Download Rome Touchstone Readings

Carthaginians and Etruscans
600 BC - 150 BC)
Study Guide Questions:
1. What were the origins of the North African city of Carthage?
2. Who were the Berbers?
3. How were the Phoenicians responsible (indirectly) for the introduction of iron to sub-Saharan
Africa?
4. What were the Punic Wars?
5. Where did Etruscan culture develop?
6. What was the most significant Etruscan contribution to history?
7. Complete the analogy: The Etruscans are to Rome as The Shang are to the _________.
…In short order, we’ll encounter mighty Rome, THE big dog in the Mediterranean and in
Europe for close to a thousand years. Around 600 BC, though, Rome was a mere puppy,
watching, learning, but mostly staying out of the way of its elders in the western
Mediterranean--the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Etruscans. We’ve already discussed
the Greeks. Time now to look at the latter two…
We already know that the Phoenicians were intrepid sailors and traders who established a
colony at Carthage around 800 BC. There they settled amongst the Berber people,
introducing, among other things, the secrets of iron making. The Berbers were a Hamite
people who had for many centuries been trading with the people of sub-Saharan West Africa.
They were farmers and herders who eagerly traded food for iron implements and weapons.
Both Phoenicians and Berbers were an aggressive, business-oriented people. Over time, they
built Carthage into a thriving commercial center.
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By 600 BC, Carthage, located a few miles from the modern city of Tunis, was the major
power in the western Mediterranean. Using the Berbers as intermediaries, the Carthaginians
conducted a significant trade across the Sahara Desert for tropical African products. The
introduction of the camel to this area did not occur until the first century AD, so trade goods
were carried on horses and in chariots. Besides salt--the most important item--the
Carthaginians and Berbers offered cloth and metal goods in exchange for West African gold,
ivory and slaves. Very importantly, it was through this trade that knowledge of iron smelting
and manufacturing passed into West Africa. Archaeological evidence of that has been found
in modern Nigeria, Niger, and Mali.
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After several centuries of great success, Carthage had the misfortune of coming into
conflict with the rising star in the Mediterranean, Rome. Friendly relations between the two
were disrupted by a minor incident in Sicily in 264 BC. For over 100 years, the resulting
Punic Wars sapped the energies of both combatants. Finally, the Romans destroyed Carthage
and established their own province, which they named “Africa.” This province would
become a major supplier of agricultural products, especially wheat and olive oil.
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…So magnificent Carthage was brought low by the Romans. They weren’t the only big losers
in the western Mediterranean, however. The Etruscans shared a similar fate…
The Etruscans formed the foundation civilization of the Italian peninsula, rising to
prominence between 600 BC and 400 BC. Etruria, the land of the Etruscans, spanned the
agriculturally rich western flank of the Appennine Mountains to the Tyrrenian Sea and
contained the Po River, Arno River and Tiber River Valleys. While their origins are in
dispute (many archeologists believe they migrated from Asia Minor, perhaps Lydia), the
Etruscans gained control of the indigenous peoples of the peninsula early in the first
millenium BC, bringing order, prosperity, and the civilizing influences of a unified religion,
writing, and arts. To this day archeologists are unearthing magnificent artifacts of Etruscan
life, particularly elaborately painted tombs, terra cotta sculpture, and gorgeously crafted
jewelry. However, Etruscan fame is eternally bound to its role as “parent” to Rome. It
provided the foundation for an aggressive culture that grew to engulf the Italian peninsula,
the Mediterranean, and ultimately 25% of the earth’s population.
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Touchstone 3.4
The Rise of the Roman Republic
509 BC - 30 BC
Study Guide Questions:
1. How was the city of Rome “incubated” from turmoil in the region during the early years of
the Republic?
