5.3: Early and Middle Republic
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From the founding of Rome to the end of the Punic Wars was a formative time, during which Rome grew from a village on the Tiber to a pan-Mediterranean empire.
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The Greek politician-turned-historian Polybius proposed that Roman's success was their adoption of the republican government as a replacement for the original monarchy. He also was convinced that the Roman government was superior to all others in the Mediterranean at the time. Indeed, he wrote in his book Histories:
For who is so worthless or lazy as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of government the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjugating nearly the entire known world to their rule, an achievement unprecedented in history? (Polybius 1.1.5)
5.3.1: From Monarchy to Republic: Some Myths and Legends
“In the beginning, kings held Rome.” (quoted from Roman historian Tacitus' Annals). Early Roman history is shrouded in myth and legend.
According to myth, Rome received its name from its founder Romulus, the son of the war god Mars, and a descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas. (Chapter 4 looked at the Greek heroic epic, Homer’s Iliad.) Several generations removed from their heroic ancestor Aeneas, Romulus and his twin brother Remus were famously abandoned as infants and then nursed by a she-wolf, the sacred animal of their father Mars.
The sweetness of the story ends there. While Romulus was building Rome, Remus insulted the new city, and his brother killed him to avenge its honor. Later, after Romulus' crew had completed the building of the new city, he realized the lack of women in the city. So, Romulus and his supporters raided the neighboring tribe, the Sabines, and kidnapped their women.
In other words, Rome came first, and if the good of the city required the sacrifice of one’s brother, or required force against others, then the gods were still on the side of the Romans and ordained these actions.
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Romans believed that their city was ruled by seven different kings in succession. After Romulus, king Numa Pompilius regulated Roman religion and created many of the priestly colleges and positions that continued to exist thereafter. Many years later, the seventh and final king Tarquin the Proud was expelled from the city. Two consults were immediately elected to govern the newly formed Republic.
5.3.2: Early Republic: Conflict of Orders, the Twelve Tables, and Key Legislations
Roman sources reveal certain common values that all Romans held dear and considered to be foundational for their state.
- Reverence for the past, mos maiorum, translated as “custom of ancestors” or “custom of elders,” Romans believed that innovation amounted to disrespect for their ancestors.
- Auctoritas, “power” or “authority”. The degree depended on one's social and political standing.
- Dignitas, roughly meaning “dignity”, reflected one's bearing and behavior as a true Roman.
- Gravitas, “seriousness”, reflected Roman conduct and determination.
It is striking that Romans never smiled in portraits. The austere facial expression conveyed their power and superiority to others, whom they had conquered.
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From its earliest time, Roman citizen population was divided into two orders:
- the patricians, defined as the descendants from the first one hundred senators appointed to the Roman aristocratic Senate by king Romulus
- the plebeians, everyone who was not a patrician
The plebeians had their own political assembly, the Plebeian Council. All Roman citizens belonged to the Centuriate Assembly, which was responsible for annual elections for top political offices.
Plebeians appear to have advocated for a public display of the laws, in order to protect the poor during lawsuits. The result was the first Roman legal code, the Twelve Tables inscribed on twelve tables c. 450 BCE. One of the laws was a ban on intermarriage between plebeians and patricians, which demonstrated an inequality between the classes. However, as the number of patrician families declined, most began to intermarry with prominent plebeian families.
Until 367 BCE, the highest political office was reserved for patricians. However, this policy changed when it was determined that one of the two consuls must come from the plebeian class. The gradual weakening of patrician power would reach its highest level in 287 BCE, when the Lex Hortensia was passed. This law made all legislations passed by the Plebeian Council binding on all Romans, patricians and plebeians alike.
5.3.3: Cursus Honorum and Roman Religion
Plebeian access to political offices, specifically the consulship, resulted in the creation of a rigid cursus honorum, a sequence or ladder of political offices. All offices were held for the term of one year. In order to prevent any one individual from amassing too much power, candidates had to wait ten years between consulships. Finally, each office had a minimum age requirement, with a special privilege for patricians to subtract two years from that minimum. The cursus honorum is best visualized as a pyramid with a wide base and narrowing each step on the way up.
The prerequisite for holding any political office was ten years of military service. Thus, aspiring Roman politicians normally entered the army around eighteen years of age. Following ten years of distinguished service, candidates who were at least thirty years of age were allowed to run for the first office in the cursus: the quaestorship. Each of the 20 quaestors was assigned to a particular duty for his year in office, varying from supervising the coin mint in Rome to serving as an assistant to a provincial governor or a consul in charge of a war.
While not officially part of the required cursus honorum, most ex-quaestors next ran for the office of the plebeian tribune, if they were plebeian, or an aedile. Ten plebeian tribunes were elected each year and were supposed to advocate for the benefit of the plebeians during Senatorial debates. Aediles—a term derived from the Latin “aedes,” meaning “building” or “temple”—were in charge of public building projects and often sponsored public entertainment.
The next step in the cursus was the praetorship. Similarly to the quaestors, the number of praetors rose over time, until topping at eight in the late Republic. Praetors could hold imperium, the right to command an army. Thus, they often served in military roles or in an administrative capacity by governing a province. Finally, one praetor each year, the praetor urbanus, was in charge of administering justice in the city of Rome and keeping track of legal cases and important decisions, which he issued at the end of the year as the Praetor’s Edict.
Upon reaching the age of forty, candidates who had successfully held the praetorship ultimately could run for the consulship. Two consuls were elected annually. This position was so socially important that aristocratic families would display the masks of family members. Since ten years were required to elapse between successive consulships, very few individuals ever held more than one consulship, until several politicians in the late Republic broke the rules altogether. Last but not least, one additional office existed for which ex-consuls could run. Every five years, two censors were elected for a period of eighteen months for the purpose of conducting the census of citizens.
