the_history_of_ancient_rome_gareth_fagan-part-2.pdf

The History of Ancient Rome Scope: I n the regional, restless, and shifting history of continental Europe, the Roman Empire stands as a towering monument to scale and stability; at its height, it stretched from Syria to Scotland, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, and it stood for almost 700...

The History of Ancient Rome Scope: I n the regional, restless, and shifting history of continental Europe, the Roman Empire stands as a towering monument to scale and stability; at its height, it stretched from Syria to Scotland, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, and it stood for almost 700 years. So enormous was the Roman achievement in forging and maintaining this vast empire that the idea of Rome has left a lasting impression on the European psyche. Subsequent rulers from Charlemagne to Napoleon to Hitler were motivated to some degree by emulation of the Roman model, and if the modern movement to unify Europe under a single currency and guiding bureaucracy succeeds, it will be the first genuine and lasting realization of such emulation in 1,400 years. Under Rome, people on three continents—in Europe, Africa, and Asia—gave their allegiance to a single political system, were governed by a unified set of laws, and were members of a distinct cultural community, despite their often profound linguistic, religious, and regional diversity. So grand was the power of the idea of Rome even in ancient times that the tribesmen who destroyed the Empire in the west often called themselves Romans, and Europe has seen some form of the Holy Roman Empire for most of its subsequent history. By no means insignificant also is the huge cultural debt that Europe and the world owe to Rome in so many fields of human endeavor, such as art, architecture, engineering, language, literature, law, and religion. In this series of lectures we examine how a small village of shepherds and farmers rose to be the colossus that bestrode the known civilized world of its day and came to leave such a lasting mark on European history. After two introductory lectures on the value of studying ancient Rome and the nature of the historical evidence for antiquity, we focus in the following four lectures on the very earliest periods of Roman history. After examining the geopolitical and cultural shape of pre-Roman Italy, the foundation legends of Rome itself, and the cycle of stories that surrounds the kings of Rome, we pause to look at the shape of early Roman society. These topics offer excellent illustrations of the problems inherent in using ancient evidence for 1 historical inquiry, which constitutes a running theme for the initial part of the course. Lectures 7 through 10 chart the fall of the monarchy at Rome and the foundation, in its wake, of the Republic (traditionally dated to 509 B.C.). The two major forces that influenced the shape of the early Republic, the Struggle of the Orders and Roman military expansion in Italy in the 8th to 4th centuries B.C., are treated, as is the means of Roman administration of conquered territories in Italy, which lay the foundations for the later acquisition and maintenance of the Empire. Scope Moving outside of Italy, Lectures 11 through 15 concern the rise of the Roman Empire in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. Having examined the shape of the Mediterranean world prior to Rome’s emergence onto the international scene, we devote two lectures to charting the course of the Romans’ first two titanic struggles with their arch-rival in the west, Carthage. In these wars, the Romans first developed a large-scale navy, sent armies overseas, acquired foreign territories, and displayed what was to become one of their chief characteristics: a dogged determination to prevail, even in the face of seemingly impossible odds. This was particularly clearly brought out in the Second Punic War, when the gifted Carthaginian general Hannibal was abroad in Italy, threatening the very existence of Rome itself. Success in the first two Punic Wars set the stage for Roman expansion in the eastern Mediterranean, which brought Rome into conflict with the “superpowers” of the day. Following the outline of the facts of Roman overseas expansion, we seek explanations for it in Lecture 15 and thereby enter a field of heated scholarly debate. Lectures 16 through 19 pause the narrative to examine two important thematic issues: the influence of Greek culture on Rome in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., and the nature of the Roman Republican system of government in both the domestic and provincial spheres. This latter system—complex, traditionbound, and replete with archaisms and redundancies—has influenced the form of several modern polities, including that of the United States. Finally, we examine the pressures of empire on Roman society, charting considerable social, economic, and political changes brought about by the speed and success of Rome’s overseas expansion. For it was on the rocks of these pressures that the Republic was destined to founder. 