2. Who were the “patricians”?
3. With whom did the Rome Republic come into conflict as she rose to power?
4. What was Hannibal’s great accomplishment?
…When we speak of “Ancient Rome,” we are actually referring to two different epochs, one
the period of the Roman Republic, the other the period of the Roman Empire. Although it got
started around 500 BC, the Roman Republic was not a well-established power until about 300
BC. For much of its early history, it was just a city—and a relatively small one at that—faced
with the straightforward task of protecting itself from its more well established neighbors. But
these early Romans were a hardy, high-disciplined and aggressive folk. They weren’t destined
just to hang out on the Tiber River …
The traditional date for the founding of the city of Rome is 753 BC. Mythology has it
that twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, were the original settlers. There are a number of
versions to that tale. According to one, the two had been cast away as infants but were saved
and raised by a kindly she-wolf. Romulus eventually ruled the city and killed his brother
after a falling-out. Another story suggests that Rome was founded by the Trojan hero
Aeneas, who arrived in Italy after a number of adventures following the conquest of Troy by
Greek forces under Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus and company.
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In its early years, Rome evolved into a highly disciplined and productive culture. It broke
away from Etruscan dominance sometime in the 6th century BC and kicked out its last king
in 509 BC, establishing a republican form of government. Geographic features aided in this
development: the Alps, the Tiber River, the Adriatic Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea formed a
natural “incubator” that shielded the growing city from much of the turbulence of the times.
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For much of the 5th Century BC, Rome was busy protecting herself from or conquering
her neighbors in Italy. This was made possible by a highly disciplined military force. Every
male Roman citizen who owned property was obliged to serve, the obligation for an ordinary
infantryman being 16 years. For a while, the biggest threat to Rome’s survival was Celtic
marauders from the north, who succeeded in sacking the city in 390 BC. Remember the
Celts? They were the ferocious warriors who painted themselves blue and rushed wildly into
battle—with no clothes on. They frightened the Romans in early encounters, but ultimately
they were no match for the disciplined Roman phalanxes, which made short work of their
chaotic charges.
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At about the time the Peloponnesian Wars were raging in ancient Greece (431 – 404 BC),
the small city of Rome was growing increasingly wealthy and influential. It could boast of a
public-spirited, productive citizenry ruled by law and representative government. In the early
days, true power resided, at least theoretically, with the people. The Senate, though, is where
the power was concentrated, and the Senate was comprised of wealthy men, the “patricians.”
A growing gap between the patricians and poor citizens, the “plebians,” was an important
factor in the ultimate fall of the Republic. But that took nearly 400 years.
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As Rome’s influence grew, she came into conflict with another power in the region, the
North African city of Carthage. As we’ve already learned, the Phoenicians, a Semitic people
who came to rival the Greeks in the western Mediterranean, originally founded Carthage.
Between 264 BC and 146 BC the Romans and Carthaginians fought three wars, known as the
Punic Wars. (“Punic” comes from the Latin word for Phoenician.) The most well known is
the Second Punic War, fought between 221 and 202 BC. In this one, the great Carthaginian
general, Hannibal, led an army from Spain through the Alps and into Northern Italy. His
plan was to overrun the Romans before they could fully prepare a defense. For this task, he
brought elephants with him through the Alps in winter. This stands as one of the greatest
military achievements of all time. However, Hannibal did not ultimately succeed. After
ravaging the Italian countryside for many years, he was forced to return to North Africa
where the Romans defeated him at Zama in 202 BC. At the conclusion of the third Punic
War (146 BC), the Romans razed the city of Carthage to the ground, spread salt over the
ruins, and sold the surviving inhabitants into slavery. The Romans could be nasty folks when
provoked.
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Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, and the Fall of the Republic
100 BC–31 BC
Study Guide Questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
How was the Roman army different after the Punic Wars?
What internal pressures pushed Rome to conquer abroad?
Why did Caesar cross the Rubicon?
What happened on March 15, 44 BC?
How did Rome gain control of Egypt?
Why did Octavius call himself “First Citizen.”
What does “Pax Romana” mean?
