Republican Rome

Date: c. 500 b.c.e.-c. 31 b.c.e.

Locale: Italy and the Mediterranean World

Republican Rome

Ancient accounts of the Roman Republic before the beginning of the Punic Wars in 264 b.c.e. are highly fictionalized and unreliable in detail, but modern archaeology and historical research confirm their general outline. Around 500 b.c.e., aristocratic leaders took advantage of dynastic struggles to overthrow the last kings of early Rome, who had become tyrants like those in contemporary Greek cities. They gradually developed a new system of government, later called the republic (res publica). It had four major parts: the magistracies, the senate, various popular assemblies, and the public priesthoods.

The magistracies were public offices filled by magistrates elected (usually annually) from the wealthiest landowning families (usually with aristocratic pedigrees). Eventually, there were two chief magistrates called consuls, who had the power of military command (imperium) outside Rome’s sacred boundary (pomerium) and held the highest civil authority in the city. As needs increased, other, lower-ranking magistrates were created: praetors (eventually eight), curule aediles (two), and quaestors (eventually twenty). Praetors also had imperium and presided over the courts; aediles supervised public buildings, festivals, and markets; and quaestors assisted other magistrates. All those magistrates and the consuls held the annual offices of the Republican course of offices (cursus honorum). The highest office of the cursus belonged to the two censors who were elected for eighteen months every five years to conduct a census of citizens, supervise public morals, and award public contracts. Each magistrate could veto another magistrate of equal or lower rank. In a crisis, a consul could appoint a dictator, who held sole power for up to six months. No one could veto a dictator. The dictatorship was not part of the cursus.

The senate was a council of experienced leaders who controlled the treasury and advised the current magistrates. Senators themselves also could be priests and magistrates. Their decrees were not laws but carried great moral authority. In the early Republic, some members probably were hereditary and the consuls probably appointed others for their year of office. Eventually, the censors appointed senators for life from the ranks of qualified former magistrates.

During the Republic, there were two major popular assemblies (comitiae) of all adult male citizens, who originally made up the army (populus). The centuriate assembly (comitia centuriata) was made up of groups of voters ranked according to wealth. Summoned by a magistrate with imperium, it elected the censors, consuls, and praetors; passed laws; and heard appeals from those convicted of capital crimes. The tribal assembly (comitia tributa) was made up of all adult male citizens grouped together by the urban and rural tribes (districts) in which they lived. It elected the aediles and quaestors and also could pass laws and hear appeals.

In the early Republic, the plebeian citizens established a separate council of the plebs organized by tribes (concilium plebis). It represented their interests through votes called plebiscites (resolutions of the plebs) and elected special plebeian officers called tribunes of the plebs (eventually ten). Within the city of Rome, the tribunes asserted the right to veto any arbitrary or abusive action taken by a magistrate—but not a dictator—against an individual plebeian or the plebs as a whole.

Many priesthoods were important elective or appointive public offices. Public priests came from the same wealthy families as the magistrates and often held magistracies at the same time. There were four major colleges (boards) of public priests: the pontiffs (including the Vestal Virgins and the priests of fifteen major deities under the leadership of the pontifex maximus, or supreme pontiff), augurs, fetials, and duovirs for making sacrifices. Their duties were to interpret the will of the gods and obtain divine favor for the community. Failure to perform the proper rituals or the discovery of unfavorable signs halted public business.

History

The early Republic and its neighbors fought for land to support growing populations. Leaders who defended Rome or expanded its territory won glory and popularity. Some of the earliest conflicts involved neighboring Etruscan and Latin cities. In 493 b.c.e., Rome and the cities of the Latin League decided to unite in the face of common attacks from nearby hill tribes like the Aequi, Volsci, and Hernici. During the fifth century b.c.e., Rome conquered the powerful Etruscan city of Veii, overcame the rugged hill tribes, and even came to dominate the Latin League.

About 390 or 386 b.c.e., a tribe of Gauls swept down from northern Italy and destroyed most of Rome before they left. Soon, old enemies and even many Latin allies who resented Rome’s dominance attacked. The Romans defeated them and either absorbed them as Roman citizens, who had to serve in Roman armies, or forced them to accept defensive alliances. Rome’s success led to wars with the powerful Samnite tribes of central Italy, the Greek cities in southern Italy, and the remaining independent Etruscan cities.

