Download Rise of Rome Began with the City`s founding set by legend in 753

Rise of Rome
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Began with the City’s founding set by legend in 753 BC
In 509 BC, the Romans established a republic, a government of representatives chosen to act for
the people at large.
North America and France founded the republics modeled after the Roman republic.
From 509-250 BC, two struggles propelled the Roman history.
o Externally: the Romans set out to conquer the Italian peninsula, establishing themselves
as a leading Mediterranean power.
o Internally: the Romans struggled over the distribution of political power within the
republic.
o The struggle was won at first by the conservative upper class Patriciansm who ruled
through the Roman Senate. Gradually, the opposing class of poor commoners (called
plebians) gained political power and constitutional recognition of their rights.
Once the Romans achieved the control of Italy, they turned to subdue their Mediterranean
rivals. Rome’s chiefs opponent was North African commercial and naval power of Carthage.
The Romans defeated the Carthaginians in a series of three wars called the Punic wars (264-146
BC) the last of which ended in the vengeful razing of Carthage and Rome’s total domination of
the western Mediterranean.
In 146 BC, Romans conquered the Greek Capitol of Corinth. In the decades that followed,
Rome’s empire absorbed virtually the entire Hellenstic world, with its wealth, libraries, and art
treasures.
Art of an Empire
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After Julius Caesar, virtually every Roman leader strove to leave a memory of himself in stone.
The emperors of the Roman Empires built statues and buildings that were both political
advertisements and artistic statements, impressing upon their people a message of their power
and generosity expressed through the styles of classical and Hellenistic Greece.
During the reign of Augustus Caesar (Octavian) The art of the Roman Empires began to flourish.
o Artists skillfully adapted classical Greek sculpture to the emperor’s propaganda
purposes.
o Augustus and his successors built the elaborate new complexes at the center of Rome,
the grandest of which was the forum of Trajan, built at the height of Rome’s power in
the second century AD.
Catullus
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(C. 84- c. 54 B.C)
An urbane, versatile poet.
Wrote a variety of wedding songs, elegies, and gossipy personal lyrics.
Studied the Greeks well, among his works is a translation of a fragment by Sappho.
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Best Remembered as a love poet for the twenty five poems concerning his love affair
with “lesbia” actually an aristocratic woman named Clodia.
His poems frankly disclosed his feelings from the foolish enthusiasm of new love to the
final bitter recrimination.
Horace
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((65-8 BC)
Wrote two books of satires in the mid 30’s bc
o One Satire recounts a journey with friends (including virgil) while another tells
humorously of his attempts to escape a borrish friend.
Most famous Satire compared the virtues of City and country life, ending with the well known
fable “The town mouse and the Country Mouse.”
Preferred country living and retired to an estate given him by a patron. His satires and other
writings would perhaps become the most widely read literature of ancient Rome.
Juvenal
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(C. AD 55-C. 127)
Savagely ironic in Criticism of Roman Life
Attacks the corruption and hypocrisy of Roman society at the height of its wealth and self
indulgences.
Few escaped Juvenal’s satirical whip: Sexual depravity, the extravagant banquets of the rich;
influences of Greek immigrants, and the folly of tyrannical emperors.
His mockery reaches a climax in the famous tenth satire, where he exposes the vanity of human
desire for wealth and fame.