Roman Republic

The Roman Republic (Latin: Rēs pūblica Rōmāna [ˈreːs

ˈpuːblika roːˈmaːna]), officially the Senate and People of Roman Republic
Rome (Latin: Senatus Populusque Romanus), was a state of Official name (as on coins):
the classical Roman civilization, run through public Roma
representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the after c. 100 BC:
overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509
Senatus Populusque
BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the
Roman Empire, Rome's control rapidly expanded during this
Romanus (Latin) (SPQR)
period—from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony (The Roman Senate and People)
over the entire Mediterranean world. 509 BC–27 BC

Roman society under the Republic was primarily a cultural

mix of Latin and Etruscan societies, as well as of Sabine,
Oscan, and Greek cultural elements, which is especially
visible in the Roman Pantheon. Its political organization
developed at around the same time as direct democracy in
Ancient Greece, with collective and annual magistracies,
overseen by a senate.[4] The top magistrates were the two
consuls, who had an extensive range of executive, legislative,
judicial, military, and religious powers. Even though a small Denarius of 54 BC, showing the first
number of powerful families (called gentes) monopolised the Roman consul, Lucius Junius Brutus,
main magistracies, the Roman Republic is generally surrounded by two lictors and preceded
considered one of the earliest examples of representative by an accensus[1]
democracy.[5][6][7] Roman institutions underwent
considerable changes throughout the Republic to adapt to the
difficulties it faced, such as the creation of promagistracies to
rule its conquered provinces, or the composition of the senate.

Unlike the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire, the Republic

was in a state of quasi-perpetual war throughout its existence.
Its first enemies were its Latin and Etruscan neighbours as
well as the Gauls, who even sacked the city in 387 BC. The
Republic nonetheless demonstrated extreme resilience and Roman provinces on the eve of the
assassination of Julius Caesar, 44 BC
always managed to overcome its losses, however
catastrophic. After the Gallic Sack, Rome conquered the Capital Rome
whole Italian peninsula in a century, which turned the Common languages Latin (official)
Republic into a major power in the Mediterranean. The
Republic's greatest enemy was doubtlessly Carthage, against Etruscan,
which it waged three wars. The Punic general Hannibal Greek, Osco-
Umbrian,
famously invaded Italy by crossing the Alps and inflicted on Venetic,
Rome two devastating defeats at Lake Trasimene and Ligurian,
Cannae, but the Republic once again recovered and won the Rhaetian,
war thanks to Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama in 202 Nuragic, Sicel,
BC. With Carthage defeated, Rome became the dominant Hebrew,
Aramaic,
power of the ancient Mediterranean world. It then embarked Syriac, Punic,
on a long series of difficult conquests, after having notably Berber, Coptic,
defeated Philip V and Perseus of Macedon, Antiochus III of Illyrian, Iberian,
the Seleucid Empire, the Lusitanian Viriathus, the Numidian Lusitanian,
Celtiberian,
Jugurtha, the Pontic king Mithridates VI, the Gaul
Gaulish,
Vercingetorix, and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Gallaecian,
Aquitanian
At home, the Republic similarly experienced a long streak of (unofficial, but
social and political crises, which ended in several violent civil commonly
wars. At first, the Conflict of the Orders opposed the spoken)
patricians, the closed oligarchic elite, to the far more Religion Roman
numerous plebs, who finally achieved political equality in polytheism
several steps during the 4th century BC. Later, the vast
Government Mixed diarchic
conquests of the Republic disrupted its society, as the constitutional
immense influx of slaves they brought enriched the republic
aristocracy, but ruined the peasantry and urban workers. In Consuls
order to address this issue, several social reformers, known as • 509 BC (first) Lucius Junius
the Populares, tried to pass agrarian laws, but the Gracchi Brutus
brothers, Saturninus, or Clodius Pulcher were all murdered Lucius
by their opponents, the Optimates, keepers of the traditional Collatinus
aristocratic order. Mass slavery also caused three Servile • 27 BC (last) Octavian
Wars; the last of them was led by Spartacus, a skilful Marcus Agrippa
gladiator who ravaged Italy and left Rome powerless until his Legislature Assemblies
defeat in 71 BC. In this context, the last decades of the Roman Senate
Republic were marked by the rise of great generals, who Historical era Classical
exploited their military conquests and the factional situation in antiquity
Rome to gain control of the political system. Marius (between • Overthrow of the 509 BC
105 and 86 BC), then Sulla (between 82 and 78 BC) monarchy
dominated in turn the Republic; both used extraordinary • Dissolution of the 338 BC[2]
powers to purge their opponents. These multiple tensions led Latin League
to a series of civil wars; the first between the two generals • Julius Caesar 49 BC
Julius Caesar and Pompey. Despite his victory and named dictator
appointment as dictator for life, Caesar was slain in 44 BC. • Assassination of 15 March 44
Julius Caesar BC
Caesar's heir Octavian and lieutenant Mark Antony defeated
• Battle of Actium 2 September
Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius in 42 BC, but then 31 BC
turned against each other. The final defeat of Mark Antony • Octavian 16 January 27
alongside his ally and lover Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium proclaimed BC
in 31 BC, and the Senate's grant of extraordinary powers to Augustus
Octavian as Augustus in 27 BC – which effectively made him Area
the first Roman emperor – thus ended the Republic. 326 BC[3] 10,000 km2
(3,900 sq mi)
50 BC[3] 1,950,000 km2
(750,000 sq mi)
Contents
History
Foundation (509 BC)
Rome in Latium (509–387 BC)
Roman expansion in Italy (387–272 BC)
Punic Wars and expansion in the Mediterranean
(264–146 BC)
Social troubles and first civil war (146–60 BC)
Triumvirates and end of the Republic (60–27 BC)
Constitutional system
 Senate Preceded by Succeeded
Legislative assemblies by
Magistrates Roman Roman
Kingdom Empire
Military Macedonian
Hoplite armies (509–c. 315 BC) Empire
Manipular legion (c. 315–107 BC) Seleucid
Legion after the reforms of Gaius Marius (107–27 Empire
BC) Ptolemaic
Kingdom
Social structure Kingdom of
Pergamon
Trade and economy Herodian
Farming Tetrarchy
Religion
Priesthoods
Temples and festivals
In the military
Cities, towns and villas
City of Rome
Culture
Clothing
Food and dining
Education and language
Arts
Literature
Sports and entertainment
See also
Notes
References
Citations
Ancient sources
Cited Sources
External links

History

Foundation (509 BC)

Rome had been ruled by monarchs since its foundation. These monarchs were elected, for life, by men who
made up the Roman Senate. The last Roman monarch was named Lucius Tarquinius Superbus
(colloquially known as "Tarquin the Proud") and in traditional histories Tarquin was expelled from Rome
in 509 BC because his son, Sextus Tarquinius, raped a noblewoman named Lucretia (who had afterwards
taken her own life). The father of Lucretia, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, together with Tarquin the Proud's
nephew, Lucius Junius Brutus, mustered support from the Senate and Roman army and forced the former
monarch into exile to Etruria.[8][9][10]
After this incident, the Senate agreed to abolish kingship. In turn, most of the former functions of the king
were transferred to two separate consuls. These consuls were elected to office for a term of one year, each
was capable of acting as a "check" on his colleague (if necessary) through the power of veto that the former
kings had held. Furthermore, if a consul were to abuse his powers in office, he could be prosecuted when
his term expired. Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus became first consuls of the Roman
Republic (despite Collatinus' role in the creation of the Republic, he belonged to the same family as the
former king and thus was forced to abdicate his office and leave Rome. He thereafter was replaced as co-
consul by Publius Valerius Publicola.)[11]

Most modern scholarship describes these events as the quasi-mythological detailing of an aristocratic coup
within Tarquin's own family, not a popular revolution. They fit a narrative of a personal vengeance against
a tyrant leading to his overthrow, which was common among Greek cities, and such a pattern of political
vengeance was theorized by Aristotle.[12][13][14]

Rome in Latium (509–387 BC)

Early campaigns

According to Rome's traditional histories, Tarquin made several attempts to retake the throne, including the
Tarquinian conspiracy, which involved Brutus' own sons, the war with Veii and Tarquinii and finally the
war between Rome and Clusium; but none succeeded.[15]

The first Roman republican wars were wars of both

expansion and defence, aimed at protecting Rome itself from
neighbouring cities and nations and establishing its territory in
the region.[16] Initially, Rome's immediate neighbours were
either Latin towns and villages, or else tribal Sabines from the
Apennine hills beyond. One by one Rome defeated both the
persistent Sabines and the local cities, both those under
Etruscan control and those that had cast off their Etruscan
rulers. Rome defeated the Latin cities in the Battle of Lake
Regillus in 496, the Battle of Mount Algidus in 458, the
Battle of Corbio in 446, the Battle of Aricia, however it
suffered a significant defeat at the Battle of the Cremera in
477 wherein it fought against the most important Etruscan city
of Veii.[17][18]

By the end of this period, Rome had effectively completed the

conquest of their immediate Etruscan and Latin neighbours,
and also secured their position against the immediate threat
The "Capitoline Brutus", a bust possibly posed by the nearby Apennine hill tribes.[19]
depicting Lucius Junius Brutus, who led
the revolt against Rome's last king and
Plebeians and patricians
was a founder of the Republic

Beginning with their revolt against Tarquin, and continuing

through the early years of the Republic, Rome's patrician
aristocrats were the dominant force in politics and society. They initially formed a closed group of about 50
large families, called gentes, who monopolised Rome's magistracies, state priesthoods and senior military
posts. The most prominent of these families were the Cornelii,[i] followed by the Aemilii, Claudii, Fabii,
and Valerii. The power, privilege and influence of leading families derived from their wealth, in particular
from their landholdings, their position as patrons, and their numerous clients.[20]

The vast majority of Roman citizens were commoners of various social degrees. They formed the backbone
of Rome's economy, as smallholding farmers, managers, artisans, traders, and tenants. In times of war, they
could be summoned for military service. Most had little direct political influence over the Senate's decisions
or the laws it passed, including the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of the consular system.
During the early Republic, the plebs (or plebeians) emerged as a self-organised, culturally distinct group of
commoners, with their own internal hierarchy, laws, customs, and interests.[21]

Plebeians had no access to high religious and civil office,[ii] and could be punished for offences against
laws of which they had no knowledge.[22] For the poorest, one of the few effective political tools was their
withdrawal of labour and services, in a "secessio plebis"; they would leave the city en masse, and allow
their social superiors to fend for themselves. The first such secession occurred in 494, in protest at the
abusive treatment of plebeian debtors by the wealthy during a famine.[23] The Senate was compelled to
give them direct access to the written civil and religious laws, and to the electoral and political process. To
represent their interests, the plebs elected tribunes, who were personally sacrosanct, immune to arbitrary
arrest by any magistrate, and had veto power over the passage of legislation.[24]

Celtic invasion of Italy (390–387 BC)

By 390, several Gallic tribes were invading Italy from the north. The Romans were alerted to this when a
particularly warlike tribe, the Senones,[25] invaded two Etruscan towns close to Rome's sphere of
influence. These towns, overwhelmed by the enemy's numbers and ferocity, called on Rome for help. The
Romans met the Gauls in pitched battle at the Battle of Allia River around 390–387 BC. The Gauls, led by
the chieftain Brennus, defeated the Roman army of approximately 15,000 troops, pursued the fleeing
Romans back to Rome, and sacked the city before being either driven off or bought off.

Roman expansion in Italy (387–272 BC)

Wars against Italian neighbours

From 343 to 341, Rome won two battles against their Samnite neighbours, but were unable to consolidate
their gains, due to the outbreak of war with former Latin allies.

In the Latin War (340–338), Rome defeated a coalition of Latins at the battles of Vesuvius and the
Trifanum. The Latins submitted to Roman rule.[26]

A Second Samnite War began in 327.[27] The fortunes of the two sides fluctuated, but from 314, Rome
was dominant, and offered progressively unfavourable terms for peace. The war ended with Samnite defeat
at the Battle of Bovianum (305). By the following year, Rome had annexed most Samnite territory and
began to establish colonies there; but in 298 the Samnites rebelled, and defeated a Roman army, in a Third
Samnite War. Following this success they built a coalition of several previous enemies of Rome.[28]

At the Battle of Populonia in 282 Rome finished off the last vestiges of Etruscan power in the region.

Rise of the plebeian nobility


Map showing Roman expansion in Italy
In the 4th century, plebeians gradually obtained
political equality with patricians. The starting point
was in 400, when the first plebeian consular tribunes
were elected; likewise, several subsequent consular
colleges counted plebeians (in 399, 396, 388, 383,
and 379). The reason behind this sudden gain is
unknown,[29] but it was limited as patrician tribunes
retained preeminence over their plebeian
colleagues. [30] In 385, the former consul and saviour
of the besieged Capitol Marcus Manlius Capitolinus is
said to have sided with the plebeians, ruined by the
Sack and largely indebted to patricians. The issue of
debt relief for the plebs remained indeed pressing
throughout the century. Livy tells that Capitolinus sold
his estate to repay the debt of many of them, and even
went over to the plebs, the first patrician to do so.
Nevertheless, the growing unrest he had caused led to
his trial for seeking kingly power; he was sentenced to
death and thrown from the Tarpeian Rock.[31][32]

Between 376 and 367, the tribunes of the plebs Gaius

Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus continued the plebeian agitation and pushed for an ambitious
legislation, known as the Leges Liciniae Sextiae. Two of their bills attacked patricians' economic
supremacy, by creating legal protection against indebtedness and forbidding excessive use of public land, as
the Ager publicus was monopolised by large landowners. The most important bill opened the consulship to
plebeians.[33] Other tribunes controlled by the patricians vetoed the bills, but Stolo and Lateranus retaliated
by vetoing the elections for five years while being continuously re-elected by the plebs, resulting in a
stalemate.[34] In 367, they carried a bill creating the Decemviri sacris faciundis, a college of ten priests, of
whom five had to be plebeians, thereby breaking patricians' monopoly on priesthoods. Finally, the
resolution of the crisis came from the dictator Camillus, who made a compromise with the tribunes: he
agreed to their bills, while they in return consented to the creation of the offices of praetor and curule
aediles, both reserved to patricians. Lateranus also became the first plebeian consul in 366; Stolo followed
in 361.[35][36][37]

Soon after, plebeians were able to hold both the dictatorship and the censorship, since former consuls
normally filled these senior magistracies. The four time consul Gaius Marcius Rutilus became the first
plebeian dictator in 356 and censor in 351. In 342, the tribune of the plebs Lucius Genucius passed his
Leges Genuciae, which abolished interest on loans, in a renewed effort to tackle indebtedness, required the
election of at least one plebeian consul each year, and prohibited a magistrate from holding the same
magistracy for the next ten years or two magistracies in the same year.[38][33][39] In 339, the plebeian
consul and dictator Quintus Publilius Philo passed three laws extending the powers of the plebeians. His
first law followed the Lex Genucia by reserving one censorship to plebeians, the second made plebiscites
binding on all citizens (including patricians), and the third stated that the Senate had to give its prior
approval to plebiscites before becoming binding on all citizens (the Lex Valeria-Horatia of 449 had placed
this approval after the vote).[40] Two years later, Publilius ran for the praetorship, probably in a bid to take
the last senior magistracy closed to plebeians, which he won.[41]

During the early republic, senators were chosen by the consuls from among their supporters. Shortly before
312, the Lex Ovinia transferred this power to the censors, who could only remove senators for misconduct,
thus appointing them for life. This law strongly increased the power of the Senate, which was by now
protected from the influence of the consuls and became the central organ of government.[42][43] In 312,
following this law, the patrician censor Appius Claudius Caecus appointed many more senators to fill the
new limit of 300, including descendants of freedmen, which was
deemed scandalous. He also incorporated these freedmen in the rural
tribes.[iii][iv] His tribal reforms were nonetheless cancelled by the
next censors, Quintus Fabius Maximus and Publius Decius Mus, his
political enemies.[44] Caecus also launched a vast construction
program, building the first aqueduct (Aqua Appia), and the first
Roman road (Via Appia).[45]

