Rome and her Empire

David Shotter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317881414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The name of Rome excites a picture of power and organisation, as do the widely-spread ruins that Roman civilization left behind. Yet Rome grew out of a collection of small villages and major developments such as the growth of Empire were unplanned and completely unprepared for.Influenced by a small number of self-interested aristocrats who lacked a broader vision, Rome was often threatened by their intrigues. Brought to the ground on a number of occasions, its leaders were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. How did Rome survive for nearly 1000 years, ruling over millions of people with few instances of internal rebellion? David Shotter argues that the key was the way Rome managed to adapt to new circumstances, without at the same time discarding too many of its cherished traditions.

Chapter 1

Myth, monarchy and the Republic

Myth and Monarchy

‘In its earliest years, Rome was ruled by kings’: with these I words the Roman historian, Cornelius Tacitus, briefly summarised the beginnings of Rome’s history in the opening sentence of his Annals. Roman tradition, as enunciated by Varro in the mid-first century BC, dated Rome’s foundation to 753 BC and remembered seven kings of Rome between that date and the establishment of the Republic in 509. Archaeological evidence does indeed suggest that such a foundation date coincides approximately with significant developments in the history of the site, although it also indicates that settlement reached back beyond the tenth century. Without doubt, Rome’s position on the hills adjacent to the River Tiber – defensible, close to the sea and to deposits of estuarine salt, and with access to the interior – serves to explain its long-standing attraction to so many people.

However, even these introductory sentences demonstrate the nature and magnitude of just some of the problems which face the historian of early Rome and Italy. Classical writers survive who tackled the period – for example, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Polybius and Appian – though none of them was close in time to the events which they were attempting to describe. Also, some Italian events were of intrinsic interest to major historians of Greece: thus, Thucydides has left an account of the disastrous Athenian expedition to Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War in the late fifth century. Livy was, however, perfectly honest about the problems inherent in trying to compose an account of early Rome (VI. 1): he deals, he says, in his first five books with matters which were obscure because they were deep in the past and because the conditions for contemporary recording did not exist. Further, the traumatic Gallic invasion of Rome in 390 BC destroyed such records as did exist, and these presumably had to be ‘reconstructed’ in the aftermath. Nonetheless, historians have noted, even in Livy’s early books, what they take to be citations from early records. Livy further ‘excuses’ himself (Praef. to Book I): the Romans had achieved so much that they were entitled to some indulgence in glorifying their distant past; nor should we lose sight of the fact that Livy’s literary patron, the emperor Augustus, had a vested interest in linking his regime with the heroic deeds of earlier years and in ‘proving’ an ancient origin for the ancestral custom (mos maiorum) which he took as his mission to encourage.

The site of Rome (see Fig. 1.1) lay in that part of Italy known as Latium; here, too, prehistoric settlement went back beyond the tenth century, but expanded notably in scope and wealth in the eighth and seventh centuries, distinguished by very rich tombs and by impressive goods both locally crafted and imported from other parts of Italy and the Mediterranean. It is probably significant that similar advances can be found in other western areas of Italy to both the north and the south of the site of Rome. The implication is clearly the development of wealthy aristocracies, and it is hard to avoid connecting this phenomenon with the arrival of Greeks in southern Italy driven from their home states by a combination of economic hardship and political intolerance; these enterprising people will have required goods and raw materials from the north and will have exchanged them for their own products. The wealthy aristocracies of Latium (and elsewhere) will then have originated with those of their number who were themselves sufficiently enterprising to grasp such opportunities. This period of the eighth to seventh centuries also saw the emergence of defended towns, which again points to wealth accumulation, status and the growth of competition for these.

Figure 1.1 Map of Italy, showing principal early sites and peoples. Source: After M. Hadas, A History of Rome (London: G. Bell & Sons Ltd, 1958], p. 21.

The pattern of development in Etruria was not dissimilar and was presumably responding to similar stimuli. Although the area to the north of Rome contained people of different origins and Cultures (as reflected in tribal names), two cultural names predominate in prehistory – Villanovans (who may have come originally from central Europe) and Etruscans, although the latter name is most widely used. In these areas we see a chronological pattern of development akin to that of Latium, although with different artefactual characteristics. Here, too, defended, ‘town-like’, centres began to appear in the seventh century, presumably with aristocratic rulers.

