Y8 History

EmpiresEmpires

The Roman Empire

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Last week we looked at what an empire Last week we looked at what an empire waswas

• This week we going to look at the Roman Empire

• We said that an empire was• a group of countries under a single

authority • This true but there is another meaning that is

equally true.• the country ruled over by an emperor or

empress• And Rome was both of these.

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So how did it all begin?So how did it all begin?

• The land we now call Italy was governed by 2 groups, the Etruscans in the north and the Greeks in the south. Rome was a crucial mid point as it was a crossing point of the River Tiber, so the people around Rome were well used to being bullied by Etruscans in particular.

• Since 6th Century BC the city state of Rome had been ruled over by kings of Etruscan choosing, and when one family, the Tarquins, went too far, the Romans rebelled and took over Rome for themselves in 509BC.

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The Republic is formedThe Republic is formed

• How it was ruled:• There were 2 groups – • The senate made up of 100 senators who were chosen from

the aristocracy or patricians as the Romans called them.• The assembly which was made up of all the freemen of

Rome who were not Patricians. They were gathered into family groups called tribes and whenever there was a vote, each tribe took voted with one vote, based on a majority decision within their tribe.

• In charge were the 2 consuls and various other officials that held power over assorted aspects of .Roman life. But these were only voted in for 1 year before they needed to face re-election. While they put forward their suggestions, they had to be supported in these ideas by both group.

• Thet called this arrangement a republic – meaning ‘ in the public knowledge’

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In the beginning ..In the beginning ..• They felt they needed to get involved in a number of wars for

defensive reasons. The Etruscans and other tribes on the Italian peninsula were a continuing threat to Rome.

• Soon, however, the Romans were moving to gain control over neighbouring territory in order to neutralize the threat of attack.

• Their logic was that control over these territories would remove any potential attack from the people occupying them and at the same time provide a buffer region between themselves and potential attackers.

• Roman conquest, then, was pursued largely for Roman security.

• But the end result of this process would be, first, the conquest of the entire Italian peninsula by 265 BC, and then the conquest of the world as it was known at the time!

• The Roman Empire was an accident, so to speak. Only in its later stages was the Roman Empire a deliberate objective.

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The land Rome controlled 218 BCThe land Rome controlled 218 BC

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The land Rome controlled 100 BCThe land Rome controlled 100 BC

• Clearly becoming an empire by the first definition, but they would have called themselves a republic still.

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As Roman took over more land, things As Roman took over more land, things went from bad to worse ..went from bad to worse ..

• The influx of booty and tribute from the conquests created a class of extremely rich Romans – senators who were sent to the wars as generals and governors, and business men (knights) who farmed the taxes of the new provinces and provisioned the armies.

• Above all, each new victory brought in thousands of slaves: during the last two centuries BC the Mediterranean slave trade became an enormous business, with Rome and Italy being the main destination markets. During this period Roman society became a more slave-based society than any other before or since in history.

• Many slaves were set to work on the land of the senators and other wealthy men, who set about developing their estates along new, much more businesslike lines.

• The ordinary farmers could not compete with these new estates, and more and more small farmers lost their lands to their rich neighbours. The estates grew larger, and more small farmers left the land. Many of them headed for Rome, where they swelled the ranks of a growing class of landless and rootless people.

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Murderous PoliticsMurderous Politics

• The combination of great wealth and mass poverty in Rome itself poisoned the political climate there.

• Political gang-masters put votes and mobs up for sale, corruption spread, and Roman politics became dominated by feuding factions.

• In 133 BC a famous incident led to the death of a reformist politician, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the first murder in Roman politics for centuries.

• The death of his brother, Gaius, in similar circumstances followed ten years later. Factionalism and strife steadily increased thereafter.

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Professional Armies, Ambitious GeneralsProfessional Armies, Ambitious Generals

• The small holder had been the traditional mainstay of the Roman army, buying his own weapons and taking his turn with the troops.

• This system had already come under strain with Rome’s armies spending years abroad on foreign campaigns; indeed it was the lack of menfolk at home that often undermined a smallholding family’s ability to keep its farm.