In 300, the two tribunes of the plebs Gnaeus and Quintus Ogulnius
passed the Lex Ogulnia, which created four plebeian pontiffs, The Temple of Hercules Victor,
therefore equalling the number of patrician pontiffs, and five Rome, built in the mid 2nd century
plebeian augurs, outnumbering the four patricians in the college. [46] BC, most likely by Lucius
Eventually the Conflict of the Orders ended with the last secession Mummius Achaicus, who won the
of the plebs in about 287. The details are not known precisely as Achaean War
Livy's books on the period are lost. Debt is once again mentioned by
ancient authors, but it seems that the plebs revolted over the
distribution of the land conquered on the Samnites.[47] A dictator named Quintus Hortensius was appointed
to negotiate with the plebeians, who had retreated to the Janiculum hill, perhaps to dodge the draft in the
war against the Lucanians. Hortensius passed the Lex Hortensia which re-enacted the law of 339, making
plebiscites binding on all citizens, but also removed the Senate's prior approval to plebiscites. Popular
assemblies were by now sovereign; this put an end to the crisis, and to plebeian agitation for 150 years.[48]

These events were a political victory of the wealthy plebeian elite who exploited the economic difficulties
of the plebs for their own gain, hence why Stolo, Lateranus, and Genucius bound their bills attacking
patricians' political supremacy with debt-relief measures. They had indeed little in common with the mass
of plebeians; Stolo was notably fined for having exceeded the limit on land occupation he had fixed in his
own law.[49] As a result of the end of the patrician monopoly on senior magistracies, many small patrician
gentes faded into history during the 4th and 3rd centuries due to the lack of available positions; the Verginii,
Horatii, Menenii, Cloelii all disappear, even the Julii entered a long eclipse. They were replaced by plebeian
aristocrats, of whom the most emblematic were the Caecilii Metelli, who received 18 consulships until the
end of the Republic; the Domitii, Fulvii, Licinii, Marcii, or Sempronii were as successful. About a dozen
remaining patrician gentes and twenty plebeian ones thus formed a new elite, called the nobiles, or
Nobilitas.[50]

Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC)

By the beginning of the 3rd century, Rome had established herself

as the major power in Italy, but had not yet come into conflict with
the dominant military powers of the Mediterranean: Carthage and
the Greek kingdoms.[52] In 282, several Roman warships entered
the harbour of Tarentum, thus breaking a treaty between the
Republic and the Greek city, which forbade the Gulf to Roman
navy. It triggered a violent reaction from the Tarentine democrats,
who sank some of the ships; they were in fact worried that Rome
could favour the oligarchs in the city, as it had done with the other
Greek cities under its control. The Roman embassy sent to Route of Pyrrhus in Italy and Sicily
investigate the affair was insulted and war was promptly
declared.[53] Facing a hopeless situation, the Tarentines (together
with the Lucanians and Samnites) appealed for military aid to Pyrrhus, the very ambitious king of Epirus. A
cousin of Alexander the Great, he was eager to build an empire for himself in the western Mediterranean,
and saw Tarentum's plea as a perfect opportunity towards this goal.[54][55]

Bust of Pyrrhus, found in the Villa of
the Papyri at Herculaneum, now in
the Naples Archaeological Museum.
Pyrrhus was a brave and chivalrous
general who fascinated the Romans,
hence his presence in a Roman
house.[51]
Pyrrhus and his army of 25,500 men (and 20 war elephants)
landed in Italy in 280; he was immediately named Strategos
Autokrator by the Tarentines. Publius Valerius Laevinus, the
consul sent to face him, rejected the king's negotiation offer, as he
had more troops and hoped to cut the invasion short. The Romans
were nevertheless defeated at Heraclea, as their cavalry were afraid
of the elephants of Pyrrhus, who lost a large portion of his army.
Pyrrhus then marched on Rome, but could not take any Roman
city on his way; facing the prospect of being flanked by the two
consular armies, he moved back to Tarentum. His adviser, the
orator Cineas, made a peace offer before the Roman Senate,
asking Rome to return the land it took from the Samnites and
Lucanians, and liberate the Greek cities under its control. The offer
was rejected after Appius Caecus (the old censor of 312) spoke
against it in a celebrated speech, which was the earliest recorded
by the time of Cicero.[56][57][58] In 279, Pyrrhus met the consuls
Publius Decius Mus and Publius Sulpicius Saverrio at the Battle of
Asculum, which remained undecided for two days, as the Romans
had prepared some special chariots to counter his elephants.
Finally, Pyrrhus personally charged into the melee and won the
battle, but at the cost of an important part of his troops; he
allegedly said "If we are victorious in one more battle with the
Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."[59][60][61][v]

He escaped the Italian deadlock by answering a call for help from

Syracuse, which tyrant Thoenon was desperately fighting an invasion from Carthage. Pyrrhus could not let
them take the whole island as it would have compromised his ambitions in the western Mediterranean and
so declared war on them. At first, his Sicilian campaign was an easy triumph; he was welcomed as a
liberator in every Greek city on his way, even receiving the title of king (basileus) of Sicily. The
Carthaginians lifted the siege of Syracuse before his arrival, but he could not entirely oust them from the
island as he failed to take their fortress of Lilybaeum.[62] His harsh rule, especially the murder of Thoenon,
whom he did not trust, soon led to a widespread antipathy among the Sicilians; some cities even defected to
Carthage. In 275, Pyrrhus left the island before he had to face a full-scale rebellion.[63] He returned to Italy,
where his Samnite allies were on the verge of losing the war, despite their earlier victory at the Cranita hills.
Pyrrhus again met the Romans at the Battle of Beneventum; this time the consul Manius Dentatus was
victorious, and even captured eight elephants. Pyrrhus then withdrew from Italy, but left a garrison in
Tarentum, and waged a new campaign in Greece against Antigonos Gonatas. His death in battle at Argos
in 272 forced Tarentum to surrender to Rome. Since it was the last independent city of Italy, Rome now
dominated the entire Italian peninsula, and won an international military reputation.[64]

Punic Wars and expansion in the Mediterranean (264–146 BC)

First Punic War (264–241 BC)

Rome and Carthage were initially on friendly terms; Polybius details three treaties between them, the first
dating from the first year of the Republic, the second from 348. The last one was an alliance against
Pyrrhus.[65][66][67] However, tensions rapidly built up after the departure of the Epirote king. Between 288
and 283, Messina in Sicily was taken by the Mamertines, a band of mercenaries formerly employed by
Agathocles. They plundered the surroundings until Hiero II, the new tyrant of Syracuse, defeated them (in
either 269 or 265). Carthage could not let him take Messina, as he would have controlled its Strait, and
garrisoned the city. In effect under a Carthaginian protectorate, the remaining Mamertines appealed to
Rome to regain their independence. Senators were divided on
whether to help them or not, as it would have meant war with
Carthage, since Sicily was in its sphere of influence (the treaties
furthermore forbade the island to Rome), and also Syracuse. A
supporter of the war, the consul Appius Claudius Caudex (Caecus'
brother) turned to the Tribal Assembly to get a favourable vote, by
notably promising booty to voters.[68]

Caudex first secured control of the city with ease. However,

Syracuse and Carthage, at war for centuries, made an alliance to
counter the invasion and blockaded Messina, but Caudex defeated
Hiero and Carthage separately.[69][70] His successor Manius
Coin of Hiero II of Syracuse
Valerius Corvinus Messalla landed with a strong 40,000 men army
that conquered eastern Sicily, which prompted Hiero to shift his
allegiance and forge a long lasting alliance with Rome. In 262, the
Romans moved to the southern coast and besieged Akragas. In order to raise the siege, Carthage sent
reinforcements, including 60 elephants – the first time they used them, but still lost the battle.[71]
Nevertheless, as Pyrrhus before, Rome could not take all of Sicily because Carthage's naval superiority
prevented them from effectively besieging coastal cities, which could receive supplies from the sea. Using a
captured Carthaginian ship as blueprint, Rome therefore launched a massive construction program and built
100 quinqueremes in only two months, perhaps through an assembly line organisation. They also invented
a new device, the corvus, a grappling engine which enabled a crew to board on an enemy ship.[72] The
consul for 260 Scipio Asina lost the first naval skirmish of the war against Hannibal Gisco at Lipara, but his
colleague Gaius Dullius won a great victory at Mylae. He destroyed or captured 44 ships, and was the first
Roman to receive a naval triumph, which also included captive Carthaginians for the first time.[73]
Although Carthage was victorious on land at Thermae in Sicily, the corvus made Rome invincible on the
waters. The consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio (Asina's brother) captured Corsica in 259; his successors won
the naval battles of Sulci in 258, Tyndaris in 257, and Cape Ecnomus in 256.[74]

In order to hasten the end of the war, the consuls for 256 decided
to carry the operations to Africa, on Carthage's homeland. The
consul Marcus Atilius Regulus landed on the Cap Bon peninsula
with about 18,000 soldiers. He captured the city of Aspis, then
repulsed Carthage's counter-attack at Adys, and took Tunis. The
Carthaginians supposedly sued him for peace, but his conditions
were so harsh that they continued the war instead. They hired
Spartan mercenaries, led by Xanthippus, to command their
troops.[75] In 255, the Spartan general marched on Regulus, still
Diagram of a corvus
encamped at Tunis, who accepted the battle to avoid sharing the
glory with his successor. However, the flat land near Tunis
favoured the Punic elephants, which crushed the Roman infantry
on the Bagradas plain; only 2,000 soldiers escaped, and Regulus was captured. The consuls for 255
nonetheless won a new sounding naval victory at Cape Hermaeum, where they captured 114 warships.
This success was spoilt by a storm that annihilated the victorious navy: 184 ships of 264 sank, 25,000
soldiers and 75,000 rowers drowned. The corvus considerably hindered ships' navigation, and made them
vulnerable during tempest. It was abandoned after another similar catastrophe took place in 253 (150 ships
sank with their crew). These disasters prevented any significant campaign between 254 and 252.[76]

Hostilities in Sicily resumed in 252, with the taking of Thermae by Rome. Carthage countered the
following year, by besieging Lucius Caecilius Metellus, who held Panormos (now Palermo). The consul
had dug trenches to counter the elephants, which once hurt by missiles turned back on their own army,
resulting in a great victory for Metellus, who exhibited some captured beasts in the Circus. Rome then
besieged the last Carthaginian strongholds in Sicily, Lilybaeum
and Drepana, but these cities were impregnable by land. Publius
Claudius Pulcher, the consul of 249, recklessly tried to take the
latter from the sea, but he suffered a terrible defeat; his colleague
Lucius Junius Pullus likewise lost his fleet off Lilybaeum. Without
the corvus, Roman warships had lost their advantage. By now,
both sides were drained and could not undertake large scale
operations; the number of Roman citizens who were being called Denarius of C. Caecilius Metellus
Caprarius, 125 BC. The reverse
up for war had been reduced by 17% in two decades, a result of
depicts the triumph of his great-
the massive bloodshed. The only military activity during this
grandfather Lucius, with the
period was the landing in Sicily of Hamilcar Barca in 247, who
elephants he had captured at
harassed the Romans with a mercenary army from a citadel he
Panormos. The elephant had thence
built on Mt. Eryx.[78] become the emblem of the powerful
Caecilii Metelli.[77]
Finally, unable to take the Punic fortresses in Sicily, Rome tried to
win the decision at sea and built a new navy, thanks to a forced
borrowing on the rich. In 242, the 200 quinqueremes of the consul
Gaius Lutatius Catulus blockaded Drepana. The rescue fleet from Carthage arrived the next year, but was
largely undermanned and soundly defeated by Catulus. Exhausted and unable to bring supplies to Sicily,
Carthage sued for peace. Catulus and Hamilcar negotiated a treaty, which was somewhat lenient to
Carthage, but the Roman people rejected it and imposed harsher terms: Carthage had to pay 1000 talents
immediately and 2200 over ten years, and evacuate Sicily. The fine was so high that Carthage could not
pay Hamilcar's mercenaries, who had been shipped back to Africa. They revolted during the Mercenary
War, which Carthage had enormous difficulties to suppress. Meanwhile, Rome took advantage of a similar
revolt in Sardinia to seize the island from Carthage, in violation of the peace treaty. This stab-in-the-back
led to permanent bitterness in Carthage, and revanchism.[79]

Second Punic War (218–201 BC)

After its victory, the Republic shifted its attention to its northern border as the Insubres and Boii were
threatening Italy.[80] Meanwhile, Carthage compensated the loss of Sicily and Sardinia with the conquest of
Southern Hispania (up to Salamanca), and its rich silver mines.[81] This enterprise was the work of the
Barcid family, headed by Hamilcar, the former commander in Sicily. Hamilcar nonetheless died against the
Oretani in 228; his son-in-law Hasdrubal the Fair – the founder of Carthago Nova – and his three sons
Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago, succeeded him.[82] This rapid expansion worried Rome, which concluded
a treaty with Hasdrubal in 226, stating that Carthage could not cross the Ebro river.[83][84] However, the
city of Saguntum, located in the south of the Ebro, appealed to Rome in 220 to act as arbitrator during a
stasis. Hannibal dismissed Roman rights on the city, and took it in 219.[85] At Rome, the Cornelii and the
Aemilii considered the capture of Saguntum a casus belli,[86] and won the debate against Fabius Maximus
Verrucosus, who wanted to negotiate. An embassy carrying an ultimatum was sent to Carthage, asking its
senate to condemn Hannibal's deeds. The Carthaginian refusal started the Second Punic War.[87]

Initially, the plan of the Republic was to carry war outside Italy, by sending the consuls Publius Cornelius
Scipio to Hispania, and Sempronius Longus to Africa, while their naval superiority prevented Carthage
from attacking from the sea.[88] This plan was thwarted by Hannibal's bold move to Italy. In May 218, he
indeed crossed the Ebro with a large army of about 100,000 soldiers and 37 elephants.[89] He passed in
Gaul, crossed the Rhone, then the Alps, possibly through the Col de Clapier (2,491 meters high).[90] This
famous exploit cost him almost half of his troops,[91] but he could now rely on the Boii and Insubres, still at
war with Rome.[92] Publius Scipio, who had failed to block Hannibal on the Rhone, sent his elder brother
Gnaeus with the main part of his army in Hispania according to the initial plan, and went back to Italy with
the rest to resist Hannibal in Italy, but he was defeated and wounded near Pavia.
 Hannibal then marched south and
won three outstanding victories.
The first one was on the banks of
the Trebia in December 218,
where he defeated the other consul
Sempronius Longus thanks to his
brother Mago, who had concealed
some elite troops behind the
legions and attacked them from the
rear once fighting Hannibal. More
than half of the Roman army was
lost. Hannibal then ravaged the
country around Arretium to lure
the new consul Gaius Flaminius
into a trap, at the Lake Trasimene.
Principal offensives of the war: Rome (red), Hannibal (green), Hasdrubal He had hidden his troops in the
(purple) hills surrounding the lake and
attacked Flaminius when he was
cornered on the shore. This clever
ambush resulted in the death of the consul and the complete destruction of his army of 30,000 men. In 216,
the new consuls Aemilius Paullus and Terentius Varro mustered the biggest army possible, with eight
legions (more than 80,000 soldiers) – twice as many as the Punic army – and confronted Hannibal, who
was encamped at Cannae, in Apulia. Despite his numerical disadvantage, Hannibal used his heavier
cavalry to rout the Roman wings and envelop their infantry, whom he annihilated. In terms of casualties,
the Battle of Cannae was the worst defeat in the history of Rome: only 14,500 soldiers escaped; Paullus
was killed as well as 80 senators.[93] Soon after, the Boii ambushed the army of the consul-elect for 215,
Postumius Albinus, who died with all his army of 25,000 men in the Forest of Litana.

These disasters triggered a wave of defection among Roman allies,

with the rebellions of the Samnites, Oscans, Lucanians, and Greek
cities of Southern Italy.[95] In Macedonia, Philip V also made an
alliance with Hannibal in order to take Illyria and the area around
Epidamnus, occupied by Rome. His attack on Apollonia started
the First Macedonian War. In 215, Hiero II of Syracuse died of old
A quarter shekel of Carthage, age, and his young grandson Hieronymus broke the long alliance
perhaps minted in Spain. The with Rome to side with Carthage. At this desperate point, the
obverse may depict Hannibal under aggressive strategy against Hannibal advocated by the Scipiones
the traits of young Melqart. The was abandoned in favour of delaying tactics that avoided direct
reverse features one of his famous confrontation with him. Its main proponents were the consuls
war elephants.[94] Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, nicknamed Cunctator ("the
delayer"), Claudius Marcellus, and Fulvius Flaccus. The "Fabian
Strategy" favoured a slow reconquest of the lost territories, since
Hannibal could not be everywhere to defend them.[96] Although he remained invincible on the battlefield,
defeating all the Roman armies on his way, he could not prevent Claudius Marcellus from taking Syracuse
in 212 after a long siege, nor the fall of his bases of Capua and Tarentum in 211 and 209. However, in 208
the consuls Claudius Marcellus and Quinctius Crispinus were ambushed and killed near Venusia.

