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Empires
The Roman Empire
Y8 History
Last week we looked at what an empire
was
• This week we going to look at the Roman
Empire
• We said that an empire was
• a group of countries under a single
authority
• This true but there is another meaning that is
equally true.
• the country ruled over by an emperor or
empress
• And Rome was both of these.
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So how did it all begin?
• The land we now call Italy was governed by 2
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groups, the Etruscans in the north and the Greeks
in the south. Rome was a crucial mid point as it was
a crossing point of the River Tiber, so the people
around Rome were well used to being bullied by
Etruscans in particular.
Since 6th Century BC the city state of Rome had
been ruled over by kings of Etruscan choosing, and
when one family, the Tarquins, went too far, the
Romans rebelled and took over Rome for
themselves in 509BC.
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The Republic is formed
• How it was ruled:
• There were 2 groups –
• The senate made up of 100 senators who were chosen from
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the aristocracy or patricians as the Romans called them.
The assembly which was made up of all the freemen of
Rome who were not Patricians. They were gathered into
family groups called tribes and whenever there was a vote,
each tribe took voted with one vote, based on a majority
decision within their tribe.
In charge were the 2 consuls and various other officials that
held power over assorted aspects of .Roman life. But these
were only voted in for 1 year before they needed to face reelection. While they put forward their suggestions, they had
to be supported in these ideas by both group.
Thet called this arrangement a republic – meaning ‘ in the
public knowledge’
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In the beginning ..
• They felt they needed to get involved in a number of wars for
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defensive reasons. The Etruscans and other tribes on the
Italian peninsula were a continuing threat to Rome.
Soon, however, the Romans were moving to gain control
over neighbouring territory in order to neutralize the threat of
attack.
Their logic was that control over these territories would
remove any potential attack from the people occupying them
and at the same time provide a buffer region between
themselves and potential attackers.
Roman conquest, then, was pursued largely for Roman
security.
But the end result of this process would be, first, the
conquest of the entire Italian peninsula by 265 BC, and then
the conquest of the world as it was known at the time!
The Roman Empire was an accident, so to speak. Only in its
later stages was the Roman Empire a deliberate objective.
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The land Rome controlled 218 BC
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The land Rome controlled 100 BC
• Clearly becoming an empire by the first
definition, but they would have called
themselves a republic still.
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As Roman took over more land, things
went from bad to worse ..
• The influx of booty and tribute from the conquests created a class of
extremely rich Romans – senators who were sent to the wars as generals
and governors, and business men (knights) who farmed the taxes of the
new provinces and provisioned the armies.
• Above all, each new victory brought in thousands of slaves: during the
last two centuries BC the Mediterranean slave trade became an
enormous business, with Rome and Italy being the main destination
markets. During this period Roman society became a more slave-based
society than any other before or since in history.
• Many slaves were set to work on the land of the senators and other
wealthy men, who set about developing their estates along new, much
more businesslike lines.
• The ordinary farmers could not compete with these new estates, and
more and more small farmers lost their lands to their rich neighbours. The
estates grew larger, and more small farmers left the land. Many of them
headed for Rome, where they swelled the ranks of a growing class of
landless and rootless people.
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Murderous Politics
• The combination of great wealth and mass poverty
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in Rome itself poisoned the political climate there.
Political gang-masters put votes and mobs up for
sale, corruption spread, and Roman politics became
dominated by feuding factions.
In 133 BC a famous incident led to the death of a
reformist politician, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus,
the first murder in Roman politics for centuries.
The death of his brother, Gaius, in similar
circumstances followed ten years later. Factionalism
and strife steadily increased thereafter.
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Professional Armies, Ambitious Generals
• The small holder had been the traditional mainstay of the Roman army,
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buying his own weapons and taking his turn with the troops.
This system had already come under strain with Rome’s armies spending
years abroad on foreign campaigns; indeed it was the lack of menfolk at
home that often undermined a smallholding family’s ability to keep its
farm.