While this structure of annually-elected offices was designed to prevent any one individual from usurping all political power in the state, the Senate realized that, on rare occasions, concentrating all power in one set of hands was needed. Thus, the Senate could appoint a dictator for a non-renewable period of six months in times of serious military emergency.
Roman religion was traditionally polytheistic, with many myths and gods aligned to the Greek counterparts. For example, Zeus, the Greek king of the gods, became Jupiter, a patron god of Rome.
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His consort, Hera, became the Roman goddess Juno and was the patron goddess of marriage. The Greek Athena became Roman Minerva and was the patron divinity of women’s crafts. In addition, both Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war, had mythical family connections to Rome’s human founders. Countless other divinities abounded as well; even the Roman sewer system, Cloaca Maxima, had its own patron goddess, Cloacina.
While Romans were expected to worship some of the gods in private, Roman religion also had a significant public component that was reserved for the priestly colleges. One example is the career of Julius Caesar, whose political career took off after his appointment to the religious office of pontifex maximus, head of Roman religion. Ultimately, both public and private religion aimed at the same goal: keeping the pax deorum. Put simply, as long as Romans maintained a respectful peace with their gods, they ensured Rome’s success. Whenever any disasters befell the state, however, Romans typically assumed that pax deorum had been violated in some way. The gods then had to be appeased in order to end the disaster and prevent similar events from occurring in the future.
5.3.4: Roman Expansion to the End of the Punic Wars
Shortly after 500 BCE, Roman expansion began in earnest. There are three important things to note. Generally, Rome did not maintain a standing army during the Republic. So, a new army was raised for each campaign, which was typically launched in the spring and ended in the fall. Similar to the Greek world, the Romans had minimum wealth requirements for military service, since soldiers supplied their own equipment. Finally, Roman had repeated conflicts with the same enemies, such as the three Samnite Wars, the three Punic Wars, and the four Macedonian Wars. This repetition suggests that the Romans did not aim to annihilate their opponents unless absolutely pressed to do so.
The Roman expansion in the 490s BCE began as a defensive measure. In either 499 BCE or 496 BCE, the expelled seventh king, Tarquin the Proud, joined forces with the Latin League, a group of about thirty city-states around the area of Rome, to attack the Romans. The Battle of Lake Regillus was a decisive victory for Rome, and lead to an uneasy peace treaty. The next round of war (340 – 338 BCE) ended with Romans absorbing the Latin city-states into Rome as partial citizens.
Romans fought and gradually conquered the Etruscan city-states to the north. One especially significant victory was over the powerful Etruscan city of Veii in 396 BCE. According to the story, the Romans performed the ceremony of evocation, “calling out.” The Romans called Juno out of Veii and promised her a nice new temple in Rome if she would switch sides. Shortly thereafter, the city fell to the Romans. When the Roman soldiers were packing up the cult statue of Juno from her temple in Veii for transportation to Rome, a cheeky Roman soldier asked Juno if she wanted to come to Rome. The statue enthusiastically nodded her head.
Titus Livius, known in English as Livy, was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, and included this story of Veii in his work. It's just one example of how divine providence intervened on the side of the Romans.
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While still fighting the Latins, the Romans embarked upon what turned out to be a series of three wars with their neighbors to the east, the Samnites. Each of these wars resulted in Roman territorial gains. Indeed, by the end of the Third Samnite War, Rome controlled all of central Italy. At some point during the Samnite Wars, the Romans switched from fighting in the Greek hoplite phalanx fashion to a system of their own making, the manipular legion. This new system apparently allowed more flexibility in the arrangement of the troops on the battlefield. Additionally, it allowed using both heavy and light infantry as needed, instead of keeping them in a static formation for the duration of a battle. While not much else is known about the manipular legion, it appears to have been an effective system for the Romans for much of the Republican period.
The Romans spent eighty years in the third century BCE at war. Yet, they did not seem to have had the ambition to conquer the neighboring Greek city-states. That would change in 280 – 275 BCE. Rome became embroiled in a war with Pyrrhus, king of Epirus in northern Greece. Tarentum requested Pyrrhus’ help for an invasion of Italy. The Romans fought three major battles against Pyrrhus, the first two of which he won at great cost to his army. Indeed, the term “Pyrrhic victory” in modern English refers to a victory that is so costly as to be truly a loss. The Romans finally defeated Pyrrhus at their third battle against him in 275 BCE, showing the superiority of the new Roman manipular legion against the phalanx of the Macedonians. This victory united most of Italy, except for the very northern portion, under Roman rule.
The Romans’ proximity to northern Greece ensured an intersection of spheres of interest, thus also providing cause for continued conflict. Between 214 and 148 BCE, Rome fought four separate Macedonian Wars. During roughly the same period, from 264 and 146 BCE, the Romans also fought three Punic Wars against Carthage, originally a Phoenician colony that became a leading maritime power. Culminating with the Roman destruction of both Carthage and Corinth in 146 BCE, the entire Mediterranean world was effectively put under Roman rule.
When the Romans found themselves in control of a Mediterranean empire, they had to deal with the consequences of rapid expansion on internal stability in Rome proper. A critical question faced them: how would the Republic, whose system of government was designed for a small city-state, adapt to ruling a large empire? In response, the Romans divided the conquered territories into provinces, to which senatorial governors were assigned for terms that varied from one to five years. The system continued, with minor variations, into the Empire.
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The new availability of governor positions only made the political competition in the Republic even stiffer than before. Senators vied for the most desirable positions; typically, these were provinces in which military action was ongoing (the potential for winning military glory) or provinces that were wealthy (potential for acquiring wealth).