aurelius decided on his successor in 180 A.D., he failed to show his
usual wisdom and foresight. Although his four predecessors had all chosen their
successors based on ability rather than ties of kinship, Marcus Aurelius decided on
his weak, spoiled son Commodus. Commodus proved to be a disaster for the
empire. According to Dio Cassius, a contemporary Greek historian, after Marcus
Aureliuss death the Roman Empire degenerated from a kingdom of gold into one
of iron and rust.
During most of the 200s, the empire experienced confusion, economic
decline, civil wars, and increasing military pressure on the frontiers. Between 235
and 284, for example, 20 emperors reigned. All but one died violently. From 226
onwards, the eastern borders of the empire were threatened by the new Persian
dynasty of the Sassanids. Replacing the weak Arsacids, the Sassanids challenged
Roman control of the eastern provinces, adding a second front to the already
restless western frontier, where Germanic tribes continued to test the empires
defences. From then on, military considerations became so increasingly important
for the empire that ultimately it became a kind of military monarchy. The Emperor
Septimius Severus, on his death bed in 211, had only one piece of advice for his
successor: Enrich the soldiers and scorn all other men.
Internal decline and reform. The growing insecurity of civil wars and barbarian
invasions affected many aspects of Roman life. Brigandage and piracy reappeared
and travel even within the bounds of the empire became hazardous. Merchants
hesitated to send goods by land or by sea. It became difficult to collect taxes at a
time when military needs required them in ever increasing amopunts. In 212, the
Emperor Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to all free people of the empire. This
was a logical conclusion to the movement of progressive inclusion of the
inhabitants of the empire in the Roman identity, but it also had a more practical
affectonly citizens paid inheritance taxes and the emperor needed more money.
Inflation. As taxes rose, however, the value of money declined. Since Rome had
ceased to expand, military conquests no longer brought in new sources of gold.
Indeed, gold was actually disappearing from the empire as it was paid out to
foreign merchants for the luxury goods of China and India. To maintain the money
supply, emperors minted new coins containing copper and lead as well as gold.
When people realized their coins had less gold in them, they refused to accept
them at their face value and merchants raised their prices. The result was growing

inflation in the empire. In some regions of the empire inflation became so severe
that people stopped using money altgether and reverted to barter.
These conditions caused important changes in the social order. The
traditional hierarchy of authority, as well as the general values of imperial society,
changed. The Senatorial elite, for example, lost its privileges and influence.
Emperors filled the Senate with their own followers, especially men from the army.
Roman society now divided between two orders: the honestiores, senators,
knights, soldiers, and members of the city aristocracies who received legal
privileges; and the humiliores, or everyone else in the population, who held an
inferior position in society. Individual freedom and private initiative, whether in
commerce or politics, were subordinated to the needs of the state.
Intellectual and emotional responses. The destruction of the old imperial order
and prosperity generated an important psychological crisis in the Roman Empire.
In an increasingly hostile world, many people took refuge in intellectual escapism,
embracing either intellectual idealism, mysticism, or more personal forms of
religion. The spiritual malaise that settled over the empire could not be solved by
the Romans own cultural values. For all its achievements, the Pax Romana had
presided over a cultural vacuum, while spirituality had in a sense atrophied. The
old civic religion was unable to comfort people in this crisis since it cared little
about emotions or inner feelings.
As people looked for comfort, they soon turned to new philosophies and
religions from the east. The philosophy of Plotinus (ca. 205-270 A.D.), which
mixed Platonism with mysticism in a new system called Neo-Platonism, illustrated
perfectly the intellectual mood of the times. Rationalism, the great intellectual
achievement of the Greek world that Rome had embraced, lost its appeal in the
prolonged crisis of the 3rd century. Plotinus urged people to find fulfilment not in
this world, but in some transcendent world of the spirit. But Neoplatonic
philosophy was the recourse of the intellectual elite, above all of the leisured
classes of the empire. The mass of the people took refuge in more emotional
movements.
