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Roman Sport & Games
Games, especially gladiatorial combats and chariot races, are among the most famous, even notorious, aspects of life
in ancient Rome. Many Roman cities built amphitheatres. The Colosseum in Rome was the largest such arena in the
Roman world. The Circus Maximus and the Colosseum were also the venues for wild beast hunts and public
executions, which were much relished by audiences. But in general, sport and physical fitness were prized
throughout its history as men were liable for arduous military service.
Gladiatorial combats
Gladiatorial combats were originally occasions to celebrate a funeral, but the spectacle of the combats soon made
them a state enterprise to unite and placate the people.
The first recorded gladiatorial show in Rome was staged in 264BC, when three pairs of gladiators fought to the
death in the Forum Boarium. The spirits of the dead were thought to appreciate human blood, so captives or slaves
were set to fight each other to death at aristocratic funerals. Over the next 200 years, Roman nobles competed to put
on ever more lavish shows. In 65BC, Julius Caesar displayed 250 pairs of gladiators at funeral games for his father –
who had died 20 years before. This extravagance was an attempt to win political influence, for, as a Roman
commentator noted, "The mob cares only for bread and circuses." Finally the emperor became the main, often sole,
provider of games for Rome's frequent public holidays, while in other cities local magnates continued to provide
gorily expensive games involving gladiators and wild animals. Games were often staged as part of ceremonies to
play homage to the emperor.
At first, gladiators were recruited from among slaves, condemned criminals or war captives. Novice gladiators
learned how to fight with wooden swords and wicker shields before progressing to real but padded weapons in a
way that paralleled military training and often faced harsh disciplinary action such as burning, imprisonment, or
flogging. As it took several years to train a skilled gladiator, they did not usually fight to the death. Although the
lifestyle was arduous and violent, the food was good and accommodation not bad by contemporary standards.
In fact, as the number of criminals and war captives dwindled in the empire, some free men volunteered for a fixed,
usually three-year term. A successful gladiator might hope to earn his liberty, after three years in the arena and to
make enough money from gifts to retire in comfort before he was killed.
Chariot Races
Although they had different origins, the circus games were the gladiators’ greatest rival attraction. Racing with
chariots generally took place in the Circus Maximus. The arena was well-named since it was truly vast, over 660
yards long and 220 yards wide. Progressively adorned, it was given its final form under Trajan, who turned it into a
massive structure with three marble-faced arcades built up on vaults. It is estimated it could seat up to 300,000
people, about a third of the city's population.
Although almost all charioteers were slaves or ex-slaves – and so scarcely higher in Rome's social hierarchy than
gladiators – a few became very famous and very rich, both from gifts they received from upper class men and also
from the fantastic wages they could command. The chariot drivers in Rome belonged to one of four teams in the
imperial period: the Whites, the Reds, the Blues and the Greens. These were sizeable companies or corporations,
each with its own stables and team of trainers, coaches, saddlers, vets, blacksmiths and grooms Farnese.
The team normally supported by the people was the Greens, while the Senate supported the Blues. Huge bets were
placed on each team or rider. Before a race started, each of the chariots was placed in one of the starting gates.
Above them a magistrate presided over the games. When he gave the signal, by dropping a white napkin into the
circus, a trumpet sounded, a spring mechanism opened the gates and the chariots were off. Each charioteer strove to
attain the best inner position on the left, but fine judgment was crucial. If his chariot wheel so much as touched the
curb, it could shatter, wrecking his own and probably others' chariots in the crash. Charioteers wore short sleeveless
tunics and leather helmets, and carried knives to cut themselves free from the leads tied round their waists if there
was a collision. As up to 12 chariots could compete in the circus, collisions were common occurrences. The last lap
was the most excitingly dangerous of all. But, the winner was greeted with ecstatic applause and given a victor's
palm or gold crown. Adding to the popularity of the events, distraught spectators –and many poorer Romans
gambled voraciously – were pacified with donations of money thrown to the audience and free meals provided
afterwards.
Games and Exercises
The Romans regarded keeping fit as a vital part of a citizen's personal regime, but they never fostered a cult of
athletics in the way that the Greeks did. However, Roman men maintained an ideology of keeping “a healthy body
and a healthy mind.” But this was an ideal. Rich Romans, unlike their counterparts in classical Greece, seem to
have suffered from the diseases of affluence, possibly because of their gluttonous dinner parties. Combined with the
fact that Rome was a crowded city notably lacking in public spaces, exercise was difficult. So while ordinary
Roman life involved at least a modicum of daily exercise for everyone, Augustus' chief minister, Marcus Agrippa,
built exercise grounds or gyms in the open land that remained. Wrestling, running, and lifting dumbbells were all
popular sports among Roman men.