One of the most famous opponents was King Pyrrhus of Epirus. He invaded Italy with 28,000 men and seventy terrifying war elephants to help the Greek city of Tarentum (280 b.c.e.). His “Pyrrhic victories” were so costly that he finally had to withdraw when the Romans refused to surrender.

By 264 b.c.e., Rome had united all of peninsular Italy by making former enemies full Roman citizens or loyal allies with rights of partial citizenship. Rome’s inclusive attitude toward citizenship had constantly increased the manpower for further conquests in Italy. A central location in Italy, constant military innovations, and values that promoted discipline and self-sacrifice for the community had also aided conquest. Another major asset was the Romans’ willingness to compromise to resolve internal conflicts in the face of external threats.

During the first two centuries of the Republic, compromises to end internal conflicts had created a fairer government and a more unified society. Some powerful families who had the hereditary right to supply important public priests tried to become an exclusive “patrician” aristocracy. Members of wealthy families who were identified as part of the plebs opposed patrician efforts to exclude them from the magistracies, the senate, and the public priesthoods. They often supported the demands of poorer members of the plebs for more land, relief from debt, and protection from abuse by magistrates. By 300 b.c.e., all wealthy citizens enjoyed the right to hold most public priesthoods and the magistracies that led to membership in the senate. Plebiscites were accepted as binding laws, and the tribunes of the plebs were recognized as legitimate “constitutional” officials. Eventually they even acquired the right to summon meetings of the senate and qualified as members. Plebeian agitation had also led to the creation of Rome’s first written code of laws (the Twelve Tables, 451-450 b.c.e.), legal restrictions on the amount of public land that any one citizen could lease (367 b.c.e.), and the end of enslavement for debt.

Internal unity and control of Italy with its resources, manpower, and central location in the Mediterranean made the Roman Republic very powerful. The need to feed Rome’s constantly growing city, the Romans’ fear of strong neighbors, and their leaders’ desire for wealth and glory led them to conquer most of the Mediterranean world except Egypt between 264 and 133 b.c.e. The three Punic Wars with Carthage (264-241, 218-201, and 149-146 b.c.e.) turned Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and central North Africa into Roman provinces. Using Rome’s great manpower and resources, leaders such as Fabius and the elder Scipio Africanus defeated the brilliant generalship of Hannibal in the Second Punic War. Between 225 and 133 b.c.e., the Romans took control of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) and the Italian and French rivieras as far as Massilia (Marseilles).

King Philip V of Macedonia drew Rome into the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean by siding with Hannibal in the Second Punic War. The four Macedonian Wars (215-205, 200-196, 172-167, and 149-148 b.c.e.) reduced Macedonia and Greece to Roman provinces. The Romans also attacked and defeated Antiochus the Great when he tried to expand the Seleucid Empire (191-188 b.c.e.). They gave Seleucid land to the kingdom of Pergamum and the maritime city of Rhodes but turned against them later. To avoid Roman conquest, Pergamum’s last king willed his kingdom to Rome (133 b.c.e.).

Imperial conquests produced social, economic, political, and cultural changes that destroyed the Republic. Some leaders promised reforms to help those hurt by social and economic changes. Rivals and those fearing change, seeing no need to compromise, blocked many necessary reforms. Jealousy and frustration led to murder and civil wars. In 133 b.c.e., the tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was murdered when he campaigned for an unusual second consecutive term after he had obtained passage of a law to redistribute public land to the poor. Ten years later, his brother Gaius Sempronius Gracchus committed suicide after being attacked by enemies of his more extensive reforms.

By 90 b.c.e., Rome’s treatment of its allies in Italy had become harsh as it demanded more and more troops for its wars and shared less of victory’s fruits. When many allies demanded full Roman citizenship, the Romans selfishly refused. The bitter allies revolted in the Social War (91-87 b.c.e.), and the Romans finally granted citizenship to all of Italy south of the Po River. Later, Julius Caesar gave citizenship to Italy north of the Po.

Governing provinces and commanding wars against foreign enemies or rebellious slaves, provincials, and allies gave leaders great wealth and armies of loyal soldiers to bribe and intimidate voters or start civil wars. The first civil wars broke out between the rival leaders Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla and their respective supporters (88-86 and 83-82 b.c.e.). The victorious Sulla obtained an unlimited dictatorship to restore stability, but his reforms did not eliminate the causes of civil conflict.

Within ten years, other ambitious aristocrats had helped overturn Sulla’s system and set off worse power struggles. In 63 b.c.e., Catiline conspired to seize power by stirring up a revolt of the poor and dispossessed. As consul, the orator Cicero foiled the plot, executed five of Catiline’s accomplices, and drove him to die in a desperate battle.

