The Roman Republic
After the overthrow of the Tarquin monarchy by Junius Brutus in 509 BC, Rome does not revert back to a
monarchy for the rest of its history. The era of the great expansion of Roman power and civilization is the era
of the Roman Republic, in which Rome is ruled by its Senate and its assembly, which were institutions
formed at the beginning of the monarchy. The history of the Republic is a history of continuous warfare; all of
the historical stories which the Romans will use as stories of Roman virtue and values date from this
tumultuous period of defense and invasion.
The Romans had at the beginning of the Republic a constitution which had laid down the traditions and
institutions of government; this constitution, however, was not a formal or even a written document, but
rather a series of unwritten traditions and laws. These traditions and laws were based on the institution of a
monarchy, so while the Romans did not revive the monarchy, they still invested enormous amounts of power
in their officials. At the top were the consuls, who were two patricians elected to the office for one year.
These patricians exercised imperium in much the same way the kings had in the Roman monarchy. These
consuls initiated legislation, served as the head of the judiciary and the military, and served as chief priests
to the nation. They even dressed as monarchs, by wearing purple robes and sitting on the seat traditionally
reserved for the monarch: the ivory chair.
However, the power of the consuls were severely limited. First, they only served for one year, at which
point they would have to be re-elected or enter into private life again. Second, there were two consuls; either
consul could effectively prevent any action or decision by the other consul by simply vetoing him. No consul
could act without the other consul in agreement. Third, the consuls would have to serve on the Senate after
their term in office; this led them to cultivate assiduously the cooperation of the senate. So the consuls
exercised absolute power, imperium , but their power was severely hamstrung by the circumstances of their
office. As a result, the consuls did not exercise much initiative or creativity, so Roman government tended to
be highly conservative and cautious. This, however, was the intent of the consular system. In 325 BC,
however, the consul system was changed to allow for proconsuls, who were consuls whose terms in office
were extended because of military campaigns.
Beneath the consuls were two financial officers called quaestors, and as the Republic evolved, an officical
called the praetor was invented. The praetorship was originally a judicial office, but later became a military
office; the praetors were essentially the central generals of Rome. The praetorship, like the consulship, was
a one-year appointment, but like the consulship could be extended in times of war. In addition, the task of
classifying citizens according to wealth and tax status, which was a consular duty, eventually fell to a new
pair of officials called censors. It was the job of the censor to draw up the roll of citizens (somewhat like our
modern day census; census is the Latin word from which "censor" is derived) and to fix their tax status. As
you might imagine, the censors had all kinds of opportunities for bribery and corruption since they were
setting tax rates, so after a while the office fell only to the most incorruptible and virtuous men of the
Republic: former consuls. Eventually, the office of the censor acquired great powers, such as the power to
dismiss senators from the Senate not merely for financial reasons, but any reason at all. By the time of the
late Republic, the censors had become some of the most powerful politicians in Rome.
It is immediately evident that the imperium was fully concentrated in the hands of the patricians. The consuls
were elected from the patrician class, as were the quaestors and the praetors; the censors, by definition,
were always patricians. Because the consul reverted to the Senate, the Senate, composed only of patricians,
became the principle power in Rome. The Republic in its early form was largely a transfer of power from the
monarch to the wealthiest classes in Rome, and this dominance of Roman law, finances, and foreign policy
by the patricians instantly produced resentment among the plebeians; from its inception in 509 BC to its
demise at the hands of Caesar in the middle of the first century BC, the political history of the Roman
Republic is a tumultuous, chaotic, and often violent conflict between the two classes in Rome vying for
political power.
This conflict was called "the struggle of the orders" (the orders of society) and is largely about the patrician
class attempting to hold onto power while the plebeians attempted to achieve social and political equality.
The patricians found themselves unable to exist without the plebeians: not only did the plebeians produce
the food and supply the labor that kept the Roman economy going, they also supplied the soldiers for the
Roman military. If the plebeians could act as a group, they could effectively shut down the Roman economy
and military; the latter was especially important since Rome was in continual military conflict during the age
of the Republic.
In Roman historical tradition, in 494 BC the plebeians withdrew from Rome and occupied the Sacred
Mount. There they declared an alternative government. They formed a tribal assembly, modelled after the
Roman assembly, which would be headed by tribunes who were heads of their tribes. They declared that
these tribunes could veto any decision by a Roman magistrate or official, and could veto any decision or
legislation by the Senate. The assembly itself, like the former assembly, voted by tribe, and the decision of
the assembly was binding on all plebeians. In other words, the plebeians had won for themselves the right to
author their own legislation. Their decisions, however, were not binding on non-plebeians.