There were efforts to make these sports into public displays modeled after the Greek Olympics, but none of these
simple sports could rival the races or gladiatorial games in popularity. The repeated attempts to enthuse the
populace about athletic displays was due in part because they were cheaper to stage than the larger gladiatorial and
circus events. Yet, simple athletic competitions were popular as interval entertainment, and continued to be
important in the Greek part of the Roman empire.
Religion & Mythology
Polytheism
The Romans had many gods and, like most other polytheists, normally accepted those of other peoples. Most Greek
gods were identified with Roman ones early on but, as Rome's power spread east, stranger gods found followers in
the multiracial city. The official religion of the Roman establishment was essentially pragmatic and utilitarian.
Worship involved precise rituals to ensure that the gods brought victory in battle or that they saved Rome from
plague.
The gods of early Rome were not initially anthropomorphic but, after 250BC, under increasing Greek influence,
they soon acquired human characteristics. They were given mythical fixed forms like the 12 Greek Olympian gods
by the poet Ennius. However, although myth and religion intertwined, religious fervor was not appropriate to the
worship of Rome's state gods. Instead, punctilious performance of the rites was all-important.
The temple of a pagan god was its house, not a place where worshippers gathered for collective rites. The sacrifice
of animals was central to the gods' worship. Offerings of flowers or cakes were acceptable from poorer people and
for lesser endeavors. These rites were normally performed outside the temple. On special occasions the statue of the
deity might be paraded through the streets, a custom still performed with Catholic statues on feast days. Jupiter, his
wife Juno, Minerva (Jupiter’s daughter), and Mars (the god of war), formed the central gods of Rome’s
mythological polytheism.
Cult of the Emperor
Since the reign of Alexander the Great (336-323BC), the Greeks hailed kings or generals whom they wished to
honor as gods. The step from superhuman hero to demi-god was a short one in a world filled with gods. When
Roman generals conquered Alexander's lands in the eastern Mediterranean, Greeks began treating them, too, as
divine. Many cities also set up altars to the deity Roma Dea, the goddess Rome.
From Augustus' time on, the worship of the emperor, whose divinity was linked with Roma Dea, the goddess of
Rome, was encouraged. This imperial cult helped to unite the disparate empire. Augustus dealt pragmatically with
the desire of many of his non-Roman subjects to worship him in his turn. He allowed altars or temples to his
guardian spirit across the provinces. Cities competed with each other to offer the emperor honors and sacred hymns.
In Egypt, where Augustus was the heir to the divine pharaohs, his worship seemed obvious. In the western reaches
of the empire, altars were established and local representatives in Gaul and Britain happily contributed to imperial
cults to demonstrate their devotion to Rome and the emperor.
In contrast, the Roman nobility, whose support Augustus needed to run the empire, regarded any presumption of
divinity by the emperor as an outrage tantamount to tyranny, and he had to tread carefully. During his lifetime,
Augustus was still only officially held the title, princeps (first citizen). Although he prominently advertised himself
as son of a god, he never allowed anyone to call him a god in Rome or to build a temple to him in Italy.
It was different with the dead, however. Julius Caesar was deified posthumously and a temple was built to him. On
his death Augustus was also declared a god by the Senate, his soul soaring into heaven in the form of an eagle
released from his burning pyre. Most popular emperors were subsequently deified, although rulers found odious by
the Senate – Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus – were denied this honor.
Previously, Rome did not have a separate priestly caste or profession; important Romans simply performed priestly
duties as required. But with the new honors paid, the emperors from Augustus on became pontifex maximus,
supreme priest, a title the Pope inherited as the fall of Rome. Soon emperors were assuming divine attributes during
their lifetime and some, especially those who had inherited the throne, let this worship go their heads.
However, most educated people knew that the emperor was not literally divine and throwing incense on the altar to
the emperor and Roma required no religious commitment. It was merely indicative of a general patriotic loyalty.
The Jews were even exempt because of the antiquity of their religion, but Christians suffered for their refusal to
worship the emperor.