In Hispania, the situation was overall much better for Rome. This theatre was mostly commanded by the
brothers Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, who won the battles of Cissa in 218, soon after Hannibal's departure,
and Dertosa against his brother Hasdrubal in 215, which enabled them to conquer the eastern coast of
Hispania. In 211 however, Hasdrubal and Mago Barca successfully returned the Celtiberian tribes that
supported the Scipiones, and attacked them simultaneously at the Battle of the Upper Baetis, in which the
Scipiones brothers died.[97] Publius' son, the future Scipio Africanus, was then elected with a special
proconsulship to lead the Hispanic campaign. He soon showed outstanding skills as a commander, by
winning a series of battles with ingenious tactics. In 209, he took Carthago Nova, the main Punic base in
Hispania, then defeated Hasdrubal at the Battle of Baecula (208).[98] After his defeat, Hasdrubal was
ordered by Carthage to move to Italy. Since he could not use ships, he followed the same route as his
brother through the Alps, but this time the surprise effect was gone. The consuls Livius Salinator and
Claudius Nero were awaiting him and won the Battle of the Metaurus, where Hasdrubal died.[99] It was the
turning point of the war. The attrition campaign had indeed worked well: Hannibal's troops were now
depleted; he only had one elephant left (Surus) and retreated to Bruttium, on the defensive. In Greece,
Rome contained Philip V without devoting too many forces, by setting an alliance with the Aetolian
League, Sparta, and Pergamon, which also prevented Philip from aiding Hannibal. The war resulted in a
stalemate, with the Treaty of Phoenice signed in 205.

In Hispania, Scipio continued his triumphal campaign at the battles of Carmona in 207, and Ilipa (now
Seville) in 206, which ended the Punic threat on the peninsula.[100] Elected consul in 205, he convinced
the Senate to cancel the Fabian Strategy, and instead to invade Africa by using the support of the Numidian
king Massinissa, who had defected to Rome. Scipio landed in Africa in 204. He took Utica, then won the
Battle of the Great Plains, which prompted Carthage to recall Hannibal from Italy and open peace
negotiations with Rome. The talks nevertheless failed because Scipio wanted to impose harsher terms on
Carthage, in order to avoid it from rising again as a threat to Rome. Hannibal was therefore sent to face
Scipio at Zama. Scipio could now use the heavy Numidian cavalry of Massinissa – which had hitherto
been so successful against Rome – to rout the Punic wings, then flank the infantry, as Hannibal had done at
Cannae. Defeated for the first time, Hannibal convinced the Carthaginian Senate to pay the war indemnity,
which was even harsher than that of 241: 10,000 talents in 50 instalments. Carthage furthermore had to
give up all its elephants, all its fleet but ten triremes, all its possessions outside its core territory in Africa
(what is now Tunisia), and could not declare war without the authorisation of Rome. In effect, Carthage
was condemned to be a minor power, while Rome recovered from a desperate situation to dominate the
Western Mediterranean.

Roman supremacy in the Greek East (200–188 BC)

Macedonian Wars
Rome's preoccupation with its war with Carthage
provided an opportunity for Philip V of the kingdom
of Macedonia, located in the north of the Greek
peninsula, to attempt to extend his power westward.
Philip sent ambassadors to Hannibal's camp in Italy, to
negotiate an alliance as common enemies of
Rome.[101][102] However, Rome discovered the
agreement when Philip's emissaries were captured by
a Roman fleet.[101] The First Macedonian War saw
the Romans involved directly in only limited land
operations, but they ultimately achieved their objective
of preoccupying Philip and preventing him from
aiding Hannibal.
Macedonia, Greece and Asia at the outbreak of the
The past century had seen the Greek world dominated
Second Macedonian War, 200 BC
by the three primary successor kingdoms of
Alexander the Great's empire: Ptolemaic Egypt,
Macedonia and the Seleucid Empire. In 202, internal
problems led to a weakening of Egypt's position, thereby disrupting the power balance among the
successor states. Macedonia and the Seleucid Empire agreed to an alliance to conquer and divide
Egypt.[103] Fearing this increasingly unstable situation, several small Greek kingdoms sent delegations to
Rome to seek an alliance.[104] The delegation succeeded, even though prior Greek attempts to involve
Rome in Greek affairs had been met with Roman apathy. Our primary source about these events, the
surviving works of Polybius, do not state Rome's reason for getting involved. Rome gave Philip an
ultimatum to cease his campaigns against Rome's new Greek allies. Doubting Rome's strength (a
reasonable doubt, given Rome's performance in the First Macedonian War) Philip ignored the request, and
Rome sent an army of Romans and Greek allies, beginning the Second Macedonian War.[105] Despite his
recent successes against the Greeks and earlier successes against Rome, Philip's army buckled under the
pressure from the Roman-Greek army. In 197, the Romans decisively defeated Philip at the Battle of
Cynoscephalae, and Philip was forced to give up his recent Greek conquests.[106] The Romans declared
the "Peace of the Greeks", believing that Philip's defeat now meant that Greece would be stable. They
pulled out of Greece entirely, maintaining minimal contacts with their Greek allies.[107]

With Egypt and Macedonia weakened, the Seleucid Empire made increasingly aggressive and successful
attempts to conquer the entire Greek world.[108] Now not only Rome's allies against Philip, but even Philip
himself, sought a Roman alliance against the Seleucids.[109] The situation was made worse by the fact that
Hannibal was now a chief military advisor to the Seleucid emperor, and the two were believed to be
planning an outright conquest not just of Greece, but of Rome itself.[110] The Seleucids were much
stronger than the Macedonians had ever been, because they controlled much of the former Persian Empire,
and by now had almost entirely reassembled Alexander the Great's former empire.[110]

Roman bronze bust of Scipio
Africanus, dated mid 1st century
BC, and found in the Villa of the
Papyri at Herculaneum[111]
assuming (or hoping) that the lack of a major Greek power would ensure a stable peace. In fact, it did the
opposite.[113]
Fearing the worst, the Romans began a major mobilization, all but
pulling out of recently pacified Spain and Gaul.[110] They even
established a major garrison in Sicily in case the Seleucids ever got to
Italy.[110] This fear was shared by Rome's Greek allies, who had
largely ignored Rome in the years after the Second Macedonian War,
but now followed Rome again for the first time since that war.[110] A
major Roman-Greek force was mobilized under the command of the
great hero of the Second Punic War, Scipio Africanus, and set out for
Greece, beginning the Roman–Seleucid War. After initial fighting that
revealed serious Seleucid weaknesses, the Seleucids tried to turn the
Roman strength against them at the Battle of Thermopylae (as they
believed the 300 Spartans had done centuries earlier).[109] Like the
Spartans, the Seleucids lost the battle, and were forced to evacuate
Greece.[109] The Romans pursued the Seleucids by crossing the
Hellespont, which marked the first time a Roman army had ever
entered Asia.[109] The decisive engagement was fought at the Battle
of Magnesia, resulting in a complete Roman victory.[109][112] The
Seleucids sued for peace, and Rome forced them to give up their
recent Greek conquests. Although they still controlled a great deal of
territory, this defeat marked the decline of their empire, as they were
to begin facing increasingly aggressive subjects in the east (the
Parthians) and the west (the Greeks). Their empire disintegrated into a
rump over the course of the next century, when it was eclipsed by
Pontus. Following Magnesia, Rome again withdrew from Greece,

Conquest of Greece (172–146 BC)

In 179 Philip died.[114] His talented and ambitious
son, Perseus, took the throne and showed a renewed
interest in conquering Greece.[115] With her Greek
allies facing a major new threat, Rome declared war
on Macedonia again, starting the Third Macedonian
War. Perseus initially had some success against the
Romans. However, Rome responded by sending a
stronger army. This second consular army decisively
defeated the Macedonians at the Battle of Pydna in
168[114][116] and the Macedonians duly capitulated,
ending the war.[117]

Convinced now that the Greeks (and therefore the Scene of the Battle of Corinth (146 BC): last day
rest of the region) would not have peace if left alone, before the Roman legions looted and burned the
Rome decided to establish its first permanent Greek city of Corinth. The last day on Corinth, Tony
foothold in the Greek world, and divided the Robert-Fleury, 1870
Kingdom of Macedonia into four client republics.
Yet, Macedonian agitation continued. The Fourth
Macedonian War, 150 to 148 BC, was fought against a Macedonian pretender to the throne who was again
destabilizing Greece by trying to re-establish the old kingdom. The Romans swiftly defeated the
Macedonians at the Second battle of Pydna.

The Achaean League chose this moment to fight Rome but was swiftly defeated. In 146 (the same year as
the destruction of Carthage), Corinth was besieged and destroyed in the Battle of Corinth (146 BC), which
led to the league's surrender.[118] After nearly a century of constant crisis management in Greece, which
always led back to internal instability and war when she withdrew, Rome decided to divide Macedonia into
two new Roman provinces, Achaea and Macedonia.

Third Punic War (149–146 BC)

Carthage never recovered militarily after the Second Punic War,[119] but quickly did so economically and
the Third Punic War that followed was in reality a simple punitive mission after the neighbouring
Numidians allied to Rome robbed/attacked Carthaginian merchants. Treaties had forbidden any war with
Roman allies, and defence against robbing/pirates was considered as "war action": Rome decided to
annihilate the city of Carthage.[120] Carthage was almost defenceless, and submitted when besieged.[121]
However, the Romans demanded complete surrender and removal of the city into the (desert) inland far off
any coastal or harbour region, and the Carthaginians refused. The city was besieged, stormed, and
completely destroyed.

Ultimately, all of Carthage's North African and Iberian territories were acquired by Rome. Note that
"Carthage" was not an 'empire', but a league of Punic colonies (port cities in the western Mediterranean)
like the 1st and 2nd Athenian ("Attic") leagues, under leadership of Carthage. Punic Carthage was gone,
but the other Punic cities in the western Mediterranean flourished under Roman rule.

Social troubles and first civil war (146–60 BC)

Rome's rapid expansion destabilized its social organization and triggered unrest in the heart of the Republic,
which ultimately led to political violence, unrest in the provinces, and ultimately a breakdown in the
traditional social relations of Rome that created the Augustan Empire. The period is marked by the rise of
strongmen (Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, and Julius Caesar), who turned military success into political
power.
The Gracchi (133–121 BC)

In 135, the first slave uprising, known as the First Servile War, broke out in Sicily. After initial successes,
the slaves led by Eunus and Cleon were annihilated by the consul Publius Rupilius in 132 BC.

In this context, Tiberius Gracchus was elected tribune in 133 BC. He attempted to enact a law which would
have limited the amount of land that any individual could own. The aristocrats, who stood to lose an
enormous amount of money, were bitterly opposed to this proposal. Tiberius submitted this law to the
Plebeian Council, but the law was vetoed by a tribune named Marcus Octavius. Tiberius then used the
Plebeian Council to impeach Octavius. The theory, that a representative of the people ceases to be one
when he acts against the wishes of the people, was counter to Roman constitutional theory. If carried to its
logical end, this theory would remove all constitutional restraints on the popular will, and put the state
under the absolute control of a temporary popular majority.[122] His law was enacted, but Tiberius was
murdered with 300 of his associates[123] when he stood for reelection to the tribunate.

Tiberius' brother Gaius was elected tribune in 123. Gaius Gracchus' ultimate goal was to weaken the senate
and to strengthen the democratic forces.[124] In the past, for example, the senate would eliminate political
rivals either by establishing special judicial commissions or by passing a senatus consultum ultimum
("ultimate decree of the senate"). Both devices would allow the Senate to bypass the ordinary due process
rights that all citizens had. Gaius outlawed the judicial commissions, and declared the senatus consultum
ultimum to be unconstitutional. Gaius then proposed a law which would grant citizenship rights to Rome's
Italian allies. This last proposal was not popular with the plebeians and he lost much of his support.[125] He
stood for election to a third term in 121, but was defeated and then murdered by representatives of the
senate with 3,000 of his supporters on Capitoline Hill in Rome.[123]

In 121, the province of Gallia Narbonensis was established after the victory of Quintus Fabius Maximus
over a coalition of Arverni and Allobroges in southern Gaul in 123. The city of Narbo was founded there
in 118 by Lucius Licinius Crassus.

Rise of Marius

The Jugurthine War of 111–104 was fought between Rome and Jugurtha
of the North African kingdom of Numidia. It constituted the final Roman
pacification of Northern Africa,[126] after which Rome largely ceased
expansion on the continent after reaching natural barriers of desert and
mountain. Following Jugurtha's usurpation of the throne of Numidia,[127]
a loyal ally of Rome since the Punic Wars,[128] Rome felt compelled to
intervene. Jugurtha impudently bribed the Romans into accepting his
usurpation. Jugurtha was finally captured not in battle but by treachery.

In 118, King Micipsa of Numidia (current-day Algeria and Tunisia) died.

He was succeeded by two legitimate sons, Adherbal and Hiempsal, and an
illegitimate son, Jugurtha. Micipsa divided his kingdom between these
three sons. Jugurtha, however, turned on his brothers, killing Hiempsal and
driving Adherbal out of Numidia. Adherbal fled to Rome for assistance,
and initially Rome mediated a division of the country between the two Bust of Gaius Marius,
instigator of the Marian
brothers. Eventually, Jugurtha renewed his offensive, leading to a long and
reforms
inconclusive war with Rome. He also bribed several Roman commanders,
and at least two tribunes, before and during the war. His nemesis, Gaius
Marius, a legate from a virtually unknown provincial family, returned from
the war in Numidia and was elected consul in 107 over the objections of the aristocratic senators. Marius
invaded Numidia and brought the war to a quick end, capturing Jugurtha in the process. The apparent
incompetence of the Senate, and the brilliance of Marius, had been
put on full display.[130] The populares party took full advantage of
this opportunity by allying itself with Marius.

The Cimbrian War (113–101) was a far more serious affair than
the earlier clashes of 121. The Germanic tribes of the Cimbri and
the Teutons[131] migrated from northern Europe into Rome's Denarius of Faustus Cornelius Sulla,
northern territories,[132] and clashed with Rome and her allies.[133] 56 BC. It shows Diana on the
At the Battle of Aquae Sextiae and the Battle of Vercellae both obverse, while the reverse depicts
tribes were virtually annihilated, which ended the threat. Sulla being offered an olive branch
by his ally Bocchus I. Jugurtha is
shown captive on the right.[129]
First civil wars

In 91 the Social War broke out between Rome and its former allies in Italy when the allies complained that
they shared the risk of Rome's military campaigns, but not its rewards. Although they lost militarily, the
allies achieved their objectives with legal proclamations which granted citizenship to more than 500,000
Italians.

The internal unrest reached its most serious state, however, in the two civil wars that were caused by the
clash between generals Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla starting from 88, when a Roman army
was sent to put down an emerging Asian power, king Mithridates of Pontus. The army, however, was not
defeated and won. One of Marius' old quaestors, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, had been elected consul for the
year, and was ordered by the senate to assume command of the war against Mithridates. Marius had a
tribune revoke Sulla's command of the war against Mithridates. Sulla brought his army back to Italy and
marched on Rome. Sulla was so angry at Marius' tribune that he passed a law intended to permanently
weaken the tribunate.[134] He then returned to his war against Mithridates. With Sulla gone, the faction of
Marius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna soon took control of the city.

During the period in which the Marians controlled the city, they flouted convention by re-electing Marius
consul several times without observing the customary ten-year interval between offices.[135] They also
transgressed the established oligarchy by advancing unelected individuals to magisterial office, and by
substituting magisterial edicts for popular legislation. Sulla soon made peace with Mithridates.

In 83, he returned to Rome, overcame all resistance, and recaptured the city. In the Battle of the Colline
Gate[136] at the very door of the city of Rome, a Roman army under Sulla bested an army of the Marius
supporters and entered the city. Sulla's actions marked a watershed in the willingness of Roman troops to
wage war against one another that was to pave the way for the wars which ultimately overthrew the
Republic, and caused the founding of the Roman Empire. Sulla and his supporters then slaughtered most of
Marius' supporters. Sulla, having observed the violent results of radical popular reforms, was naturally
tyrannical. As such, he sought to strengthen the aristocracy, and by extension the senate.[137] Sulla made
himself dictator, passed a series of constitutional reforms, resigned the dictatorship, and served one last term
as consul. He died in 78.

