by
Alexander Moiseev
05.15.98
Rome
The accounts of the regal period have come down overlaid
with such a mass of myth and legend that few statements can be
accepted as factual; the Roman historians of later times, lacking
authentic records, relied on fabrications of a patriotic records,
relied on fabrications of a patriotic fancy.
The Legendary Period of the kings(753-510 BC)
Rome was said to have been founded by Latin colonists
from Alba Longa, a nearby city in ancient Latium. The legendary date
of the founding was 753 BC; it was ascribed to Romulus and Remus, the
twin sons of Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin and the daughter of
Numitor, king of Alba Longa. Later legend carried the ancestry of the
Romans back to the Trojans and their leader Aeneas, whose son
Ascanius, or lulus, was the founder and the first king of Alba Longa.
The tales concerning Romulus’s rule, notably the rape of the
Sabine women and the war with the Sabines under the leader Titus
Tatius, point to an early infiltration of Sabine peoples or to a
union of Latin and Sabine elements at the beginning. The three
tribes, the Ramnes, Titieus, and Luceres, that appear in the legend
of Romulus as the parts of the new commonwealth suggest that Rome
arose from the amalgamation of three stocks, thought to be Latin,
Sabine, and Etruscan.
The seven kings of the regal period and the dates
traditionally assigned to their regns are as follows: Romulus, from
753 to 715 BC; Numa Pompilius, from 715 to 676 or 672 BC, to whom was
attributed the introduction of many religious customs; Tullus
Hostilius, from 673 to 641 BC, a warlike king, who destroyed Alba
Longa and fought against the Sabines; Ancus Marcius, from 641 to 616
BC, said to have built the port of Astia and to have captured many
Latin towns, transferring their inhabitants to Rome; Lucius
Tarquinius Priscus, from 616 to 578 BC, celebrated both for his
military exploits against neighboring peoples and for his
construction of public buildings at Rome; Servius Tullius, from 578
to 534 BC, famed for his new constitution and for the enlargement of
the boundaries of the city; and Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, from 534
to 510 BC, the seventh and the last king, whose tyrannical rule was
overthrow when his son ravished Lucretia, the wife of a kinsman.
Tarquinius was banished, and attempts by Etruscan or Latin cities to
reinstate him on the throne at Rome were unavailing.
Although the names, dates, and events of the regal
period are considered as belonging to the regal of fiction and myth
rather than to that of factual history, certain facts seem well
attested: the existence of an early rule by kings; the growth of the
city and its struggles with neighboring peoples; the conquest of Rome
by Etruria and the establishment of a dynasty of Etruscan princes,
symbolized by the rule of the Tarquins; the overthrow of this alien
control; and the abolition of the kingship. The existence of certain
social and political conditions may also be accepted, such as the
division of the beginning into two orders: the patricians, who alone
possessed political rights and constituted the populus, or people;
and their dependents, known as clients or the plebs, who had
originally no political existence. The rex, or king, chosen by the
Senate(senatus), or Council of Elders, from the ranks of the
patricians, held office for life, called out the populus for war, and
led the army in person; he was preceded by officers, known as
lictors, who bore the faces, the symbols of power and punishment, and
was the supreme judge in all civil and criminal suits. The senatus
gave its advice only when the king chose to consult it, but the
elders(patres) possessed great moral authority, inasmuch as their
tenure was for life. Originally only patricians could bear arms in
defense of the state. At some stage in the regal period an important
military reform occurred, usually designated as the Servian reform of
the constitution, because it was decided that all property and
wealth, it was ascribed to Servius Tullius. As the plebs could by
this time acquire property and wealth, it was decided that all
property holders, both patrician and plebian, must serve in army, and
each took a rank in accordance with his wealth. This arrangement,
although initially military, paved the way for the great political
struggle between the patricians and the plebs in the early centuries
of the Republic.
The Republic
On
the overthrow of Tarquininus Superbus a republic was established.
Conquest
of Italy(510-264 BC)
In place of the king, two chief executives were chosen
annually by the whole body of citizens. These were known as praetors,
or leaders, but later received the title of consuls. The
participation of a colleague in the exercise of supreme power and the
limitation of the tenure to one year prevented the chief magistrate
from becoming autocratic. The character of the Senate was altered by
the enrollment of plebeian members, known as conscreipti, and hence
the official designation of the senators thereafter was patres
conscripti(conscript fathers). As yet, only patricians were aligible
for the magistracies, and the discontent of the plebs led to a
violent struggle between the two orders and the gradual removal of
the social and political disabilities under which the plebs had
labored.
In 494 BC a secession of plebian soldiers led to the
institution of the tribuni plebis, who were elected annually as
protectors of the plebs; they had the power to veto the acts of
patrician magistrates, and thus served as the leaders of the plebs in
the struggles with the patricians. The appointment of the
decemvirate, a commission of a famous code of laws. In 445 BC, under
the Canuleian law, marriages between patricians and members of the
plebs were declared legally valid. By the Licinian-Sextian laws,
passed in 367 BC, it was provided that one of the two consuls should
thenceforth be plebeian. The other magistracies were gradually apened
to the plebs: in 356 BC, the dictatorship, an extraordinary
magistracy, the incumbent of which was appointed in times of great
danger; in 350 BC, the censorship; in 337 BC, the praetorship; and in
300 BC, the pontifical and augural colleges.
A
World Power(264-133 BC)
In 264 BC, 11 years after the victory over Pyrrhus, Rome
engaged with Carthage in a struggle for the control of the
Mediterranean Sea. Carthage at this time was the foremost maritime
power in the world, ruling as absolutely in the central and western
Mediterranean as did Rome on the Italian Peninsula.
The Empire
Ceasar’s assassination by Republican nobles on
March 15, 44 BC, was followed by Cicero’s attempt to restore
the old Republican constitution, but Mark Antony, who had been
appointed consul with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Caesar’s
grandnephew, the youthful Octavian, later Rmperor Augustus, to form
the second triumvirate.
Octavian received the title of Augustus in 27 BC and
began the new regime by an apparent restoration of the Republic, with
himself as princeps, or chief citizen.
During the last 80 years of the Western Roman Empire the
provinces, drained by taxes levied for the support of the army and
the bureacracy, were visited by internal war and by barbarian
invasions. At first the policy of conciliating the invader with
military commands and administrative offices succeded. Gradually,
however, the barbarians estublished in the east began to aim at
conquest in the west, and Alaric I, king of the Visigoths, first
occupied illyricum, whence he ravaged Greece. In 410 he captured and
sacked Rome, but died soon after. His successor, Ataulf(r. 410-15),
drew off the Visigoths to Gaul, and in 419 a succeeding king, Wallia,
received formal permission from Honorius to settle in southwestern
Gaul, where at Toulouse he founded the Visigothic dynasty.The last
Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was overthrown by the
mercenary Herulian leader Odoacer(c.435-93),who was proclaimed king
of Italy by his troops. The history of Rome would subsequently merge
with that of the papacy, the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, and
Italy. For the history of the Eastern Empire from the time of
Theodosius the Great.
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