2 The following eight lectures, 20 through 27, follow the course of what modern scholars have termed the “Roman Revolution.” In the century between 133 and 31 B.C., the Roman Republic tore itself apart. It is a period of dramatic political and military developments, of ambitious generals challenging the authority of the state for their political development, of civil wars and vicious violence, and of some of the first great personalities of European history: Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Julius Caesar. The story is intriguing, complicated, and at times horrendous, and it illustrates perfectly the historical principle of contingency. With a few exceptions, each protagonist in the drama of the Revolution tended to act within the bounds of necessity or precedent, and thereby to set new and dangerous precedents for later protagonists to follow. In this way, the Roman Revolution was not a staged or planned event, but a cumulative snowball of crises that combined to shatter the system of Republican government. By the time of Caesar’s assassination in 44 B.C., few could have held any illusions as to the ultimate destination of the Roman body politic: autocracy. After pausing to examine the social and cultural life of the Late Republic, we return in Lectures 29 and 30 to the very last phases of the Revolution and the rise to power of the man who was to become Rome’s first Emperor, Augustus. Lectures 31 to 33 examine the long reign of Augustus (31 B.C.–A.D. 14) and his establishment of a new political order at Rome, called the Principate. His solution to the Republic’s problems was clever and subtle, at once radically altering the nature of government while disguising that fact under a veneer of familiar Republican forms. The Principate stood for centuries and brought stability and good government, especially to the provinces, in a way that the old Republic had been incapable of doing. It also had a flaw at its core that made life for subsequent emperors and those close to them perilous indeed. This was the issue of the succession, how one emperor passed power onto the next. Engendered by Augustus’s concealment of his autocracy under the forms of the old Republic, the problem of what happened when an emperor died was to prove the single most destabilizing factor in the Principate’s existence. Lectures 34 to 36 cover the early Imperial period, from the death of Augustus to the instability of the 3rd century. This is the era of such familiar Roman historical figures as Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and Hadrian. Rather than treat 3 each reign as a march of facts, we examine thematically, first, the gradual derailment of the pure Augustan Principate under his immediate successors and, second, the role of the emperor in general in the Roman world, citing examples to illustrate our points. Finally, we show how the problem of the succession combined with ominous developments among Rome’s external enemies in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. to generate a period of great crisis, indeed near-collapse, in the mid-3rd century A.D. Leaving the Empire under pressure, we turn in Lectures 37 through 45 to consider some of the salient characteristics of classical Roman civilization. The selection of themes is, by necessity, limited and some omissions are unavoidable, but it addresses many topics of greatest interest to the modern historian investigating ancient Rome. Individual lectures are devoted to the broad shape of Roman society, slavery, the Roman family, the role of women in Roman society, urbanism, public leisure and mass entertainment, paganism, and the rise of Christianity. Scope To conclude the course, Lectures 46 through 48 return to the Empire’s last centuries. We see the Empire restored to order and stability at the end of the 3rd century, but under an increasingly oppressive and militarized government. The institutionalization of Christianity as the legitimation for imperial power and the more openly autocratic regime created, in many ways, a Roman Empire closer to medieval Europe than to the Empire of Augustus. As such, the later Empire is treated only in general terms here, since it warrants closer study in and of itself. We end the course with one of the great questions in history—why did the Roman Empire fall?—and we see how, in the eyes of most modern scholars, the Empire did not fall at all but just changed into something very different. 4 Introduction Lecture 1 The Romans loved the law. They conceived of the law somewhat differently from the way we do. It wasn’t the law of individual human rights the way our modern law is, but the notion that the law stands above us all. The images and themes of Roman history and culture continue to influence modern culture. Rome’s is an interesting history to study due to patterns of change. Modern popular culture remains enthralled by images and themes drawn from the pagan Roman world: Julius Caesar assassinated, Nero fiddling as Rome burns, and gladiators fighting to the death before clamoring crowds. 