Roman Empire
Ancient Rome exercises a powerful grip on the imagination of modern man. It was a sophisticated and powerful civilization, which has had a profound influence on all later Western societies.
Timeline and Overview
Timeline of Roman history:
753 BC - traditional date for the founding of Rome
509 BC - traditional date for the founding of the Roman Republic
390 BC - traditional date for the sack of Rome by the Gauls
264-241 and 218-202 BC - The First and Second Punic Wars (the great wars with Carthage)
83-31 BC - period of Civil Wars leads to the fall of the Roman Republic
27 BC - Augustus establishes himself as the first of the Roman emperors
117 - the Roman Empire reaches its largest extent
312 - the conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity
410 - Rome is sacked by the Goths
476 - the last Roman emperor in the West is deposed
(For more detailed timelines, see the timelines for the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.)
Location
The city of Rome is located in central Italy, but the empire it came to rule covered the entire Mediterranean basin, together with much of western Europe. At its greatest extent in stretched from present-day northern England to southern Egypt, and from the Atlantic coast to the shores of the Persian Gulf.
Rome’s location in central Italy placed it squarely within the Mediterranean cluster of civilizations. The most famous of these was that of the Ancient Greeks, but others included those of the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians and the Etruscans, plus several lesser-known peoples such as the Lycians.
In its early centuries Rome was particularly influenced by the powerful Etruscan civilization to its north, from which it acquired many aspects of its culture. As Rome’s reach expanded, it came into direct contact with the Greeks. From then on Greek influence would become an increasingly important element within Roman life. However, the Romans would give Greek culture their own slant, giving it a new grandeur which can be seen in Roman remains throughout the empire.
Economy and society
Roman society originated as a society of small farmers. However, as it grew more powerful and more extensive, it became one of the most urbanized societies in the pre-industrial world.
At the height of its empire, Rome was probably the largest city on the planet, with more than a million inhabitants. The empire had a handful of other cities with several hundred thousand inhabitants, and many other large and wealthy urban settlements.
These cities had some features which would have looked very familiar to us: high rise apartment blocks, overcrowded slums, busy streets, plazas, imposing public administrative buildings, and so on.
Roman cities
The Roman Empire contained around 2000 "cities". For the Romans, cities were communities which ran their own affairs, and constituted the main building-blocks of the empire. Every free person in the empire belonged to a city - which may not necessarily have been where he or she was living at any given time, but was his or her "home town".
The Roman city was built around a forum. This was an open space surrounded by colonnades and public buildings. It functioned as a market place, political meeting point and social center. The public buildings surrounding it would include the main temple, the basilica (the main government building where the town council met and town administration was carried on), the law courts (if separate from the Basilica), and the main public baths of the city.
Stretching away from the forum were the cities streets, forming a grid pattern so that a map of a city would look like a multitude of square blocks. Here would be situated the homes of rich and poor, the shops, cafes and workshops of the town, more temples and public baths, and a theater, maybe two.
Unlike Greek theaters, Roman ones were large, free-standing buildings of semi-circular design, containing tiered ranks of seats.
The city would be surrounded by walls, usually made of stone. Fortified gateways pierced the walls to allow people and traffic to pass in and out.
Water was brought to the city, sometimes from miles away, along aqueducts. It was fed into public fountains dotting the city, from which poorer families drew their water; and also into private wells in the houses of the rich. The amount of fresh water available in an average Roman town was far greater than in later centuries, right up to two hundred years ago.
Roman cities also had public drains and sewers to take the city's waste away, and public toilets were available.
Outside the walls was the amphitheater. Here, wild animal shows and gladiatorial fights were shown. Amphitheaters were built like the theaters, but were circular rather than semi-circular in design.
Many cities were located on the coast or by a large, navigable river. Here, a harbor would be situated, consisting of quays built of wood or stone for loading and unloading vessels, and docks for repairing or building ships.
Surrounding the city was the territory which it controlled. Hamlets and villages were scattered across the landscape, whose people came to the city for market or other special occasions. Villas of the rich were also to be found - large farmhouses set in country estates worked by slaves or tenant farmers. Some villas were truly magnificent, palaces set in beautiful parks.
Agriculture
As in all pre-modern societies, the Roman economy was based primarily on agriculture. For the Romans, this was then typical Mediterranean farming of the ancient world, cultivating grains, vines and olives, and keeping sheep, goat and cattle.
Landholdings were very small by modern standards, the majority no more than a few acres in size. An estate of 100 acres was considered large. In the late Republic, however, many wealthy Romans developed huge slave-run plantations.
As the city of Rome grew into a huge imperial capital, its population was fed by grain imported from overseas. However, there was still a great demand for vegetables, olives, wine and other farm produce. As a result, the countryside near Rome was given over to intensive farming and market gardening. Manuals on agriculture were written to spread efficient methods of food production.
Trade and industry
Economically, the "PaxRomana" which the Romans established around the Mediterranean was very favorable to trade. Long-distance maritime trade was more extensive at the time of the empire than at any time before the nineteenth century.
This expansion in trade encouraged the development of farms and estates growing crops for export, of craftsmen specializing in export goods, and the growth of highly organized trading operations spanning the empire.
One fact which had a major impact on trade was the system of grain fleets which carried grain from Egypt and North Africa to Rome, to feed the population of the capital. This was set up by the emperor Augustus, so that the Roman poor - hundreds of thousands of them - could get free bread each day.
Scholars used to think that this massive operation acted as a drain on the economy of the empire - it was, after all, paid for out of taxes. More recently, they have begun to view it as having acted as a huge stimulus to trade. The ships which carried the grain would also have carried other goods, which would have subsidized the long-distance trade of the empire.
Quite apart from the grain supply, the sheer wealth which flowed into the enormous imperial capital would have boosted commerce and industry right around the empire.
The volume of trade in the empire brought into being the most advanced financial system in the ancient world. Banking had been practiced in Rome since at least the days of the 2nd Punic War (218-202 BC). The large-scale military operations of the later Republic also brought into being firms of contractors which were involved in supplying armies and undertaking tax-farming operations in the provinces. Associated with this was the rise of high finance, and what appears to be the arrival of modern-style stocks and shares: the firms of financiers were joint-stock companies issuing bonds and shares which apparently fluctuated in price, just as modern stocks do. This financial industry continued to be active into the imperial period, financing the grain fleets, large-scale mining and other major business operations.
This scale of Roman commercial activity would have facilitated an expansion in industrial output, and there is strong evidence that this, too, was at a level not seen again in Europe until the Nineteenth century. The copper mines which developed in Spain, for example, were huge by pre-modern standards.
Most industrial production took place in the small workshops of potters, blacksmiths, bronze workers, carpenters, leather workers, cobblers, lamp makers and other craftsmen. Family members plus some slaves would make up the workforce in most of these. However, some workshops were much larger. The armories which supplied the Roman army employed hundreds of workers, mostly slaves.
Social classes
Roman society changed enormously over time as Rome expanded from small city-state to huge empire Throughout almost all Roman history, however, the basic class distinctions of Roman society remained in place.
At the top stood the senators - members of the senate (the council of state) - and their families. In early Rome, these were probably all members of the class of Patricians, a group of hereditary aristocrats; as time went by, however, membership of the senate became more broadly based, as men from Plebeian families were enrolled.
Below the senatorial class came the equites. These were originally those in the army who could afford to own a horse (equus). Over time, however, they became a numerous "middle class" between senators and the rest of the citizen body.
Below them were the ordinary Roman citizens. Their numbers grew vastly over time, from a few thousand to many millions; and spread right around the empire.An