Magic, alchemy, the effort to transform common metals into gold, and
astrology had always been part of popular culture in the ancient world. From the
3rd century onward, however, they became increasingly prevalent with the
majority of the population as people sought some means to regain a sense of
control over their lives. Magicians, astrologers, and exorcists, who offered to cast
out evil spirits from peoples lives, particularly appealed to a population that had
remained largely rural and untouched by urban Greco-Roman culture.
The 3rd century also witnessed the resurgence of mystery cults, eastern
religions that promised personal salvation while at the same time offering a sense
of community and brotherhood among the members of the cult. Hellenistic cults
experienced a tremendous surge of popularity, along with relatively new variations.
Mithraism, for example, a cult that developed out of Zoroastrianism in Persia,
became particularly popular among soldiers in the empire. It stressed masculine
virtues of comradeship and bravery. Other popular cults were those of Isis, from
Egypt, and Cybele, from Asia Minor, which both worshipped mother goddesses
and welcomed all devotees, whether women or men, free or slave. Among these

other sects, one in particular emerged as the most resilient and adaptablea cult
that had sprung from Judaism and that was called Christianity.
The Rise of Christianity
The cult of the Christians had begun among the Jews in Judea during the reign of
the emperor Tiberius. Sometime during Tiberiuss reign, a rabbi, or Jewish teacher,
named Jesus was denounced by the leaders of the Jewish Temple priesthood as a
blasphemer and a danger to the community. Turned over to the Roman authorities,
Jesus was eventually crucified and then buried. What followed the burial, however,
became the subject of not only endless dispute between Jesuss followers and his
critics, but also the beginning of a new religion.
For most in the Jewish community, Jesus was an impostor who had not
only claimed to be the Messiah, that is the redeemer chosen by God to liberate
Israel from foreign rule, but even more seriously the son of God. Such claims not
only threatened the traditional Jewish leaderhip, but also the stability of what had
been a particualarly unruly Roman province since 6 A.D. Both Romans and Jewish
leaders could agree that Jesus was too much a nuisance to be tolerated.
Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, we know little of Jesuss life. He wrote nothing that we
know of, and apparently nothing was written about him during his lifetime. Our
knowledge comes almost exclusively from the first four books of the New
Testament of the Biblethe Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
According to these gospels, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, near Jerusalem,
and grew up in the town of Nazareth. His family traced its roots to King David,
the ancient king of Israel. Although he apparently learned the trade of carpentry, he
was also a student of the writings of the Jewish prophets. In time he began to
preach a message of religious renewal and warning. As he travelled through the
villages of Judea, he gathered a small group of disciples, or followers. According
to the Biblical account, he created a great deal of excitement by performing
miracles of healing, and by defending the poor and the oppressed in Jewish society.
Jesus apparently had no intention of creating a new religion or even
breaking with Jewish tradition. Rather, he and his followers saw him as a reformer
whose coming had been prophesied by the Hebrew prophets. According to the
Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said Dont misunderstand why I have comeit isnt to
cancel the laws of Moses and the warnings of the prophets. No, I come to fulfill
them, and to make them all come true. Judaism, he taught, had become too
bogged down in legalism and meaningless ritual. The spirit of the Mosaic law,
Jesus insisted, was more important than the letter of the law. At the heart of this
law, he argued, was a universal message of love and brotherhood.
Jesus laid down two primary rules for his followers: they must love God
above all else: and they must love others as they loved themselves. In addition, he
emphasized the values of humility and charity. These Christian ideals were perhaps
best expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, as described in the Gospels:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn: for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be
filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness: for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.
According to the Gospels, which reflected the beliefs of the Christian community
of the late 100s A.D., after being crucified Jesus rose from the dead, spent another
40 days teaching his disciples on earth, and then ascended bodily into Heaven. His
followers believed that the resurrection and ascension proved that Jesus was the
Messiah and the son of God, indeed, they believed he was God himself come to
earth as a man in order to redeem the sins of humanity. They called him Jesus
Christ, after the Greek word for MessiahChristos.