5 © Tom Brakefield/Stockbyte/Thinkstock. W hy study ancient Rome at all? The heritage of ancient Rome is enormous. The influence that Rome exerted on later ages, as illustrated by the Grand Tours that were conducted from the Renaissance through the 19th century, has been both profound and continuous. The Roman legacy to the modern world in various spheres is inestimable. From Rome we have inherited, among other things, a reverence for the law. Certainly Rome influenced the Founding Fathers of the The Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum. United States. The Roman Catholic Church is the manifestation of Rome in the modern world. Lecture 1: Introduction Roman society changed enormously over its long duration: It evolved from a monarchy into a republic and then back to a monarchy; it changed from a pagan to a Christian empire; and culturally it evolved from a rustic and crude place to a sophisticated and Hellenized one. The long period of Rome’s survival, coupled In the case of with the processes of change, make Rome’s history more dynamic and variegated than the United States that of any other ancient state and quite a few of America, the subsequent ones. founders were unequivocally and This series of lectures will outline the main events of Roman history in the political, directly influenced military, and social spheres. Some attention will by their knowledge also be paid to cultural matters where pertinent. of the ancient Roman By “ancient Rome,” we mean the period from past in formulating circa 1000 B.C. to A.D. 500. The course focuses especially on the period circa 300 B.C. to A.D. the Constitution. 300. Late antiquity (c. A.D. 300–500) is treated only briefly, and the Byzantine period (c. A.D. 300–1453*) not at all; both are deserving of courses in their own right. In geographic terms, we shall examine Rome’s expansion from a small hamlet on a hillside overlooking the Tiber River to the colossus that dominated the Mediterranean basin and northwestern Europe for a half a millennium. Ancient history is not like modern history, which most people conceive of as “typical” history—a combination of facts about the past and the interpretation of those facts. Ancient history suffers from a relative dearth of evidence. The body of ancient evidence available to us is finite, well-known, patchy, and often contradictory. This makes the establishment of basic facts a more difficult endeavor than it is in modern history. Due to the scarcity of evidence, the scope for interpretation is extremely wide in ancient history. The circumscribed body of ancient evidence is itself subject to constant reevaluation and interpretation. All of these circumstances *Erratum: In the lecture, the professor states that the Byzantine Empire fell in A.D. 1454. The correct date is A.D. 1453, as shown in the lecture guide. 6 make certainty a rare bird in ancient history. More often there are merely competing reconstructions and interpretations, with no clear way to decide among them. There are few “correct” answers to problems in ancient history; that is precisely what makes it so fascinating and exciting an endeavor. Suggested Reading E. H. Carr, What is History?, 2nd edition. M. I. Finley, Ancient History: Evidence and Models. R. Jenkyns (ed.), The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal. Questions to Consider 1. Is it possible that, in fact, Rome never “fell” at all, in the sense that the idea of Rome has stood consistently behind so much of subsequent European and world history? 2. To what extent does the study of ancient history differ in its objectives and methods from the study of modern history? Can you account for those differences? 7 The Sources Lecture 2 All history is based on what are called primary sources. The primary sources can be broadly defined as those that derive from the period under study. They can vary in terms of their focus and their quality. P rimary sources can sometimes be removed from their subjects by some distance. Whatever the case, they hail from the cultural ethos of the ancient world. Secondary sources, in contrast, are works of modern scholarship about the ancient past. All secondary sources are grounded in the primary sources. © iStockphoto/Thinkstock. Lecture 2: The Sources Historical theorists have argued at length about the relative merits of primary sources. One view, called positivism, says that one can never go beyond what the primary sources tell us. New History holds to the view that the primary evidence can be supplemented by comparative and theoretical data drawn from other realms of scholarship. The inherent bias of the practicing historian can be minimized and the past “reality” can be reconstructed by The exquisitely preserved ruins of Pompeii, one of the most important primary sources on Roman life. 8 close attention to the original context of the primary evidence. This is history from the bottom up. Postmodernists argue that there is no reality beyond the text. The inherent bias of the historian cannot be overcome and, in fact, history is not reconstructed but merely constructed in the image of the historian’s biases. In this series of lectures, we shall take a broadly modernist approach, while acknowledging There is a big the warnings of the postmodernists about the depth question as to of one’s own bias. whether history is scientific at all Archaeological evidence comprises any and all or whether it is physical material that survives from antiquity. At just over 100 years old, scientific archaeology is a new just an art form. discipline and has turned up a variety of physical evidence for our consideration. Macro evidence comprises such artifacts as entire cities, buildings, infrastructures, ships, works of art, corpses, and so on. Micro evidence offers fragments of pots, bones, textiles, and other small items, and even pollen and micro-organisms. Pottery is a very common and important type of archaeological evidence. But archaeological excavation is destructive, and the evidence it produces is mute and only speaks when interpreted. Written evidence offers unparalleled insights into the lives of the ancients. Ancient literature