Christianity
In c. AD33 Jesus, an obscure Jewish preacher, was put to death on the reluctant orders of the governor of Judaea,
Pontius Pilate. The event had no impact on the Roman empire, although Jesus' followers claimed to have seen him
alive soon after and began preaching his resurrection, first to Jewish communities around the Mediterranean and
then, under the forceful guidance of Paul of Tarsus, to the wider Greek and Latin-speaking world.
Initially considered a form of Judaism by the Romans, Christianity was recognized as a distinct sect in AD64 after
the great fire of Rome, which the people blamed Nero for starting. The Christians made useful scapegoats for the
emperor, who had some rounded up, coated with pitch and set alight. Even Roman audiences found this hard to
stomach and such mass persecutions were long the exception. The Christians were not popular, however. What
Christians believed did not worry most pagans; it was what they openly refused to accept that caused problems,
especially when the empire was in crisis. By refusing even to sacrifice incense to the goddess of Rome, Christians
were offending the gods' united protection that the empire desperately needed. This led to imperially sponsored
persecutions.
Although mobs seem to have enjoyed tormenting this helpless minority, Christianity continued to expand.
Christianity first appealed mainly to women and slaves (another reason for suspicion); however, letters between
Trajan and Pliny the Younger, c. AD110, show the emperor restraining would-be persecutors, insisting that
Christians be given fair trials and forbidding anonymous letters of accusation. Christianity also appealed to
intellectuals and the Christian church's structure proved supportive in a way unmatched by any other cult.
Christianity's final triumph was due chiefly to its promotion by Constantine after AD312. But, as the Roman empire
became Christian, Christianity in turn became imperially Roman. After a military victory, Constantine believed
himself to be protected by the Christian god. When Constantine died in AD337, his successors continued his
Christianizing policies. With the disasters of the 5th century AD and the fall of Rome, most Romans in the West
turned in despair to Christianity, whose kingdom was not of this world. However, in the East paganism survived in
substantial pockets into the 6th century AD.
Family Life
The extended family was central to Roman law and society and especially to the real workings of informal political
influence. Central to this fact was the idea of the paterfamilias. The theoretical powers of the father in the early
Republic were unbounded. A paterfamilias (male head of the household with no living father or grandfather) held
paterpotestas, powers of life and death over all family members, including his slaves and most of his freedmen. In
theory, a father could beat his son although the latter might be middle-aged and hold high office. Family courts
dominated by the paterfamilias could even hand out death sentences, though these became so rare as to be almost
legendary. Prestige and influence of the paterfamilias was linked to dependents, often numbering in the hundreds for
a great household.
Roman politics in the Republic and the early Principate depended crucially on these extended households for
governing the empire, with slaves or freedmen effectively taking on the role of civil servants. In practice, these
vastly extended and powerful dynasties were balanced by more numerous nuclear families, composed just of parents
and children. When a paterfamilias died – and not many lived long enough to torment their grown-up children for
long – his estate had by law to be divided equally among all his surviving children.
Marriage
Although Roman marriage had as its explicit goal the production and rearing of children, among the great political
families of the late Republic and empire political motives often dictated unions. Financial motives also played a
major role in most noble marriages. However, this did not mean that all were unhappy. Augustus and his wife, Livia,
shared a happy marriage. Judging by the feelings expressed on memorials, many ordinary Romans were also
devoted to their spouses.
Among the upper classes in Rome, marriages were often arranged for dynastic reasons, but the comedies of Plautus
(among others) demonstrate that love was as important for the Romans as for anyone else. Like the Greeks but
unlike the early Jews or the Persians, the Romans were always monogamous. But, because Roman mortality rates
were so high, especially among women giving birth, many people found themselves marrying several times without
divorce. And still, divorce had become common at least among the nobility by the end of the Republic. Despite the
fact that divorce could be initiated by either party, the power of the paterfamilias is evident in the father maintaining
custody of the children in most instances of divorce. Among less wealthy Romans, where personal feelings possibly
counted for more, divorce remained more unusual, although devoid of any stigma.
Women
Women in Rome were barred from playing any role in public life, whether in war or in peace. There were no women
consuls, generals, senators or emperors. In this exclusion Rome was in tone with classical Greek precedents but not
with the Hellenistic world, where queens such as Cleopatra in Egypt ruled as acknowledged sovereigns. Highranking women could hope to be powers behind the throne, like Augustus' wife Livia or Nero's mother Agrippina,
but they could never assume imperial power in their own right. Perhaps one reason was that women's voices were
thought to lack the carrying power to make themselves easily heard in public places such as the Forum. Oratory was
vital to Roman political life even after the end of the Republic.
