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2 nd ed. – LWH- Huma 1301 – Chapter 5- Rome – text & exercises – VI - 2021 Chapter 5 Roman Civilization & Byzantium Roman Civilization The great importance that the Roman Empire and its civilization has in the formation of the Western civilization, derives from establishing a civilization that lasted over six hundred years and reaching geographically from the Middle East to the Atlantic and from North Africa to Northern Europe. Rome was a builder of a great historical bridge between East and West, or the eastern Hellenistic, Egyptian and Mesopotamian worlds and Western Europe that in many places was still in the Iron Age. Roman history Two famous Roman legends about Rome’s origin tell us the character and values of the ancient Romans. These legends are Romulus & Remus , and the one found in Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid. According to legend it all began two twin brothers Romulus and Remus who were the sons of the god of war Mars and a mortal woman Rhea Silva, daughter of king Numitor. Amulius he wicked brother of king Numitor usurped the throne overthrowing his brother and made his daughter Rhea Silvia a Vestal Virgin. As a virgin she could not marry and have legitimate heirs to the throne. To secure his rule against future claimants Numitor had Romulus and Remus placed in a basket asset adrift on the Tiber River in today’s central Italy. The infants were rescued by a female wolf which suckled them. Surviving in their natural environment the infants were then discovered by a shepherd couple and raised into manhood. Thus they were nourished by nature, the she-wolf, and by hard working good humans connected to the land, the shepherd couple. The sculpture of a standing she-wolf with two infants suckling beneath her became an ancient symbol of Rome. The twin brothers learned their true identity and following their Roman nature immediately killed Amulius and restored their grandfather Numitor to the throne. They set out to perform their destiny to found the city of Rome on the seven hills by the Tiber River. The serious Romulus quarreled with the lighthearted Remus when the latter made fun of the wall Romulus constructed. In his self-righteous wrath Romulus murdered his twin brother. Then Romulus raised an army and having more men than women he set off to supplies his soldiers with wives by rapping Sabine women who were their neighbor. Romulus founded Rome in 753 B.C. and received the first constitution form the gods becoming its first king. The Aeneid is the epic poem about Rome’s legendary beginnings written by the poet Virgin (70 – 19 B.C.) written in 31 B.C. commissioned by Emperor Augustus. Virgil took his inspiration from the Greeks. The tradition that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey gave to Greek literature was admired by Virgil who desired to achieve that level of greatness, thus he patterned his poem on these epics to Rome the same kind of epic golden past the ancient Greeks had. Virgil’s epic hero is Aeneas of Greek origin. It begins with the fall of the city of Troy in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) during the long siege of the Greeks lead by Agamemnon. Aeneas and his loyal band of warriors escape the fall of Troy and set sail on the Mediterranean Sea toward the west to fulfill their destiny. The wonderings of Aeneas are based on the Odyssey. Aeneas and his warriors are stranded on the North African shore after a sea storm and then arrive to nearby Carthage well received by Queen Dido who falls in love with Aeneas. She wants Aeneas to stay and live with her but the stern duty in the nature of the hero renounced the honors and the love of the queen

and abandons Dido to fulfill his sacred mission of founding Rome. Queen dido represents the opposite of Aeneas by putting precedence of her desires and passions over duty. The despairing Dido hoping Aeneas will return to her at the last moment chooses suicide and Aeneas sails to Sicily and then to the Tiber River where he fought and defeats Turnus. War in Italy is based on the Iliad. The epic hero then marries Lavinia, the beautiful daughter of king Latinus, and faithful to his duty founds Rome first among cities and home of gods. Thus Virgil’s hero founds an empire and launches a whole new civilization. Aeneas represents stoic Roman hero who is middle aged with the wisdom that comes with maturity. In his sober austerity Aeneas coldly puts his passions aside to fulfill his destiny to found Rome. His will power to carry out his destiny is his greatest virtue. It is clear in this poem that human actions are dictated by external forces when the hero fulfills his destiny, a stoic doctrine that states that people must follow the natural world because they cannot violate natural laws, thus the cosmic determinism man is subjected to. Aeneas comes close to perfect freedom when he frees himself of all mundane desires, another stoic doctrine. The Roman hero achieves stoic virtue when he directs his will to the ends that coincide with nature, which in his case is to begin a great civilization. Following stoic philosophy Aeneas sees adhering to duty as the most noble of all human values. In Aeneas Romans found the best example of the superior qualities of the noble Roman that no other Roman individual in history and in fiction equaled. In his travels Aeneas mirrors Greek hero Odysseus in the Odyssey and in his struggle the Greek heroes of the Iliad Achilles and Hector. The Aeneid is literature but it is also propaganda for a great empire where society’s most important reality was the state and therefore the principal aim of literature was to stir patriotism. It represents the best of the Roman ideal. These two Roman legends tell us important traits about the Romans and what they thought about themselves. The Romans were practical dedicated hard working, thrifty, loyal to family and state, combative, and faithful to their duty as Roman citizens, the noblest of all virtues. They