Early Christian doctrine. The resurrection became the central message of
Christianity. Through the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who had died to
atone for, or wash away, the sins of humanity, Christians taught, all people could
achieve redemption and salvation, the promise of everlasting life with Christ in
Heaven. Jesuss disciples soon set out to spread this message.
At first, the disciples worked mainly in the Jewish communities of
Palestine. They too were persecuted by the Jewish authorities, and some were
actually killed. With the promise of everlasting life, however, such deaths were
seen by the early christians as martyrdom, a voluntary suffering of death for the
sake of the faith; such examples only inspired others to be strong in their own faith.
As martyrs calmly confronted death, even many non-believers were impressed by
their conviction that they would be resurrected and achieve immortality as Jesus
had promised. Still, had it not been for the work of a Hellenized Jew named Saul
of Tarsus, Christianity might have remained a sect of Judaism.
Saint Paul. Born in the town of Tarsus, as a young man Saul actually worked for
the Jewish leadership persecuting Christians. During a trip to Damascus, however,
he apparently had a conversion experience and actually became a Christian himself.
Taking the name of Paul, he convinced the original disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem
that Christ had given him a special mission to convert not fellow Jews but the nonJews, or gentiles. With this mission in mind, Paul soon transformed Christianity
into a universal religion with a message that transcended any particular people.
Pauls Epistles, or Letters, to the Christian churches he helped establish throughout
the eastern Mediterranean, and even in Rome itself, later became an important part
of the New Testament, those writings which early Christians eventually accepted
as inspired by God for the teaching of the faith.
Finding that Mosaic regulations such as circumcision and food prohibitions
were hindering missionary work among non-Jews, Paul eventually dispensed with
them as requirements for Christians. In their place he emphasized certain new
doctrines that distinguished Christianity from Judaism. Above all perhaps, Paul
established the doctrine of original sinthe idea that since Adam and Eve had first
disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, all human beings were born sinful. It had

been to redeem this sin that God had come to earth as Jesus. This he had done by
dying on the cross, acting as the ultimate sacrifice to bring human bings back into a
state of grace, or communication with God. Since human beings were too full of
sin to be an acceptable sacrifice, only a sinless person could do so for them this
became known as the doctrine of the vicarious atonement. Paul emphasized the
uselessness of human bengs trying to achieve their own salvation alonetheir only
hope, he taught, was Jesus. Nor were human beings deserving of salvation. It was
only Gods grace, or love, that saved them, even though they were unworthy.
The Spread of Christianity
The spread of Christianity was also served by a progressive decline in the vitality
of Hellenism. Stressing the intellect and self-reliance, Greco-Roman thought did
not provide for the emotional needs of the people. This aspect was to become
crucial in the eventual triumph of Christianity in the 3rd century, and even in the
first two centuries A.D. it attracted many new followers. Similarly, the Christian
message of love on earth and eternal life after death regardless of social position or
wealth appealed to the poor, the oppressed, and the enslaved. All were welcomed
and many were attracted by the sense of community the new cult offered. At the
same time, the emphasis on Jesus as the savior removed the need for elaborate selfdisciplione, such as that taught by the Stoics, with their similar philosophy of
universal brotherhood.
The Roman tradition of religious toleration and the climate of peace and
stability in the early years of the empire also contributed to the spread of
Christianity. Missionaries, for example, benefitted from the easy communications
within the empire. Moreover, during the first several centuries after Jesus life,
outright persecution by Roman officials was rare. Most emperors were indifferent
to the new religion, although some saw the Christian refusal to worship the state
gods in addition to their own as a potential threat to civic order. Christians might
become the objects of scapegoating, as the Emperor Nero did when he tried to
deflect criticism from himself for the burning of Rome and laid the blame on
Christians instead. More usual, however, was the attitude displayed by the
Emperor Trajan in a letter of instructions to Pliny, the governor of Bythinia-Pontus
in 111-113:
They [the Christians] are not to be sought out; or if they are denounced and
proved guilty [of refusing to offer sacrifices to the state gods], they are to be
punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and
really proves it that is, by worshipping our godseven though he was under
suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance. But anonymously
posted accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution. For this is both
a dangerous kind of precedent and out of keeping with [the spirit of] our age.