In 450 BC, the struggle of the orders produced the Law of the Twelve Tables, which simply formalized
and codified Roman law and its constitution. The Romans, however, saw it as a victory for the rights of the
citizen for it gave them an instrument to know where they stood as far as the law is concerned. In 445 BC,
plebeians acquired the right to marry a patrician, and in 367 the plebeians gained the right to be elected
consul, when the first plebeian consul was elected. The Licinian-Sextian laws demanded that at least one
consul be a plebeian. After the completion of the term of consular office, the consul became a member of the
Senate, so the patrician hold on the Senate had, in part, been broken when the plebeians gained full access
to the office of the consul. In 300 BC, plebeians were allowed to serve at all levels of the priesthood, thus
making them religiously equal to the patricians. Finally, in the greatest victory of all in terms of power and
influence, in 287 BC, the decisions and legislation of the plebeian assembly were not only binding on the
plebeians, but on the entire Roman citizenry. These reforms were purchased without any civil war or internal
bloodshed; they would not resolve the struggle, but they certainly prevented out and out civil war.
The Romans, then, reformed their government as the need arose rather than pursuing any particular plan of
reform or development. At the same time, the Romans built their territorial power with the same lack of
planning and purpose. Originally, the wars which the Republic fought were largely defensive wars; the
expulsion of the Tarquins provoked many attacks by their allies and by Etruscans. Soon, however, the
Romans were moving to gain control over neighboring territory in order to neutralize the threat of attack.
Their logic was that control over these territories would obviate any potential attack from the people
occupying those territories and at the same time provide a buffer region between themselves and potential
attackers. Roman conquest, then, was pursued largely for Roman security; the end result of this process
would be, first, the conquest of the entire Italian peninsula by 265 BC, and then the conquest of the world.
The Roman Empire was an accident, so to speak; it was formed in the pursuit of other policies, namely,
security. Only in its later stages was the Roman Empire a deliberate objective.
The Conquest of Italy
The conquest of Italy began soon after the Romans expelled the Tarquins in 509 BC; their first target were
the Etruscans themselves. Allying themselves with other Latins and with the Greeks, the Romans quickly
drove the Etruscans from the Italian peninsula. Etruscan civilization came to a brutal end. Rome steadily
conquered all the Etruscan territory throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BC.
The Romans, however, were dramatically checked in their conquest of Italy by invasions of another IndoEuropean people from across the Alps: the Gauls. The Gauls were a Celtic people who were nomadic and
war-like. In 387 BC, the roared across the Alps into Italy, soundly defeated the Roman army, and then
capture and burned Rome to the ground. The Gauls, however, did not wish to settle in Italy; they were
interested only in amassing wealth. They looted Rome and then demnaded a tribute; after they had collected
their ransom, they returned home to central Europe. Rome was now vulnerable to all the peoples it had
conquered, and various Italian states tried to attack Rome. By 350 BC, however, Rome was sufficiently
powerful enough to begin asserting dominance over the region again.
The Romans had been part of a Latin alliance, but exerted tremendous hegemony over that alliance.
Despite being defeated by the Gauls in 387 BC, the Romans successfully fought back Gaulish raiding parties
throughout the middle of the fourth century BC. Roman allies, however, began to bitterly resent the Roman
hegemony over the league and demanded their independence. Rome turned them down flat, and the Latin
cities rose up against Rome for their independence in 340 BC. Rome, however, only took two years to defeat
the Latins in this uprising; in 338 BC, Rome dismantled the Latin League and took control of all of Latium.
In 295 BC, Rome began a war with a tough Latin people living in the Appenine mountains, the Samnites,
who were joined by the remaining Etruscan cities, by Gaulish tribes, and some rebellious Italian cities. The
result of this war, in 280 BC, was total Roman control over all of central Italy. Rome then turned its eyes
south to the Greek cities and quickly overpowered them. By the middle of the third century BC, Rome
controlled all of the Italian peninsula.
Ancient history shows abundantly that it is enormously difficult to hang onto conquered territories; the
Romans, however, seemed to have figured out how to peacefully hold onto conquered territory with both
liberal and militaristic policies. First, Rome didn't destroy conquered cities, but granted them certain rights.
Some cities were allowed full Roman citizenship, particularly those near to Rome. Others were allowed
certain Roman rights. Some were allowed complete autonomy. Some were allowed to become allies. All,
however, were required to send Rome taxes and troops. In addition, Rome settled soldiers on the captured
lands as payment for their service. Some of these land grants were especially lucrative. The soldiers got land
wealth, and the Romans got permanent military settlers in the conquered lands. In this way, Rome was able
to maintain a permanent military settlement in every conquered land. In order to reinforce these settlements,
the Romans began an ambitious road-building project. Their roads were of the highest quality and went in
straight lines—right straight over mountains in fact—so that soldiers and supplies could be quickly moved
into rebellious territories. The response to revolt was swift and harsh. So the combination of granting
conquered territories rights and citizenship (or the promise of future rights and citizenship) and the surety of
a swift, harsh response to rebellion produced a lasting, peaceful empire on the Italian peninsula.