Pompey's dominance

The third and final slave uprising was the most serious,[138] involving ultimately between 120,000[139] and
150,000[140] slaves under the command of the gladiator Spartacus.

Mithridates the Great was the ruler of Pontus,[141] a large kingdom in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), from
120 to 63. Mithridates antagonised Rome by seeking to expand his kingdom,[141] and Rome for its part
seemed equally eager for war and the spoils and prestige that it might bring.[141][142] In 88, Mithridates
ordered the killing of a majority of the 80,000 Romans living in his kingdom.[143] The massacre was the
official reason given for the commencement of hostilities in the First Mithridatic War. The Roman general
Lucius Cornelius Sulla forced Mithridates out of Greece proper, but then had to return to Italy to answer the
internal threat posed by his rival, Gaius Marius. A peace was made between Rome and Pontus, but this
proved only a temporary lull.

The Second Mithridatic War began when Rome tried to annex a province that Mithridates claimed as his
own. In the Third Mithridatic War, first Lucius Licinius Lucullus and then Pompey the Great were sent
against Mithridates and his Armenian ally Tigranes the Great.[144] Mithridates was finally defeated by
Pompey in the night-time Battle of the Lycus.[145]

The Mediterranean had at this time fallen into the hands of pirates,[145] largely from Cilicia.[146] The
pirates not only strangled shipping lanes but also plundered many cities on the coasts of Greece and Asia.
Pompey was nominated as commander of a special naval task force to campaign against the
pirates.[144][145] It took Pompey just forty days to clear the western portion of the sea of pirates and restore
communication between Iberia (Spain), Africa, and Italy.

In 77, the senate sent one of Sulla's former lieutenants, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus ("Pompey the Great"), to
put down an uprising in Hispania. By 71, Pompey returned to Rome after having completed his mission.
Around the same time, another of Sulla's former lieutenants, Marcus Licinius Crassus, had just put down
the Spartacus-led gladiator/slave revolt in Italy. Upon their return, Pompey and Crassus found the populares
party fiercely attacking Sulla's constitution.[147] They attempted to forge an agreement with the populares
party. If both Pompey and Crassus were elected consul in 70, they would dismantle the more obnoxious
components of Sulla's constitution. The two were soon elected, and quickly rolled back most of Sulla's
constitution.[148]

Around 66, a movement to use constitutional, or at least peaceful,

means to address the plight of various classes began.[149] After
several failures, the movement's leaders decided to use any means
that were necessary to accomplish their goals. The movement
coalesced under an aristocrat named Lucius Sergius Catilina. The
movement was based in the town of Faesulae, which was a natural
hotbed of agrarian agitation.[150] The rural malcontents were to
advance on Rome,[151] and be aided by an uprising within the city.
After assassinating the consuls and most of the senators, Catiline
would be free to enact his reforms. The conspiracy was set in
motion in 63. The consul for the year, Marcus Tullius Cicero,
intercepted messages that Catiline had sent in an attempt to recruit
more members. As a result, the top conspirators in Rome
(including at least one former consul) were executed by
authorisation (of dubious constitutionality) of the senate, and the
planned uprising was disrupted. Cicero then sent an army, which
cut Catiline's forces to pieces. A Roman marble bust of Marcus
Tullius Cicero, Musei Capitolini,
The most important result of the Catilinarian conspiracy was that Rome
the populares party became discredited. The prior 70 years had
witnessed a gradual erosion in senatorial powers. The violent
nature of the conspiracy, in conjunction with the senate's skill in disrupting it, did a great deal to repair the
senate's image.[151]

Triumvirates and end of the Republic (60–27 BC)

First Triumvirate (60–50 BC)

In 62, Pompey returned victorious from Asia. The Senate, elated by its
successes against Catiline, refused to ratify the arrangements that Pompey
had made. Pompey, in effect, became powerless. Thus, when Julius Caesar
returned from a governorship in Spain in 61, he found it easy to make an
arrangement with Pompey. Caesar and Pompey, along with Marcus
Licinius Crassus, established a private agreement, now known as the First
Triumvirate. Under the agreement, Pompey's arrangements would be
ratified. Caesar would be elected consul in 59, and would then serve as
governor of Gaul for five years. Crassus was promised a future
consulship.[152][153]

A Roman marble head of Caesar's consular colleague in 59, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, was an
Pompey (now in the Ny extreme aristocrat. Caesar submitted the laws that he had promised
Carlsberg Glyptotek) Pompey to the assemblies. Bibulus attempted to obstruct the enactment of
these laws, and so Caesar used violent means to ensure their passage.[152]
Caesar was then made governor of three provinces. He facilitated the
election of the former patrician Publius Clodius Pulcher to the tribunate for 58. Clodius set about depriving
Caesar's senatorial enemies of two of their more obstinate leaders in Cato and Cicero. Clodius was a bitter
opponent of Cicero because Cicero had testified against him in a sacrilege case. Clodius attempted to try
Cicero for executing citizens without a trial during the Catiline conspiracy, resulting in Cicero going into
self-imposed exile and his house in Rome being burnt down. Clodius also passed a bill that forced Cato to
lead the invasion of Cyprus which would keep him away from Rome for some years. Clodius also passed a
law to expand the previous partial grain subsidy to a fully free grain dole for citizens.[154]

During his term as praetor in the Iberian Peninsula

(modern Portugal and Spain), Pompey's contemporary
Julius Caesar defeated two local tribes in battle.[155]
After his term as consul in 59, he was appointed to a
five-year term as the proconsular Governor of
Cisalpine Gaul (part of current northern Italy),
Transalpine Gaul (current southern France) and Illyria
(part of the modern Balkans).[155][156] Not content
with an idle governorship, Caesar strove to find
reason to invade Gaul (modern France and Belgium),
which would give him the dramatic military success
he sought. When two local tribes began to migrate on
a route that would take them near (not into) the
Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caesar had the
barely sufficient excuse he needed for his Gallic Wars,
fought between 58 and 49.

Map of the Gallic Wars Caesar defeated large armies at major battles 58 and
57. In 55 and 54 he made two expeditions into
Britain, the first Roman to do so. Caesar then defeated
a union of Gauls at the Battle of Alesia, [157] completing the Roman conquest of Transalpine Gaul. By 50,
all of Gaul lay in Roman hands.

Clodius formed armed gangs that terrorised the city and eventually began to attack Pompey's followers,
who in response funded counter-gangs formed by Titus Annius Milo. The political alliance of the
triumvirate was crumbling. Domitius Ahenobarbus ran for the consulship in 55 promising to take Caesar's
command from him. Eventually, the triumvirate was renewed at Lucca. Pompey and Crassus were
promised the consulship in 55, and Caesar's term as governor was extended for five years. Beginning in the
summer of 54, a wave of political corruption and violence swept Rome.[158] This chaos reached a climax
in January of 52 BC, when Clodius was murdered in a gang war by Milo.

In 53, Crassus launched a Roman invasion of the Parthian Empire (modern Iraq and Iran). After initial
successes,[159] he marched his army deep into the desert;[160] but here his army was cut off deep in enemy
territory, surrounded and slaughtered at the Battle of Carrhae in which Crassus himself perished. The death
of Crassus removed some of the balance in the Triumvirate and, consequently, Caesar and Pompey began
to move apart. While Caesar was fighting in Gaul, Pompey proceeded with a legislative agenda for Rome
that revealed that he was at best ambivalent towards Caesar[161] and perhaps now covertly allied with
Caesar's political enemies. Pompey's wife, Julia, who was Caesar's daughter, died in childbirth. This event
severed the last remaining bond between Pompey and Caesar. In 51, some Roman senators demanded that
Caesar not be permitted to stand for consul unless he turned over control of his armies to the state, which
would have left Caesar defenceless before his enemies. Caesar chose civil war over laying down his
command and facing trial.

Caesar's Civil War and dictatorship (49–44 BC)

On 1 January 49, an agent of Caesar presented an ultimatum to the senate.

The ultimatum was rejected, and the senate then passed a resolution which
declared that if Caesar did not lay down his arms by July of that year, he
would be considered an enemy of the Republic.[162] Meanwhile, the
senators adopted Pompey as their new champion against Caesar. On 7
January of 49, the senate passed a senatus consultum ultimum, which
vested Pompey with dictatorial powers. Pompey's army, however, was
composed largely of untested conscripts.

On 10 January, Caesar with his veteran army crossed the river Rubicon,
the legal boundary of Roman Italy beyond which no commander might
bring his army, in violation of Roman laws, and by the spring of 49 swept
down the Italian peninsula towards Rome. Caesar's rapid advance forced
Pompey, the consuls and the senate to abandon Rome for Greece. Caesar
entered the city unopposed. Afterwards Caesar turned his attention to the
Pompeian stronghold of Hispania (modern Spain)[163] but decided to
tackle Pompey himself in Greece.[164] Pompey initially defeated Caesar, The Tusculum portrait, a
Roman sculpture of Julius
but failed to follow up on the victory, and was decisively defeated at the
Caesar, Archaeological
Battle of Pharsalus in 48,[165] despite outnumbering Caesar's forces two to
Museum of Turin, Italy
one, albeit with inferior quality troops.[166] Pompey fled again, this time to
Egypt, where he was murdered.

Pompey's death did not end the civil war, as Caesar's many enemies fought on. In 46 Caesar lost perhaps as
much as a third of his army, but ultimately came back to defeat the Pompeian army of Metellus Scipio in the
Battle of Thapsus, after which the Pompeians retreated yet again to Hispania. Caesar then defeated the
combined Pompeian forces at the Battle of Munda.

With Pompey defeated and order restored, Caesar wanted to achieve undisputed control over the
government. The powers which he gave himself were later assumed by his imperial successors.[167] His
assumption of these powers decreased the authority of Rome's other political institutions.

Caesar held both the dictatorship and the tribunate, and alternated between the consulship and the
proconsulship.[167] In 48, Caesar was given permanent tribunician powers. This made his person
sacrosanct, gave him the power to veto the senate, and allowed him to dominate the Plebeian Council. In
46, Caesar was given censorial powers,[168] which he used to fill
the senate with his own partisans. Caesar then raised the
membership of the Senate to 900.[169] This robbed the senatorial
aristocracy of its prestige, and made it increasingly subservient to
him. While the assemblies continued to meet, he submitted all
candidates to them for election, as well as all bills for enactment.
Thus, the group became powerless and were unable to oppose
him.[170]

Caesar's assassination

Caesar began to prepare for a war against the Parthian Empire.

Since his absence from Rome would limit his ability to install his
own consuls, he passed a law that allowed him to appoint all
magistrates, and later all consuls and tribunes. This transformed the
magistrates from representatives of the people to representatives of
The Curia Julia, the Roman Senate
the dictator.[169] house established by Julius Caesar
in 44 BC and completed by Octavian
Caesar was now the primary figure of the Roman state, enforcing in 29 BC, replacing the Curia
and entrenching his powers. His enemies feared that he had Cornelia as the meeting place of the
ambitions to become an autocratic ruler. Arguing that the Roman Senate
Republic was in danger, a group of senators led by Gaius Cassius
and Marcus Brutus hatched a conspiracy and assassinated Caesar
at a meeting of the Senate on 15 March 44.[171] Most of the conspirators were senators, who had a variety
of economic, political, or personal motivations for carrying out the assassination. Many were afraid that
Caesar would soon resurrect the monarchy and declare himself king. Others feared loss of property or
prestige as Caesar carried out his land reforms in favor of the landless classes. Virtually all the conspirators
fled the city after Caesar's death in fear of retaliation.

Second Triumvirate

This mid-1st-century-BC Roman wall painting in Pompeii is probably a depiction of Cleopatra VII as Venus
Genetrix, with her son Caesarion as Cupid. Its owner Marcus Fabius Rufus most likely ordered its
concealment behind a wall in reaction to the execution of Caesarion on orders of Octavian in 30 BC.[172][173]

The civil wars that followed destroyed what was left of the Republic.[174]

After the assassination, Caesar's three most important supporters, Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony),
Caesar's co-consul, Gaius Octavianus (Octavian), Caesar's adopted son and great-nephew, and Marcus
Lepidus, Caesar's magister equitum, formed an alliance. Known as the Second Triumvirate,[175] they held
powers that were nearly identical to the powers that Caesar had held under his constitution. As such, the
Senate and assemblies remained powerless, even after Caesar had been assassinated. The conspirators were
then defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42. Although Brutus defeated Octavian, Antony defeated Cassius,
who committed suicide. Brutus did likewise soon afterwards.

Following Philippi, Rome's territories were divided between the triumvirs but the agreement was fragile
and could not withstand internal jealousies and ambitions. Antony detested Octavian and spent most of his
time in the East, while Lepidus favoured Antony but felt himself obscured by both his colleagues.
Following the defeat of the Sicilian revolt, led by Sextus Pompey, a dispute between Lepidus and Octavian
regarding the allocation of lands broke out. Octavian accused Lepidus of usurping power in Sicily and of
attempted rebellion and, in 36 BC, Lepidus was forced into exile in Circeii and stripped of all his offices
except that of Pontifex Maximus. His former provinces were awarded to Octavian.

Antony, meanwhile, married Caesar's lover, Cleopatra of Ptolemaic Egypt, intending to use the fabulously
wealthy Egypt as a base to dominate Rome. The ambitious Octavian built a power base of patronage and
then launched a campaign against Antony.[171] Another civil war subsequently broke out between
Octavian on one hand and Antony and Cleopatra on the other. This final civil war culminated in the latter's
defeat at Actium in 31 BC; Octavian's forces would then chase Antony and Cleoptra to Alexandria, where
they would both commit suicide in 30 BC.

Octavian was granted a series of special powers including sole "imperium" within the city of Rome,
permanent consular powers and credit for every Roman military victory, since all future generals were
assumed to be acting under his command. In 27 Octavian was granted the use of the names "Augustus",
indicating his primary status above all other Romans, "Princeps", which he used to refer to himself as in
public, and he adopted the title "Imperator Caesar" making him the first Roman Emperor.[176]

Constitutional system
The constitutional history of the Roman Republic began with the revolution which overthrew the monarchy
in 509 BC, and ended with constitutional reforms that transformed the Republic into what would
effectively be the Roman Empire, in 27 BC. The Constitution of the Roman Republic was a constantly-
evolving, unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent, by which the
government and its politics operated.[177] Throughout the history of the Republic, changes in the
constitution were driven by conflicts of interest between the aristocracy and ordinary citizens.

Senate

The senate's ultimate authority derived from the esteem and prestige of the senators.[178] This esteem and
prestige was based on both precedent and custom, as well as the caliber and reputation of the senators. The
senate passed decrees, which were called senatus consulta. These were officially "advice" from the senate
to a magistrate. In practice, however, they were usually followed by the magistrates.[179] The focus of the
Roman senate was usually directed towards foreign policy. Though it technically had no official role in the
management of military conflict, the senate ultimately was the force that oversaw such affairs. This was due
to the senate's explicit power over the state's budget and in military affairs.[180] The power of the senate
expanded over time as the power of the legislative assemblies declined, and the senate took a greater role in
ordinary law-making. Its members were usually appointed by Roman Censors, who ordinarily selected
newly elected magistrates for membership in the senate, making the senate a partially elected body. During
times of military emergency, such as the civil wars of the 1st century, this practice became less prevalent, as
the Roman Dictator, Triumvir or the senate itself would select its members. Towards the end of the
Republic, the senate could enact a senatus consultum ultimum in times of emergency, instead of appointing
a dictator.
Legislative assemblies

The legal status of Roman citizenship was limited and was a vital
prerequisite to possessing many important legal rights such as the
right to trial and appeal, to marry, to vote, to hold office, to enter
binding contracts, and to special tax exemptions. An adult male
citizen with the full complement of legal and political rights was
called "optimo jure." The optimo jure elected their assemblies,
whereupon the assemblies elected magistrates, enacted legislation,
presided over trials in capital cases, declared war and peace, and
The Roman Forum, the commercial,
forged or dissolved treaties. There were two types of legislative
cultural, religious, and political center
assemblies. The first was the comitia ("committees"),[181] which
of the city and the Republic which
were assemblies of all optimo jure. The second was the concilia
housed the various offices and
("councils"), which were assemblies of specific groups of optimo meeting places of the government
jure.[182]

Citizens were organized on the basis of centuries and tribes, which

would each gather into their own assemblies. The Comitia Centuriata ("Centuriate Assembly") was the
assembly of the centuries (i.e., soldiers). The president of the Comitia Centuriata was usually a consul. The
centuries would vote, one at a time, until a measure received support from a majority of the centuries. The
Comitia Centuriata would elect magistrates who had the imperium powers (consuls and praetors). It also
elected censors. Only the Comitia Centuriata could declare war, and ratify the results of a census.[183] It
also served as the highest court of appeal in certain judicial cases.