had little interest theories or abstract ideas, and were practical incorporating what worked and served their needs. This no-nonsense people who were resolute and combative conquered the largest empire of antiquity and established one of the most influential civilizations in history. They viewed themselves as virtuous self-righteous and superior people who had the right to conquer and exploit other people because they had the military ability and superior culture to accomplish this. Thus violence was a means to their goals. Romulus and Remus were sons of the god of war, Romulus murdered his brother in self-righteous wrath then he took the Sabine lands and women, and Aeneas was a warrior who began the city-state that would grow to restore Trojan honor by conquering the Greeks. Aeneas was the ancestor of Romulus and Remus. These legends were the version of history that Roman children heard of their origins, and were a self- fulfilling prophesies in that Romans believed that they were fated to be warriors destined to grandeur, glory and to rule the world. The Romans built a great civilization that had splendor, the highest standard of living of its time and achieved great building projects on a grand scale that the Western world inherited with its laws and Latin language. But it achieved this at the cost of exploitation denigrating human value and the qualities of imagination and joy. Roman morality and Roman law has a rural ethic by stressing the importance of nature and of living within one’s means. This also applied to Roman literary culture that revered its rustic past, and when Rome became prosperous with its conquests, many writers criticized the corrupting power of luxury and looked up to the home-spun values of Rome’s founders who were herdsmen and farmers. A very important value was the sanctity of the family and its reputation. Divorce was unheard of until the late republican era, and still family values continued to be praised by

moralists and honored by its leaders. The Roman family was guided by the paterfamilias , or father of the family which usually was reserved for the eldest male member of the entire family that could span to two or three generations. The paterfamilias exercised the legal power of life and death over his entire household which included family members, servants and slaves. To get marry you need the consent of this family head regardless of age. The Roman matron had a freer and more influential role in family life than the secluded Greek wives, and seen more in public with her husband and supervising the education of her sons and daughters. Rome’s origin. The Aeneas legend may have been based on the Etruscans who were a people that settled in northern and central Italy around the ninth century B.C. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote the Etruscans originated from western Asia Minor, near Troy, and were advanced in culture. Modern historians agree with this view. They used letters derived from the archaic Greek alphabet. Thus this legend may be based on actual historical facts. The Etruscan civilization ruled Rome during the sixth century B.C. Etruscan civilization had a high standard of living and they originated the street plans for cities, the masonry arch, sophisticated sanitary and civil engineering, the triumphal processions and gladiatorial combat. Rome borrowed many concepts from the Etruscans making the cultural inheritance was very strong. But the Romans did not accept all aspects of Etruscan culture. The Etruscans were not austere people, they valued what was pleasurable in life and pursued it. Their elaborate tombs of the members of the upper class demonstrate that the Etruscan were very concerned about life after death because the tombs look like their luxurious homes with all the items that made life comfortable and pleasant, thus they believed in a continuing afterlife and they wanted to keep enjoying it. Their tomb paintings portray men and women drinking wine together in a relax atmosphere. In contrast the austere Romans were not concern with the afterlife and they frowned upon living life in the pursuit of pleasure. Romans did not give the same status to women as the Etruscan. Roman women would not socialize nor drink with men, and did not have the same rights and liberties as men. The battle of Lake Vadimon in 308 B.C. broke the Etruscan political and military control of central and northern Italy. Greek influence. Early in Rome’s history during the eight century B.C., the Romans came in contact with the Greek colonies in southern Italy known as Magna Graecia. The Greeks culture in many ways was more sophisticated thus Rome came under Greek influence. The Romans assimilated Greek architecture, sculpture, art, literature, theater, philosophy and mythology. They looked up to the Greeks, but they were also suspicious of them. The Greek culture in many ways was the opposite of Roman values which creating a hostile attitude toward the Greeks. The Greeks were urbane, artistic, intellectual, sophisticated, individualistic, seeking the good life. Thus the sober, austere and warlike Romans that valued discipline, conformity, tradition, physical prowess, and duty to state and family looked down on their southern neighbors but recognized their cultural achievements. They had an ambivalent attitude toward the Greeks. The Age of Kings, 753 – 509 B.C. During the Age of Kings some of the basic elements of the roman political, social and economic structures were established. The small city-state was ruled by kings having a balance system of government in which a council of landowners took part in selecting the ruler and the entire people ratified its choice. This system came to an end when the Etruscans imposed their kings upon Rome around 600 B.C. Later on this system of selecting rulers and voting for acceptance became the model for government under the republic. The Romans saw the Etruscans kings as tyrants and eventually they were able to free themselves from their rule.