With the decline of the numbers of smallholders the filling of the armies
by this class became impossible. To deal with this problem, the consul
Marius opened recruitment to the landless classes (105 BC).
This had the effect of tying the interests of the soldiers much more tightly
to their general than before – they now looked to him to ensure that they
were provided them with land after their service had ended.
Commanders could count on his soldiers putting their loyalty to him
before their loyalty to the state, and the great Roman armies being
fielded from this time on behaved increasingly like the generals’ private
forces.
In an effort to control the generals, their opponents in the senate would
try to block their efforts to achieve land distribution in favour of their men,
with the predictable result of throwing the generals and their men even
more closely together.
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War with the Allies
• The last phase of the Republic, then, was dominated a
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succession of struggles between leading generals and their
opponents in the senate on the one hand, and between the
rival generals themselves on the other.
But what set the stage for this phase was a fierce and
entirely needless war between Rome and many of her longstanding Italian allies, in 90 BC.
This came about through the senate’s tendency to treat the
allies with increasing arrogance, and reduce their citizens
rights.
The Allies’ frustrations boiled over into outright war, which
belatedly prompted the senate to grant all Italians (south of
the Po) full Roman citizenship. Many cities laid down their
arms, but a few hill tribes were not defeated until 88 BC.
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Civil War
• In the aftermath, the famous old general Marius attempted to have
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himself elected by the People’s Assembly to the command in the East.
The general who had in fact been appointed to the command by the
senate, Cornelius Sulla, then marched his army to Rome and drove
Marius into exile. He then set off for the eastern provinces.
As soon as Sulla was gone Marius and his supporters returned, seized
control of Rome and carried out a vicious purge of their enemies. Marius
died shortly after this, but his supporters retained influence in Roma.
Later Sulla returned with his victorious army and in his turn seized control
of Rome.
He had himself appointed dictator, and embarked on a reign of terror
against his real and perceived enemies – much of the property
confiscated was distributed to his veterans.
Sulla also carried out a programme of reforms, aimed essentially at
strengthening the power of the senate, and then, in 79 BC, retired from
public life.
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Pompey and Caesar
• The Rise of Pompey
• By the time of Sulla's retirement, another general was making his mark,
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Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey). After a long, gruelling war Pompey
defeated Sertorius, one of Marius’ supporters who had been governing
Spain virtually as an independent ruler for several years
Pompey was then appointed to deal with a huge slave revolt led by an
energetic and able leader, Spartacus, in southern Italy.
Pompey then marched his army near Rome and demanded the
consulship for the coming year but he was far too young.
Instead Pompey was given the supreme command against the pirates,
who, in the chaos of the preceding years, had established themselves
throughout the eastern Mediterranean.
He achieved this in short order, and was appointed to the supreme
command in the east,
Having sorted out the little problems in this area too, he returned and
spent several frustrating years trying to get the senate to give land to his
veterans (having made the honourable mistake of disbanding his army
first).
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The Rise of Caesar
• At Rome, domestic politics was coloured by the continual faction fighting between
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leading senators, spiced by gang warfare in support of one party or the other.
Another rising politician and general was C. Julius Caesar, who was elected
consul in 59 BC after a successful tour of duty as governor in Spain.
During his term in office, he negotiated an informal alliance between himself,
Pompey and Crassus: Crassus was to receive the eastern command, he was to
receive the command in Gaul, and Pompey was to have the land distribution in
favour of his veterans so long denied him. Their combined influence and wealth
created an unstoppable political force, and they all got what they wanted from it.
They renewed their compact in 56 BC.
In the next few years Caesar conquered the whole of Gaul and even invaded
Britain twice (55 and 54 BC). During this he acquired an unparalleled reputation
as a brilliant general, and great popularity with the ordinary people of Rome, but
his opponents in the senate increasingly tried to have him recalled to face trial for
various misdemeanours.
After Crassus was killed in the east,Pompey and Caesar soon fell out. Many
senators were by now getting thoroughly alarmed at the rising popularity and
power of Caesar, a feeling fully shared by Pompey.