Christianity and Greek philosophy. Christianity, a religion that had its roots in
the religious traditions of southwest Asia, was based on revelation and faith. Such
roots were largely alien to Greek philosophy, which instead emphasized reason.
Some early Christian thinkers wanted to keep the two traditions completely
separate. Tertullian, for example, declared: What has Athens to do with
Jerusalem, the Academy with the Church? . . . With our faith, we desire no further

belief. But many Christians thought otherwise, and tried to reconcile the Christian
ethical creed with the categories of Greek philosophy and Greek rationalism. In
doing so, they transformed Jesuss teaching into a theology, or methodical
formulation of knowledge about the nature of God, his laws, and his requirements
of human beings. This process of transformation and amalgamation of Jewish
religious traditions with Greek philosophical traditions is often called the
Hellenization of Christianity.
The process of Hellenization in Christianity was facilitated by the nature of
two of the most popular philosophies of the time: Stoicism and Platonism. The
Stoic teaching that all people are fundamentally equal because they share the
universal spark of Divine Reason, the Logos, could be formulated in Christian
termsthat they are all united in Christ. Even the language of Greek philosophy
was borrowed by some Christian writers, as in the opening passage of the Gospel
of John: In the Beginning was the Word [Logos in the original Greek], and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God.
For Christians, the Word referred to Jesus. For Stoics on the other hand,
the use of the term Logos in this context made equally good sense. Similarly, Stoic
ethics that stressed moderation, self-control, and brotherhood could just as easily
be seen in Christian revelation. In Platonism too, which drew a distinction between
a world perceived by the physical senses and a higher order open only to the
intellect, or spirit, Christian thinkers often found a congenial vehicle for expressing
Christian beliefs. The perfect and universal forms, which Plato had maintained
were the true goals of knowledge and the source of ethical standards, were held by
Christians to exist in Gods mind.
The Hellenization of Christianity had two great advantages that contributed
to the new faiths ability to adapt to changing circumstances and so survive. For
one thing, it made it easier for Stoics and Platonists to accept Christianity. Perhaps
even more importantly, it allowed Christians to combine the strengths to be gained
from religious faith and spiritual comfort with those to be derived from the Greek
tradition of rational thought. With both strands embedded in it, the new faith
would appeal to a vast range of people under many diverse circumstances.

Section 6
The Later Roman Empire
The crisis of the 200s shattered the Roman world in all its aspects. Drastic
reforms had to be implemented if the empire were to survive. This was the goal of
the Emperor Diocletian, who assumed the purple mantle of imperial authority in
284. Diocletian succeeded in giving the empire another two centuries of life, but
in the process he completely transformed it, particularly the western provinces.
Neither the political system, nor even the intellectual world of what we call the
Late Roman Empire can be compared with the Roman imperial civilization of the
first three centuries A.D.
The Diocletian Reforms
In an effort to stem the floodtide that was steadily undermining the empires
foundations, in the late 200s and early 300s the Emperor Diocletian transformed
the principate into an absolute and autocratic monarchy. The emperor was no
longer simply the princeps, or first citizen, but rather the dominus, or master.
Drawing on eastern traditions of monarchy, the emperor surrounded himself with
elaborate ceremony and pomp. No longer continuing the idea of being a first
among equals, he now placed himself far above his subjects, and ruled over them
with no accountability to anyone. Soon, he became Dominus et Deus, Master and
God, ruling the empire from a state of divine grandeur and isolated splendor.
A new social order. Diocletians reforms transformed Roman imperial society into
a bureaucratic and rigid order that might best be compared to a prison camp.