Soon, three powerful senators, Pompey the Great, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Julius Caesar, formed the unofficial First Triumvirate (committee of three) to control Rome. Cicero opposed them and was briefly exiled (58-57 b.c.e.). After Crassus started a war against Parthia and was killed (c. 53 b.c.e.), personal rivalry between Pompey and Caesar escalated to civil war (49 b.c.e.). Traditionalists such as Cato the Younger, who feared that Caesar’s ambitions would lead to monarchy, joined Pompey and fought on after Pompey’s death until 45 b.c.e.

When Caesar had been made dictator for up to ten years in 46 b.c.e., the trend toward a monarchical government had become obvious to many. When he was made dictator for life in February of 44 b.c.e., some of his friends such as Brutus and Cassius conspired to assassinate him on March 15 (the Ides). That desperate act led to another round of civil wars and the official Second Triumvirate of Caesar’s adopted heir, Octavian (the former Gaius Octavius and the future emperor Augustus), Marc Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.

Later, Octavian forced Lepidus into retirement and challenged Marc Antony for supremacy. Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt allied with Antony, but they lost the Battle of Actium to Octavian’s forces (31 b.c.e.). They committed suicide when Octavian captured Egypt a year later. Soon, the senate hailed the triumphant Octavian as Augustus, the first Roman emperor (27 b.c.e.).

Government and law

The Republic was not a democracy. For most of Republican history, ballots were not secret. Complicated voting procedures and the necessity of going to Rome to vote severely limited voter participation. Public offices were unpaid, and wealth was a requirement for holding them. Therefore, a wealthy, landowning aristocracy always controlled the government. After 300 b.c.e., the government was made up of both patrician and plebeian families who dominated elections to the magistracies that led to membership in the senate. Among them was an even smaller elite, the consular nobility, families who had produced consuls.

Consuls and praetors or former magistrates appointed by the senate as proconsuls and propraetors governed the provinces with full civil and military power.

The Republic never had a public police force or public prosecutors. For most people, personal revenge and informal custom enforced by neighbors and the heads of families were enough. The most important public priests, the pontiffs, handed down the earliest laws of the state and controlled early legal procedure. After the publication of the Twelve Tables (451-450 b.c.e.), pontifical control over the law gradually yielded to magistrates such as the praetors and legal consultants (iuris consulti, iuris prudentes). Both the praetor peregrinus at Rome and provincial governors took into account relevant foreign laws to produce greater equity in cases involving Roman citizens and non-Romans. They built up a broadly applicable law of nations (ius gentium) parallel to Roman civil law.

Magistrates who granted a trial appointed a private judge (iudex) to try a case. Later, public standing courts (quaestiones perpetuae) presided over by praetors with juries of senators were established for serious crimes. In all cases, the plaintiffs had to act as prosecutors, and except in criminal cases in which the verdict involved capital punishment or payment of a fine to the state, the winner had to enforce judgment.

War and weapons

Men seventeen to forty-five owed active military service for up to sixteen years, six consecutively. From forty-six to sixty, they were liable for defending Rome’s walls. They had to own at least two iugera of land (1.3 acres, or 0.5 hectare) to serve as light-armed infantry. The wealthiest men served as high officers and cavalry. Those of modest wealth made up the heavy infantry, the backbone of each Roman legion (3,000-6,000 men), originally armed and organized like the Greek phalanx.

The Romans organized the legion into increasingly flexible units during the Republic and adopted the javelin (pilum), short sword (gladius), and oblong shield (scutum) as the principal armament in addition to helmets, breastplates, and shin guards. Marius instituted rigorous training and made each soldier carry his own equipment in heavy packs to increase mobility and hasten the building of a fortified camp on the march each night.

Soldiers received shares of booty and supplemental pay. A law of Gaius Sempronius Gracchus provided free clothing and equipment. Marius eliminated the property requirement. Propertyless volunteers became long-term professionals more loyal to their generals than to the Republic. Except during the first two Punic Wars (264-241, 218-201 b.c.e.), the Republic relied mostly on Greek allies to supply naval forces.

Settlement and social structure

About 500 b.c.e., Rome was a city covering about 660 acres (267 hectares) and controlled a territory of about 300 square miles (about 780 square kilometers) with a total population of 25,000-40,000. Much of the population lived in small farming villages and towns. By the end of the Republic, Rome’s urban core included about 4,200 acres (1,791 hectares), with about a million people drawn from Italy and the Mediterranean world. The total population of Italy was probably between six and seven million.