The origin of the Etruscans has over the years been a matter of considerable dispute: the written form of their language derives from the same Greek as that used by the colonists of the south, although the nature of the language, unlike Greek, is not Indo-European. This has appeared to lend support to the contention of the Greek historian, Herodotus, that the Etruscans may have originated in Asia Minor; yet, despite the superficial attractiveness of such an idea, archaeological evidence has produced no support for the notion of significant immigration into northern Italy at the relevant time.

However that may be, it does seem that culturally Etruscan influence was spreading in Italy in the sixth century, so that it manifests itself all over the peninsula as far south as Campania – that is, up to the Greek settlements of the south. We should not, however, view the Etruscans as constituting a homogeneous political grouping: they were linked by religion and cultural affinity alone. In their centres (‘city-states’), the warlords maintained a fierce independence of one another, which undoubtedly resulted in bitter and frequent strife between neighbours – of the kind that was later evident, for example, between the neighbouring cities of Rome and Veii.

Immigration into the south of Italy by Greeks began in the eighth century, extending from the islands on to the mainland. Some of these city-states, which generally maintained an independence of each other, were founded from already-existing settlements in Italy, while others continued to be founded from city-states in Greece itself. Because of the circumstances which drove such ‘colonists’ from their homelands, relations between mother-city and colony were poor, often to the point of non-existence.

These Greek city-states in southern Italy and Sicily made up an environment dominated by manufacturing and trade, and evidence of their search for raw materials is ample throughout Italy. Given the importance to them of commerce, the Greek settlements were located principally in the coastal lowlands, where land quality was high – a factor which brought them into conflict with indigenous tribes of the interior, such as the Samnites.

Archaeological evidence suggests that relations between Greeks and Etruscans were often good, leading to the hypothesis of shared participation in some projects. Rectilinear town planning, for example, originated among Greeks in Asia Minor, probably deriving from mathematical principles exemplified in the work of Hippodamus of Miletus. In the sixth century, it made its appearance on an Etruscan site – Marzabotto (near Bologna), prompting the suggestion of involvement by Greek planners, perhaps from southern Italy where land conditions favoured rectilinear town planning, which was said to have been an object of envy among ‘northerners’. Similarly, it has been suggested that Greek and Etruscan artists may have worked together on the painted tombs of Tarquinia. Such, then, was the vibrant, cosmopolitan, environment of Italy in which Rome came into being as an urban entity.

An attempt to bring clarity to the early history of Rome itself finds us implicated in a net of myths, legends and pseudo-history, which is occasionally penetrated by the evidence of archaeology and possibly-genuine records. We are faced immediately by an apparent inconsistency: two foundation episodes for Rome were known – that of the Trojan hero, Aeneas, celebrated most fully in the Augustan epic poem, Virgil’s Aeneid, and that of Romulus and Remus, which figures in the works of several historians.

The story of Aeneas bridges the eastern and western Mediterranean and, by bringing Rome into the ‘epic cycle’, gives her a place in Greek history and the development of classical civilisation. The Greeks were much interested in Rome; early writers and travellers in the Greek city-states of Italy, especially Cumae, were certainly responsible for the passage of information to the great ‘logographers’ of Asia Minor of the early fifth century, such as Hecataeus and Hellanikos. In the Greek versions, there is an attempt to connect the aftermath of the Trojan War with the founding of Rome, usually by Trojans (Aeneas, Romé, Romos). Hellanikos certainly said that Aeneas was responsible for the foundation, and named his new site after Romé, one of the Trojan women in his party – that is, in c. 1180 BC. Besides the Greek source, this version reappears on Etruscan pottery of the sixth century, suggesting that Aeneas was viewed as a popular founding figure, especially in south Etruria. Another tradition, which ascribed the foundation to an eponymous hero (Romulus), maintained that it took place two generations (that is, approximately seventy years) after Aeneas.

The problem with this was, of course, that a date of around 1100 BC was far too early for Roman writers and tradition; for quite independent reasons, the opening of the consular lists, the dedication of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, the expulsion of the kings and the birth of the Republic had to occur in or around 509 BC. From that point, the traditional line of kings could not possibly stretch back to anywhere near 1100 BC. Roman calculations assumed a generation (approximately thirty-five years) for each king, with a little less for Tarquinius Superbus because he was expelled; various calculations produced dates between 750 and 730, until the encyclopaedic Varro, in the first century BC, came up with his ‘refined’ date of 21 April 753 BC.

Aeneas was thus left seriously adrift: an ingenious resolution was produced by Livy’s Greek contemporary, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the form of two foundations. Aeneas left Rom...