Every aspect of life was regulated by the central imperial administration. Individual
freedom was a privilege of the pastunder Diocletians decrees sons must follow
the trades and social positions of their fathers. Thus soldierss sons must become
soldiers, while bakers sons must become bakers. Peasants were permanently tied
to the land they farmed as coloni. Even the provincial organization was reviewed
and revised. Diocletian made provinces smaller for better administrative control,
and grouped them together into four large divisions called prefectures. Local
aristocrats were subjected to the scrutiny of imperial civil servants and lost all their
independence and political power. The army was increased to 500,000 men in all,
as it became increasingly important and received the full atttention of the emperor
himself.
A new economic order. The economy also came under full state direction and
control. Prices of goods and services were rigidly controlled. A new tax system
raised more money than ever for the new adnministration and for the army. Under
the increasing pressures of maintaining security, all aspects of the economy were
regulated. Factories producing weapons in the eastern cities of the empire, for
example, were given quotas and forbidden to shut down, even when they were
losing money. Everwhere, commercial and manufacturing activities were
subordinated to the needs of imperial defence.
Initially, these drastic reforms were successful. Diocletian did save the
empire from falling into anarchy or even disappearing. But the price was
enormous, particularly in the loss of individual freedom and intellectual originality.

Rome was no longer a civilization expanding but a civilization on the defensive.

The individualism of the Hellenistic world and the early empire gave way to
growing conformity. People ceased to be citizens so much as subjects, anonymous
parts of a state-engineered society.
Political reforms. As part of his efforts to improve the efficiency of imperial
administration, Diocletian divided the empire in two. Ruling the eastern half
himself, he appointed a co-emperor to rule the western provinces. In addition, both
emperors named assistants, called caesars, who were supposed to help administer
the empire and eventually succeed peacefully to the imperial purple in their turn.
So long as Diocletian remained emperor, these arrangements worked reasonably
well, and in 305 he retired to grow cabbages. His co-emperor also retired so that
the two caesars could assume the purple at the same time.
Soon, however, the two new emperors quarreled and the empire plunged
once more into civil war. Not until 312 did Constantine, the son of one of the
original caesars, emerge victorious and restore peace throughout the empire.
Although at first he maintained the system of divided rule, governing the western
provinces himself, in 337 Constantine did away with the system and restored the
unity of the empire. In other respects, however, Constantine continued Diocletians
policies of rigid state control over society.
As emperor, Constantine made two personal decisions that would
profoundly affect the direction of the future empire. First, he made Christianity
legal and encouraged its development throughout the Empire under the auspices of
the state. Second, he established a second imperial capital, named Constantinople,
on the site of the tiny village of Byzantium on the European shore of the
Bosphorus, which separated Asia Minor from Europe. While Constantine hoped to
use Christianity to revitalize the unity of the empire, like Diocletian, he recognized
that the balance of wealth and power in the empire had shifted from the west to the
eastit was for this reason that he tacitly admitted a continuing division of the
empire by creating Constantinople as a second imperial capital.
Constantines conversion to Christianity. According to tradition, Constantines
conversion to Christianity was triggered by a personal experience that occurred
just before the the last battle of the civil wars that brought him uncontested power
in 312. Before the battle the emperor apparently saw a vision of the cross in the
sky, and heard the words, In hoc signo vince, In this sign, conquer. When he
did indeed conquer, Constantine decided to become a devotee of the Christian
faith. In 313, he issued the Edict of Milan, making Christianity legal. Although
Constantine did not go so far as to make Christianity the state religion, he certainly
favored it and under his patronage the new religion began to flourish throughout
the empire.
The Triumph of Christianity
From a tiny religious minority, Christians soon grew to constitute a majority of the
population. Constantines successors were raised in the doctrines of the faith and
further favored it. Finally, in 380, the Emperor Theodosius the Great outlawed all
religious worship in the empire except that of Christianity. Paganism, which had

once held sway throughout the Greco-Roman world, soon all but disappeared from
the territories of the Roman world.