• With the decline of the numbers of smallholders the filling of the armies by this class became impossible. To deal with this problem, the consul Marius opened recruitment to the landless classes (105 BC).

• This had the effect of tying the interests of the soldiers much more tightly to their general than before – they now looked to him to ensure that they were provided them with land after their service had ended.

• Commanders could count on his soldiers putting their loyalty to him before their loyalty to the state, and the great Roman armies being fielded from this time on behaved increasingly like the generals’ private forces.

• In an effort to control the generals, their opponents in the senate would try to block their efforts to achieve land distribution in favour of their men, with the predictable result of throwing the generals and their men even more closely together.

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War with the AlliesWar with the Allies

• The last phase of the Republic, then, was dominated a succession of struggles between leading generals and their opponents in the senate on the one hand, and between the rival generals themselves on the other.

• But what set the stage for this phase was a fierce and entirely needless war between Rome and many of her long-standing Italian allies, in 90 BC.

• This came about through the senate’s tendency to treat the allies with increasing arrogance, and reduce their citizens rights.

• The Allies’ frustrations boiled over into outright war, which belatedly prompted the senate to grant all Italians (south of the Po) full Roman citizenship. Many cities laid down their arms, but a few hill tribes were not defeated until 88 BC.

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Civil WarCivil War• In the aftermath, the famous old general Marius attempted to have

himself elected by the People’s Assembly to the command in the East. • The general who had in fact been appointed to the command by the

senate, Cornelius Sulla, then marched his army to Rome and drove Marius into exile. He then set off for the eastern provinces.

• As soon as Sulla was gone Marius and his supporters returned, seized control of Rome and carried out a vicious purge of their enemies. Marius died shortly after this, but his supporters retained influence in Roma.

• Later Sulla returned with his victorious army and in his turn seized control of Rome.

• He had himself appointed dictator, and embarked on a reign of terror against his real and perceived enemies – much of the property confiscated was distributed to his veterans.

• Sulla also carried out a programme of reforms, aimed essentially at strengthening the power of the senate, and then, in 79 BC, retired from public life.

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Pompey and Caesar Pompey and Caesar

• The Rise of Pompey• By the time of Sulla's retirement, another general was making his mark,

Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey). After a long, gruelling war Pompey defeated Sertorius, one of Marius’ supporters who had been governing Spain virtually as an independent ruler for several years

• Pompey was then appointed to deal with a huge slave revolt led by an energetic and able leader, Spartacus, in southern Italy.

• Pompey then marched his army near Rome and demanded the consulship for the coming year but he was far too young.

• Instead Pompey was given the supreme command against the pirates, who, in the chaos of the preceding years, had established themselves throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

• He achieved this in short order, and was appointed to the supreme command in the east,

• Having sorted out the little problems in this area too, he returned and spent several frustrating years trying to get the senate to give land to his veterans (having made the honourable mistake of disbanding his army first).

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The Rise of CaesarThe Rise of Caesar

• At Rome, domestic politics was coloured by the continual faction fighting between leading senators, spiced by gang warfare in support of one party or the other.

• Another rising politician and general was C. Julius Caesar, who was elected consul in 59 BC after a successful tour of duty as governor in Spain.

• During his term in office, he negotiated an informal alliance between himself, Pompey and Crassus: Crassus was to receive the eastern command, he was to receive the command in Gaul, and Pompey was to have the land distribution in favour of his veterans so long denied him. Their combined influence and wealth created an unstoppable political force, and they all got what they wanted from it. They renewed their compact in 56 BC.

• In the next few years Caesar conquered the whole of Gaul and even invaded Britain twice (55 and 54 BC). During this he acquired an unparalleled reputation as a brilliant general, and great popularity with the ordinary people of Rome, but his opponents in the senate increasingly tried to have him recalled to face trial for various misdemeanours.

• After Crassus was killed in the east,Pompey and Caesar soon fell out. Many senators were by now getting thoroughly alarmed at the rising popularity and power of Caesar, a feeling fully shared by Pompey.

