Transcript File

THE REPUBLIC (509-31 B.C.)
Following his expulsion from Rome, Tarquinius Superbus enlisted the help of
the Etruscan king, Lars Posenna. When Porsenna’s army approached Rome,
Horatius Cocles, with two companions, volunteered to defend the bridge over
the Tiber whilst those behind him demolished it. He sent his companions back
just before its collapse, afterwards swimming back to safety himself.
In about 508 B.C., whilst Rome was under siege by Lars Porsenna’s army, a young
man named Gaius Mucius volunteered to assassinate the king but mistakenly killed
his secretary. When he discovered the mistake he thrust his right hand into the fire
and held it there to demonstrate that he did not fear punishment. He and his
descendants afterwards bore the surname Scaevola (`left-handed’)
In about 500 B.C., as part of a peace treaty with the Etruscans that
followed the expulsion of Tarquin, Cloelia was one of twenty children of
leading citizens handed over to the enemy as hostages. She led he
fellow captives in escaping from the Etruscan camp and swimming
across the Tiber to freedom.
Cincinnatus was a Roman leader who was supposedly summoned from
his ploughing to become dictator (i.e. chief executive for six months) in
an military emergency in the 5th century B.C. The American city of
Cincinnati is named after him.
In 390 B.C. the city was taken by the Gauls, a Celtic people who at that time occupied
much of western Europe, including northern Italy. The enemy failed, however, to
capture the Capitol because sacred geese gave the alarm as they were scaling the hill.
The Romans had to pay an indemnity to get the Gauls to leave but they recovered and
by the end of the century were in control of the whole of Italy.
In the early 3rd century B.C., some of the Greeks who had settled in
southern Italy turned to King Pyrrhus of Epirus (a kingdom in western
Greece) for help. Phyrrhus beat the Romans several times but his `Pyrrhic
victories’ killed so many of his army that he had to withdraw.
At this time, the western Mediterranean, including the coast of Spain, was
dominated by Carthage, a city in north Africa (in modern Tunisia), founded by
colonists from the Phoenician (Lebanese) city of Tyre, whose Semitic language,
closely related to Hebrew and Arabic, was known to the Romans as `Punic’
(lingua Punica)
According to the legend elaborated in Vergil’s epic poem, the Aeneid, theTrojan
prince Aeneas, whose descendants were to found Rome, was received in Carthage
by its founding queen, Dido. The pair were briefly lovers but Aeneas then sailed off
to fulfill his destiny in Italy and Dido committed suicide in despair.
The First and Second Punic Wars (264 to 241 and 218-202 B.C.), which began
with a dispute between Rome and Carthage over spheres of influence in Sicily,
left Rome the dominant power in the western Mediterranean. There is a good
summary of the conflict available at
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/punicwars.html
The First Punic War forced Rome to develop a full-scale naval
capability for the first time. Under the terms of the peace treaty, Rome
received full control of Sicily but she subsequently insisted on taking
Corsica and Sardinia also
Embittered by her defeat, the Carthaginians sought to extend their
Spanish empire in compensation. Hamilcar, the general who led the
Carthage’s forces in Spain,, is said to have made his young son,
Hannibal, swear undying enmity towards Rome.
Hannibal succeeded to his father’s position in Spain and Rome declared war on
Carthage again in 218 B.C., when she refused an ultimatum to halt an offensive
against Saguntum, a Spanish city Rome had accepted as an ally. Hannibal
then led his forces overland to attack Rome’s power in Italy itself.
Despite an unprecedented march over the Alps, the mountains separating Italy from the rest of
Europe, and several crushing defeats inflicted on Roman armies, Hannibal was unable either to put
Rome itself under siege or to win over her north Italian allies. He was finally recalled to Africa when
a Roman force under Publius Cornelius Scipio (later granted the additional name `Africanus’)
threatened Carthage. Scipio won the war for Rome by defeating Hannibal in one of the most
decisive battles of European history at Zama in 202 B.C..
Although Carthage was no longer a real threat, some Romans felt there
was still a danger it might revive and so, using as a pretext a dispute
between Carthage and Rome’s north African allies, the city was finally
destroyed in 146 B.C. and its inhabitants killed or enslaved.
During the war with Hannibal, Macedon, one of the Greek-ruled kingdoms into
which Alexander the Great’s empire had been divided, had intervened on the
Carthaginian side. Rome sought revenge and then became progressively more
involved in disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean, which she dominated by the
middle of the 1st century B.C.
In 133 B.C. Tiberius Gracchus, who had tried to bring in reforms to help
landless citizens, was murdered by his political opponents. This
ushered in a period of increasing conflict between `Populares’ (`the
People’s party’) and `Optimates’ (defenders of the intersests of the
aristocracy)
In 90 B.C. many of Rome’s Italian allies, angered by her refusal to grant
them full citizenship, revolted and tried to set up an independent state.
They issued a coin showing the Italian bull trampling the Roman wolf.
The war ended with a Roman victory in 88 but they then granted the
allies the citizenship rights they had originally demanded.
In 88 B.C., the Roman general Sulla led his army into Rome itself to reverse the decision
to transfer command in a war against King Mithridates in Asia Minor to a rival leader,
Marius. Soldiers increasingly saw themselves as followers of their commander, who they
expected to provide them with land after their retirement, rather than as servants of the
state. Sulla was the victor in the civil war that followed his return from the East in 83.
Sertorius, a former ally of Marius, established himself as an independent
ruler in Spain and sought an alliance with King Mithridates in the eastern
Mediterranean but he was assassinated in 72 B.C. and control by the
government in Rome re-established.
In 73-71 B.C. Rome struggled to put down a slave rebellion led by
Spartacus. After the final defeat of the rebels by Crassus, thousands
were crucified along the sides of the Via Appia. The picture is from the
1960 film starring Kirk Douglas
In 67 B.C., Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey), a general who had been one of Sulla’s
followers, was given sweeping powers to rid the Mediterranean of pirates. The following
year he defeated King Mithridates of Pontus in Asia Minor, who had fought three wars
against the Romans over the previous twenty years.
In 63 B.C. a conspiracy to take over the government was formed by an
indebted aristocrat, Cataline, who fled the city after his denunciation in the
senate by the consul, Cicero. Cicero had some of Cataline’s collaborators
executed without trial and Cataline himself was defeated in battle.