The assembly of the tribes (i.e., the citizens of Rome), the Comitia Tributa, was presided over by a consul,
and was composed of 35 tribes. The tribes were not ethnic or kinship groups, but rather geographical
subdivisions.[184] The order that the thirty-five tribes would vote in was selected randomly by lot.[185]
Once a measure received support from a majority of the tribes, the voting would end. While it did not pass
many laws, the Comitia Tributa did elect quaestors, curule aediles, and military tribunes.[186] The Plebeian
Council[187] was identical to the assembly of the tribes, but excluded the patricians. They elected their own
officers, plebeian tribunes and plebeian aediles. Usually a plebeian tribune would preside over the
assembly. This assembly passed most laws, and could also act as a court of appeal.

Magistrates

Each republican magistrate held certain constitutional powers. Each was assigned a provincia by the
Senate. This was the scope of that particular office holder's authority. It could apply to a geographic area or
to a particular responsibility or task.[188] The powers of a magistrate came from the people of Rome (both
plebeians and patricians).[189] The imperium was held by both consuls and praetors. Strictly speaking, it
was the authority to command a military force. In reality, however, it carried broad authority in the other
public spheres such as diplomacy, and the justice system. In extreme cases, those with the imperium power
were able to sentence Roman Citizens to death. All magistrates also had the power of coercitio (coercion).
This was used by magistrates to maintain public order by imposing punishment for crimes.[190] Magistrates
also had both the power and the duty to look for omens. This power could also be used to obstruct political
opponents.

One check on a magistrate's power was called Collega (collegiality). Each magisterial office would be held
concurrently by at least two people. Another such check was provocatio. While in Rome, all citizens were
protected from coercion, by provocatio, which was an early form of due process. It was a precursor to
habeas corpus. If any magistrate tried to use the powers of the state against a citizen, that citizen could
appeal the decision of the magistrate to a tribune. In addition, once a magistrate's one-year term of office
expired, he would have to wait ten years before serving in that office again. This created problems for some
consuls and praetors, and these magistrates would occasionally have their imperium extended. In effect,
they would retain the powers of the office (as a promagistrate), without officially holding that office.[191]

The consuls of the Roman Republic were the highest ranking ordinary magistrates. Each served for one
year.[192] They retained several elements of the former kingly regalia, such as the toga praetexta, and the
fasces, which represented the power to inflict physical punishment. Consular powers included the kings'
former "power to command" (imperium) and appointment of new senators. Consuls had supreme power in
both civil and military matters. While in the city of Rome, the consuls were the head of the Roman
government. They would preside over the senate and the assemblies. While abroad, each consul would
command an army.[193] His authority abroad would be nearly absolute. Praetors administered civil law[194]
and commanded provincial armies. Every five years, two censors were elected for an 18-month term,
during which they would conduct a census. During the census, they could enroll citizens in the senate, or
purge them from the senate.[195] Aediles were officers elected to conduct domestic affairs in Rome, such as
managing public games and shows. The quaestors would usually assist the consuls in Rome, and the
governors in the provinces. Their duties were often financial.

Since the tribunes were considered to be the embodiment of the plebeians, they were sacrosanct. Their
sacrosanctity was enforced by a pledge, taken by the plebeians, to kill any person who harmed or interfered
with a tribune during his term of office. It was a capital offense to harm a tribune, to disregard his veto, or
to otherwise interfere with him.[196] In times of military emergency, a dictator would be appointed for a
term of six months.[197] Constitutional government would be dissolved, and the dictator would be the
absolute master of the state. When the dictator's term ended, constitutional government would be restored.

Military
Rome's military secured Rome's territory and borders, and helped to impose tribute on conquered peoples.
Rome's armies had a formidable reputation; but Rome also "produced [its] share of incompetents"[198] and
catastrophic defeats. Nevertheless, it was generally the fate of Rome's greatest enemies, such as Pyrrhus
and Hannibal,[199] to win early battles but lose the war.

Hoplite armies (509–c. 315 BC)

During this period, Roman soldiers seem to have been modelled after those of the Etruscans to the
north,[200] who themselves are believed to have copied their style of warfare from the Greeks.
Traditionally, the introduction of the phalanx formation into the Roman army is ascribed to the city's
penultimate king, Servius Tullius (ruled 578–534).[201] The front rank was composed of the wealthiest
citizens, who were able to purchase the best equipment. Each subsequent rank consisted of those with less
wealth and poorer equipment than the one before it.[202][203]

The phalanx was effective in large, open spaces, but not on the hilly terrain of the central Italian peninsula.
In the 4th century, the Romans replaced it with the more flexible manipular formation. This change is
sometimes attributed to Marcus Furius Camillus and placed shortly after the Gallic invasion of 390; more
likely, it was copied from Rome's Samnite enemies to the south,[204] following the Second Samnite War
(326–304).[205]

Manipular legion (c. 315–107 BC)

During this period, an army formation
of around 5,000 men (of both heavy
and light infantry) was known as a
legion. The manipular army was
based upon social class, age and
military experience.[206] Maniples
were units of 120 men each drawn
from a single infantry class. They
were typically deployed into three
Detail from the Ahenobarbus relief showing (centre-right) two Roman
discrete lines based on the three heavy
foot-soldiers c. 122 BC. Note the Montefortino-style helmets with
infantry types: horsehair plume, chain mail cuirasses with shoulder reinforcement,
oval shields with calfskin covers, gladius and pilum.
1. The first line maniple were the
hastati, leather-armoured
infantry soldiers who wore a
bronze breastplate and a bronze helmet adorned with 3 feathers approximately 30 cm (12 in)
in height and carried an iron-clad wooden shield. They were armed with a sword and two
throwing spears.
2. The second line were the principes. They were armed and armoured in the same manner as
the hastati, but wore a lighter coat of mail rather than a solid brass breastplate.
3. The triarii formed the third line. They were the last remnant of the hoplite-style troops in the
Roman army. They were armed and armoured like the principes, with the exception that they
carried a lighter spear.[207]

The three infantry classes[208] may have retained some slight parallel to social divisions within Roman
society, but at least officially the three lines were based upon age and experience rather than social class.
Young, unproven men would serve in the first line, older men with some military experience would serve in
the second line, and veteran troops of advanced age and experience would serve in the third line.

The heavy infantry of the maniples were supported by a number of light infantry and cavalry troops,
typically 300 horsemen per manipular legion.[208] The cavalry was drawn primarily from the richest class
of equestrians. There was an additional class of troops who followed the army without specific martial roles
and were deployed to the rear of the third line. Their role in accompanying the army was primarily to
supply any vacancies that might occur in the maniples. The light infantry consisted of 1,200 unarmoured
skirmishing troops drawn from the youngest and lower social classes. They were armed with a sword and a
small shield, as well as several light javelins.

Rome's military confederation with the other peoples of the Italian peninsula meant that half of Rome's
army was provided by the Socii, such as the Etruscans, Umbrians, Apulians, Campanians, Samnites,
Lucani, Bruttii, and the various southern Greek cities. Polybius states that Rome could draw on 770,000
men at the beginning of the Second Punic War, of which 700,000 were infantry and 70,000 met the
requirements for cavalry. Rome's Italian allies would be organized in alae, or wings, roughly equal in
manpower to the Roman legions, though with 900 cavalry instead of 300.

A small navy had operated at a fairly low level after about 300, but it was massively upgraded about forty
years later, during the First Punic War. After a period of frenetic construction, the navy mushroomed to a
size of more than 400 ships on the Carthaginian ("Punic") pattern. Once completed, it could accommodate
up to 100,000 sailors and embarked troops for battle. The navy thereafter declined in size.[209]

The extraordinary demands of the Punic Wars, in addition to a shortage of manpower, exposed the tactical
weaknesses of the manipular legion, at least in the short term.[210] In 217, near the beginning of the Second
Punic War, Rome was forced to effectively ignore its long-standing principle that its soldiers must be both
citizens and property owners. During the 2nd century, Roman territory saw an overall decline in
population,[211] partially due to the huge losses incurred during various
wars. This was accompanied by severe social stresses and the greater
collapse of the middle classes. As a result, the Roman state was forced to
arm its soldiers at the expense of the state, which it did not have to do in
the past.

The distinction between the heavy infantry types began to blur, perhaps
because the state was now assuming the responsibility of providing
standard-issue equipment. In addition, the shortage of available manpower
led to a greater burden being placed upon Rome's allies for the provision
of allied troops.[212] Eventually, the Romans were forced to begin hiring
mercenaries to fight alongside the legions.[213]

Legion after the reforms of Gaius Marius (107–27

BC)
The "Togatus Barberini",
In a process known as the Marian reforms, Roman consul Gaius Marius depicting a Roman senator
carried out a programme of reform of the Roman military.[214] In 107, all holding the imagines
citizens, regardless of their wealth or social class, were made eligible for (effigies) of deceased
entry into the Roman army. This move formalised and concluded a gradual ancestors in his hands;
process that had been growing for centuries, of removing property marble, late 1st century BC;
requirements for military service. [215] The distinction among the three head (not belonging): mid
heavy infantry classes, which had already become blurred, had collapsed 1st century BC
into a single class of heavy legionary infantry. The heavy infantry
legionaries were drawn from citizen stock, while non-citizens came to
dominate the ranks of the light infantry. The army's higher-level officers and commanders were still drawn
exclusively from the Roman aristocracy.[216]

Unlike earlier in the Republic, legionaries were no longer fighting on a seasonal basis to protect their land.
Instead, they received standard pay, and were employed by the state on a fixed-term basis. As a
consequence, military duty began to appeal most to the poorest sections of society, to whom a salaried pay
was attractive. A destabilising consequence of this development was that the proletariat "acquired a
stronger and more elevated position"[217] within the state.

The legions of the late Republic were almost entirely heavy infantry. The main legionary sub-unit was a
cohort of approximately 480 infantrymen, further divided into six centuries of 80 men each.[218] Each
century comprised 10 "tent groups" of 8 men. Cavalry were used as scouts and dispatch riders, rather than
as battlefield forces.[219] Legions also contained a dedicated group of artillery crew of perhaps 60 men.
Each legion was normally partnered with an approximately equal number of allied (non-Roman)
troops.[220]

The army's most obvious deficiency lay in its shortage of cavalry, especially heavy cavalry.[221] Particularly
in the East, Rome's slow-moving infantry legions were often confronted by fast-moving cavalry-troops, and
found themselves at a tactical disadvantage.

Following Rome's subjugation of the Mediterranean, its navy declined in size although it would undergo
short-term upgrading and revitalisation in the late Republic to meet several new demands. Julius Caesar
assembled a fleet to cross the English Channel and invade Britannia. Pompey raised a fleet to deal with the
Cilician pirates who threatened Rome's Mediterranean trading routes. During the civil war that followed, as
many as a thousand ships were either constructed or pressed into service from Greek cities.[209]
Social structure
Citizen families were headed by the family's oldest male, the pater
familias, who was lawfully entitled to exercise complete authority
(patria potestas) over family property and all family members.
Brutus, co-founder of the Republic, is supposed to have exercised
the extreme form of this right when he executed his own sons for
treachery.[225] Citizenship offered legal protection and rights, but
citizens who offended Rome's traditional moral code could be
declared infamous, and lose certain legal and social privileges.[226] A Roman naval bireme depicted in a
Citizenship was also taxable, and undischarged debt was relief from the Temple of Fortuna
potentially a capital offence. A form of limited, theoretically Primigenia in Praeneste,[222] c. 120
voluntary slavery (debt bondage, or nexum) allowed wealthy BC;[223] now in the Museo Pio-
creditors to negotiate payment of debt through bonded service. Clementino in the Vatican Museums
Poor, landless citizens of the lowest class (proletarii) might
contract their sons to a creditor, patron or third party employer to
obtain an income, or to pay off family debts. Nexum was only
abolished when slave labour became more readily available, most
notably during the Punic wars.[227][228][229]

Slaves were simultaneously family members and family property.

They could be bought, sold, acquired through warfare, or born and
raised within their master's household,. They could also buy their
freedom with money saved or the offer of future services as a
freedman or woman, and their sons could be eligible for
citizenship; this degree of social mobility was unusual in the Temple of Janus as seen in the
ancient world. Freed slaves and the master who freed them present church of San Nicola in
retained certain legal and moral mutual obligations. This was the Carcere, in the Forum Holitorium of
bottom rung of one of Rome's fundamental social and economic Rome, Italy, dedicated by Gaius
institutions, the client-patron relationship. At the top rung were the Duilius after his naval victory at the
senatorial families of the landowning nobility, both patrician and Battle of Mylae in 260 BC[224]
plebeian, bound by shifting allegiances and mutual competition. A
plebiscite of 218 forbade senators and their sons to engage in
substantial trade or money-lending.[230][231] A wealthy equestrian
class emerged, not subject to the same trading constraints as
senators.[232]

Citizen men and citizen women were expected to marry, produce

as many children as possible, and improve – or at worst, conserve
– their family's wealth, fortune, and public profile. Marriage
offered opportunities for political alliance and social advancement.
Patricians usually married in a form known as confarreatio, which
transferred the bride from her father's absolute control or "hand" An inscribed funerary relief of
Aurelius Hermia and his wife Aurelia
(manus) to that of her husband.[233] Patrician status could only be
Philematum, former slaves who
inherited through birth; an early law, introduced by the reactionary
married after their manumission, 80
Decemviri but rescinded in 445, sought to prevent marriages
BC, from a tomb along the Via
between patricians and plebeians; any resulting offspring may not Nomentana in Rome
have been legally recognised.[234] Among ordinary plebeians,
different marriage forms offered married women considerable
more freedom than their patrician counterparts, until manus marriage was replaced by free marriage, in
which the wife remained under the legal authority of her absent father, not her husband.[235] Infant
mortality was high. Towards the end of the Republic, the birthrate began to fall among the elite. Some
wealthy, childless citizens resorted to adoption to provide male heirs for their estates, and to forge political
alliances. Adoption was subject to the senate's approval; the notoriously unconventional patrician politician
Publius Clodius Pulcher had himself and his family adopted into a plebeian clan, so that he could hold a
plebeian tribunate.