… After destroying Carthage, killing most of the Carthaginian males, and shipping their women
and children off to slavery, Roman armies moved on to success in other areas as well, gaining
control through fair means or foul of Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine. Things were
really looking up for the former sleepy little town on the Tiber. Alas, there was a price to be paid
for all this success. Ever so gradually the Romans lost what they had cherished most: their
republican form of government …
One main consequence of the Punic Wars and the expansion of empire that followed was
that the military was increasingly composed of professional soldiers. With all its manpower
requirements, Rome simply could not depend on an army of true citizen soldiers, in other
words, an army made up of men whose primary occupation was farming. In 107 BC, the
requirement that Roman soldiers be landowners was dropped entirely. From that time on,
citizenship was granted to any man who joined the army. This was a reversal from the early
days when one had to be a citizen to be in the army.
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During and after the Punic Wars, the countryside around Rome was transformed as large
estates worked by slaves replaced peasant farms. Many small farmers lost their property
because of their involvement in the protracted fighting against Carthage. There was only one
thing for them to do: remain in the army. And the only way for soldiers in the army to make
a living was through conquest. Little wonder that the century after the fall of Carthage saw
Rome extending her grip from Spain all the way to Asia, and that a series of warlord generals
dominated during the waning days of the Republic. One of these warlords was Julius Caesar.
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In 59 BC, Caesar was elected consul, and not long afterward he marched north with his
army to conquer those troublesome Celts. Between 58 and 50 BC, he defeated all the Celts
in Gaul and pushed the Germanic tribes back beyond the Rhine. In 55 BC he invaded
Britain, and in 54 BC the tribes there agreed to pay tribute to Rome.
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Back home, other politicians and rival warlords were troubled by Caesar’s success. They
knew how ambitious he was and decided they had to get him out of the way. They recalled
him to Rome. He was ordered to come alone, to not bring his army with him across the
Rubicon River in northern Italy. Caesar’s mother hadn’t raised a fool, however. He crossed
the Rubicon with his army in 49 BC, uttering the famous words, “the die is cast.” He was
taking an incredible gamble and there was no turning back. This move spelled the end of the
Roman Republic. Caesar was immediately embroiled in a civil war (there were a number of
civil wars in Rome during the 1st Century BC) with a former ally named Pompey. Pompey
was not up to the challenge and was eventually killed in Egypt by some people trying to win
favor with Caesar. The Romans voted Caesar “dictator for life”—they really didn’t have
much choice—but, alas, “life” didn’t last very long. On March 15 (the infamous “Ides of
March”), 44 BC, a gang of former colleagues, including his good friend Brutus, assassinated
Caesar. His killers said they only wanted to save the Republic. It was too late for that: the
Roman Empire had arrived.
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After the death of Caesar, the Roman Empire was split in two. Gaius Octavius, a nephew
whom Caesar had adopted as his heir in 45 BC, ruled the western half. Mark Antony,
Caesar’s top lieutenant and close friend, took over the eastern half with his girlfriend, the
Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Cleopatra, a descendant of our old Macedonian friend Ptolemy
Soter, really got around: she had also been Caesar’s girlfriend and had borne him a son. Both
sides wanted complete control of the young empire and went to war to get it. Naval forces of
the two met at the decisive battle of Actium in 31 BC. Marcus Agrippa was Octavius’s naval
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commander, and his smaller fleet overwhelmed the combined Egyptian-Roman fleet of
Antony and Cleopatra. The two lovers committed suicide.
Octavius assumed control of Rome following his victory at Actium and took the title
Caesar Augustus. Although he was now the sole ruler of the entire Roman world, stretching
from Scotland to Egypt, he acted as if he only wanted to restore the Republic. To support
this fiction, he called himself “First Citizen of Rome,” rather than “Emperor.” The forms of
republican government were to remain throughout Rome’s history, but it was now really a
monarchy. The ultimate basis of power had long since shifted from the people to the military.