Traditionally women remained always under a man's control, first their father's and then their husband's. A Roman
matron (married woman) earned respect running the household, controlling the domestic slaves and holding the keys
of the house. By the age of 25 she could normally manage any property that she had inherited independently, which
made her better placed than women in early Victorian Britain. When her husband was away, a wife took control of
family affairs. Domestic duties, such as looking after the children and the household, traditionally included making
clothes for the family even for wealthy women. By the later Republic and early imperial period, women were
joining men at dinner. This was in marked contrast to their seclusion in Greece.
Most women could never be empresses or wives of great politicians, but some still made their way in a maledominated world. Some women worked as bakers, pharmacists and shopkeepers, either with or without their
husbands. A few managed to be accepted as doctors – there is a funerary inscription in Latin for a female doctor. As
no formal medical body existed to regulate doctors, this may have reflected changes in the social climate.
Children & Education
In the 2nd century BC, Cato the Censor boasted, perhaps untruthfully, that he had taught his sons everything from
reading to swimming but, over time, education in richer households passed from the hands of fathers to
professionals, slaves and free, as Rome filled with well-educated Greeks. However, Roman education remained
generally unsystematic and for girls was almost non-existent beyond a basic level which was normally taught at
home.
Primary schools, which were mostly private and which only some Romans attended, taught the three basic subjects
of reading, writing and arithmetic. Most teaching took place in porticoes or similar public areas such as the great
recesses of Trajan's Forum. Teaching was mostly a matter of learning texts by rote, with underpaid teachers beating
lessons into boys. Among wealthier families, a slave-tutor who was usually Greek-speaking, took care of the
education of boys. Supposedly his pupil's master, he was in reality his slave and accompanied him everywhere.
Relatively few pupils progressed to secondary education where a grammaticus, again often a Greek-speaker, taught
Latin and especially Greek literature. Although emperors such as Trajan established chairs for lecturers paid by the
public purse in Rome, there were only sporadic attempts to establish an educational system across the empire.
Hadrian, for example, tried to encourage primary schooling in remote parts of the empire by offering tax
concessions to school masters willing to teach in the villages of the mining region of Vipasca. Even fewer students
went onto higher education, where a rhetor taught the vital art of public speaking. The Senate at first actually
discouraged the spread of higher education in case it undermined its own monopoly on power.
Latin was the language of most of Italy Lind later of the Western provinces, but not of every inhabitant of polyglot
Rome, let alone of the empire. Greek was also very widely spoken. Almost all cities in the Eastern half of the
empire, and most in Sicily and southern Italy, were at least partly Greek-speaking. This was a result of the Latin
literature hardly compared with Greek. For a long time, the majority of Romans acknowledged, with varying
degrees of reluctance, the supremacy of classical Greece in the cultural field, while considering contemporary
Greeks their political and social inferiors.
Between the ages of 14 and 19, usually at the age of 17, the Roman male came of age, putting on a new white toga
to mark his status as a full citizen. He then went to the Records Office with his family to be officially enrolled, after
which a family banquet was held in his honor. High infant mortality meant that many children died long before this
age, however. In the Republic, young male citizens were liable for military service.
Roman Social Hierarchy
The Roman Empire of the first three centuries CE was an “urban” empire. This does not mean that most people
were living in cities or towns. Perhaps 80 percent of the 50 to 60 million people living within the borders of the
empire engaged in agriculture and lived in villages or on isolated farms in the countryside. The empire, however,
was administered through a network of towns and cities, and the urban populace benefited from most.
Numerous town had several thousand inhabitants. A handful of major cities – Alexandria in Egypt, Antioch in
Syria, and Carthage – had population of several hundred thousand. Rome itself had approximately a million
residents. The largest cities strained the limited technological capabilities of the ancients; providing adequate food
and water and removing sewage were always problems.
In Rome the upper classes lived in elegant townhouses on one or another of the seven hills. Such a house was
centered around an atrium, a rectangular courtyard with a skylight that let in light and rainwater for drinking and
washing. Surrounding the atrium were a dining room for dinner and drinkning parties, an interior garden, a kitchen,
and possibly a private bath. Bedrooms were on the upper level. The floors were decorated with pebble mosaics, and
the walls and ceilings were covered with frescoes (paintings done directly on wet plaster) of mythological scenes or
outdoors vistas, giving a sense of openness in the absence of windows.