Hierarchical social structures with reciprocal duties and obligations characterized Roman life. Ancestors, the “greater ones” (maiores), and their customs (mos maiorum) received great respect. The head of the family hierarchy was the father of the family, the paterfamilias. His power (patria potestas) gave him absolute legal control over his family and its property, but he was morally obligated to protect the welfare of the family and consult with his wife and other closely related adults. Powerful men were patrons to weaker men called clients. Clients received their patrons’ help and protection and performed whatever services they could in return.

At the bottom of the social ladder were numerous slaves. Racial prejudice was not a factor, but slaves from certain ethnic groups were prized for certain tasks. Loyal slaves who worked closely with their masters could expect eventual freedom, but slaves who worked in gangs on large estates or in dangerous operations such as mining were often badly treated. Freed slaves became Roman citizens but were like clients with legal obligations to their former masters.

Women

A woman was always legally subject to some male: father, husband, or guardian. Still, Roman women enjoyed a less restricted life than women in Classical Athens. Their role as mothers of legitimate children in marriage was extremely important. A married woman (matrona) managed the household, which was large and complex among the upper classes. She was not segregated from men inside the home, could go out in public unescorted, was well informed, was a trusted adviser to her husband, and could divorce him if she wished. Upper-class women were educated and had many opportunities to act independently in the late Republic. Unfortunately, lower-class women and female slaves suffered the hardships and exploitation that the poor and powerless often have experienced.

Agriculture and animal husbandry

The Roman economy was overwhelmingly agricultural. The Po Valley and the coastal plains of peninsular Italy provided flat, fertile ground for grains and field crops and winter pasturage for sheep, goats, and cattle. The hills and mountains of the interior provided summer pasturage for animals and slopes hospitable to grapes and olives. Grain, planted in the fall and harvested in early summer, could be sown among vines and olive trees, whose fruits were harvested in the fall. With these staple crops, a few chickens, sheep, goats, and pigs, possibly a mule or an ox, a vegetable garden, access to public grazing land, and the sale or barter of small surpluses in the local market, a few iugera could support a farmer and his family.

Nevertheless, the margin of error for small farmers was always thin, and the division of property among heirs could quickly lead to a crisis of subsistence for many. Rome’s overseas expansion rapidly undermined small farming in many parts of Italy. Cheap supplies of grain from Sicily and North Africa, large numbers of cheap slaves, and rapid urban growth greatly altered the agricultural economy. Supplying lucrative urban markets required the production of surpluses beyond the means of many poor farmers. Many sold out to creditors and wealthy neighbors and moved to cities such as Rome or looked for fresh starts in the Po Valley, Spain, or southern Gaul.

The wealthy amassed large villa estates, often called latifundia (broad lands). They used many slaves and the best equipment for the greatest output at the lowest cost. The villa system of production came to dominate Campania, Latium, and southern Etruria, which produced fruits, vegetables, olives, wine, wool, hides, meat, and cheese for urban markets. Those estates farther from Rome often specialized in high-value products that were profitable enough to move over long distances. Southern Italy specialized in cattle, sheep, and pigs, which could be herded to market. Really wealthy Romans would own several estates in different parts of Italy to spread out the risks from disasters and poor market conditions.

Trade, industry, and commerce

Rome’s location on the Tiber at its lowest bridgehead made Rome a valuable trading center from the start. By the third century b.c.e., Rome had also become a major center of craft manufacturing. Fine bronze work and pottery were major exports. The local demand for furniture, terra-cotta sculptures, and carved stone grave monuments, altars, and sarcophagi was great. Greek and Carthaginian traders brought metals, ivory, gold jewelry, premium wines, and spices for sale in Rome and distribution to the rest of central Italy.

As the city grew, demands for construction materials, other goods, and personal services accelerated. Hundreds of small shops provided wine, hot food, meat, bread, metalwares, pottery, shoes, barbering, and laundering. Many people in the countryside produced bricks, roof tiles, timber, firewood, charcoal, stones, crates, and baskets.

Contracts for building public works, operating state-owned mines and forests, collecting taxes, and supplying Rome’s armies attracted rich investors. They were called publicani and formed legally recognized companies. The principal partners even sold shares to others. These companies submitted bids to the censors, who awarded contracts. Profits came from the difference between the amount bid and the revenue collected or expenses incurred. Although senators were legally forbidden to engage in these transactions and overseas commerce after 218 b.c.e., they often participated through friends and agents.