The Republic, 509 – 27 B.C. Roman tradition has that the Republic began with the expulsion of the Etruscan king Tarquin the Proud in 509 B.C. Now that the Romans were free of foreign rule they created a different way to govern themselves following their practical nature. They did not want another monarchy so Rome was under an oligarchy, which is the government by the few who possess wealth and political power. The oligarchy became the basis of the new state. To be a member of the oligarchy required wealth, and in an agricultural economy land ownership was the source of wealth and political power. Thus the oligarchs, the land-owning aristocrats, established republic with full citizenship reserved only for their class. Oligarchs belong to the patrician class. This upper class that ruled over Roman society took its name from the Latin word “pater” or father. They had the authority in Roman society like a father has in his family. The patricians constituted 10 percent of the population. The remaining 90 percent were the plebeians from the Latin “plebs” or multitude. At this time a long lasting aspect of roman political and economic life takes roots and that is class conflict. When the aristocrats established the republic by denying citizenship to the plebeians they safeguarded their power. This policy of exclusion laid the groundwork for centuries of class conflict that would be a factor in the fall of the republic. In contrast to the direct democracy of Athens, the republic was based on a system of representatives and separation of powers. In their pragmatic attitude, not being interested in political theories or abstract ideas about government the patricians made the necessary adjustments to meet their needs developing the republican institutions and practices. They were the class that could participate and hold office in government, and be officers in the military. The plebeians could not hold office and marry into the patrician class. But making money was not forbidden to this class. With time some plebeians became wealthy and were able to have adjustments made to have some representation in government and eventually marry into the patrician class. The patricians did not want to be ruled by one man or a very small group, therefore one characteristic of the Republic is that during peace time political power is not in the hands of one person or group. It seeks to avoid concentration of power through the need of cooperation among the different bodies or institutions that govern. The Republic will have two heads of state with short terms and mutual veto power, and their legislative branch was made up of two legislative bodies that need to cooperate to pass laws. The executive heads of state were two consuls who govern with full power for one year and each had the power to veto over the other consul. They were commanders of the army. Consuls were chosen from members of the senate. Consuls appointed members of the patrician class to the Senate made of three hundred members who had life terms. The Senate and the consuls submitted laws to the other legislative body the Centuriate Assembly which had less power than the Senate but it passed the laws, and elected the consuls. This assembly was organized around military units known as “centuries”, and even if plebeians could be members in reality it was dominated by the rich patricians because military obligations were determined by a citizen’s wealth. Also the Centuriate Assembly elected two censors among the exconsuls. The censors had the function of determining who was eligible for military service and who had the moral quality to become a nominee for the Senate. Military service was important in Roman society because service to the state was considered a mark of a true Roman who was fit to serve in government. Therefore, the Republic had built into it a mechanism of check and balances in which to govern effectively the consuls had to agree or cooperate because their mutual veto power could neutralize their acts and policies; the senators needed the appointment of the consuls to become Senate members; the Senate and consuls needed the approval of the Centuriate Assemble to

make their legislation into law, and the consuls needed to be elected by this assembly as well as the censors; and those that wanted to serve in the military and become senators depended on being declared eligible by the censors. Thus all governing bodies and offices depended on their mutual cooperation, and no one individual or group had absolute power and could act on his own. Most offices were held by patricians having the monopoly on power. . ( insert a diagram of the republican government of Rome. I will send it as an attachment in another e-mail.) The risk that having two heads of state with mutual veto power and both being commanders of the army could jeopardize the state incase that they disagreed or veto each other during times of war where the security and survival of the state was paramount, led Rome to make another practical adjustment to government which was the office of the dictator . The word comes from the term to dictate , because this individual had the authority to dictate his decision and all had to obey his him. The dictator became the supreme commander of the army and received his authority constitutionally for a term of six month. The short term was to avoid being under the absolute rule of one individual for a long time and not allow that person to get used to such great power or extend his term for a long period. The plebeians , who were excluded from government , created a situation of abuse of power that became intolerable for this class and with their growing financial power were able to exert political influence to force the Senate to create the office of the Tribune . The tribune was the protector of the people, the plebeians. This office was created by a strike. In 494 B.C. when Rome was threatened by invading forces the plebeians went on strike and refused to fight taking a position in the Aventine Hill. They created their magistrates called “tribunes of the people”. Then the patricians had to recognize this office. It changed radically the