Development of the church. Early Christian congregations were not only spiritual
organizations, but also acted as closely knit families. They provided all kinds of
support for their members, such as nursing and burial services, and provision of
food and shelter for the poor. As crisis rocked the foundations of the Roman
world, Christianity provided emotional and physical support and reassurance for its
growing membership.
Under imperial patronage, however, Christianity itself began to change.
Part of its early success had been due to the development of special ceremonies
and rituals designed to inspire peoples faith and make them feel closer to Christ.
Those who organized and performed these ceremonies gradually became a special
class within Christianity. They derived their authority from the apostles, or
disciples of Jesus, who had passed on the authority given them by Christ himself to
their own followers and helpers through a laying on of hands. Called priests,
those who were part of this apostolic succession were soon distinguished from the
laity, or general congregation of the church.
Over time, distinctions also appeared even within the priesthood.
Christianity was primarily a urban religion. As the church expanded, and
particularly as it became the beneficiary of legacies left by its members in gifts of
property or money with which to carry on its charitable and missionary activities, it
also began to develop an administrative structure. Soon, a single member of the
clergy emerged in most cities who had authority over all other members of the
clergy within the region. These officials were called bishops.
The adoption of Christianity as the state religion not only reinforced such a
hierarchical development but accelerated it. Bishops in the large cities of the
empire, for example, began to call themselves metropolitans, and to claim
jurisdiction over the clergy in entire provinces. By the 300s, the heads of the oldest
and largest Chrsitiahn congregations in Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and
Constantinople, were being called patriarchs, and claimed authority even over the
metropolitans. Primarily administrators, these bishops, metropolitans and
patriarchs were also the leaders in the development of Christian doctrine.
At first, questions concerning correct doctrine and church organization
were handled by general councils, with representatives from all the major churches
in attendance. Councils continued to be an important part of the church
government, but increasingly the position of the bishops of Rome and of
Constantinople, as the leading churchmen in the imperial capitals, also became
particularly influential and authoritative. The Roman bishops in particular claimed
primacy in the Chrsitian world, by arguing that the church in Rome had been
founded by Saints Peter and Paul, both of whom were martyred there.
Saint Peter was generally accepted by the Christian community as having
founded the Roman church and acting as its first bishop.Consequently, later
bishops of Rome were seen as Peters spiritual heirs. Reinforcing their claim to
primacy, the bishops of Rome interpreted a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, in
which Christ apparently gave Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to mean
that all subsequent Roman bishops would also inherit the keysa doctrine known
as the Petrine Succession. Although other metropolitans and patriarchs, as well as

many ordinary bishops, disputed the Petrine Succession for centuries, in 445 the
Emperor Valentinian III decreed that all western bishops should acknowledge the
authority of the bishop of Rome, or pope as he was now being called, after the
Latin word for father. Increasingly, the chruch organized itself along the same lines
as the imperial administration.
In fact, such developments were probably in keeping with Constantines
original decision to foster the church as a potential source of unity for binding the
empire back together. Ironically, however, the more closely organized the church
became, the greater became the dangers it faced from internal disputes over
doctrine.
The problem of heresy. Heresy, or beliefs that did not conform to the accepted
teachings of the main body of the church, seriously threatened to destroy the unity
of Christianity in its early years of imperial patronage. During the first major crisis
over doctrine, the so-called Arian heresy, after the views of a priest named Arius,
became the subject of a church council summoned by Constantine to settle the
doctrinal controversy once and for all and to establish a uniform doctrine for all of
the Christian community.
Arius argued that Christ, being Gods son, could not be the same as God
himself and must therefore have been created by God the Father. This entirely
rational view was opposed by the followers of Saint Athenasius, who argued that it
was a matter of correct faith to accept that the Father and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, all mentioned in the Gospels, were co-eternal, co-equal, and made of the
same substance. Eventually, this view of the Christian Trinity prevailed and
Arianism was branded a heresy and swept out of the church.
Other heresies were dealt with in the same manner, usually debated in a
church council and then eventually declared beyond the bounds of true Christianity.