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Caesar v Pompey
• In 49 BC, having been recalled from Gaul to face his
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enemies in the senate, Caesar chose instead to march on
Rome with his army (the first time that a provincial army had
“invaded” Italy in support of a Roman general). His enemies
fled to Greece, where Pompey raised an army. Caesar
followed with his army, and defeated Pompey at the battle of
Pharsalus (48). Pompey then fled to Egypt where he was
assassinated on the orders of Ptolemy, king of Egypt.
Several more years of bloody fighting in Africa and Spain
were needed to overcome up opposition to his rule, but by 45
BC he was in complete control of the Roman state, like Sulla
taking the office of dictator. He showed great clemency to his
enemies, and carried out some reforms within Rome and the
provinces. However, his time was short - he was
assassinated by a group of his enemies in 44 BC.
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History of Ancient Rome: End of the
Republic
• The Assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC sounded the starting pistol for the
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final round in the struggles that were the death throws of the Roman Republic.
Antony and Octavian
The assassination of Caesar set the stage for another civil war. The assassins of
Caesar fled to Greece (43 BC), where they set about raising an army. Caesar’s
former lieutenants, Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) and C. Octavianus (Octavian,
Caesar’s grand nephew and adopted son), and Aemilius Lepidus, formed the
Second Triumvirate (this time a formal one, with the specified aim of “Settling the
Constitution”), and carried out a widespread purge of thousands of senators and
knights in Rome and throughout Italy, distributing the confiscated lands amongst
their followers. Antony and Octavian then took an army to Greece in pursuit of
Caesar’s assassins, and defeated them at Philippi (42).
After Philippi, the triumvirs divided the Roman world between them: Octavian took
Italy, Gaul and Spain, Lepidus took Africa, and Antony took all the eastern
provinces.
The Triumvirate almost immediately began to break down. When Lepidus proved
restive at his small share, Octavian crushed him and stripped him even of that.
He then skilfully used Antony’s infatuation with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, to
present him as an enemy of Rome’s true interests, and prepared for war.
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The Final Round
• This finally came in 31 BC, when the fleets of the two opposing sides met
at Actium, off the Greek coast. Octavian won (thanks mainly to the
generalship of his lieutenant, Vipsanius Agrippa), leaving Antony and
Cleopatra to sail away and commit suicide in Egypt.
• Octavian followed up his victory by occupying Egypt, which now became
a part of the Roman empire – became, in fact, Octavian’s private estate.
• The First Emperor
• Octavian was now sole master of the Roman world, and for a few years
experimented with various ways of ruling in a manner that would be
acceptable to all parties. Finally, in 27 BC he took the name Augustus,
and remodelled the constitution in such a way that kept the traditional
forms of the Republic (senate, historic magistracies and so on) but in fact
concentrated effective power (especially overwhelming military force) in
his own hands. This “Augustan Settlement”, as it has been called,
provided the Roman world with a framework of government which lasted
more than two hundred years. Octavian, or Augustus as we should now
call him, was thus the first of the long line of Roman emperors who were
to rule the Roman world until…well, until AD 1453.
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• This turmoil has now been ended (31 BC) by the
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first of the Roman emperors, Augustus, the adopted
son of Rome's most famous general Julius Caesar.
In all but name, he has replaced the old republic
with a monarchy, concentrating effective (i.e.
military) power in his own hands. Augustus'
statesmanship has brought about peace and
stability, which will hold for two centuries or more
with only one brief intermission. With peace has
come an increase in trade, and the Graeco-Roman
cities of Europe and the Mediterranean have
entered a phase of prosperity and expansion
Now we have an empire in both senses – a large
nuber of states all under the control of one person
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1 AD
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200 AD
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However, just having one person in
charge did not stop all the squabbling
This was also
• There were
know as the
Byzantine
Empire
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over 140
Emperors in
500 years –
most of them
did not die
from natural
causes.
Eventually
over the next
few centuries,
the Roman
Empire
collapsed
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500 AD –
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