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Caesar v PompeyCaesar v Pompey

• In 49 BC, having been recalled from Gaul to face his enemies in the senate, Caesar chose instead to march on Rome with his army (the first time that a provincial army had “invaded” Italy in support of a Roman general). His enemies fled to Greece, where Pompey raised an army. Caesar followed with his army, and defeated Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus (48). Pompey then fled to Egypt where he was assassinated on the orders of Ptolemy, king of Egypt.

• Several more years of bloody fighting in Africa and Spain were needed to overcome up opposition to his rule, but by 45 BC he was in complete control of the Roman state, like Sulla taking the office of dictator. He showed great clemency to his enemies, and carried out some reforms within Rome and the provinces. However, his time was short - he was assassinated by a group of his enemies in 44 BC.

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History of Ancient Rome: End of the History of Ancient Rome: End of the RepublicRepublic

• The Assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC sounded the starting pistol for the final round in the struggles that were the death throws of the Roman Republic.

• Antony and Octavian• The assassination of Caesar set the stage for another civil war. The assassins of

Caesar fled to Greece (43 BC), where they set about raising an army. Caesar’s former lieutenants, Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) and C. Octavianus (Octavian, Caesar’s grand nephew and adopted son), and Aemilius Lepidus, formed the Second Triumvirate (this time a formal one, with the specified aim of “Settling the Constitution”), and carried out a widespread purge of thousands of senators and knights in Rome and throughout Italy, distributing the confiscated lands amongst their followers. Antony and Octavian then took an army to Greece in pursuit of Caesar’s assassins, and defeated them at Philippi (42).

• After Philippi, the triumvirs divided the Roman world between them: Octavian took Italy, Gaul and Spain, Lepidus took Africa, and Antony took all the eastern provinces.

• The Triumvirate almost immediately began to break down. When Lepidus proved restive at his small share, Octavian crushed him and stripped him even of that. He then skilfully used Antony’s infatuation with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, to present him as an enemy of Rome’s true interests, and prepared for war.

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The Final RoundThe Final Round

• This finally came in 31 BC, when the fleets of the two opposing sides met at Actium, off the Greek coast. Octavian won (thanks mainly to the generalship of his lieutenant, Vipsanius Agrippa), leaving Antony and Cleopatra to sail away and commit suicide in Egypt.

• Octavian followed up his victory by occupying Egypt, which now became a part of the Roman empire – became, in fact, Octavian’s private estate.

• The First Emperor• Octavian was now sole master of the Roman world, and for a few years

experimented with various ways of ruling in a manner that would be acceptable to all parties. Finally, in 27 BC he took the name Augustus, and remodelled the constitution in such a way that kept the traditional forms of the Republic (senate, historic magistracies and so on) but in fact concentrated effective power (especially overwhelming military force) in his own hands. This “Augustan Settlement”, as it has been called, provided the Roman world with a framework of government which lasted more than two hundred years. Octavian, or Augustus as we should now call him, was thus the first of the long line of Roman emperors who were to rule the Roman world until…well, until AD 1453.

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• This turmoil has now been ended (31 BC) by the first of the Roman emperors, Augustus, the adopted son of Rome's most famous general Julius Caesar.

• In all but name, he has replaced the old republic with a monarchy, concentrating effective (i.e. military) power in his own hands. Augustus' statesmanship has brought about peace and stability, which will hold for two centuries or more with only one brief intermission. With peace has come an increase in trade, and the Graeco-Roman cities of Europe and the Mediterranean have entered a phase of prosperity and expansion

• Now we have an empire in both senses – a large number of states all under the control of one person

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1 AD1 AD

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200 AD200 AD

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However, just having one person in However, just having one person in charge did not stop all the squabblingcharge did not stop all the squabbling

• There were over 140 Emperors in 500 years – most of them did not die from natural causes.

• Eventually over the next few centuries, the Roman Empire collapsed

This was also know as the Byzantine

Empire

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Now for homework over the next 3 Now for homework over the next 3 weeksweeks

• You will lead one presentation and join in at least one other.

• This will be part of your end of year exam mark.

• What you may not choose: the Romans – ‘cos we have just done it The Moguls empire under Genghis Khan – I have

that one ready for week 6 The part of the British empire concerning India - -

this is the basis of the next unit!