The remains of the Temple of Saturn - below which dwelt the Roman Treasury.
So, the Republic. The period covers 500 years or more, so this will be a bit of a highlights package for the most part.
Important stuff to know.
1. At the founding of the Republic, Rome was no more important than any number of other Italian cities.
2. We're talking 509BC for the expelling of the Kings, until - well you pick a year but many go with 27BC - lifelong supreme power vests in one man again. The concept of an 'Emperor' really doesn't take off until a while after that, but as the single defining principle of the Roman Republic was that no one man could have supreme power - other than in times of crisis and then appointed by the Senate as 'dictator' for a limited period - then you can certainly say 27BC is when any vague notion of semi-democracy ceased to exist. As a functioning concept it had disappeared years before that, but I am jumping ahead there.
3. From its inception, the Republic split Roman society between the Patricians - members of ancient families whose forebears had been the king's counsellors, an aristocracy really, and the Plebeians - every other free citizen.
4. The Roman political and social systems are way too complex to cover in detail in a bluffer's guide. In any event, there were changes through the centuries here and there - although not too much of substance until near the end. The Romans were absolute sticklers for what they called the 'mos maiorum' which sort of translates as 'the ancient ways'.
Having said all that, here's the Republican Bluffer's Guide. Even a highlights package of 500 years takes a while, so grab a glass of wine and sit back. I hope you enjoy the ride.
I. Expansion
The entire Republican period from go to woah saw non stop expansionism of a kind not seen again until the British Empire. A city-state in the middle of Italy expanded within a comparatively short space of time to rule the entire peninsula. Before too long it was running the Mediterranean, with provinces from France to Syria, via Greece, Spain, modern Turkey, Macedonia, and North Africa. The political system, designed to run a city, was creaking at the joins many years before it fell.
The Romans went north, south and east with equal intensity, offering alliance - on terms of submission - or destruction. They lost battles, they even lost the city at one point,but they never stopped expanding. Once the peninsula was under control - more or less, as several uprisings and outright wars proved - they started out abroad. Believe it or not though, they justified each and every expansion, incursion and invasion as necessary to ensure national security. Remind you of anyone recently?
II. Carthage
Remember Queen Dido? Well she was about as likely to have existed as Aeneas was, take that how you will. But Carthage was no myth. It represented the strongest competition in and around the Mediterranean, and ended up giving Rome its all-time biggest battlefield defeat. Once again the Romans did not give in. After the slaughter of the battle of Cannae, where the Romans lost an estimated 80,000 men, they just lowered their recruitment standards and raised more troops.
The Romans fought three wars with Carthage, over the third and second centuries BC. All were bloodbaths in which both sides and their allies suffered horrendously. The third Punic War saw Carthage itself utterly destroyed, the city being razed and its fields despoiled. Rome - a nation which had not even possessed a navy prior to its Carthaginian entanglements - was the unquestioned mistress of the Mediterranean by the end of the second century.
The Romans picked up their first overseas provinces in this series of wars - Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, North Africa and parts of Spain. At the same time their wars in the east against the Greeks and their neighbours turned them into the global superpower of the day.
III. Domestic Politics
(the Forum, where it all happened)
Having disposed of their monarchy, the Romans adopted a Republican system of annually elected officials, combined with the Senate, which in theory was an advisory body. The twists and turns that sentence encompasses are outside the scope of our bluffers' guide to the Republic, so in true modern style we'll summarise it in bullet points with sweeping generalisations.
*The highest ranking officials were the consuls. Two were elected every year and they held equal power. Under them were the praetors, quaestors, aediles, and tribunii aerarii. Seperate but supremely powerful in some instances were the tribunes, about whom you will hear more later.
*At first the plebs had no political power, but, after literally going on strike and withdrawing from the city - they moved en masse to the Aventine Hill - they were granted various rights including the creation of the tribunate to protect them.
*The Senate - made up of the heads of the patrician families plus elected magistrates (who remained after their year of office ended) - was supposed to advise the Magistrates, but ended up largely running them, at least until the final century of the Republic. The Senate itself was run by the oldest and richest families and very few outsiders ever entered it.
*The "Famous Families" allied through marriage and ensured their cosy nest on the peak of Rome's summit remained undisturbed for centuries. As Rome expanded and became richer, so did they.
*When a 'new man' was elected to the consulate (and later, to any office) he became a member of the Senate thereafter and qualified his family for admission, provided they met the financial criteria (which changed over time but was always high). Not surprisingly, those famlies already in the Senate did not favour broadening its base, until the last years of the Republic when it could lead to political advantage.
*These aren't very good short bullet points, are they? Time for a new topic.
IV. Social classes
Basically they had the patricians and the plebeians, however over time there ended up being some poor patricians and rich plebeians (see below re: Sulla and Marius for examples of each). On a financial, property, and political level, there were senators, the knights (or 'equites'), and the rest - who ranged from not quite rich enough for the top two but still comfortably well off, all the way down to the 'capite censi' or Head Count. The latter were plebs in such throes of poverty that they owned no property whatsoever - not even a slave. They made up a substantial percentage of the city's population. The categories supposedly derived from pre Republican times and related in a way to military service - those who could afford horse and armour and weapons, those who could afford some of the above, and those who were ineligible for service as they could afford nothing - the urban and landless poor. As we shall see, their eventual entry into the military, in controversial circumstances, led directly to the fall of the Republic and the institution of what would become the Empire.
V. Slaves
Well there is no avoiding the fact that despite all the things the Romans did for us, their entire social structure rested on slavery. Without it they would never have risen to the degree they did. Of course they were hardly the only nation - then or since - to adopt slavery as an economic masterstroke, but they probably did it bigger and better than anyone else.
Slaves came directly from conquests and battlefield victories, as tribute from defeated enemies, or were bought from markets. The largest was on the Greek island of Delos, where hundreds of thousands of slaves were bought and sold.
They could be freed, meaning they became the clients of their former master (now their patron). They could in some cases make and save money and even buy their freedom.
They could also be exploited and barbarically treated with virtually no protection. If, say, you killed someone else's slave, you were up for damages (i.e. market value of the slave, much as if you had a car accident today). Slaves had no rights.
VI. Spartacus
While we're on slaves, the most famous of them all. Spartacus was a gladiator who in around 73BC led a violent escape from a gladiatorial school. He and a small band of followers camped on Mount Vesuvius and cleverly defeated the increasingly larger Roman forces sent against them. Escaped slaves and others flocked to join Spartacus who ended up with an army of some 70,000 plus women, children and the old and infirm. After many epic struggles, betrayals, victories and despair, Spartacus and most of his army perished in a series of battles, while 6000 survivors were crucified alongside the main roads to Rome as a warning to all slaves.
VII. Political struggles
The Romans did not have political parties. There were groups and factions, but Roman politics was about individuals striving for personal success. The two most well known groupings, which many people including myself have equated with modern right/left political parties were the Optimates (the "Best Men" or "Good Men") and the Populares (what you'd expect).
The Populares were frequently accused of being demagogues - inflammatory speakers who sought to mobilise the masses in order to gain personal power - and some of them met that definition. However the Optimates would stop at nothing - murder, lynching, political trickery, armed warfare and, believe it or not, mobilising the masses in order to gain personal power - to keep their place at the heart of power and influence.
I started this months ago and it's still nowhere near finished. Let's call it Episode II and publish it now.
The Republic continues in Episode III.
****perhaps a lesson for modern superpowers is that almost without exception, the biggest threat to the regime came from within***
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