Trade and economy

Farming

The Republic was created during a time of warfare, economic recession, food shortages, and plebeian debt.
In wartime, plebeian farmers were liable to conscription. In peacetime, most depended on whatever cereal
crops they could produce on small farming plots, allotted to them by the state, or by patrons. Soil fertility
varied from place to place, and natural water sources were unevenly distributed throughout the landscape.
In good years, a pleb small-holder might trade a small surplus, to meet his family's needs, or to buy the
armatures required for his military service. In other years, crop failure through soil exhaustion, adverse
weather, disease or military incursions could lead to poverty, unsupported borrowing, and debt. Nobles
invested much of their wealth in ever-larger, more efficient farming units, exploiting a range of soil
conditions through mixed farming techniques. As farming was labour-intensive, and military conscription
reduced the pool of available manpower, over time the wealthy became ever more reliant upon the
increasingly plentiful slave-labour provided by successful military campaigns.[236][237][238] Large, well
managed agricultural estates helped provide for clients and dependents, support an urban family home, and
fund the owner's public and military career, in the form of cash for bribes and security for loans. Later
Roman moralists idealised farming as an intrinsically noble occupation: Cincinnatus left off his ploughing
reluctantly, to serve as dictator, and returned once his state duties were done.[239][240][241]

In law, land taken by conquest was ager publicus (public land). In practise, much of it was exploited by the
nobility, using slaves rather than free labour. Rome's expansionist wars and colonisations were at least
partly driven by the land-hunger of displaced peasants, who must otherwise join the swelling, dependent
population of urban plebs.[242] At the end of the second Punic War, Rome added the fertile ager
Campanus, suitable for intense cultivation of vines, olives and cereals. Like the grain-fields of Sicily –
seized after the same conflict – it was likely farmed extra-legally by leading landowners, using slave-gangs.
A portion of Sicily's grain harvest was sent to Rome as tribute, for redistribution by the aediles.[243][244]
The urban plebs increasingly relied on firstly subsidised, then free grain.[245]

With the introduction of aqueducts (from 312), suburban market-

farms could be supplied with run-off or waste aqueduct water.
Perishable commodities such as flowers (for perfumes, and festival
garlands), fresh grapes, vegetables and orchard fruits, and small
livestock such as pigs and chickens, could be farmed close to
municipal and urban markets.[237] In the early 2nd century Cato
the Elder tried to block the illicit tapping of rural aqueducts by the
elite, who thus exploited the increased productivity of cheaply
bought, formerly "dry" farmland; a law was duly passed, but fines
for abuses, and taxes on profits, proved more realistic solutions Ruins of the Aqua Anio Vetus, a
than an outright ban. Food surpluses, no matter how obtained, kept Roman aqueduct built in 272 BC
prices low.[246][247] Faced with increasing competition from
provincial and allied grain suppliers, many Roman farmers turned
to more profitable crops, especially grapes for wine production. By the late Republican era, Roman wine
had been transformed from an indifferent local product for local consumption, to a major domestic and
export commodity, with some renowned, costly and collectable vintages.[248][249]
Roman writers have little to say about large-scale stock-breeding, but make passing references to its
profitability. Drummond speculates that this focus on agriculture rather than livestock might reflect elite
preoccupations with historical grain famines, or long-standing competition between agriculturalists and
pastoralists. While agriculture was a seasonal practise, pasturage was a year-round requirement. Some of
Republican Rome's early agricultural legislation sought to balance the competing public grazing rights of
small farmers, the farming elite, and transhumant pastoralists, who maintained an ancient right to herd,
graze and water their animals between low-lying winter pastures and upland summer pastures. From the
early second century, transhumance was practised on a vast scale, as an investment opportunity.[250][251]
Though meat and hides were valuable by products of stock-raising, cattle were primarily reared to pull carts
and ploughs, and sheep were bred for their wool, the mainstay of the Roman clothing industry. Horses,
mules and donkeys were bred as civil and military transport. Pigs bred prolifically, and could be raised at
little cost by any small farmer with rights to pannage. Their central dietary role is reflected by their use as
sacrificial victims in domestic cults, funerals, and cults to agricultural deities.[250]

Religion
Republican Rome's religious practises harked back to Rome's
quasi-mythical history.[253][254] Romulus, a son of Mars, founded
Rome after Jupiter granted him favourable bird-signs regarding the
site.[255] Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome, had established
Rome's basic religious and political institutions after direct
instructions from the gods, given through augury, dreams and
oracle. Each king thereafter was credited with some form of
divinely approved innovation, adaptation or reform.[256] An
Imperial-era source claims that the Republic's first consul, Brutus,
effectively abolished human sacrifice to the goddess Mania, The Temple of Portunus, god of grain
storage, keys, livestock and
instituted by the last king, Tarquinius.[257]
ports.[252] Rome, built between 120
Romans acknowledged the existence of innumerable deities who and 80 BC
controlled the natural world and human affairs. Every individual,
occupation and location had a protective tutelary deity, or
sometimes several. Each was associated with a particular, highly
prescriptive form of prayer and sacrifice. Piety (pietas) was the
correct, dutiful and timely performance of such actions. The well-
being of each Roman household was thought to depend on daily
cult to its Lares and Penates (guardian deities, or spirits), ancestors,
and the divine generative essence embodied within its pater
familias. A family which neglected its religious responsibilities
could not expect to prosper.[258]
The tomb of the Flavii, a necropolis
The well-being of the Roman state depended on its state deities, outside the Nucerian gate (Porta
whose opinions and will could be discerned by priests and Nocera) of Pompeii, Italy,
magistrates, trained in augury, haruspicy, oracles and the constructed 50–30 BC
interpretation of omens. Impieties in state religion could produce
expressions of divine wrath such as social unrest, wars, famines
and epidemics, vitiate the political process, render elections null and void, and lead to the abandonment of
planned treaties, wars and any government business. Accidental errors could be remedied by repeating the
rite correctly, or by an additional sacrifice; outright sacrilege threatened the bonds between the human and
divine, and carried the death penalty. As divine retribution was invoked in the lawful swearing of oaths and
vows, oath-breakers forfeited their right to divine protection, and might be killed with impunity.[259]
Roman religious authorities were unconcerned with personal beliefs or privately funded cults, unless they
offended natural or divine laws, or undermined the mos maiorum (roughly, "the way of the ancestors"); the
relationship between gods and mortals should be sober, contractual, and of mutual benefit. Undignified
grovelling, excessive enthusiasm (superstitio) and secretive practises were "weak minded" and morally
suspect.[260] Magical practises were officially banned, as attempts to subvert the will of the gods for
personal gain, but were probably common among all classes. Private cult organisations that seemed to
threaten Rome's political and priestly hierarchy were investigated by the Senate, with advice from the
priestly colleges. The Republic's most notable religious suppression was that of the Bacchanalia, a
widespread, unofficial, enthusiastic cult to the Greek wine-god Bacchus. The cult organisation was
ferociously suppressed, and its deity was absorbed within the official cult to Rome's own wine-god,
Liber.[261] The official recognition, adoption and supervision of foreign deities and practices, whether
Etruscan, Sabine, Latin or colonial Greek, had been an important unitary feature in Rome's territorial
expansion and dominance since the days of the kings. For example, king Servius Tullius had established an
Aventine temple to Diana as a Roman focus for the Latin League.[253][254]

The gods were thought to communicate their wrath (ira deorum) through prodigies (unnatural or aberrant
phenomena). During the crisis of the Second Punic War an unprecedented number of reported prodigies
were expiated, in more than twenty days of public ritual and sacrifices. In the same period, Rome recruited
the "Trojan" Magna Mater (Great Mother of the Gods) to the Roman cause, "Hellenised" the native Roman
cult to Ceres; and took control of the Bacchanalia festival in Rome and its allied territories. Following
Rome's disastrous defeat at Cannae, the State's most prominent written oracle recommended the living
burial of human victims in the Forum Boarium to placate the gods.[262][263] Livy describes this "bloodless"
human sacrifice as an abhorrent but pious necessity; Rome's eventual victory confirmed the gods'
approval.[264]

Starting in the mid-Republican era, some leading Romans publicly displayed special, sometimes even
intimate relationships with particular deities. For instance, Scipio Africanus claimed Jupiter as a personal
mentor. Some gentes claimed a divine descent, often thanks to a false etymology of their name; the Caecilii
Metelli pretended to descend from Vulcan through his son Caeculus, the Mamilii from Circe through her
granddaughter Mamilia, the Julii Caesares and the Aemilii from Venus through her grandsons Iulus and
Aemylos. In the 1st century, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar made competing claims for Venus'
favour.[265][266][267]

Priesthoods

With the abolition of monarchy, some of its sacral duties were shared by the consuls, while others passed to
a Republican rex sacrorum (king of the sacred rites"), a patrician "king", elected for life, with great prestige
but no executive or kingly powers.[268] Rome had no specifically priestly class or caste. As every family's
pater familias was responsible for his family's cult activities, he was effectively the senior priest of his own
household. Likewise, most priests of public cult were expected to marry, produce children, and support
their families.[269] In the early Republic the patricians, as "fathers" to the Roman people, claimed the right
of seniority to lead and control the state's relationship with the divine. Patrician families, in particular the
Cornelii, Postumii and Valerii, monopolised the leading state priesthoods: the flamines of Jupiter, Mars and
Quirinus, as well as the pontifices. The patrician Flamen Dialis employed the "greater auspices" (auspicia
maiora) to consult with Jupiter on significant matters of State.

Twelve "lesser flaminates" (Flamines minores), were open to plebeians, or reserved to them. They included
a Flamen Cerealis in service of Ceres, goddess of grain and growth, and protector of plebeian laws and
tribunes.[270] The plebs had their own forms of augury, which they credited to Marsyas, a satyr or silen in
the entourage of Liber, plebeian god of grapes, wine, freedom and male fertility.[271] The priesthoods of
local urban and rustic Compitalia street-festivals, dedicated to the Lares of local communities, were open to
freedmen and slaves, to whom "even the heavy-handed Cato recommended liberality during the festival";
so that the slaves, "being softened by this instance of humanity, which has something great and solemn
about it, may make themselves more agreeable to their masters and be less sensible of the severity of their
condition".[272]

The Lex Ogulnia (300) gave patricians and plebeians more-or-less

equal representation in the augural and pontifical colleges;[50]
other important priesthoods, such as the Quindecimviri ("The
Fifteen"), and the epulones[275] were opened to any member of the
senatorial class.[276] To restrain the accumulation and potential
abuse of priestly powers, each gens was permitted one priesthood
at any given time, and the religious activities of senators were Denarius of Lucius Caesius, 112–111
monitored by the censors.[276] Magistrates who held an augurate BC. On the obverse is Apollo, as
could claim divine authority for their position and written on the monogram behind his
policies.[277][278] In the late Republic, augury came under the head, who also wears the attributes
control of the pontifices, whose powers were increasingly woven of Vejovis, an obscure deity. The
into the civil and military cursus honorum. Eventually, the office obverse depicts a group of statues
of pontifex maximus became a de facto consular prerogative.[279] representing the Lares Praestites,
which was described by
Some cults may have been exclusively female; for example, the Ovid.[273][274]
rites of the Good Goddess (Bona Dea). Towards the end of the
second Punic War, Rome rewarded priestesses of Demeter from
Graeca Magna with Roman citizenship for training respectable, leading matrons assacerdotes of "Greek
rites" to Ceres.[280] Every matron of a family (the wife of its pater familias) had a religious duty to maintain
the household fire, which was considered an extension of Vesta's sacred fire, tended in perpetuity by the
chaste Vestal Virgins. The Vestals also made the sacrificial mola salsa employed in many State rituals, and
represent an essential link between domestic and state religion. Rome's survival was thought to depend on
their sacred status and ritual purity. Vestals found guilty of inchastity were "willingly" buried alive, to
expiate their offence and avoid the imposition of blood-guilt on those who inflicted the
punishment.[281][282]

Temples and festivals

Rome's major public temples were contained within the city's sacred, augural boundary (pomerium), which
had supposedly been marked out by Romulus, with Jupiter's approval. The Temple of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus ("Jupiter, Best and Greatest") stood on the Capitoline Hill. Among the settled areas outside the
pomerium was the nearby Aventine Hill. It was traditionally associated with Romulus' unfortunate twin,
Remus, and in later history with the Latins, and the Roman plebs. The Aventine seems to have functioned
as a place for the introduction of "foreign" deities.[284] In 392, Camillus established a temple there to Juno
Regina, Etruscan Veii's protective goddess. Later introductions include Summanus, c. 278, Vortumnus c.
264, and at some time before the end of the 3rd century, Minerva.[285] While Ceres' Aventine temple was
most likely built at patrician expense, to mollify the plebs, the patricians brought the Magna Mater ("Great
mother of the Gods") to Rome as their own "Trojan" ancestral goddess, and installed her on the Palatine,
along with her distinctively "un-Roman" Galli priesthood.[286]

Romulus was said to have pitched his augural tent atop the Palatine. Beneath its southern slopes ran the
sacred way, next to the former palace of the kings (Regia), the House of the Vestals and Temple of Vesta.
Close by were the Lupercal shrine and the cave where Romulus and Remus were said to have been
suckled by the she-wolf. On the flat area between the Aventine and Palatine was the Circus Maximus,
which hosted chariot races and religious games. Its several shrines and temples included those to Rome's
indigenous sun god, Sol, the moon-goddess Luna, the grain-storage god, Consus, and the obscure goddess
Murcia. A temple to Hercules stood in the Forum Boarium, near
the Circus starting gate. Every district (Vicus) of the city had a
crossroads shrine to its own protective Lares.

Whereas Republican (and thereafter, Imperial) Romans marked the

passage of years with the names of their ruling consuls, their
calendars marked the anniversaries of religious foundations to
particular deities, the days when official business was permitted
(fas), and those when it was not (nefas). The Romans observed an
eight-day week; markets were held on the ninth day. Each month
was presided over by a particular, usually major deity. The oldest
calendars were lunar, structured around the most significant
periods in the agricultural cycle, and the religious duties required to
yield a good harvest.

In the military
Inside the "Temple of Mercury" at
Baiae, a swimming pool for a Roman
Before any campaign or battle, Roman commanders took auspices, bath, built during the late Roman
or haruspices, to seek the gods' opinion regarding the likely
Republic,[283] and containing one of
outcome. Military success was achieved through a combination of the largest domes in the world before
personal and collective virtus (roughly, "manly virtue") and divine the building of the Pantheon
will. Triumphal generals dressed as Jupiter Capitolinus, and laid
their victor's laurels at his feet. Religious negligence, or lack of
virtus, provoked divine wrath and led to military disaster.[288][289]
Military oaths dedicated the oath-takers life to Rome's gods and
people; defeated soldiers were expected to take their own lives,
rather than survive as captives. Examples of devotio, as performed
by the Decii Mures, in which soldiers offered and gave their lives
to the Di inferi (gods of the underworld) in exchange for Roman
victory were celebrated as the highest good. Denarius of Caesar, minted just
before his murder, in 44 BC. It was
Some of Republican Rome's leading deities were acquired through
the first Roman coin bearing the
military actions. In the earliest years of the Republic, Camillus portrait of a living person. The lituus
promised Veii's goddess Juno a temple in Rome as incentive for and culullus depicted behind his
her desertion (evocatio). He conquered the city in her name, head refer to his augurate and
brought her cult statue to Rome "with miraculous ease" and pontificate. The reverse with Venus
dedicated a temple to her on the Aventine Hill.[290] The first alludes to his claimed descent from
known temple to Venus was built to fulfil a vow made by Q. the goddess.[287]
Fabius Gurges during battle against the Samnites.[291][292]
Following Rome's disastrous defeat by Carthage in the Battle of
Lake Trasimene (217), Rome laid siege to Eryx, a Sicillian ally of Carthage. The city's patron deity, whom
the Romans recognised as a warlike version of Venus, was "persuaded" to change her allegiance and was
rewarded with a magnificent temple on the Capitoline Hill, as one of Rome's twelve Dii consentes. Venus
Victrix was thought to grant her favourites a relatively easy victory, worthy of an ovation and myrtle
crown.[293][294]

Cities, towns and villas

City of Rome
Life in the Roman Republic revolved around the city of
Rome, and its seven hills. The most important governing,
administrative and religious institutions were concentrated at
its heart, on and around the Capitoline and Palatine Hills. The
city rapidly outgrew its original sacred boundary (pomerium),
and its first city walls. Further growth was constrained by an
inadequate fresh-water supply. Rome's first aqueduct (312)
built during the Punic wars crisis, provided a plentiful, clean
supply. The building of further aqueducts led to the city's
expansion and the establishment of public baths (thermae) as
a central feature of Roman culture.[295][296] The city also had
The ruins of the Servian Wall, built during
several theatres,[297] gymnasiums, and many taverns and
the 4th century BC, one of the earliest
brothels. Living space was at a premium. Some ordinary ancient Roman defensive walls
citizens and freedmen of middling income might live in
modest houses but most of the population lived in apartment
blocks (insulae, literally "islands"), where the better-off might rent an entire ground floor, and the poorest a
single, possibly windowless room at the top, with few or no amenities. Nobles and rich patrons lived in
spacious, well-appointed town houses; they were expected to keep "open house" for their peers and clients.
A semi-public atrium typically functioned as a meeting-space, and a vehicle for display of wealth, artistic
taste, and religious piety. Noble atria were also display areas for ancestor-masks (imagines).[298]

Most Roman towns and cities had a forum and temples, as did the city of Rome itself. Aqueducts brought
water to urban centres.[299] Landlords generally resided in cities and left their estates in the care of farm
managers.

Culture

Clothing

The basic Roman garment was the Greek-style tunic, worn knee-length and short-sleeved (or sleeveless)
for men and boys, and ankle-length and long-sleeved for women and girls. The toga was distinctively
Roman. It was thought to have begun during the early Roman kingdom, as a plain woolen "shepherd's
wrap", worn by both sexes, all classes, and all occupations, including the military.[301] By the middle to
late Republic, citizen women had abandoned it for the less bulky, Greek-style stola, and the military used it
only for off-duty ceremonies.[302] The toga became a mark of male citizenship, a statement of social
degree.[303] Convention also dictated the type, colour and style of calcei (ankle-boots) appropriate to each
level of male citizenship; red for senators, brown with crescent-shaped buckles for equites, and plain tanned
for plebs.

