Roman Empire (1 gen 27 anni a. C. – 1 gen 284 anni)

Descrizione:

"In 31 B.C.E., Octavian’s forces defeated the combined forces of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in Greece, but the two escaped. Octavian pursued them to Egypt, and they committed suicide rather than fall into his hands...For his success, the Senate in 27 B.C.E. gave Octavian the name Augustus, meaning “revered one.” The Senate did not mean this to be a decisive break with tradition, but...that date is generally used to mark the end of the Roman Republic and the start of the Roman Empire."

“Augustus, now the ruler of Rome, recognized that ideals and traditions were important to Romans. Instead of creating a new form of government, he left the republic officially intact, but increasingly held more power himself.”


HOW DID AUGUSTUS AND ROMAN ELITES CREATE A FOUNDATION FOR THE ROMAN EMPIRE?

“After Augustus (r. 27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.) ended the civil wars...he faced the monumental problems of reconstruction. He first had to reconstruct a functioning government. Next he had to pay his armies for their services, and care for the welfare of the provinces. Then he had to address the danger of various groups on Rome’s European frontiers. Augustus was highly successful in meeting these challenges..."

AUGUSTUS AND HIS ALLIES
“Augustus claimed that he was restoring the republic, but he actually transformed the government into one in which he held increasing amounts of power…Augustus was assisted in this by senators and other members of the Roman elite who wanted to play an active role in governance. Augustus and his successors turned for advice to a circle of trusted friends. Many of these were from senatorial families or those just beneath them in Rome’s social hierarchy, who were called equites…”

“An ambitious young man from a senatorial or equestrian family who wished to gain power and wealth generally first served as an official somewhere in the Italian peninsula. He then spent time as a high military officer, and if he was successful, he gained a post as a governor, high official, or military leader in the provinces, taking the Roman legal system and Roman culture with him. He then might try to gain a seat in the Senate, though Augustus limited these seats to around six hundred and set high minimum property requirements, so competition was fierce. Sons of sitting senators did not just inherit their fathers’ seats but had to serve in the administration or high in the army first, and then run a campaign.”

“Toward the end of his reign, he closed the popular assemblies, so ordinary Romans could make their opinions known to him only when they saw him in person at games or during his speeches. At these times vast crowds of thousands organized themselves to clap, stomp, and shout their opinions, but these were never as important in determining policy as the opinions of Augustus’s intimates.”

“Augustus fit his own position into the republican constitution not by creating a new office for himself but by gradually taking over many of the offices that traditionally had been held by separate people. He was elected consul…As a patrician, Augustus was ineligible to be a tribune, but the Senate gave Augustus the powers of a tribune anyway…Recognizing the importance of religion, he had himself named pontifex maximus, or chief priest.”

On using the word imperator: “Here again Augustus and his successors used familiar language to make change seem less dramatic. They never adopted the title “king” (rex in Latin), as this would have been seen as too great a break with Roman traditions.”

“Augustus’s title of imperator reflects the source of most of his power: his control and command of the army. He could declare war, he controlled deployment of the Roman army, and he paid the soldiers’ wages. He granted bonuses and gave veterans retirement benefits. He could override any governor’s decision about military matters in a province. Building on the earlier military reforms of Marius and Julius Caesar, Augustus further professionalized the military, making the army a recognized institution of government.”

“Soldiers who were Roman citizens were organized into legions, units of about five thousand men. These legionaries were generally volunteers; they received a salary and training under career officers who advanced in rank according to experience, ability, valor, and length of service. Legions were often transferred from place to place as the need arose. Soldiers served twenty-year terms, plus five in the reserves, and on retiring were to be given a discharge bonus of cash or a piece of land.”

“Like the armies of Marius and Julius Caesar, the army that Augustus developed was loyal to him as a person, not as the head of the Roman state. This would lead to trouble later, but the basics of the political and military system that Augustus created lasted fairly well for almost three centuries.”

ROMAN EXPANSION
“One of the most significant aspects of Augustus’s reign was Roman expansion into central and eastern Europe and consolidation of holdings in western Europe”
-completed conquest of Spain
-founded twelve new towns in Gaul

“The German frontier along the Rhine River was the scene of hard fighting…But in 9 C.E. some twenty thousand Roman troops were annihilated at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest by an alliance of Germanic tribes led by a Germanic officer who had acquired Roman citizenship and a Roman military education. Military historians see this major defeat as an important turning point in Roman expansion, because although Roman troops penetrated the area of modern Austria, southern Bavaria, and western Hungary, the Romans never again sent a major force east of the Rhine.”

