ROMAN HISTORY 500390
Cincinnatus the Dictator
• Not a bad thing; actually a hero
• Had previously been a consul
• Rome vs Aequi in 458
• Consul trapped on Mt. Algidus
• Chosen as dictator
• One guy in charge for 6 months
• Senators find him on his farm
What’s Next for Cincinnatus?
• Took 16 days to win the war & come back
• of 6 month term; what do you think he does next?
• Gives up power and goes back to farming
• American president who gave up his position?
• “American Cincinnatus” – George Washington
• Selfless service
• Order of the Cincinnati
• Cincinnati, OH
Conflict of the Orders
• Plebeians (plebs) vs. patricians
• Poor vs. rich
• Patricians hold all the legal power too
• Senators (gotta be rich) create laws
• Judges speaking oral law
• Plebeians don’t even know if things are made up
First Secession of the Plebs - 494
• Background: Plebeians feel like the patricians have too
much power to create laws; could hurt the plebeians
• Mons Sacer – sacred mountain
• Menenius Agrippa’s story
• Tribunes
• Veto power
• Sacrosanct
Second Secession of the Plebs - 449
• Background: inconsistent rulings by patrician judges;
plebeians want to see the laws written down
• Decemviri – Ten Men – slow to write them
• One tries to kidnap a freeborn girl
• Plebeians go back to the mountain
• The Twelve Tables
• Bronze tablets in the forum
• Laws written on them
• What would be their significance?
Rome vs. Veii, 406-396 BC
• Veii as powerful as Rome; fortified on a hill
• Camillus is made dictator
• In through the sewer!
• Overpopulation at Rome; Camillus
grows unpopular
• Opposes resettlement
• Convicted of embezzlement
• Banished and fined
• Rome controls Etruria to the north
Rome vs. Brennus
• Rome’s therefore responsible for Etruria
• Brennus & the Senones, a tribe from Gaul
• Rome tries to help Etruria
• Battle of Allia River – 390 BC
• Rome besieged; Capitoline Hill
Geese, Woe, and Camillus
• Messenger sent to Camillus; route revealed
• Juno’s sacred geese save the day
• Rome sacked and records burned
• Settlement; weighted scales
• Brennus: “Vae victis” – woe to the conquered
• Camillus arrives and chases the Gauls away
• “second Romulus” or “second founder of Rome”
From here…
• Historians free to fudge prior details
• Rome recovers very quickly and finds itself in a lot of wars
• Conquers the Mediterranean within about 300 years