is rich and varied, and it is an invaluable historical tool. The surviving body of Roman literature comprises many genres. It gives us windows into ancient life as lived by the ancients, into their values and preoccupations, the main events of their history, and their own view of themselves. But ancient literature mostly survives in medieval copies and is therefore a selected body of material subject to loss or the introduction of error in the process of copying. Epigraphic evidence comprises inscriptions with varied content carved on a variety of surfaces. Inscriptions can be carved on stone, metal, bone, wood, bark, parchment, or papyrus. They include epitaphs, decrees, laws, commemorative and honorary texts, letters, notes, records, and graffiti. Unlike literary evidence, epigraphic evidence has 9 not been selected or copied over the centuries but speaks to us directly from antiquity. Ancient written evidence has its limitations. Roman literature was written by upper-class men, who mostly lived at Rome, between circa 200 B.C. and A.D. 200. Inscriptions are largely formulaic and for the most part not particularly informative for the major events of Roman history. The study of coins (numismatics) and papyrus (papyrology) are two important subfields in the investigation of ancient evidence. Roman coins are both archaeological and epigraphic artifacts in that they can be studied from both perspectives. Papyrus is a particular kind of inscriptional source, often presenting detailed portraits of life at the local level. Suggested Reading M. Crawford (ed.), Sources for Ancient History. M. I. Finley, Ancient History: Evidence and Models. L. Keppie, Understanding Roman Inscriptions. Questions to Consider 1. Can the practicing historian ever overcome the bias ingrained by the social, cultural, and historical context in which that historian is operating? If so, how? If not, why not? 2. Are some classes of ancient evidence more trustworthy relative to Lecture 2: The Sources others? If so, why? 10 Pre-Roman Italy and the Etruscans Lecture 3 The Romans were not the first people to inhabit the Italian Peninsula. They were not even the first people to become powerful or influential within the Italian Peninsula. T he geography of the Italian Peninsula offered many benefits to its inhabitants. The peninsula is well-watered and well-endowed with natural resources. The Alps in the north and the Apennine range that runs down the center of Italy provide springs, streams, and rivers more than sufficient to supply the inhabitants. The largest rivers in Italy, and the ones with which we shall be mostly concerned, are the Po and Arno rivers in the north, and the Tiber in central Italy. The mountainous nature of the country guaranteed an abundance of wood and ores for the ancient Italians and pasture for their sheep and goats. © Hemera/Thinkstock. The peninsula’s plains are fertile. The three main plains in Italy are the Po River Valley in the north, the plain of Latium around Rome, and Campania around Naples. Campania, in particular, with its volcanic soil, pleasant Mount Vesuvius, the source of Campania’s fertile volcanic soil. 11 climate, and natural hot springs, was destined to become a popular pleasure spot for the Roman elite. The plain of Latium, on the north edge of which lay the Tiber River and the site of Rome, is surrounded by the sea to the west and mountains to the east. A range of low hills (the Alban Hills) is located in the center of the plain. All of these plains are fertile. By the time of Roman expansion into Italy, all were inhabited by settled people practicing agriculture. Lecture 3: Pre-Roman Italy and the Etruscans With the exception of the Greek colonizers and the Etruscans, pre-Roman Italy was inhabited by nonurbanized tribal peoples. The tribal cultures of preRoman Italy are difficult to study. Archaeology shows that Italy had human inhabitants as early as the Stone Age. Literary sources become available only in the 5th century B.C., by which time the immediately pre-Roman tribal cultures of Italy had existed for 500 years or more. The situation before circa 400 B.C. is therefore very hard to reconstruct. Pre-Roman tribal Italy was a quilt of languages and cultures. Archaeology and linguistics are our main avenues for studying this period: Two archaeological keys are burial styles and pottery, and at least 40 languages and dialects have been determined. A broad division appears to have existed between settled agriculturists in the plains and their threatening, mountain-dwelling neighbors. The situation in 400 B.C. was as follows, north to south: the Celtic Gauls had control of the Po Valley; the Etruscans were to their south; then came the Romans and the Latins; the Oscans and Samnites controlled central Italy and parts of Campania; and finally, the Greeks were found in the south. The Greeks and Etruscans were urbanized cultures. The Greek colonies in Italy were localized affairs and centered on coastal cities, notably Naples and Tarentum. The Etruscans, too, were an urbanized people and were much influenced by the Greeks (i.e., Hellenized). The origins of the Etruscans are unclear. No Etruscan literature survives; they are studied through archaeology, later Roman tales about them, mentions in Greek sources, and surviving inscriptions in their ill-understood language. They may have been migrants from the eastern Mediterranean. More likely, they were a native Italian