“Romans then conquered the regions of modern Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania in the Balkans, which gave them a land-based link between the eastern and western Mediterranean. After all the conquests under his rule, Augustus left explicit instructions in his will that Roman territory not be expanded any further, as there was plenty to do trying to subdue, Romanize, and properly govern the huge territory Rome had. Most of his successors paid no attention to his wishes.”

“Within the area along the empire’s northern border the legionaries and auxiliaries built fortified camps…Traders began to frequent the frontier and to do business with the people who lived there. Thus Roman culture — the rough-and-ready kind found in military camps — gradually spread into the north, blending with local traditions through interactions and intermarriage. As a result, for the first time central and northern Europe came into direct and continuous contact with Mediterranean culture.”

“Although the pax Romana was not peaceful for everyone, under Augustus and many of his successors the Romans were often able to continue doing what they had under the republic: create a sense of loyalty in conquered people by granting at least some of them citizenship and other privileges. Augustus also respected local customs and ordered his governors to do the same. Roman governors applied Roman law to Romans living in their territories, but they let local people retain their own laws. As long as they provided taxes, did not rebel, and supplied a steady stream of recruits for Roman armies, people could continue to run their political and social lives as they had before Roman conquest. This policy was crucial in holding the empire together.”

MARRIAGE AND MORALITY
“Augustus promoted marriage and childbearing through legal changes that released free women and freedwomen (female slaves who had been freed) from male guardianship if they had given birth to a certain number of children. Men and women who were unmarried or had no children were restricted in the inheritance of property. Adultery, defined as sex with a married woman or with a woman under male guardianship, was made a crime, not simply the private family matter it had been.”

“Same-sex relationships among men were acceptable in Roman society as long as there was an age and status difference between partners and certain sexual norms were followed. Roman citizens were expected never to be sexually penetrated, for this would mean a loss of what was termed integritas. Thus a respectable Roman man could penetrate whomever he wished and still maintain his masculinity, but losing his integritas brought shame on himself and his family and could mean a loss of status.”

“We do not know very much about same-sex relationships among women in Rome, though court gossip and criticism of powerful women, including the wives of Augustus’s successors, sometimes included charges of such relationships…Most of these were in fact personal attacks on the men who were supposed to control them, however, rather than statements about the women’s actual behavior.”

HOW DID THE ROMAN STATE DEVELOP AFTER AUGUSTUS?
"Augustus’s success in creating solid political institutions was tested by those who ruled immediately after him, a dynasty historians later called the Julio-Claudians (27 B.C.E.–68 C.E.) after the families who comprised it. The incompetence of Nero, one of the Julio-Claudians, and his failure to deal with the army generals allowed a military commander, Vespasian (veh-SPAY-zhuhn), to claim the throne and establish a new dynasty, the Flavians (69–96 C.E.), who reasserted order. The Flavians were followed by a series of relatively successful emperors, the Nerva-Antonine dynasty (96–192 C.E.), and Rome entered a period of political stability, prosperity, and relative peace that lasted until the end of the second century C.E."

WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE IN THE CITY OF ROME AND IN THE PROVINCES?

“Roads and secure sea-lanes linked the empire in one vast web, creating a network of commerce and communication. Trade and production flourished in the provinces, and Romans came into indirect contact with China.”

LIFE IN IMPERIAL ROME
“Rome was truly an extraordinary city, and with a population of over a million it may have been the largest city in the world. Although it boasted stately palaces and beautiful residential areas, most people lived in shoddily constructed houses. They took whatever work was available, producing food, clothing, construction materials, and the many other items”

“Many residents of the city of Rome were slaves, who ranged from highly educated household tutors or government officials and widely sought sculptors to workers who engaged in hard physical tasks. Slaves sometimes attempted to flee their masters, but those who failed in their escape attempts were returned to their masters and often branded on their foreheads.”

“individual Romans did sometimes free their slaves. Often these were house slaves who had virtually become members of the family and who often stayed with their former owner’s family after being freed. Manumission was limited by law, however, in part because freeing slaves made them citizens, allowing them to receive public grain and gifts of money,”

“Seafood was a favorite item, as the Romans normally ate meat only at festivals. While poor people ate salt fish, the more prosperous dined on rare fish, oysters, squid, and eels. Wine was the common drink, and the rich often enjoyed rare vintages imported from abroad.”

