Rome

You, Roman, remember to rule the peoples with power (these will be your arts), to graft custom into peace, to spare the conquered, and to subdue the proud. . . .
Virgil, The Aeneid

Geography

• Like Greece, a peninsula
• However, allowed unity
• Apennines less rugged than Greek mountains

Etruscans and Latins

• Combination of ^ and Greeks
• war and collaboration
• Etruscans skilled stone and metal workers

Political Traditions

• Romulus and Remus
• drained swamps- lots of fertile land
• nearby drinking water and metal ores
• 15 miles up the Tiber River from the Mediterranean- trade/protection balance

Republic

• Tarquin the Proud
• Senate
• Plebians; Tribunes
• Consuls
• Rule of Law

Roman Expansion

• 1st the other Italian city-states
• Good leaders
• organized military
• citizenship

Roman Conquests

• Greece
• Gaul
• Punic Wars
• Syria, Egypt, Britain, Germany

Untitled Slide

Army

• Legions
• Soldiers
• Latifundia

Society

• Slaves (foreigners)
• Spartacus Rebellion
• Decline of small landholders
• Women

Civil Wars

• Generals
• Gaius Marius/Lucius Pompey Magnus/Julius Caesar
• Marc Antony/Octavian
• End of Republic

Roman Empire

• Octavian/Augustus Caesar
• Roads/Defenses
• Social classes- equestrians; senators; lower classes; slavery
• Women- rights increased
• Law

Literature and Philosophy

• Virgil; Horace; Ovid
• Livy; Tacitus
• Seneca
• Epicurianism; Stoicism

Religion

• Syncretism- Latin/Greek
• Pontifex Maximus
• Required religion; tolerance
• Emperor worship
• Personal religion

Other Religions

• Judaism- Second Temple Period
• Jerusalem captured in 37 BCE
• Christianity- Jesus; lower class
• Peter and Paul
• Monastaries
• Martyrdom
• Constantine
• St. Augustine

Trade

• Silk Roads
• Sea Routes
• New goods: stirrups; silk; spices; gold; new foods

Decline

• Over 1,000,000 to under 100,000
• epidemics- decline in trade; decline in taxes; decline in infrastructure and military
• Environmental problems
• Non-Romans
• Edward Gibbon

Legacies of the Romans