The whitest, most voluminous togas were worn by the senatorial class. High ranking magistrates, priests
and citizen's children were entitled to a purple-bordered toga praetexta. Triumphal generals wore an all-
purple, gold-embroidered toga picta, associated with the image of Jupiter and Rome's former kings – but
only for a single day; Republican mores simultaneously fostered competitive display and attempted its
containment, to preserve at least a notional equality between peers, and reduce the potential threats of class
envy.[304] Togas, however, were impractical for physical activities other than sitting in the theatre, public
oratory, and attending the salutiones ("greeting sessions") of rich patrons. Most Roman citizens, particularly
the lower class of plebs, seem to have opted for more comfortable and practical garments, such as tunics
and cloaks.
Luxurious and highly coloured clothing had always been
available to those who could afford it, particularly women of
the leisured classes. There is material evidence for cloth-of-
gold (lamé) as early as the 7th century.[305] By the 3rd
century, significant quantities of raw silk was being imported
from China.[306] The Lex Oppia (215), which restricted
personal expenditure on such luxuries as purple clothing, was
repealed in 195, after a mass public protest by wealthy Roman
matrons.[307] Tyrian purple, as a quasi-sacred colour, was
officially reserved for the border of the toga praetexta and for
the solid purple toga picta;[308][309] but towards the end of
the Republic, the notorious Verres was wearing a purple
pallium at all-night parties, not long before his trial, disgrace
and exile for corruption.[310]

For most Romans, even the simplest, cheapest linen or

woolen clothing represented a major expense. Worn clothing
was passed down the social scale until it fell to rags, and these
in turn were used for patchwork.[311] Wool and linen were
the mainstays of Roman clothing, idealised by Roman
moralists as simple and frugal.[312] Landowners were advised
that female slaves not otherwise occupied should be
producing homespun woolen cloth, good enough for clothing The Orator, c. 100 BC, an Etrusco-Roman
the better class of slave or supervisor. Cato the Elder statue of a Republican senator, wearing
recommended that slaves be given a new cloak and tunic toga praetexta and senatorial shoes;
every two years; coarse rustic homespun would likely be "too compared to the voluminous, costly,
good" for the lowest class of slave, but not good enough for impractical togas of the Imperial era, the
their masters.[313] For most women, the carding, combing, Republican-era type is frugal and "skimpy"
spinning and weaving of wool were part of daily (exigua).[300]
housekeeping, either for family use or for sale. In
traditionalist, wealthy households, the family's wool-baskets,
spindles and looms were positioned in the semi-public reception area (atrium), where the mater familias and
her familia could thus demonstrate their industry and frugality; a largely symbolic and moral activity for
those of their class, rather than practical necessity.[314]

As the Republic wore on, its trade, territories and wealth increased. Roman conservatives deplored the
apparent erosion of traditional, class-based dress distinctions, and an increasing Roman appetite for
luxurious fabrics and exotic "foreign" styles among all classes, including their own. Towards the end of the
Republic, the ultra-traditionalist Cato the Younger publicly protested the self-indulgent greed and ambition
of his peers, and the loss of Republican "manly virtues", by wearing a "skimpy" dark woolen toga, without
tunic or footwear.[312][315]

Food and dining

Modern study of the dietary habits during the Republic are hampered by various factors. Few writings have
survived, and because different components of their diet are more or less likely to be preserved, the
archaeological record cannot be relied on.[316] Cato the Elder's De Agri Cultura includes several recipes
and his suggested "Rations for the hands". The list of ingredients includes cheese, honey, poppy seeds,
coriander, fennel, cumin, egg, olives, bay leaves, laurel twig, and anise. He gives instructions for kneading
bread, making porridge, Placenta cake, brine, various wines, preserving lentils, planting asparagus, curing
ham, and fattening geese and squab.[317] The Roman poet Horace mentions another Roman favorite, the
olive, in reference to his own diet, which he describes as very
simple: "As for me, olives, endives, and smooth mallows provide
sustenance."[318] Meat, fish and produce were a part of the Roman
diet at all levels of society.[319]

Romans valued fresh fruit, and had a diverse variety available to

them.[320] Wine was considered the basic drink,[321] consumed at
all meals and occasions by all classes and was quite inexpensive.
Cato once advised cutting his rations in half to conserve wine for
the workforce.[322] Many types of drinks involving grapes and
honey were consumed as well. Drinking on an empty stomach was
regarded as boorish and a sure sign for alcoholism, the debilitating
physical and psychological effects of which were known to the Banquet scene, fresco,
Romans. Accusations of alcoholism were used to discredit political Herculaneum, Italy, c. 50 BC
rivals. Prominent Roman alcoholics included Marcus
Antonius,[323] and Cicero's own son Marcus (Cicero Minor). Even
Cato the Younger was known to be a heavy drinker.[324]

Education and language

Rome's original native language was early Latin, the language of the Italic Latins. Most surviving Latin
literature is written in Classical Latin, a highly stylised and polished literary language which developed
from early and vernacular spoken Latin, from the 1st century. Most Latin speakers used Vulgar Latin,
which significantly differed from Classical Latin in grammar, vocabulary, and eventually pronunciation.

Following various military conquests in the Greek East, Romans adapted a number of Greek educational
precepts to their own fledgling system.[325] Strenuous, disciplined physical training helped prepare boys of
citizen class for their eventual citizenship and a military career. Girls generally received instruction[326]
from their mothers in the art of spinning, weaving, and sewing. Schooling in a more formal sense was
begun around 200. Education began at the age of around six, and in the next six to seven years, boys and
girls were expected to learn the basics of reading, writing and counting. By the age of twelve, they would
be learning Latin, Greek, grammar and literature, followed by training for public speaking. Effective
oratory and good Latin were highly valued among the elite, and were essential to a career in law or
politics.[327]

Arts

In the 3rd century, Greek art taken as the spoils of war became popular, and many Roman homes were
decorated with landscapes by Greek artists.[328]

Over time, Roman architecture was modified as their urban requirements changed, and the civil engineering
and building construction technology became developed and refined. The architectural style of the capital
city was emulated by other urban centers under Roman control and influence.

Literature

Early Roman literature was influenced heavily by Greek authors. From the mid-Republic, Roman authors
followed Greek models, to produce free-verse and verse-form plays and other in Latin; for example, Livius
Andronicus wrote tragedies and comedies. The earliest Latin works to have survived intact are the
comedies of Plautus, written during the mid-Republic. Works of well-known, popular playwrights were
sometimes commissioned for performance at religious festivals; many of these were satyr plays, based on
Greek models and Greek myths. The poet Naevius may be said to have written the first Roman epic poem,
although Ennius was the first Roman poet to write an epic in an adapted Latin hexameter. However, only
fragments of Ennius' epic, the Annales, have survived, yet both Naevius and Ennius influenced later Latin
epic, especially Virgil's Aeneid. Lucretius, in his On the Nature of Things, explicated the tenets of
Epicurean philosophy.

The politician, poet and philosopher Cicero's literary output was remarkably prolific and so influential on
contemporary and later literature that the period from 83 BC to 43 BC has been called the "Age of Cicero".
His oratory set new standards for centuries, and continue to influence modern speakers, while his
philosophical works, which were, for the most part, Cicero's Latin adaptations of Greek Platonic and
Epicurean works influenced many later philosophers.[329][330] Other prominent writers of this period
include the grammarian and historian of religion Varro, the politician, general and military commentator
Julius Caesar, the historian Sallust and the love poet Catullus.

Sports and entertainment

The city of Rome had a place called the Campus Martius ("Field
of Mars"), which was a sort of drill ground for Roman soldiers.
Later, the Campus became Rome's track and field playground. In
the campus, the youth assembled to play and exercise, which
included jumping, wrestling, boxing and racing. Equestrian sports,
throwing, and swimming were also preferred physical activities. In
the countryside, pastimes included fishing and hunting. Board
games played in Rome included dice (Tesserae or Tali), Roman The Amphitheatre of Pompeii, built
Chess (Latrunculi), Roman Checkers (Calculi), Tic-tac-toe (Terni around 70 BC and buried by the
Lapilli), and Ludus duodecim scriptorum and Tabula, predecessors eruption of Mount Vesuvius 79 AD,
of backgammon.[331] Other activities included chariot races, and once hosted spectacles with
musical and theatrical performances. gladiators.

See also
Democratic empire
History of the Roman Empire – Occurrences and people in the Roman Empire
Roman commerce
Roman conceptions of citizenship – aspect of history
Roman economy – Economy of ancient Rome

Notes
i. Throughout the Republic, the Cornelii held 75 consulships and 27 consular tribuneships,
almost 10% of all the consulships of the period.
ii. Several historians, notably Tim Cornell, have challenged this view, saying that in the early
Republic the Fasti Consulares bear names that are distinctively plebeian. Therefore, they
claim that the plebeians were only excluded from higher offices by the Decemvirate in 451
BC. More recently, Corey Brennan has dismissed this theory, arguing that the consular
plebeians would not have let the Decemvirs take their power away that easily (cf. The
Praetorship, pp. 24, 25). He explains the "plebeian" names in the Fasti by some patrician
gentes who later died out, or lost their status. Consequently, this article follows the traditional
narrative that the plebeians were excluded from the start.
iii. The urban poor were registered in the four urban tribes, whilst the 31 other tribes were
composed of landowners, who therefore had the majority in the Tribal Assembly. Humm
thinks that Caecus actually did not appointed "freedmen" in the Senate, but chose new
Roman citizens from the recently conquered cities in Italy.
iv. Appius Caecus is a complex character whose reforms are difficult to interpret. For example,
Mommsen considered he was a revolutionary, but was puzzled by his opposition to the Lex
Ogulnia, which contradicts his previous "democratic" policies. Taylor on the contrary thought
he defended patricians' interests, as freedmen remained in the clientele of their patrons.
More recently, Humm described his activity as the continuation of the reforms undertaken
since Stolo and Lateranus.
v. There are significant differences between the accounts of Cassius Dio, Dionysius, and
Plutarch, but the latter's is traditionally followed in the academic literature.