A new enemy, however, asserted itself across the Mediterranean in the south: Carthage. The next century
would see the clash of these two great and powerful cities; the end of these wars, the Punic Wars, would
make Rome the most powerful force in the Mediterranean.
The Punic Wars
Carthage
The greatest naval power of the Mediterranean in the third century BC was the North African city of Carthage
near modern day Tunis. The Carthaginians were orginally Phoenicians and Carthage was a colony founded
by the Phoenician capital city of Tyre in the ninth century BC; the word "Carthage" means, in Phoenician,
"the New City." The Phoenicians, however, were conquered by the Assyrians in the sixth century BC, and the
conquered by the Persians; an independent Phoenician state would never again appear in the Middle East.
Carthage, however, remained; it was no longer a colony, but a fully functioning independent state. While the
Romans were steadily increasing their control over the Italian peninsula, the Carthaginians were extending
their empire over most of North Africa. By the time that Rome controlled all of the Italian peninsula, Carthage
already controlled the North African coast from western Libya to the Strait of Gibraltar, and ruled over most of
southern Spain, and the island of Corsica and Sardinia in Europe as well. Carthage was a formidable power;
it controlled almost all the commercial trade in the Mediterranean, had subjected vast numbers of people all
whom sent soldiers and supplies, and amassed tremendous wealth from gold and silver mines in Spain.
These two mighty empires came into contact in the middle of the third century BC when Rome's power had
reached the southern tip of Italy. The two peoples had been in sporadic contact before, but neither side felt
threatened by the others. The Romans were perfectly aware of the Carthaginian heritage: they called them
by their old name, Phoenicians. In Latin, the word is Poeni, which gives us the name for the wars between
the two states, the Punic Wars. These conflicts, so disastrous for Carthage, were inevitable. Between
Carthage and Italy lay the huge island of Sicily; Carthage controlled the western half of Sicily, but the
southern tip of the Italian peninsula put the Romans within throwing distance of the island. When the city of
Messana revolted against the Carthaginians, the Romans intervened, and the first Punic War erupted.
The First Punic War: 264-241 BC
The First Punic War broke out in 264 BC; it was concentrated entirely on the island of Sicily. Rome
beseiged many of the Carthaginian cities on Sicily, and when Carthage attempted to raise the seige with its
navy, the Romans utterly destroyed that navy. For the first time since the rise of the Carthaginian empire,
they had lost power over the sea-ways.
The war ended with no particular side winning over the other. In 241 BC, the Carthaginians and Romans
signed a treaty in which Carthage had to give up Sicily, which it didn't miss, and to pay an indemnity to pay
for the war, which it could well afford. But Carthage soon faced rebellion among its mercenary troops and
Rome, in 238 BC, took advantage of the confusion by seizing the island of Corsica. The Romans greatly
feared the Carthaginians and wanted build as large a buffer zone as possible between them and the
Carthaginians. By gaining Sicily, the Romans had expelled the Carthaginians from their back yard; they now
wanted them out of their front yard, that is, the islands of Corsica and Sardinia west of the Italian peninsula.
The Carthaginians were furious at this action; even Roman historians believed it was a rash and unethical
act. The Carthaginians began to shore up their presence in Europe. They sent first the general Hamilcar and
then his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, to Spain to build colonies and an army. Both Hamilcar and Hasdrubal made
allies among the native Iberians, and their armies, recruited from Iberians, grew ominous as Carthaginian
power and influence crept up the Iberian peninsula.
The Second Punic War: 218-202 BC
By 218 BC, Carthage had built a mighty empire in Spain and grown wealthy and powerful as a result.
Growing increasingly anxious, the Romans had imposed a treaty on Carthage not to expand their empire
past the Ebro river in Spain. However, when a small city in Spain, Saguntum, approached Rome asking for
Roman friendship and alliance, the Romans couldn't resist having a friendly ally right in the heart of the
Carthaginian Iberian empire.
A few years later, however, in 421 BC, a young man, only twenty-five years old, assumed command over
Carthaginian Spain: Hannibal. At first, Hannibal gave the Saguntines wide berth wishing to avoid coming
into conflict with Rome. But the Saguntines were flush with confidence in their new alliance, and began
playing politics with other Spanish cities. Hannibal, despite direct threats from Rome, attacked Saguntum
and conquered it.