Rome became a great center of private money lending and banking. Partnerships financed cargoes for shipowners by profitable loans. Cities, provinces, and kingdoms borrowed huge sums to pay for taxes, tribute, and Roman military protection. Roman bankers kept deposits in their strongrooms and issued drafts on account or gave letters of credit, which could be cashed at branches in other cities or with other individuals.

Navigation and transport

Water provided the most efficient transport. Ships linked Rome directly or through the Campanian city of Puteoli with ports on the Atlantic coast of Spain, throughout the Mediterranean, and along the Black Sea. Riverboats and barges carried people and goods up navigable rivers such as the Tiber, the Rhone, and the Po to inland cities.

Starting with the Appian Way in 312 b.c.e., the Romans built a network of straight, well-drained, stone-paved highways. They linked Rome with the major cities and towns of Italy and the provinces and allowed Roman armies to march swiftly against any threat. They also aided the movement of people and light goods of high value.

Religion

At times, the Republican senate had tried to suppress foreign religions that seemed to threaten the state. Still, the large multiethnic population of late Republican Rome allowed many foreign cults and religions to flourish alongside traditional Roman religion. Many people found comfort in the mystery cults of universal deities such as Mithra, Cybele, and Isis from the eastern Mediterranean. Initiation rites created a sense of community and provided personal emotional connections with powerful protective deities in an impersonal and dangerous world.

Literature and thought

The language of the Romans was Latin, but close contact with Greek civilization from very early times is reflected in all aspects of Roman Republican literature. Formal Roman literature begins with a freed Greek slave named Lucius Livius Andronicus, who first translated Homer’s Odyssey (c. 800 b.c.e.; English translation, 1616) into Latin and put on Latin versions of a Greek tragedy and comedy to celebrate the end of the First Punic War (241 b.c.e.). Later Republican poets such as Quintus Ennius, Plautus, Terence, Lucretius, and Catullus continued to write plays, epic poems, and lyric verse based on Greek models. Sometimes they adapted Greek subjects and themes for Roman audiences, and sometimes they wrote on personal or patriotic subjects and themes.

The earliest Roman historians were aristocrats who had fought in the first two Punic Wars and wrote on them in Greek to advertise Rome’s greatness to the Greek world. The greatest early historian of Rome was the Greek hostage Polybius (c. 200-c. 118 b.c.e.). He wrote to convince fellow Greeks how pointless it was to resist Rome. The first important history of Rome in Latin was the Origines (168-149 b.c.e.; Roman Politics, 1951) of Cato the Censor (234-149 b.c.e.).

Despite his thundering against the bad moral influence of the Greeks, Cato studied Greek and used Greek models. His published speeches, treatise on rhetoric, and handbook on agriculture laid the groundwork for later orators and scholars such as Cicero, Julius Caesar, and Marcus Terentius Varro. Many of these writers also applied the thinking of great Greek philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans to the study of Roman social and political life.

Architecture and art

Around 264 b.c.e., the Romans began to remodel Rome in Classical Greek style. They often plundered works of art, monuments, and parts of buildings from Greek cities in southern Italy, Sicily, and Greece itself. The Romans’ major contribution to Classical architecture was the extensive use of arches and vaults made of baked bricks or concrete. In the late second and early first centuries b.c.e., the Romans started building great symmetrical complexes that linked together a number of architectural elements and styles. Their combination of Greek columns framing Roman arches set a style that lasted for centuries.

Native bronze sculptures and terra-cotta reliefs were popular in the early Republic, but looted or copied Greek marble statues and reliefs became popular in the second century b.c.e. The Romans also decorated their floors and walls with mosaics and frescoes in the Hellenistic Greek style. Many were even versions of famous Greek paintings.

Legacy

Politically, the Roman Republic failed to withstand the pressures created by its imperial expansion. Culturally, however, it was a great success. Republican religion, literature, philosophy, architecture, and art blended Greek and native elements into a distinctive cultural synthesis that was the hallmark of the Roman Empire afterward.

Bibliography

Crawford, M. H. The Roman Republic. 2d ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Hornblower, S., and A. Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Scarre, C. The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1995.

Walbank, F. W., and A. E. Astin et al., eds. The Cambridge Ancient History. 2d ed. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989-1996.

Ward, A. M., F. M. Heichelheim, and C. Yeo. A History of the Roman People. 3d ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1999.