References

Citations
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Encyclopedia. Retrieved 5 November 2020.
8. Cornell, The beginnings of Rome, pp. 215–218: Cornell offers a summary of "Livy's prose
narrative" and derived literary works relating to the expulsion of the kings.
9. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, p. iv. 64–85.
10. Livy, i. 57–60
11. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 226–228.
12. Aristotle, Politics, 5.1311a.
13. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 215–218, 377–378.
14. Drummond, Cambridge Ancient History, VII, part 2, p. 178.
15. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 215–217.
16. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 33
17. Florus, Epitome, i. 11–12.
18. Grant, The History of Rome, pp. 37–41.
19. Pennell, Ancient Rome, Ch. II
20. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 289–291.
21. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 256–259: Plebs ("the mass") was originally a disparaging
term, but was adopted as a badge of pride by those whom it was meant to insult. It might not
have referred to wealthier commoners.
22. Orlin, A Companion to Roman Religion, pp. 59–60.
23. The traditional date for the first secession is given by Livy as 494; many other dates have
been suggested, and several such events probably took place: see Cornell, Beginnings of
Rome, pp. 215–218, 256–261, 266.
24. For a discussion of the duties and legal status of plebeian tribunes and aediles, see Andrew
Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 92–101 (https://bo
oks.google.com/books?id=QIKEpOP4lLIC&pg=PA92).
25. Florus, Epitome, i. 13.
26. Grant, The History of Rome, pp. 48–49.
27. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 52.
28. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 53.
29. It has nevertheless been speculated that Lucius Atilius Luscus in 444, and Quintus Antonius
Meranda in 422 were also plebeian. cf. Brennan, The Praetorship, p. 50.
30. Cornell, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7-2, p. 338.
31. Livy, vi. 11, 13–30.
32. Cornell, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7-2, pp. 331, 332.
33. Cornell, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7-2, p. 337. Cornell explains that Livy confused the
contents of the Lex Licinia Sextia of 366 the Lex Genucia of 342.
34. Livy mentions at least two patricians favourable to the tribunes: Marcus Fabius Ambustus,
Stolo's father-in-law, and the dictator for 368 Publius Manlius Capitolinus, who appointed the
first plebeian magister equitum, Gaius Licinius Calvus.
35. Livy, vi. 36–42.
36. Broughton, vol. I, pp. 108–114.
37. Brennan, The Praetorship, pp. 59–61.
38. Livy, vii. 42 (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0
154%3Abook%3D7%3Achapter%3D42).
39. Brennan, The Praetorship, pp. 65–67, where he shows that the ten-year rule was only
temporary at this time.
40. Cornell, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7-2, pp. 342, 343.
41. Brennan, The Praetorship, pp. 68, 69.
42. Cornell, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7-2, pp. 393, 394. Cornell gives an earlier date,
before 318.
43. Humm, Appius Claudius Caecus (https://books.openedition.org/efr/1613#bodyftn15), pp.
185–226.
44. Taylor, Voting Districts, pp. 132–138.
45. Bruce MacBain, "Appius Claudius Caecus and the Via Appia (https://www.jstor.org/stable/63
8505)", in The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1980), pp. 356–372.
46. Cornell, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7-2, p. 343.
47. Graham Maddox, "The Economic Causes of the Lex Hortensia (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4
1532825)", in Latomus, T. 42, Fasc. 2 (Apr.–Jun. 1983), pp. 277–286.
48. R. Develin, "'Provocatio" and Plebiscites (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4430760)'. Early
Roman Legislation and the Historical Tradition", in Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 31,
Fasc. 1 (1978), pp. 45–60.
49. Cornell, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7-2, pp. 340, 341.
50. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, p. 342
51. Franke, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, p. 484.
52. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 78.
53. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, p. xix. 5, 6.
54. Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 14.
55. Franke, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 456, 457.
56. Cicero, Cato Maior de Senectute, 6.
57. Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 18, 19.
58. Franke, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 466–471.
59. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, p. xx. 3.
60. Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 21 § 9.
61. Cassius Dio, x. 5.
62. Franke, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 473–480.
63. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, p. xx. 8..
64. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 80
65. Polybius, iii. 22–26.
66. Livy, vii. 27.
67. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 517–537.
68. Which assembly was consulted has led to many discussions in the academic literature.
Goldsworthy favours the Centuriate Assembly, cf. The Punic Wars, p. 69.
69. Polybius, i. 11, 12.
70. H. H. Scullard thinks that Caudex was not successful, since he did not receive a triumph and
was succeeded in command by Messalla, his political enemy. Cf. Cambridge Ancient
History, vol. 7, part 2, p. 545.
71. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, p. 547.
72. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 113
73. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 84.
74. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 548–554.
75. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 88.
76. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 554–557.
77. Crawford (1974), pp. 292, 293.
78. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 559–564.
79. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 565–569.
80. Hoyos, Companion to the Punic Wars, p. 217.
81. Hoyos, Companion to the Punic Wars, p. 215.
82. Carthage was an oligarchy at the time, dominated by the Barcids. The Roman historian
Fabius Pictor thought that the Barcids conquered Spain without approval from the
Carthaginian government; a view rejected by Polybius. cf. Hoyos, Companion to the Punic
Wars, pp. 212–213.
83. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, pp. 28–31.
84. Hoyos, Companion to the Punic Wars, pp. 216–219.
85. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, pp. 33–36.
86. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, p. 37. These gentes had interests in Massalia and
other Greek cities of the western Mediterranean. Massalia was concerned by the
Carthaginian growing influence in Spain.
87. Scullard, Cambridge Ancient History, p. 39.
88. Briscoe, Cambridge Ancient History, p. 46.
89. Fronda, Companion to the Punic Wars, pp. 251, 252.
90. Briscoe, Cambridge Ancient History, p. 47.
91. Livy, xxi. 38, quoting Cincius Alimentus who reported a personal discussion with Hannibal,
in which he said he lost 38,000 men by crossing the Alps.
92. Briscoe, Cambridge Ancient History, p. 48.
 93. Polybius (iii. 117) gives 70,000 dead. Livy (xxii. 49) gives 47,700 dead and 19,300
prisoners.
94. Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, Great Britain, Volume IX, British Museum, Part 2: Spain,
London, 2002, n° 102.
95. Briscoe, Cambridge Ancient History, pp. 52, 53.
96. Briscoe, Cambridge Ancient History, pp. 49, 50.
97. Briscoe, Cambridge Ancient History, p. 57.
98. Briscoe, Cambridge Ancient History, p. 59.
99. Briscoe, Cambridge Ancient History, p. 55.
100. Briscoe, Cambridge Ancient History, p. 60.
101. Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 47
102. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 115
103. Eckstein, Rome Enters the Greek East, p. 42.
104. Eckstein, Rome Enters the Greek East, p. 43
105. Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 49
106. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 117
107. Eckstein, Rome Enters the Greek East, p. 48
108. Eckstein, Rome Enters the Greek East, p. 51
109. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 119
110. Eckstein, Rome Enters the Greek East, p. 52
111. Naples National Archaeological Museum (Inv. No. 5634).
112. Lane Fox, The Classical World, p. 326
113. Eckstein, Rome Enters the Greek East, p. 55
114. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 120
115. Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 75
116. Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 92
117. Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 53
118. History of Rome – The republic, Isaac Asimov.
119. Pennell, Ancient Rome, Ch. XV, para. 24
120. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 338
121. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 339
122. Abbott, 96
123. Bishop, Paul. "Rome: Transition from Republic to Empire" (https://web.archive.org/web/2015
0924025245/http://www.hccfl.edu/media/160883/ee1rome.pdf) (PDF). Hillsborough
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125. Stobart, J.C. (1978). "III". In Maguinness, W.S; Scullard, H.H. The Grandeur That was Rome
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126. Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens, p. 29
127. Sallust, The Jugurthine War, XII
128. Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 64
129. Crawford (1974), pp. 449–451.
130. Abbott, 100
131. Appian, History of Rome, §6
132. Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 75
133. Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens, p. 6
134. Abbott, 103
135. Abbott, 106
136. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 161
137. Abbott, 104
138. Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 77
139. Appian, Civil Wars, 1, 117
140. Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens, p. 43
141. Florus, The Epitome of Roman history, Book 3, ch. 5
142. Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 76
143. Grant, The History of Rome, p. 158
144. Lane Fox, The Classical World, p. 363
145. Plutarch, Lives, Pompey
146. Florus, The Epitome of Roman history, Book 3, ch. 6
147. Abbott, 108
148. Abbott, 109
149. Abbott, 109–110
150. Abbott, 110
151. Abbott, 111
152. Abbott, 112
153. Cantor, Antiquity, p. 168
154. Abbott, 113
155. Plutarch, Lives, Caesar
156. Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens, p. 58
157. Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens, p. 62 See also: Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p.
212
158. Abbott, 114
159. Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 133
160. Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, p. 266
161. Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 214
162. Abbott, 115
163. Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 217
164. Julius Caesar, The Civil War, 81–92 See also: Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 218
165. Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 227 See also: Lane Fox, The Classical World, p. 403
166. Holland, Rubicon, p. 312
167. Abbott, 134
168. Abbott, 135
169. Abbott, 137
170. Abbott, 138
171. Cantor, Antiquity, p. 170
172. Roller, Duane W. (2010). Cleopatra: a biography (https://archive.org/details/cleopatrabiograp
00roll_0). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 175. ISBN 978-0195365535.
173. Walker, Susan (2008). "Cleopatra in Pompeii?" (https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/ao
p-cambridge-core/content/view/S0068246200000404). Papers of the British School at
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174. Abbott, 133
175. Goldsworthy, Adrian (2003). In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire.
p. 237. ISBN 9780297846666.
176. Luttwak, Edward (1976). The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century
CE to the Third. p. 7. ISBN 9780801818639.
177. Byrd, 161
178. Byrd, 96
179. Byrd, 44
180. Bleiken, Jochen (1995). Die Verfassung der römischen Republik (6th ed.). Schöningh: UTB.
181. Lintott, 42
182. Abbott, 251
183. Abbott, 257
184. Lintott, 51
185. Taylor, 77
186. Taylor, 7
187. Abbott, 196
188. Lintott, Constitution of the Roman Republic, p. 101.
189. Lintott, Constitution of the Roman Republic, p. 95.
190. Lintott, Constitution of the Roman Republic, p. 97.
191. Lintott, 113
192. Byrd, 20
193. Byrd, 179
194. Byrd, 32
195. Byrd, 26
196. Byrd, 23
197. Byrd, 24
198. Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 15
199. Lane Fox, The Classical World, p. 312
200. Nicholas V Sekunda, Early Roman Armies, p. 17.
201. Nicholas V Sekunda, Early Roman Armies, p. 18.
202. Livy, i. 43.
203. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, p. iv. 16–18.
204. Early Roman Armies, pp. 37–38.
205. "Rome, The Samnite Wars" (https://web.archive.org/web/20111014004107/http://history-worl
d.org/samnite_wars.htm). History-world.org. Archived from the original (http://history-world.or
g/samnite_wars.htm) on 14 October 2011. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
206. Boak, A History of Rome to 565 A.D., p. 87
207. PolybiusB6
208. Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens, p. 18
209. Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, p. 156
210. Smith, Service in the Post-Marian Roman Army, p. 2
211. Gabba, Republican Rome, The Army and The Allies, p. 9
212. Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens, p. 11
213. Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, p. 143
214. Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens, p. 10
215. Gabba, Republican Rome, The Army And the Allies, p. 1
216. Santosuosso, p. 29
217. Gabba, Republican Rome, The Army and The Allies, p. 25
218. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 14
219. Webster, The Roman Imperial Army, p. 116
220. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 15
221. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 43
222. D.B. Saddington (2011) [2007]. "Classes: the Evolution of the Roman Imperial Fleets (https://
books.google.com/books?id=1D612o_X2VYC&pg=PR10)," in Paul Erdkamp (ed), A
Companion to the Roman Army, 201–217. Malden, Oxford, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
ISBN 978-1-4051-2153-8. Plate 12.2 on p. 204.
223. Coarelli, Filippo (1987), I Santuari del Lazio in età repubblicana. NIS, Rome, pp 35–84.
224. Tacitus. Annales. II.49.
225. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 215–216.
226. Thomas A.J. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality and the Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford
University Press, 1998), pp. 65ff.
227. Drummond, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, p. 126.
228. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 238, 379–380, citing Livy, 9. 46. 13–14 for the poorest
citizens as forensis facto... humillimi (the "lowest of the low").
229. Alföldy, Geza, The Social History of Rome, p. 17.
230. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 288–291.
231. Flower, Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, pp. 173–175; Flower is describing
the restrictions placed on Senatorial business activity by the plebiscitum Claudianum of 218
BC, and related legislation: it may have been intended to reduce opportunity for bribery and
corruption, or to help Senators focus exclusively on their tasks in government.
232. D'Arms, J. B., "Senators' Involvement in Commerce in the Late Republic: Some Ciceronian
Evidence (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4238697)", Memoirs of the American Academy in
Rome, Vol. 36, The Seaborne Commerce of Ancient Rome: Studies in Archaeology and
History (1980), pp. 77–89, University of Michigan Press for the American Academy in Rome.
233. David Johnston, Roman Law in Context (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 33–34.
234. The plebeian involved in such a marriage would likely have been wealthy: see Cornell, The
beginnings of Rome, p. 255.
235. Bruce W. Frier and Thomas A.J. McGinn, A Casebook on Roman Family Law (Oxford
University Press, 2004), pp. 20, 53, 54. Plebeian marriage forms include coemptio (marriage
"by purchase" – a form of dowry), and usus (marriage recognised through the couple's
"habitual cohabitation")
236. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 265–268, 283.
237. Bannon, Gardens and Neighbors, pp. 5–10.
238. Drummond, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 118–122, 135, 136.
239. Livy, iii. 26–29.
240. Cornell, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 412–413: Cato the Elder dwelt upon
the probably mythical poverty of leading Romans such as Manius Dentatus, and the
incorruptible Gaius Fabricius Luscinus.
241. Rosenstein, Nathan, "Aristocrats and Agriculture in the Middle and Late Republic (https://ww
w.jstor.org/stable/20430663)", The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 98 (2008), pp. 1–3.
242. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 265–268.
243. Gabba, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 8, pp. 197–198.
244. Lintott, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 9, p. 55: A later consular investigation into similar
land-encroachments is dated to 175.
245. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, pp. 328–329.
246. Bannon, Gardens and Neighbors, pp. 5–10; citing Hodge, Roman Aqueducts, p. 219 for
Cato's diatribe against the misuse of aqueduct water by L. Furius Purpureus, consul in 196.
247. Nicolet, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 9, p. 619.
248. Rosenstein, Nathan, "Aristocrats and Agriculture in the Middle Republic", The Journal of
Roman Studies, Vol. 98 (2008), pp. 2–16.
249. Nicolet, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 9, pp. 612–615: up to this time, the Roman elite had
favoured Greek imported wine over any of Rome's homegrown versions.
250. Drummond, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 118–122.
251. Gabba, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 8, pp. 237–239.
252. Fowler, W. Warde (1899). Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic. Port Washington,
NY: Kennikat Press. pp. 202–204.
253. Rüpke, Companion to Roman Religion, p. 4.
254. Beard, North, Price, Religions of Rome, Vol. I, pp. 30–35.
255. Robert Schilling, "The Decline and Survival of Roman Religion", Roman and European
Mythologies University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 115
256. King Numa Pompilius was also said to have consorted with the nymph Egeria. The myths
surrounding king Servius Tullius include his divine fathering by a Lar of the royal household,
or by Vulcan, god of fire; and his love-affair with the goddess Fortuna.
257. Macrobius describes the woolen figurines (maniae) hung at crossroad shrines during the
popular Compitalia festival as substitutions for ancient human sacrifice once held at the
same festival and suppressed by Rome's first consul, L. Junius Brutus. Whatever the truth
regarding this sacrifice and its abolition, the Junii celebrated their ancestor cult during
Larentalia rather than the usual Parentalia even in the 1st century BC; see Taylor, Lilly Ross,
"The Mother of the Lares", in American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 29, 3, (July–Sept. 1925),
pp. 302 ff.
258. Orr, D. G., Roman domestic religion: the evidence of the household shrines, Aufstieg und
Niedergang der römischen Welt, II, 16, 2, Berlin, 1978, 1557–1591.
259. Halm, Companion to Roman Religion, pp. 241, 242.
260. Rüpke, Companion to Roman Religion, p. 5.
261. Erich S. Gruen, Erich S., "The Bacchanalia affair", in Studies in Greek Culture and Roman
Policy, University of California Press, 1996, pp. 34 ff.
262. Rosenberger, Companion to Roman Religion, pp. 295–298; the discovery of a
hermaphroditic four-year-old child was expiated by the state haruspex, who set the child to
drown in the sea. Its survival for four years after its birth would have been regarded as
extreme dereliction of religious duty.
263. Livy, xxvii. 37, cited by Halm, Companion to Roman Religion, p. 244; see also Rosenberger,
p. 297.
264. For Livy's use of prodigies and portents as markers of Roman impiety and military failure,
see Feeney, Companion to Roman Religion, pp. 138, 139. For prodigies in the context of
political decision-making, see Rosenberger, pp. 295–298.
265. Festus, "Caeculus", "Aemilia" and others.
266. T. P. Wiseman, "Legendary Genealogies in Late-Republican Rome (https://www.jstor.org/sta
ble/642729)", Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Oct. 1974), pp. 153–164.
267. Orlin, Companion to Roman Religion, pp. 67–69.
268. Jörg Rüpke, Religion of the Romans (Polity Press, 2007, originally published in German
2001), p. 223.
269. The Vestal Virgins were the major exception. The Galli, mendicant eunuch priets of the
Magna Mater, were forbidden Roman citizenship.
270. Cornell, The beginnings of Rome, p. 264.
271. Barbette Stanley Spaeth, "The Goddess Ceres and the Death of Tiberius Gracchus",
Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 39, No. 2 (1990), pp. 185–186.
272. Lott, John. B., The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 2004, ISBN 0-521-82827-9, pp. 31, 35, citing Cato, On agriculture, 5.3., and
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 4.14.2–4 (excerpt), Trans. Cary, Loeb, Cambridge, 1939.
273. Ovid, Fasti, v, 129–145
274. Crawford (1974), p. 312.
275. Established in 196 to take over the running of a growing number of ludi and festivals from
the pontifices
276. Lipka, M., Roman Gods: a conceptual approach, Versnel, H., S., Frankfurter, D., Hahn, J.,
(Editors), Religions in the Graeco-Roman world, Brill, 2009, pp. 171–172
277. Rosenberger, Companion to Roman Religion, p. 299.
278. Auctoritas (authority) is etymologically linked to augur: See Cornell, The Beginnings of
Rome, p. 341
279. Brent, A. The imperial cult and the development of church order: Concepts and images of
authority in paganism and early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian, Brill, 1999, pp. 19–
20, 21–25: citing Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 2.4.
280. Spaeth, Barbette Stanley, The Roman goddess Ceres, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp.
4, 6–13. ISBN 0-292-77693-4
281. Cunham, Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, p. 155.
282. Beard, Mary, "The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins," The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 70,
(1980), pp. 12–27; and Parker, Holt N. "Why Were the Vestals Virgins? Or the Chastity of
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(2004), pp. 563–601.
283. "Baiae, historic site, Italy (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Temple-of-Mercury)".
Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed 6 June 2021.
284. Cornell, Beginnings of Rome, p. 264.
285. Orlin, Eric M., Foreign Cults in Republican Rome: Rethinking the Pomerial Rule, Memoirs of
the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 47 (2002), pp. 4–5. For Camillus and Juno, see
Stephen Benko, The virgin goddess: studies in the pagan and Christian roots of mariology,
Brill, 2004, p. 27.
286. Roller, Lynn Emrich (1999). In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, pp. 282–285. ISBN 0-
520-21024-7
287. Crawford (1974), pp. 487–495.
288. Orlin, Companion to Roman Religion, p. 58.
289. Beard, North, Price, Religions of Rome, Vol. I, pp. 44, 59, 60, 143.
290. Cornell, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, part 2, p. 299, citing Livy xxi. 8–9 and xxii. 3–6.
Livy describes this as evocatio (a "calling forth") initiated by Roman soldiers who snatched
the goddess's sacrificial portion during her Veiian rites; the Veiian priest had announced that
whoever possessed the sacred entrails would win the coming battle.
291. Eden, P. T., "Venus and the Cabbage" Hermes, 91, (1963) p. 456.
292. Schilling, R. La Religion romaine de Venus, BEFAR, Paris, 1954, p. 87, suggests that Venus
began as an abstraction of personal qualities, later assuming Aphrodite's attributes.
293. See Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, The Belknap Press, 2007, pp. 62–63.
294. Brouwer, Henrik H. J., Bona Dea, The Sources and a Description of the Cult, Études
préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain, 110, Brill, 1989: citing Pliny the
Elder, Natural History, Book 23, 152–158, and Book 15, 125.
295. Gargarin, M. and Fantham, E. (editors). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and
Rome, Volume 1. p. 145.
296. For the earliest likely development of Roman public bathing, see Fagan, Garrett T., Bathing
in Public in the Roman World, University of Michigan Press, 1999, pp. 42–44.
297. Jones, Mark Wilson Principles of Roman Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2000.
298. "The architecture of the ancient Romans was, from first to last, an art of shaping space
around ritual:" Lott, John. B., The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 1, citing Frank E. Brown, Roman Architecture, (New
York, 1961, p. 9. Some Roman ritual includes activities which might be called, in modern
terms, religious; some is what might be understood in modern terms as secular – the proper
and habitual way of doing things. For Romans, both activities were matters of lawful custom
(mos maiorum) rather than religious as opposed to secular.
299. Kevin Greene, "Technological Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World: M.I.
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what was known as a "Gabine cinch". See Stone, The World of Roman Costume, p. 13.
302. An equestrian statue, described during the Imperial era by Pliny the Elder as "ancient",
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most seem to dress as they like, not as they ought: "For now the Roman people are much
mixed with foreigners, there is equal citizenship for freedmen, and slaves dress like their
masters. With the exception of the Senators, free citizens and slaves wear the same
costume." See Rothfus, MA, "The Gens Togata: Changing Styles and Changing Identities",
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External links
The Roman Republic (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20041230.sh
tml) from In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)
Nova Roma – Educational Organization (http://novaroma.org/nr/Main_Page) a working
historical reconstruction of the Roman Republic
Roman Empire History (http://www.unrv.com/)

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