balance of power between the patricians and the plebeians. Ten tribunes were elected annually by the plebs alone. Their function was to protect the plebeians from the abuse of power at the hands of government officials, especially consuls. Tribunes had the power of intervening physically if need be to defend a plebeian who was wrongfully punished or oppressed. With time also the Assembly of the Tribes came to have power which allowed for plebeian participation in government. This new assembly could be attended by patrician and plebeians. The tribune convened the Plebeian Assembly (only for plebs). At first its votes serve as a plebiscite that allowed for the Senate and consuls to measure the opinion of the majority of Roman citizens. By 287 B.C. the decisions of the Patrician and Plebeian Assemblies (both constituted the Assembly of Tribes) had force of law binding all Roman society. Thus with the office of tribune and the popular assemblies the Roman republic had evolved into “two heads”, those of the Senate composed of the rich patricians and those of the Roman people. Economics. The pragmatic Romans never resolved the issue of ownership of the land which held the key to Rome’s economic health and wealth of its citizens. There were landlords that owned large estates with cheap slave labor, and controlled large part of the agricultural market that left the small farmer struggling to stay in business. Competition from these large estates with lower cost due to labor from war-booty slaves, drought and pestilence forced many farmers with small acreage into debt, bankruptcy, and some ended as slaves to pay their debt. The large estates grew larger at expense of small farms. Reforms were made to change the law and end debt-slavery and attempts to distribute the land, but many farmers still ended as urban poor who left the countryside to find work in the cities. This mass of poor country people could not find work in large estates because they could not compete with cheap slave labor and many neither found

work in the cities because there were plenty of slaves there to work. Thus these urban poor became part of the permanent welfare program, receiving free bread from the state. By the first century B.C. 80% of the population of Rome was either slave or living of the “panes et cirsens” or “bread and circuses”, free bread and entrance to the spectacles of the Coliseum. This failure of lack of productive farms and urban jobs was a cause that contributed to the decline of the empire. The welfare program was a failure because many Romans lost their ethics of hard work and the decadent and sadistic entertainments of the Roman games diminished their moral fiber. Military might & empire building. Rome began its history as a small city-state governed by kings that was competing with neighboring city-states for power and control of the region of central Italy. Since its beginnings Rome was unique in that it had an open door policy of assimilating foreigners into its city-state, which was the opposite of its neighbors who were distrustful of outsiders. Its founder, Romulus decided that Rome did not have enough population and therefore he decided to create an asylum, a free zone for anyone, whether it be runaway slaves and criminals, brigands, pirates, who ever wanted to come and join to be part of this great idea that is Rome. Thus Rome had a very unique attitude, its openness to other people and ideas that were of use to their needs. To grow and become a stronger state, Rome became a safe haven for people who were desperate and were seeking a place to prosper and settle. This brought ambitious and ruthless individuals to populate this growing city-state. This aspect of Roman reality would influence the character of Roman people who were ambitious and inclined to use violence and ruthlessness to achieve their goals. This was a very important contributing factor, the use of violence, throughout the entire history of Rome. Since the story of Romulus and Remus, where Romulus murders Remus and becomes king of Rome, bloodshed became a means to produce a new Roman ruler. Civil war among the Romans is one of the defining features of the growth of the Roman state. Thus the tradition of the murder of Romulus and Remus is one that reverberates or repeats itself throughout Roman history. The openness of Rome to foreigners and ideas imported from other cultures encouraged a free exchange of ideas, among them engineering theories imparted from other cultures, especially from the Etruscans. The Romans will be masters in adapting, improving and refining ideas and technologies to meet their needs, that will allow them to become a great empire with a high standard of living and achievement. Therefore, the Romans will make important contributions to Western civilization such as aqueducts, indoor plumbing, sewer systems, masonry arch, bridges and paved roads, still in use today. From 500 to 275 B.C. Rome gained control of the region of Latium in central Italy. It accomplished this in piecemeal fashion by means of a combination of diplomacy and war. Then it brought the rest of the Italian peninsula under its control. Initially the motivation for expansion was to gain more farming land due to the small farms of many peasants that were not large enough to sustain a large family. Also defending their territory was a motive. In 493 B.C. Rome joined an alliance with it Latin neighbors forming the Latin League to defend themselves from the invasion of central tribes of Volsci, Aequi and the Sabines. Once they overcame this threat, Rome and its Latin allies turned on Etruria to the north. Some Etruscan cities came to peaceful terms while others were defeated to submission and annexed. In 340 BC. The city-state of Rome went to war against the Latin League and defeated it. By 290 B.C. Rome turned south and dominated the Samnites, thus controlling more territory. Now Rome was bordering with Magna Graecia, the Greek colonies in Southern Italy. Rome was conquering its neighbors through forced annexation, alliances and conferring the privilege of citizenship becoming absorbed in the

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