The Roman Republic and Empire Comparison Chart
The Roman Republic
The first 500 years
800BC-510BC Those Mysterious Etruscans
 Indo-Europeans who settled in Northern Italy around 2 nd
millennium
 Their lives were highly focused on Death given their elaborate
burial chambers
 They were heavily influenced by Greek colonists
 They had a class system
 Passed much of what they learned from Greeks onto Latia
(Romans)
 They created the Roman numerals
Early Latins

Patriarchy much more than Etruscans (father absolute head of
house)
 Children taught civics and loyalty to State and Family
 Patricians were their noble class (by birth) representing 10% and
owning most land
 Plebeians were everyone else (90%)
The Early Republic (509BC-287BC)
 509 BC Patricians throw off Tarquin the Etruscan (Last
Etruscan King) and set up a two branch republic (Executive and
Legislative)
 Executive = 2 Consuls that could veto each other
 Legislative = Assembly of Centuries (soldiers) and the Senate
(serve for life)
 494 BC Plebeians strike and start a 200 year struggle for
equality
 They eventually win their demands for Written Laws (12
Tables) and Representation
(Assembly of Tribes) led by a Tribune-Plebeian power would
gradually grow
Italian Conquest and Punic Wars (264-149BC)
 Romans treated others on the peninsula liberally, allowing them
to keep their forms of government at first )Greek Colonies in
Sicily and the Boot Heel, so long as they sent soldiers and paid
taxes
 Punic Wars start over Shipping control of the Mediterranean and
Sicily (Rome v. Carthage)
 Of the three campaigns the second would devistate the Italian
peninsula as the Carthage General Hannibal burn almost all of
Italy until his eventual defeat by Scipio at Zama near Carthage
 149 BC Rome destroys Carthage once and for all with salt in the
fields
230BC -130BC Conquest of Greece and the East
 Phillip V (Macedonian descendant of Alexander sides with
Carthage during Punic War
 Rome pushes Macedonians out of Greek City States to "protect"
them
 Corinth Rebels-Rome burns the city state to the ground (and all
in it) and militarily occupies Greek City-States (More Fusion)
The Roman Empire
The second 500 years
The Last 500 Years ( The Roman Empire)
27BC-14AD (Augustus) and 14AD to 180 AD (His Successors)
 Caesar Augustus (the adopted nephew of Julius) defeats
Marcus Antonious (Mark Anthony and Cleopatra) to rule
over all of the Empire
 His wise policies create peace in the empire for 200 years
(after years of civil war)
 This time of peace is called the Pax Romana
 In Government Augustus picks qualified and loyal
proconsuls, allows local rule in most places (Judea), and
becomes head of the Roman Pagan faith – Pontifex
Maximus
 In Law he creates the Jus Gentium (laws for noncitizens) and the Jus Civile (laws for citizens), eventually
almost all males in the empire will be eligible for full
citizenship. He creates a uniform legal code for the entire
empire.
 In Military affairs, he shrinks the size of the legions
(Roman Army) to 300,000 men and supplements them
with local militia
Dangerous Statistics from the Empires Heyday
 New wealthy (Equities) conduct high risk, high reward
global economic speculation
 Taste for luxury items increases, as does debt
 Wealth takes a priority over the family and traditional
values (mostly after Augustus) –Fewer Children, divorce,
population decline of citizens

Less loyalty to Rome and more to your bank account
180AD-284AD The Beginning of the End
 The last good emperor is Marcus Aurelius
 He is followed by 28 terrible emperors (the first, his son
Commodus, who was assassinated by his own men)
 Political instability and civil war reign
294AD-337AD (The split-Diocletian, Constantine, and
Theodosius)
 Reforms improve the Empire somewhat during this time
allowing the empire to last another 1000 years in the East
 Diocletian creates two administrative units from the
empire (East and West)
 Diocletian would rule in the East and Maximian in the
West (Rule of 4-Tetrarchy)
 In 330AD Constantine would move the capital to
Byzantium and name it Constantinople (Tremendous
defensive site)
 In 395 AD Theodosius officially splits the empire into
two separate empires
230BC-130BC (Provincial Plantation Temptations)
 As Rome expands it sends out proconsuls as territorial
governors. They become greedy and rent huge amounts of
land from the state, using slave labor to grow cheap crops.
These plantations are called Latifundias
 This puts small farmers out of work all over the empire
(including Italy)
 Farmers crowd into cities looking for work and food
 Meanwhile, Patricians and many established Plebeians are
becoming very wealthy off of the Latifundia system and
abandoning their allegiance to the state for that of profit.
This starts to degrade the value civic value system of the
republic
133BC-121BC (Two Noble Brothers go Tribunal)
 Tiberius and Gaius Gracchi both try political reforms that
fail
 Tiberius rejects his patrician birth and is elected as a
tribune. He introduce radical land reform (giving land back
to the people) and is assassinated by other patricians

Gaius is elected as a consul and tries both land and price
reforms. He too is assassinated by patricians
107BC -81BC (No Controlling Authority)
 Marius (a great general) is elected consul in 107BC and
starts to pay his army out of his own battle loot. The army
now switches allegiance from the republic Marius (the
person). Other generals follow this model to the point of
competing armies and civil war
 Sulla, one of Marius’ soldiers builds his own private army
and defeats Marius to rule Rome as its first dictator (Good
bye republic in all but name)
70BC-44BC The First Triumvirate
 Rome is ruled for a time by three powerful men
Crassus, Pompey, and Julius
 Julius conquers Gaul (France) for Rome and is told not
to return by Pompey.
 He returns (crossing the Rubicon) and defeats Pompey’s
forces and then declares himself emperor for life
 He introduces reforms, granting citizenship to all
Italians and others who serve in the army, but he is
assassinated in the first year of his empire (44BC)
Late300s-476AD-The Final Acts of a declining Western
Roman Empire
 Germans are pushed into the empire because of
population pressure into their homeland from central
Asia (Huns)
 Also they desired warmer and better farmland (Gaul)
 Germans became a big part of the Roman army and
adopted Roman culture during the last centuries of
the empire
“Barbarians” at the Gates
 Visogoths rebelled against Rome and defeated a large
Roman army at Adrianople. Rome gave land to the
Visogoths but there were too many
 The Huns (under Attila) invade France (Gaul) and sack
and burn Roman towns
 By 455 AD the Vandels and the Goths have divided Gaul
between them
 In 476 AD the City of Rome surrenders to Odoacer (First
German Emperor)
The End in the West