The Romans attempted to solve the problem with diplomacy, demanding that Carthage dismiss Hannibal
and send him to Rome. When Carthage refused, the second Punic War began in 218 BC. Rome, however,
was facing a formidable opponent; in the years following the first Punic War, Carthage had created a
powerful empire in Spain with a terrifyingly large army. Hannibal marched that army across Europe and, in
September of 218, he crossed the Alps with his army and entered Italy on a war of invasion. Although his
army was tired, he literally smashed the Roman armies he encountered in northern Italy. These spectacular
victories brough a horde of Gauls from the north to help him, fifty thousand or more; his victory over Rome,
as he saw it, would be guaranteed by convincing Roman allies and subject cities to join Carthage.
The Romans knew that they couldn't beat Hannibal in open warfare. Desperate, they asked Quintus Fabius
Maximus to become absolute dictator of Rome. Fabius determined to avoid open warfare at any cost and
simply harass the Carthaginian army until they were weak enought to be engaged with openly. But when
Hannibal marched into Cannae and started decimating the countryside in 216 BC, Fabius sent an army of
eighty thousand soldiers against him. This army was completely wiped out, the largest defeat Rome ever
suffered. Roman allies in the south of Italy literally ran to Hannibal's side; the whole of Sicily allied itself with
the Carthaginians. In addition, the king of Macedon, Philip V, who controlled most of the mainland of Greece,
allied himself with Hannibal and began his own war against Roman possessions in 215 BC.
The situation was nearly hopeless for the Romans. Fabius had been chastened by his defeat and
absolutely refused to go against Hannibal, whose army moved around the Italian countryside absolutely
unopposed. Hannibal, however, was weak in numbers and in equipment. He didn't have enough soldiers to
lay seige to cities such as Rome, and he didn't have either the men or equipment to storm those cities by
force. All he could do was roam the countryside and lay waste to it.
The Romans, however, decided to fight the war through the back door. They knew that Hannibal was
dependent on Spain for future supplies and men, so they appointed a young, strategically brilliant man as
proconsul and handed him the imperium over Spain. This move was unconstituional, for this young man had
never served as consul. His name: Publius Cornelius Scipio (237-183 BC). Scipio, who would later be
called Scipio Africanus for his victory over Carthage (in Africa), soon conquered all of Spain. Hannibal was
now left high and dry in Italy.
Scipio then crossed into Africa in 204 BC and took the war to the walls of Carthage itself. This forced the
Carthaginians to sue for peace with Rome; part of the treaty demanded that Hannibal leave the Italian
peninsula. Hannibal was one of the great strategic generals in history; all during his war with Rome he never
once lost a battle. Now, however, he was forced to retreat; he had, despite winning every battle, lost the war.
When he returned to Carthage, the Carthaginians took heart and rose up against Rome in one last gambit in
202 BC. At Zama in northern Africa, Hannibal, fighting against Scipio and his army, met his first defeat.
Rome reduced Carthage to a dependent state; Rome now controlled the whole of the western Mediterranean
including northern Africa.
This was the defining historical experience of the Romans. They had faced certain defeat with toughness
and determination and had won against overwhelming odds. For the rest of Roman history, the character of
being Roman would be distilled in the histories of this desperate war against Carthage. The Second Punic
War turned Rome from a regional power into an international empire: it had gained much of northern Africa,
Spain, and the major islands in the western Mediterranean. Because Philip V of Macedon had allied himself
with Hannibal and started his own war of conquest, the second Punic War forced Rome to turn east in wars
of conquest against first Philip and then other Hellenistic kingdoms. The end result of the second Punic War,
in the end, was the domination of the known world by Rome.
The Third Punic War: 149-146 BC
In the years intervening, Rome undertook the conquest of the Hellenistic empires to the east. In the west,
Rome brutally subjugated the Iberian people who had been so vital to Roman success in the second Punic
War. However, they were especially angry at the Carthaginians who had almost destroyed them. The great
statesman of Rome, Cato, is reported by the historians as ending all his speeches, no matter what their
subject, with the statement, "I also think that Carthage should be destroyed." Carthage had, through the first
half of the second century BC, recovered much of its prosperity through its commercial activities, although it
had not gained back much power. The Romans, deeply suspicious of a reviving Carthage, demanded that
the Carthaginians abandon their city and move inland into North Africa. The Carthaginians, who were a
commercial people that depended on sea trade, refused. The Roman Senate declared war, and Rome
attacked the city itself. After a seige, the Romans stormed the town and the army went from house to house
slaughtering the inhabitants in what is perhaps the greatest systematic execution of non-combatants before
World War II. Carthaginians who weren't killed were sold into slavery. The harbor and the city was
demolished, and all the surrounding countryside was sown with salt in order to render it uninhabitable.