Augustus was a shrewd politician and a very capable administrator. Under him, the affairs of
the vast empire were placed in the hands of professionals. This ushered in a period known as
“Pax Romana” or Roman Peace. What this really meant was that Rome dictated the terms of
peace. She could do that because she had the power.
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Under Augustus, Rome pushed its European frontier eastward to the Danube. In the
north, Roman legions attempted to move beyond the Rhine to the Elbe River, but they
suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the German tribes in 9 AD and moved back to the
Rhine, which, along with the Danube, became the permanent northern boundary of the
empire.
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Touchstone 3.6
The Roman Empire
44 BC - 476 AD
Study Guide Questions:
1. There were 12 Caesars in the early Roman Empire. Name three of them.
2. After 212 AD, who were the “Romans”?
3. What was the significance of the Rhine and Danube rivers to the Roman Empire?
4. How did Christianity become a major world religion?
…When people talk today about Ancient Rome, they are usually referring to the period after
Julius Caesar and up to the coming of the Germanic barbarians in the 5th Century AD, in
other words, a period spanning almost 500 years. This was the Roman Empire. Great things
were accomplished during the days of empire. For example, a new world religion,
Christianity, was born; within a few centuries, it spread throughout what we now know as
Europe. Unfortunately, though, this was also an era of great depravity and cruelty. From its
earliest days, the mighty Roman Empire contained within it the seeds of its own destruction ...
The Rhine and the Danube rivers marked the northern boundary of the Roman Empire.
During the centuries following Augustus, there was order and peace within those boundaries.
A complex and sophisticated bureaucracy developed to handle all the problems of governing
this vast area. The Romans were a tolerant, cosmopolitan people. They did not attempt to
annihilate subject people. They successfully “romanized” those whom they had conquered
by making the Roman way of life appealing. In 212 AD, Roman citizenship was granted to
all free subjects in the empire.
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The Romans saw themselves as inheritors of Greek culture. In fact, most educated
Romans were bilingual, speaking both Latin and Greek. Roman writers grew up reading the
Greek classics. Roman sculptors copied the great works of the Greeks. Roman philosophy
was Greek philosophy. Only in two fields were the Romans innovators: engineering and law.
They were, after all, an amazingly practical and ingenious people. Romans were among the
first city planners. (We now know there were others, e.g. at Mohenjo-Daro, Harrapa, and
Knossos). They developed sewage systems and aqueducts that still stand today. And they
laid down a system of fine roads throughout Western Europe.
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Although the era of the Roman Empire was in many respects a time of great accomplishment
and consolidation of power, it also was a time of decline. After Augustus, 10 more “Caesars”
rose to power, including such psychopaths and nitwits as Caligula and Nero. In fact, except
for the period between 100 AD and 200 AD, known as the Age of the Antonines, the political
scene in Rome itself was a mess. Being emperor was a very dangerous business: there was
incessant conniving for power and assassinations were frequent. Real power lay with the
army, and any man who could successfully command the army’s loyalty, either through
charisma or money, could be emperor. Meanwhile, wealth and power flowed increasingly
into the hands of the few, the elite. A huge gap developed between rich and poor. Things
just couldn’t go on this way. And eventually they didn’t.
The end of Rome as a great imperial city began in 331 AD when the emperor Constantine
built the city of Constantinople at the site of the Ancient Greek city of Byzantium.
Constantine was born in the Balkans and spent much of his youth along the frontier. He was
the son of a great Roman soldier, Constantius, who eventually rose to become an emperor.
Constantine had little interest in the city of Rome itself. For him, it was no longer of any
political significance. His new capital, Constantinople, would remain the seat of the
Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire until the coming of the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD.
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Before Constantine first came to power, the empire was divided into four parts, with an
“emperor” in charge of each. A masterful soldier, he soon overwhelmed his rivals and
gained control of everything. Before Constantine, Christians had been persecuted in the
eastern part of the Empire. However, he had a very tolerant attitude toward Christianity and
eventually made it the official religion of his armies. He was baptized on his deathbed.