The cities, towns, and even the ramshackle settlements that sprang up on the edge of frontier forts were miniature
replicas of the capital city in political organization, physical layout, and appearance. A town council and two
annually elected officials drawn from prosperous members of the community maintained law and order and
collected both urban and rural taxes. In their desire to imitate the manners and values of Roman senators, this
“municipal aristocracy” endowed cities and towns, which had very little revenue of their own, with attractive
elements of Roman urban life – a forum (an open plaza that served as a civic center), government buildings,
temples, gardens, baths, theaters, amphitheaters, and games and public entertainments of all sorts.
The concentration of ownership of the land in ever fewer hands was temporarily reversed during the civil wars that
brought an end to the Roman Republic, but it resumed in the era of emperors. However, after the era of conquest
ended in the early second century CE, slaves were no longer plentiful or inexpensive, and landowners needed a new
source of labor. Over time, the independent farmers were replaced by “tenant farmers” who were allowed to live on
and cultivate plots of land in return for a portion of their crops. The landowners still lived in cities and hired
foremen to manage their estates. Thus wealth was concentrated in the cities but was based on the productivity of
rural agricultural laborers.
Romanization – the spread of the Latin language and Roman way of life – was one of the most enduring
consequences of empire, primarily in the western provinces. This formed yet another form of hierarchy within the
mosaic of Roman society. Greek language and culture, a legacy of the Hellenistic empires, continued to dominate
the eastern Mediterranean and was seen as a sign of refinement given the early sophistication of Greece. But, the
Romanization of frontiers in western Europe often brought prosperity and served to distinguish those who were
“civilized” and those who were not. Peace and security opened Britain, Gaul, and Germany to immigration. As
towns sprang up and acquired the features of Roman urban life, they served as magnets for ambitious members of
the indigenous populations. The empire gradually and reluctantly granted Roman citizenship, with its attendant
privileges, legal protections, and exemptions from some types of taxation, to people living outside of Italy. Men
who completed a twenty-six-year term of service in the native military units that backed up the Roman legions were
granted citizenship to individuals or entire communities as rewards for good service. In 212 CE the emperor
Caracalla granted citizenship to all free, adult, male inhabitants of the empire.
The gradual extension of citizenship mirrored the empire’s transformation from an Italian dominion over
Mediterranean lands into a commonwealth of peoples. As early as the first century CE some of the leading literary
and intellectual figures came from the provinces. By the second century even the emperors hailed from Spain, Gaul,
and North Africa.
In Rome, the provinces, and frontier, the era of the the pax romana (“Roman Peace”) was one of extensive
prosperity, which served to heighten social stratification. Commerce was greatly enhanced by the pax romana, the
safety and stability guaranteed by Roman might. Some urban dwellers got rich from manufacture and trade. Some
merchants traded in luxury items from far beyond the boundaries of the empire, especially silk from China and
spices from India and Arabia. Other fine manufactured products, like glass, metalwork, and delicate pottery, were
exported throughout the empire. Perhaps surprisingly, the army was largely responsible for the new burst of
expansion in continental Europe. In short, the areas where legions were stationed became Romanized. Roman
armies stationed on the frontiers were a large market, and their presence promoted the prosperity of border
provinces. Additionally, upon retirement, legionaries often settled where they had served. Having learned a trade in
the army, they brought essential skills to areas that badly needed trained men. These veterans used their retirement
pay to set themselves up in business.
Although Rome and the empire could boast of state palaces, noble buildings, and burgeoning trade, the urbane
nature of the Roman empire presented some serious challenges. Most Romans and urban dwellers lived in jerrybuilt
houses and perennial crime. The poor lived in crowded slums in the low-lying parts of Rome. Damp, dark, and
smelly, with few furnishings, their wooden tenements were susceptible to frequent fires. The massive size of Rome
meant that it depended on the import of massive quantities of grain from Sicily and Egypt. Rome grew so large and
was so difficult to feed, emperors eventually solved the problem by providing citizens with free bread, oil, and wine.
In time, the masses of urban poor not only counted on the distribution of grain, but they insisted on it as well (if
rulers wished to avoid riots). In food and games, the emperors could temporarily keep the favor of the multitudes of
urban poor. In the provinces, trade helped the lower classes to an extent, but the relative technological
backwardness of Europe hurt the agrarian masses. Grain, meat, vegetables, and other bulk foodstuffs usually could
be exchanged only locally because transportation was expensive and many products spoiled quickly. Gradually,
peasants became overburdened and left out of the prosperity of the pax romana.
