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PAX ROMANA
By Lea Holman
The Roman Republic was gone. In its place, the government was now a dictatorship, under the leadership of an
emperor. The first Roman emperor was Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar. He was emperor for 45
years. This was the beginning of the Pax Romana or Roman Peace. This is a very misleading title. There wasn't
really peace.
Rome continued to expand the empire, mostly through conquest. Rome itself was still beset by criminals and
sometimes riots. It is called the Pax Romana because the empire itself was stable. The people knew that there
was an emperor to run things and Roman legions to take care of wars and riots. They didn't have to worry about
somebody coming in and conquering Rome and destroying their beautiful city.
Many of Rome's most spectacular and huge construction projects were built during this time period, the period we
call the Roman Empire. Thousands of miles of roads were built to keep the empire united. Art, literature and
theatre flourished and grew. Rome was at its height.
Pax Romana is Latin for "Roman Peace." The Pax Romana lasted from about 27 B.C. (with Augustus) until A.D. 180 -the death of Marcus Aurelius. Some date the Pax Romana from A.D. 30 to the reign of Nerva. Others date it as
late in the reign of Augustus as the year A.D. 14.
Edward Gibbon, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is sometimes credited with the
idea of the Pax Romana. He writes:
Notwithstanding the propensity of mankind to exalt the past and to depreciate the present, the tranquil and
prosperous state of the empire was warmly felt and honestly confessed by the provincials as well as Romans. 'They
acknowledged that the true principles of the social life, laws, agriculture, and science, which had been first
invented by the wisdom of Athens, were now firmly established by the power of Rome, under whose auspicious
influence the fiercest barbarians were united by an equal government and common language. They affirm that, with
the improvement of arts, the human species was visibly multiplied. They celebrate the increasing splendor of the
cities, the beautiful face of the country, cultivated and adorned like an immense garden; and the long festival of
peace, which was enjoyed by so many nations, forgetful of their ancient animosities, and delivered from the
apprehension of future danger.' Whatever suspicions may be suggested by the air of rhetoric and declamation
which seems to prevail in these passages, the substance of them is perfectly agreeable to historic truth.
It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of
decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret
poison into the vitals of the empire.
The Pax Romana was a period of relative peace and cultural achievement in the Roman Empire, especially in the area
of building (e.g., Hadrian's Wall, Nero's Domus Aurea, and the Flavians' Colosseum and Temple of Peace), and Silver
Age Latin literature. Roman roads traversed the empire by land, and for ships, the Julio-Claudian Emperor
Claudius established Ostia as aport city for Italy.
The Pax Romana came after an extended period of civil conflict in Rome. Augustus became emperor after his
posthumously adoptive father, Julius Caesar, was assassinated. Caesar had begun a civil war when he crossed the
Rubicon, leading his troops into Roman territory. Earlier in his life he had witnessed the fighting between his uncle
Marius and another Roman autocrat, Sulla. Shortly before, the famous Gracchi brothers had been killed for
political reasons. Proscriptions under Sulla and the Second triumvirate of Octavian (Augustus), Mark Antonyand
Lepidus, sanctioned civilian slaughter and property theft. Peace is a relative term, when looking at the Pax Romana.
Romans no longer fought one another, by and large. There were exceptions, like the period at the end of the first
imperial dynasty, when, after Nero committed suicide, four other emperors followed in rapid succession, each
deposing the previous one violently.
The Pax Romana did not mean Rome was at peace vis a vis the peoples at its borders. Peace in Rome meant a strong
professional army stationed mostly away from the heart of the Empire, and instead, at the roughly 6000 miles of
frontiers of imperial frontier. There weren't enough soldiers to spread evenly, so the legions were stationed at the
locations thought most likely to cause trouble. Then, when the soldiers retired, they generally settled in the land
where they had been stationed.
To maintain order in the city of Rome, Augustus established a sort of police force, the vigiles. The Praetorian
Guard protected the emperor.