“Daughters learned how to manage the house, and sons learned the basics of their future calling from their fathers, who also taught them the use of weapons for military service. Boys boxed, swam, and learned to ride when possible, all to increase their strength, while giving them basic skills. Wealthy boys gained formal education from tutors or schools, generally favoring rhetoric and law for a political career.”

APPROACHES TO URBAN PROBLEMS
“Fire and crime were serious problems in the city…and sanitation was poor. Numerous inscriptions record prohibitions against dumping human refuse and even cadavers on the grounds of sanctuaries and cemeteries. Private houses generally lacked toilets, so people used chamber pots.”

“In the second century C.E…. engineers built an elaborate system that collected sewage from public baths, the ground floors of buildings, and public latrines. They also built hundreds of miles of aqueducts, sophisticated systems of canals, channels, and pipes, most of them underground, that brought freshwater into the city from the surrounding hills.”

“The most important medical researcher and physician working in imperial Rome was Galen (ca. 129–ca. 200 C.E.), a Greek born in modern-day Turkey…He promoted the idea that imbalances among various bodily fluids caused illness and recommended bloodletting as a cure. This would remain a standard treatment in Western medicine until the eighteenth century. His research into the nervous system and the operation of muscles — most of which he conducted on animals, because the Romans forbade dissections of human cadavers — proved to be more accurate than did his ideas about the circulation of fluids. So did his practical advice on the treatment of wounds, much of which grew out of his and others’ experiences with soldiers on the battlefield.”

“Neither Galen nor any other Roman physician could do much for infectious diseases, and in 165 C.E. troops returning from campaigns in the East brought a new disease with them that spread quickly in the city and then beyond into other parts of the empire. Modern epidemiologists think this was most likely smallpox”

“Because of the danger of starvation, the emperor, following republican practice, provided the citizen population with free grain for bread and, later, oil and wine. By feeding the citizenry, the emperor prevented bread riots caused by shortages and high prices. For those who did not enjoy the rights of citizenship, the emperor provided grain at low prices.”

POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT
“The most popular forms of public entertainment were gladiatorial contests and chariot racing. Gladiator fights were advertised on billboards, and spectators were given a program with the names and sometimes the fighting statistics of the pairs, so that they could place bets more easily.”

“All gladiators were trained in gladiatorial schools and were legally slaves, although they could keep their winnings and a few became quite wealthy. The Hollywood portrayal of gladiatorial combat has men fighting to their death, but this was increasingly rare, as the owners of especially skilled fighters wanted them to continue to compete. Many — perhaps most — did die at a young age from their injuries or later infections, but some fought more than a hundred battles over long careers, retiring to become trainers in gladiatorial schools.”

“The Romans were even more addicted to chariot racing than to gladiatorial shows…Other winning charioteers were also idolized, just as sports stars are today, and the demand for races was so high that they were held on more than one hundred days a year in imperial Rome.”

PROSPERITY IN THE ROMAN PROVINCES
“As the empire grew and stabilized, many Roman provinces grew prosperous. Peace and security opened Britain, Gaul, and the lands of the Danube to settlers from other parts of the Roman Empire (Map 6.2). Veterans were given small parcels of land in the provinces and became tenant farmers. The rural population throughout the empire left few records, but the inscriptions that remain point to a melding of cultures, an important reason for Rome’s success. One sphere where this occurred was language…Religion was another site of cultural exchange and mixture. Romans moving into an area learned about and began to venerate local gods, and local people learned about Roman ones. Gradually hybrid deities and rituals developed.”

TRADE AND COMMERCE
“As the Romans drove farther eastward, they encountered the Parthians, who had established a kingdom in what is now Afghanistan and Iran in the Hellenistic period. After the Romans tried unsuccessfully to drive out the Parthians in the second century C.E., the Parthians came to act as a link between Roman and Chinese merchants. Chinese merchants sold their wares to the Parthians, who then carried the goods overland to Mesopotamia or Egypt, from which they were shipped throughout the Roman Empire. Silk was a major commodity traded from the East to the West, along with other luxury goods. In return the Romans traded glassware, precious gems, and slaves.”

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