Although to the modern observer such doctrinal questions might seem trivial, for
Christians of the times they were of absolute importancesince only the correct
doctrine could assure people of the chance for salvation and eternal life. Anyone
who threatened such certainty of salvation was simply asking for trouble.
Monasticism. As the church became increasingly involved in the daily affairs of
peoples lives after its recognition as the state religion, many within its fold became
concerned that it was losing sight of the original message of Christ. In an effort to
recapture the ascetic and contemplative spirit they believed Jesus had wanted, such
pious individuals often turned toward monasticism, becoming monks and living
alone to practice a life of asceticism and self-denial in order to prepare for the life
to come. During the 300s, monasticism spread like wildfire throughout the church,
especially in the east, where the monastic movement first emerged.
As the clergy became more and more involved in the affairs of
administration and the life of the flesh, more and more lay people abandoned the
world around them in favor of isolation in the deserts and woods and mountains.
Some went to extreme lengths to practice their devotion to God by denying the
needs of the flesh. St. Simeon Stylites, for example, lived on a platform atop a tall
pole for 37 years. Others had themselves cemented into tiny cubby holes, with only
small openings through which they could be passed food and water. In such perfect
isolation they felt closer to God and better able to devote themselves entirely to

preparing for the next life rather than becoming caught in the struggle for survival
in the present life.
As monasticism reached new heights of self-torture, however, eventually
some in the church decided that a communal approach to asceticism would be
more productive. Perhaps the most influential of these advocates of communal
monasticism was Saint Basil. In a series of writings, Basil developed plans and
rules for monastic communitiies that would replace the individual asceticism of the
early monks. Instead of self-denial, Basil suggested that hard work would better
serve the needs of both the indiividual ascetic and the Lord. Even with work to fill
their time, however, under Basils rule monks spent most of their time in prayer
and meditation, and monastic communities along this new model preferred to
establish themselves as far away from the outer world as possible.
Pressure on the Frontiers and the Fall of Rome
The history of the western Roman empire after the death of Constantine in 337
was almost entirely conditioned by the constant struggle to keep its borders safe
from Germanic invaders. Military considerations became the main preoccupation
of the emperors and all the resources of the empire were aimed at trying to protect
the integrity of its borders. The empire was besieged and constantly threatened on
its frontiers along the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates. Neither the economy
nor the manpower of the empire could withstand invasions on so many fronts.
Consequently, at the end of the 300s, the Romans had to concede territory to the
invaders and allow them to settle inside the empire as autonomous groups. In
exchange, they hoped the tribes would act as frontier guards against the tribes still
pressing in behind them. At the same time, Diocletians division of the empire into
eastern and western parts was revived, with Rome as the capital of the west and
Constantinople as capital of the east. By the time of the Emperor Theodosiuss
death in 395, this division had become permanent.
Progressively Germanized, the western empire survived until 476 A.D.
when Odoacer, a German chieftain, deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last western
Roman emperor. The eastern empire resisted the invaders on its borders, but it too
was forced progressively to withdraw into itself. Although Constantinople
remained the capital of Rome in the East for another thousand years, at the end
of that time the only thing left to the emperors was the city itself and its immediate
surroundings.
Meanwhile, in the western provinces, Germanic tribes began to roam at
will, attacking cities and establishing kingdoms of their own in the ruins of the
Roman provinces. As the imperial communications network began to break down,
cities could no longer obtain enough food from the countryside to sustain many
people. Gradually, most cities were abandoned as people drifted back into the
countryside to find food and some kind of security.
Civilization did not cease, but it retreated increasingly to the local level as a
new culture began to emerge from the amalgamation of Germanic, Roman, and
Christian elements. Only the memory of a united empire under a single emperor
remained alive, fanned by an everpresent church hierarchy that survived the
transition and began to pick up the pieces after the fall of Rome itself. Both the
ideal of a universal empire and a universal church to sustain it would remain
embedded in the imagination of Europeans for centuries to come.