Roman Governance
According to tradition, Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BCE, by Romulus, said to have been the son of the god
of Mars. Like most traditions associated with Rome’s earliest days, it is hard to disentangle truth from myth.
Crucially, one thing seems certain: Rome was more receptive to outside influences than its neighboring rivals. In
time, this receptiveness helped the small Roman monarchy to expand its territory against the neighboring Latin tribe.
However, the tyrannical monarchy grew unpopular and was deposed in 509 BCE by a group of aristocrats.
The Roman Republic
With the transition in 509 BCE, Rome became a republic ruled by an amorphous group of aristocratic elders, known
as the Senate. The Senate of the early Republic was composed of 300 patres familias, or heads of households. They
were joined by other prominent men, known as patricii, to form a proud nobility of about 1000 families. Magistrates
in the Republic entered the Senate after serving a year in the lowest bureaucratic office. Once there, they held their
seats for life. The Senate held formal powers to select candidates for magisterial office, but the Senate’s real power
lay in its informal authority and prestige to advise. The most important magistrates were the consuls. Every year,
two consuls were elected to serve together in an attempt to prevent despotism. Beneath the consuls in magisterial
office were the praetors and quaestors. The praetors supervised the administration of justice and dealt with foreign
diplomacy. In 496 BCE, Rome defeated a league of Latin neighbors, which created a need for provincial
governments that echoed Rome’s. Provinces were led by proconsuls and supported by propraetors.
The early Republic was dominated by the conflict between two groups of citizens, the patricians (elite landowners)
and the underclass of plebeians. The patricians monopolized political power, and provided all the members for the
Senate. Plebeian resentment of this hierarchy led to a series of violent conflicts, which in 494 BCE resulted in the
creation of a plebeian Assembly. In theory, the people of the Assembly were sovereign and had unlimited powers.
In practice, they met only when summoned by magistrates and could only vote, without discussion, on measures put
before them. These restrictions meant that Rome was never a democracy. This did not seem to concern the people,
for they usually had little desire to guide the state. Their main interest was to be protected from unjust nobles.
Amidst economic turmoil in the 5th century BCE, citizen-soldiers suffered from endless summer battles that
distracted from properly tending their farms. Many poorer citizens became so heavily indebted that they became
serfs. Because of these hardships, plebeians threatened to secede. As a result, they gained two elected tribunes –
magistrates outside of the senate-dominated offices – who could veto any laws passed by the Senate. But instead, the
tribunes formed a plebeian nobility. Tribunes, once people’s defenders, increasingly became co-opted into the
Senate, first just to listen to debates, but gradually to join the ranks. The codification of Roman laws in the “Twelve
Tables” 445 BCE eased other restrictions on the plebeians, but tensions remained.
By the 3rd century BCE, Rome had expanded its influence throughout the Italian peninsula creating conflict with
other powers in the Mediterranean. Most notable among these adversaries were the Carthaginians, who from their
capital in present-day Tunisia, North Africa, controlled an empire in the western Mediterranean. In a series of wars
known as the Punic War from 264 BCE to 148 BCE, the Romans eventually defeated Carthage and annexed its
territory in Spain and North Africa. But, this newly sizeable Roman Republic faced problems.
Seeing Rome for the first time in 166 BCE, the Greek historian Polybius was struck by the apparent excellence of its
government, thinking it combined the best aspects of democracy in its Assembly of the people, of aristocracy
embodied by the Senate, and monarchy with the elected Consuls. And, unlike other classical cities, notably Athens,
Rome fostered loyalty by generously granting citizenship to other towns – especially those in Italy. This seemingly
perfect system of checks and balances made Rome’s status as ruler of the Mediterranean look well-deserved.
But, the Senate, dominated by the interests of its noble elite, failed to cope with the problems of governing an
expanding territory. Without a written constitution, real power lay in informal alliances, which fostered a climate of
political maneuvering rather than meeting the needs of the people. This led to civil war, the Republic’s downfall,
and eventually, imperial rule.
Crisis
During the 2nd century BCE, the political situation in Rome became tense. In the 80s BCE, the city was hit by a
political and military struggle dominated by politicians bent on murdering opponents and popular military generals.