Because Constantine made Christianity the official religion of his Empire, it spread rapidly
throughout the Roman world. Wherever the Roman army went—and the Roman army went
far and wide—Christianity went with it. When we get to Unit 4, we’ll see the same sort of
thing happening with Islam and the Arab armies.
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The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Rise of the Franks
400 AD - 800 AD
Study Guide Questions:
1. Who were “the barbarians” and where did they live?
2. How did the collapse of the Roman Empire occur?
3. Why did the collapse of the Roman Empire occur?
4. When the Germanic tribes crossed the Rhine and Danube Rivers, whom did they conquer?
(Hint: don’t just say “the Romans.”)
5. Who were the Franks and what is their significance in the story of Europe?
…For 400 years after Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, a Roman army of between 150,000 and
200,000 men held the German tribes in check on the east side of the Rhine and Danube rivers.
These “barbarians” (Goths, Franks, Burgundians, Vandals, and others) were squeezed
between the Romans and the Huns. The latter were fierce Mongolian warriors of the steppes
who had been marauding as far east as China (the Great Wall was built to hold them back)
and as far west as the Danube for hundreds of years. Of course, it was impossible for the
Roman army to keep all the Germanic people out, and over time various groups of them found
their way into the Empire, where life was better. Many barbarians joined the Roman army,
and a few, like the great general Stilicho, a Vandal, rose to positions of great power. Even the
famous emperor Constantine was the son of a Roman father and a German mother …
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In the early 5th Century AD, the Visigoths, and other German tribes broke across the
Danube River. The Romans eventually recalled all their armies from Britain and the
north to protect Rome itself. When they did that, German tribes also began to pour across
the Rhine.
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The Roman armies, led by Stilicho, stopped the Visigoths twice. However, in 410 AD,
Stilicho fell victim to a typical plot amongst the leaders of the Rome and was beheaded.
His old enemy, Alaric, king of the Visigoths, immediately besieged Rome and eventually
sacked the city. The Visigoths moved on to establish a kingdom in what is now Northern
Spain.
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Meanwhile, another German tribe, the Vandals, who had broken into the empire when the
Roman army left the Rhine, had moved rapidly thorough Gaul and established
themselves on the Iberian Peninsula. By 439, under pressure from the Visigoths to their
north, they had moved into North Africa and established a Vandal kingdom on the site of
the old city of Carthage. In 455, they, too, returned to Italy to sack Rome. The Roman
Empire moved closer to chaos.
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The collapse was completed in the last half of the 5th Century AD. Besides the Visigoths,
the Vandals and other Germanic tribes, the Huns under Attila had been creating havoc
within the empire. At one point, the emperor even sent the pope out to see if he could
calm Attila down. An army of Visigoths finally put an end to the threat from the Huns by
defeating Attila and his hordes at the battle of Troyes in 451 AD. The Huns retreated to
the lands they had made their own, modern day Hungary.
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The last emperor of the Roman Empire was deposed by the Germanic warlord Odoacer in
476 AD, the date which is usually assigned for the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
As you can see, though, the empire had been falling almost from its beginning. People
have loved speculating as to why this magnificent world power fell. The reasons given
for the fall are many: lead in their drinking water; too much luxury; pagan religions; the
Christian religion; degenerate emperors; too many poor people; etc. Some or all of these
factors may have played a part. More importantly, Roman success came to depend too
much on military power. Roman politics and government, which, in the era of the early
Republic, had been energetic and disciplined, became corrupt and weak. Citizens no
longer saw themselves as responsible, individually and collectively, for what happened.
In fact, “citizenship” was no longer the glorious thing it had once been. Despite its
brilliant engineering, its capable bureaucracy, its excellent legal code, its efficient and
brave armies, the Roman Empire fell apart. Nations ever since have seen this as a lesson.
Should we?