culture (called Villanovan) that became urbanized circa 800–700 B.C., perhaps through contact with the Greeks. They were not a politically unified people but were very influential in Italy. They had 12 a League of Twelve Cities, which often warred with each other. They were united by language and religion, and these cities could occasionally work in concert. Originally ruled by kings, many Etruscan cities became oligarchies, ruled by councils of leading families. The nature of Etruscan “control” in Italy is unclear. Earlier scholars imagined a sort of Etruscan Empire in Italy, stretching from the Po Valley to Campania. This empire collapsed in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. in the face of resistance from the Greeks in the south and incursions of Gauls in the north. More recently, it has been proposed that there was a looser sphere of Etruscan influence, predominantly on the cultural plane; there was no Etruscan Empire. This debate affects how historians read the early history of Rome, particularly the question of Etruscan Rome under the last kings. The Etruscans were absorbed by the Romans, but they greatly influenced Roman culture. The main areas of Etruscan influence on the Romans were in religion and statecraft, but also in architecture. From the late 3rd century B.C. onward, the Etruscans were thoroughly absorbed into the Roman state, and by the age of the emperors, they had ceased to exist as a distinct cultural group. Suggested Reading G. Barker, The Etruscans. T. J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, chapters 1–2. R. M. Ogilvie, Early Rome and the Etruscans, esp. chapters 1–3. Questions to Consider 1. How reliable are modern scholars’ reconstructions of the situation in pre-Roman Italy? On what evidence are they based, and how is that evidence deployed by modern scholars? 2. Which of the modern views of the nature of Etruscan Italy do you favor? Why? 13 The Foundation of Rome Lecture 4 Later Romans preserved two tales about the origin of their people and their city. Both are well known to most people. One of them surrounds the twins Romulus and Remus. The other surrounds the Trojan hero Aeneas. T Lecture 4: The Foundation of Rome he story of Romulus and Remus—their escape from death as infants and their founding of Rome—has characteristic folkloric elements that suggest it is very old and local in origin. The story of Aeneas founding Rome, on the other hand, derives from a Hellenized source, reflecting Greek legends, but it is probably older than many have assumed. In this story, Aeneas, the sole survivor of Troy, wandered the Mediterranean before settling in Italy at Lavinium, where he founded a town. The two stories were united into a single tradition by making Romulus and Remus descendants of Aeneas. Aeneas founded the Roman people; Romulus and Remus founded the city of Rome. Archaeological evidence suggests that settlement at Rome began as early as 1500 B.C., but it does not offer any evidence that substantially contradicts the ancient legends. The site of Rome was advantageous. It overlooked a ford in the Tiber near an island in the stream; it could control north-south traffic between Etruria and Latium and east-west traffic from the interior to the coast. It was hilly, defensible, and well-watered. Signs of early human habitation (i.e., pottery shards) date to circa 1500 B.C., with the first permanent settlement, as indicated by graves, founded in circa 1000 B.C. Originally and into the 8th century B.C., Rome was a series of small, separate villages on neighboring hilltops; evidence of these settlements has been found. At some stage—the dates are impossible to establish—these communities coalesced into a single community, and Rome, as an entity, was born. Spectacular finds on the Palatine Hill in Rome in the 1930s revealed postholes for wooden huts that dated to the mid-8th century, circa 750 B.C. Later Romans maintained a hut on the Palatine that they called the Hut of Romulus. 14 Archaeological evidence is mute; it cannot prove legendary evidence, but occasionally it can disprove it. The archaeology does suggest an early pattern of settlement at Rome, becoming more complex in the 8th century and coalescing into a single community sometime after that (a process termed synoikism). Therefore, the issue of sources for this early period of Roman history is an important consideration to bear in mind. Suggested Reading T. J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, chapter 3. Livy, The Early History of Rome, book 1. C. J. Smith, Early Rome and Latium: Economy and Society, c. 1000 to 500 B.C. Questions to Consider 1. Where did the ancient Roman authors get their information concerning the early period of Roman history? 2. In what precise respects do the archaeological and written sources converge or diverge in their reconstruction of Rome’s founding? 15 Corel Stock Photo Library. That said, archaeology cannot confirm Rome’s founding legends either. Archaeological evidence needs to be interpreted to make sense. The presence of worship centers embracing Aeneas in Lavinium does not prove the Aeneas legend; it is likely the result of the fame of the legend, not vice versa. The coincidence A bronze statue of Romulus and Remus, of the Palatine huts and the the legendary founders of Rome. traditional foundation date does not prove the Romulus legend. In fact, the settlement of which the huts are part dates to 1000 B.C.