Peter Haugen - World History For Dummies

Although he may not have tasted wolf’s milk or killed his twin, legend credits Romulus as being the first of seven kings who ruled Rome as a city-state, not unlike the Greek city-states around the Mediterranean (which you can find out about in Chapter 4), until 509 BC. That year was when King Tarquinius Superbus got on the wrong side of his advisory body of citizen-magistrates, the Roman Senate.

The Senate gave Tarquinius Superbus the boot and set up a republican system of government designed to prevent a tyrant from ever misruling Rome again. Two consuls, elected annually, served as administrative executives under the supervision of the Senate. The republic system worked, bringing the stability that Rome needed as it grew. And did it grow.

Rome borrowed freely from other cultures — a pantheon of gods from the Greeks; Athenian-style democracy; and metalworking technology from an older Italian culture, the Etruscans. (I talk about cultural diffusion in Chapter 4.) Yet the Roman civilization did so much with what it borrowed that you can’t overestimate its impact, both in its own time and since. You can feel Rome’s influence even today. For one thing, the Roman language, Latin, is the foundation of not just Italian, but also of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. Latin also left a deep impression on non-Latin languages, such as English. Even after Latin fell out of everyday use, it remained a unifying language of learning, particularly in medicine and science.

Romans lived in a stratified society organized by class (see the nearby “Roman class” sidebar for more). Opportunities and employment were strictly defined by birth, just as they were in many other cultures dominated by privileged aristocrats. Yet Roman custom also offered ways for non-citizens to improve their status or that of their children.

Rome allowed foreigners and slaves to become citizens. This opportunity was highly limited when compared to today’s standards but progressive for its time. Giving the Roman Empire’s lowborn and conquered people a chance at inclusion in society helped win those people’s loyalty to Rome, which added greatly to Rome’s growth and resilience.

Democratic Athens offered no such opportunities for outsiders. (See more about Athens in chapters 4and 11.) In a Greek city-state, a slave could be granted freedom, but the best he could hope for was lowly resident-alien status; he was unlikely to develop loyalty to a state that excluded him. (And I do mean him. Women couldn’t even dream of citizenship.)

Why so exclusive? Greeks valued Greekness, looking down on those who didn’t speak their language and worship their gods. But the exclusion was also economic. The city-states of rocky Greece were usually short of resources, especially good farmland. Granting citizenship meant increasing the number of people who had a direct claim on the food supply. Making slaves citizens was expensive and would have meant increasing the number of voters, which may have caused unwanted power shifts.

In fertile Italy, on the other hand, food was relatively abundant, so shares weren’t such an issue. Also, blocks of votes rather than individual votes determined Roman elections, so an extra vote in a block had little potential impact.

Rome offered slaves the real possibility of earning citizenship, but only in the lowest class of citizenship: plebeian. Plebeians, however, could hope for their children to rise to a higher class. Further, Rome united other cities in its empire by bringing conquered people into the fold. Roman officers propped up local aristocrats in newly taken provinces, making them dependent on Rome’s support. The defeated country’s men were enlisted in the next conflict and rewarded with part of the profits from the almost-inevitable conquest. Loyalty was lucrative.

By the third century BC, Rome had only one major rival for the position of top dog in the western Mediterranean: the city of Carthage, a rich trading port in North Africa.

Before 1000 BC, the Phoenicians sailed out of what is now Lebanon to expand trade opportunities. On the north African coast, in present-day Tunisia, they established the port city of Carthage. Around 600 BC, Carthage became so rich and populous that it cast off Phoenician rule.

Plebeian, which refers to a lowly person, is a word you may still run across. In Rome, the plebeian belonged to the second-lowest of four social classes. The lowest was the slave, who had no rights. Plebeians were a little better off, in that they were free, but beyond that, they had no clout. Next in the hierarchy were the equestrians, or riders. Equestrians were rich people — rich men, actually — of a class that rode horses when they were called to fight for Rome. They weren’t rich enough to have much power, though. For real power, you had to be among the patricians, or nobles. Patrician is a word that still gets used, too. Now, as back then, it’s applied to people of wealthy families who are accustomed to having authority.

Carthage and Rome fought three Punic Wars from 264–146 BC. (Punic comes from Punicus, a Latin word for Phoenician. ) Carthage should have quit while it was ahead. In the first of these wars, Rome won the island of Sicily, its first overseas province. In the second Punic War, Carthage lost the rest of its far-flung territories and became a dependent ally of Rome. The alliance was never sweet, and then it really soured: The third Punic War began, and Rome destroyed Carthage.

To the east, Rome fought the Hellenistic kingdoms, Greek-influenced nations carved out of Alexander’s empire. Romans took Macedon, Greece, Asia Minor, and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, eventually including Judah, founded by the Jewish leader Judas the Maccabee in 168 BC. In 63 BC, the Romans made Jerusalem the capital of Roman Judea.

The empire pushed north into Gaul, to the Rhine and the Danube rivers, growing so big that administering the vast territory became too difficult for the republic, which had an unwieldy, often-contentious government. Turmoil created the opportunity for a military genius to step forward.

Gaius Julius Caesar (better known as Julius Caesar) was a Roman aristocrat and military commander. His far-flung conquests extended Rome’s growing dominion, and he was ambitious for himself as well as for his country.

In the first century BC, Rome desperately needed leadership. Decades of uneasy peace, fierce political rivalries, and widespread bitterness had followed a series of civil wars. Quarreling politicians fighting for power rendered the Roman Senate useless. In 60 BC, three leaders formed the First Triumvirate (rule by three) to restore order. The Triumvirate was an unofficial arrangement and kept secret at first, but it dominated Roman politics for most of a decade. The three co-rulers were Marcus Licinius Crassus; Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (widely remembered as Pompey); and Julius Caesar, the youngest. Caesar was especially feared by politicians who opposed the Triumvirate, in part because he was a nephew of the late Gaius Marius, who had served seven times as consul, the top administrative post in the Roman government. (A consul was a bit like a combination prime minister and attorney general.)