In 78 BCE, a powerful general named Pompey rose to power and for 15 years seemed to end the crisis with his
political prowess and continued military successes. Yet, in 60 BCE, increasing factional violence led him to broker
a three-way alliance, called the “First Triumvirate,” with Crassus and Julius Caesar, in an attempt to re-unite Rome.
Unable to work together and jealous of each other’s popularity, the First Triumvirate collapsed in 49 BCE and civil
war erupted between the factions of Caesar and Pompey. In 46 BCE, Caesar triumphed, becoming Dictator for life.
Fearing Caesar would make himself king, a group of republicans assassinated him. However, their murderous act
failed to save the Republic from collapse. After a second triumvirate and civil war, Octavian – Caesar’s adoptive
son – emerged victorious, but rather than making himself Dictator as Caesar had done, he manipulated Republican
politics to acquire supreme power without seeming to usurp the Senate’s authority.
The Roman Empire
In 27 BCE, Octavian was granted a special form of authority, known as proconsular imperium, for 10 years, which
in effect allowed him to act as he chose in all provinces where the army was currently based. In the same year, he
took title “Augustus.” In 23 BCE, Augustus acquired the permanent power of a tribune of the plebeians, making
him invulnerable to legal action. Although he did not refer to himself as an emperor, this was the position he held.
Under imperial rule, the Senate became increasingly ceremonial and the Assembly disappeared. By the 4 th century
CE, the Roman Empire was an absolute monarchy, albeit one where the emperor (in theory) obeyed the laws.
The empire over which Augustus assumed rule in 27 BCE was very different from the Rome of the early republic.
Now ruling over territories that stretched from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to Syria and Armenia in the east – as
well as large parts of North Africa – the Roman government faced far greater challenges than the old, informal
systems could manage. Rome ruled its growing empire with the minimum of government by co-opting the
aristocracies of other cities into ruling on Rome’s behalf. In essence, the empire became a confederation of
internally self-governing cities. Defense and foreign affairs were transferred to Rome’s control, however.
At the center of Roman government, the role of the emperor remained ambivalent. Certain emperors, such as
Claudius (ruled 41-54 CE), liked to flatter the old senatorial class with the fantasy that the emperor was just a
superior sort of senator; others, such as Nero (ruled 54-68 CE), tended to much more direct, despotic, and capricious
rule. The early empire had little in the way of public service, and many important roles, such as running the
imperial treasury, were assumed by freedmen (former slaves). Provincial governors, however, who administered
Rome’s imperial territories, were almost all senators. Augustus worked to restore the Senate’s dignity in running the
empire. He held real power, but he allowed the Senate to retain important duties, including presiding over law
courts and choosing about one-third of the provincial governors. Immediately below the Senators in social class was
a group known as the equestrians. This knightly group originally supplied the cavalry for early Rupublican armies,
but during imperial rule, they turned instead to making money through banking and commerce since they were
excluded entirely from the sentorial order. More importantly however, emperors employed the equestrians as
important counterweights to the privileges of the Senate by appointing them as governors of some provinces or as
treasurers in provinces governed by senators.
The Roman government raised its revenue mainly through indirect taxes on sales or death duties. Some was spent
on Roman roads, which linked the main cities of the empire, but as much as 80% was spent on the army. Augustus
had inherited 80 legions, with a total manpower of around 300,000. The legions formed a formidable strike force,
almost irresistible in open combat. Their engineering expertise meant they could also conduct siege warfare
expertly, and take on large-scale construction projects, such as roads and fortifications. Over time the army formed
its own power base, through the imperial guard (the Praetorians) based in Rome and the legionary frontier garrisons,
and became as much a cause of internal instability as a guard against outside threats.
The Romans prided themselves on the excellence of their laws, seeing law as a field in which they were superior to
the Greeks. In its entirety, Roman law is one of its great glories and legacies. However, it did not emerge fully
formed but instead evolved slowly as a series of overlapping precedents.
As its empire spread to the less urbanized parts of Europe, it planted colonies of Roman citizens or made existing
cities into Roman colonies. These colonia were fine cities with full Roman rights, complete with theatres, baths,
and forums. A grade lower were municipia with Latin rights, whose magistrates became full Roman citizens.
Below these were civitates, urban settlements. The tendency was to upgrade any city that proved worthy, so the
empire ended up as an agglomerate of more than a thousand cities because urbanization helped spread Roman
culture around the empire.